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“What?” I ask, startled by his voice in the quiet room. I look up at him, but he’s not watching me. His eyes are closed.
“One of those sick kids. I can’t stand to see those posters of the kids in the beds. I know it makes me selfish as hell. It makes me a total asshole because I should be so grateful for children’s hospitals like that, but when I see those posters...”
I roll more fully to my side so I can watch him. His eyes are still closed. “Royal... we don’t have to—”
“Naked rule,” he states, and I nod, even though he can’t see me. He must feel it or sense it because he continues, “I was born to really young parents. My mom was sixteen, and my dad was seventeen. But apparently, they wanted me. They got married and had a plan. But that plan didn’t include a sick kid.”
My own eyes fall closed as I take in his words, but I don’t say anything.
“I was a year and a half when they noticed something wasn’t quite right. They took me in, and that’s when I got the diagnosis.” I swallow hard, waiting. “Leukemia. A really rare, childhood form of leukemia.”
“Oh, God,” I whisper.
“They tried. At least that’s what I was told. I don’t remember, not at all. I remember being in the hospital a lot. Being poked and prodded. But most of what I remember about them is what I was told. Apparently, it was the second time the leukemia came back. The first time, they stuck around. They tried to pay the bills and kept working while I was in the hospital for weeks and weeks, getting treatment. But the second time when I was almost five, they apparently couldn’t do it anymore.”
I feel tears welling up in my eyes, and my throat is raw from the sadness and anger warring there.They couldn’t do it anymore?What about their child? “What happened?” I force myself to ask.
“They just left the hospital and never came back.”
My jaw drops. I force my eyes open and look at Royal, who’s now looking at me, despair written all over his features. “The bills were too much. The time was too much. It was all too much, I guess. They never came back, and I became the state’s problem.”
“Oh, Royal.”
“Please don’t,” he says softly, wrapping an arm around me and stroking my arm. “I’m okay. I really am. I was pissed for a long time. I hated them for leaving me there, sick and alone. I was angry, but I’m okay.”
He definitely isn’t. No one could be. That’s horrific.
“But this fundraiser...”
I look up at him in horror. “Oh, God. No wonder. Why don’t you just tell Jenny no?”
“Because hospitals like this one are incredible. They pay the bills for the parents, so they can focus on the kids. I didn’t have that. But it’s just hard to see the kids. My mind goes right back there to those cold hospital rooms. To wondering where my parents went.”
My heart aches for him. “Did they ever find your parents? Please tell me they’re in prison for abandonment.”
“Nah,” he says quietly. “But every time I race, I like to think they’re watching. That they know I’m the one they left behind. That I’m not that weak, sick child, and instead, I’m a badass racer with more money and fame than they could have ever imagined. And I know that’s wrong...”
I shake my head. “It’s not. You have every right to want that. And you may have been sick, but you were never weak.”
I feel his immediate need to argue with me, but thankfully, he doesn’t. He seems too tired to do that, which I hate. I don’t want him tired. It starts to make so much sense why he wants to win so badly. Why he can’t let other racers get away with bumping his car on the track.
He can’t appear weak—in case they’re watching him.
Oh, God. He’s even more amazing than I thought he was.I lean up and steal his lips with a heated kiss because I need to try to take away even an ounce of his pain. I don’t think it can actually work, but I hope so.
I want to ask him about the years he was in foster care. I want to know how he made it from fighting his childhood illness to the man before me today. But I don’t get anything out because my phone is going off somewhere in the room.
And then I hear another phone.
And several dings.
Royal and I share a look before he climbs out of bed and grabs both our phones. I look at the missed calls and see Jenny’s name on my phone.
“Jenny,” Royal says just as his phone starts to ring again. I nod at him to answer it, and he does. “What’s going on?”
I hear Jenny through his phone. “You need to get to the hospital right now.”
“What?” Royal sounds distraught. “Why?”
