by Zante, Lily
“Marie thinks I’m a model girlfriend...” She stopped, the flustered look on her face telling him that she’d slipped up. “I mean, those were her words, not mine.”
He wanted to tell her she was, but he didn’t. He took the bags into the kitchen and started unloading. “You don’t have to get this stuff,” he said, pulling everything out. “I can shop online.”
“You need lots of fresh fruit and vegetables,” she announced. “You’ll need your strength, plus I had to get a few things for me.”
He huffed out a slow breath, not liking this turn of events in his life. All of a sudden he was the sick patient. The guy who could spend hours in the gym, and then swim a hundred lengths, the guy who could keep a woman entertained most of the night, the guy who had never so much as had the flu before was now a sorry walking shadow of his former self.
“Did Marie come today?” she asked.
“No. She said she had too much to do at the office.”
Marie had told him she had too much going on at work, and checking in on him as well as looking after her kids, was tough. They were in regular contact many times during the day, though, and she popped in with a couple of home-cooked dishes a few days ago.
Apparently, Marie said Amanda had called at work a couple of times. She was back from her honeymoon, and was trying to get a hold of him. She’d called him on his cellphone but he’d ignored it, not wanting her to ask him a million and one questions about his voice sounding odd. It wasn’t as hoarse as before, but different enough that she would notice, and he didn’t want to tell her about the cancer.
She’d be over like a shot, and he didn’t need that.
“Have you eaten?” Kay asked.
“I ate earlier.” He’d waited as long as he could, before having his dinner. If he had known she would come, he would have waited. “I called, but your phone went to voicemail. I figured you were busy.”
“I was.”
“I saved you some leftovers.”
“I had dinner at work.”
He forgot. She’d mentioned how they ordered in food when they had lots of work to get through.
What he wanted was for her to come over and have dinner with him, for a change, and then stay the night. Stay in the guest room if it made her feel better. That was what he wanted, but he never asked her, because their relationship was different now. He liked this new easiness they had going on between them especially now that sex was off the agenda. He still missed the sex, but that was a conversation for another day. He had a lot of groveling to do before then.
At least things weren’t worse, though it felt as if there was a storm coming. After her outburst at the hospital that day, he sensed that Kay wasn’t yet done, that she still had things to say, and he was just going to have to wait for her to say them. Each time he’d tried to have a conversation about that night, and the night before that, when he’d said some despicable things to her, she refused to discuss them, saying these things would have to wait. The tables had turned because there had been a time not so long ago when she had wanted to talk, and connect, but he had denied her that, and now she was having her revenge by treating him in the same way.
He couldn’t fault her at all. Kay had been amazingly good to him. The two weeks after the surgery had stretched on like a goddamn month, and had it not been for Marie and Kay coming in to see him daily, he’d have been out of his mind with boredom.
He had still managed to keep an eye on the business, managed to keep on top of his emails and other pressing matters, and he’d kept in daily phone contact with the workmen at the Canal Street site.
Marie took care of all other business matters, and Kay—she was the best part of his day. It was her visits most evenings that he looked forward to the most.
Things became easier between them. She came, she talked, and then she left. And this was how he got to find out more about her. Thinking back on it now, he could see exactly how empty and how meaningless what they had had before had been. Back when it had been just pure physical sex without the emotional connection.
Now, he was slowly making that emotional connection, strengthening it with every new morsel of information he discovered about her. He had come to know more about her than he had ever before, about her growing up, and her getting her scholarship and then her high pressured job. He learned about her boss Remington, and the new client deal she was leading at work, and he marveled that she found the time to fit him in despite all of that.
He was humbled, and embarrassed, and determined to make it up to her. His voice was getting back to normal, but he wasn’t given the all clear yet. There was one final part of his treatment left, and which his doctor recommended.
“It will kill off any more living cancer cells that the surgery didn’t catch, Luke,” his consultant had told him. “I would advise you to have it.”
It was a radioactive iodine treatment. It wasn’t a surgical procedure, but required him to ingest the radioactive iodine which would make his body slightly radioactive. For the first few days, he’d be in a single room without visitors. Once the radiation levels in his body came down, and he wasn’t considered a risk to anyone, he would then be allowed to go home.
The fuckers who told him that this was the good cancer, didn’t tell him that taking away part of his thyroid gland meant it would no longer produce the hormones he needed. That the absence of a fully functioning thyroid would make him feel off balance and less than functional, that even if he looked normal on the outside, he would never be 100% the same. That, unless he took his medicine every single day, he would suffer from poor muscle tone, depression, weight gain, and brain fog; there was a whole list of things he would have, things he had taken for granted, things which were working just fucking fine before he’d had part of his thyroid gland removed.
But life had also given him Kay, and she seemed to have stuck by him in spite of everything. He could never make up to this woman for the way he had treated her. And that, he had decided, during many of the free hours he’d had to sit back and reflect on his life, was what he was going to fix as soon as he could .
“Are you ready for it?” she asked a few days before the treatment. They were sitting across the kitchen island from one another. It was their safe place, away from the couch and the bedroom.
He was. “I sure am. I want it over and done with.” He did. He wanted this part of his life behind him. He wanted to forget he ever had it, but the chances of that, the doctor had told him, were zero. He would have to take replacement hormone tablets for the rest of his life, in order to prevent symptoms of an underactive thyroid.
She reached across the island, and took his hand. The sudden, unexpected gesture stealing a beat of his heart. “You’re going to be fine,” she told him, as she had the night before his surgery.
He smiled, basking in the warmth of her reassurance.
“We’ll get it over and done with,” she said, making his heart burst. She’d said, ‘We’.
Once this was all done with, he’d explain, he’d make her see and she would understand.
“Thanks,” he said, rubbing his thumb slowly over the back of her hand. He waited for her to move her hand away, but she didn’t. “You don’t know what it means to me to hear you say that.”
Things were going to get better.
Chapter 36
Isolation stank.
He'd taken his pill almost a week ago and had stayed in an isolation room at the hospital for the first three days because he was a risk to others. His body was literally giving off radiation as if he was a nuclear missile.
After those days, he’d driven himself back home and spent another four days in solitary confinement.
‘Five to ten days, to be safe,’ the doctor had told him. He’d told Marie and Kay not to come over.
He was expecting to stay in isolation for another week, but when one evening, on day eight, the door opened and Kay walked in, it physically knocked him back. He’d given her a set of keys to his
place a few weeks ago, but seeing her walking through his door as if she lived here was like a burst of sunshine in a cloud of grey.
He liked the idea of her coming home to him, of this being their place, but he wasn’t sure it was such a good idea, him being a walking, talking bundle of radiation and her being this close to him.
“Hey,” he said, taking a few steps back. “You shouldn’t be here. I’m still radioactive.” He took a few more steps back so that he was in the corner of his living room as she watched him, still hovering near the door.
It didn’t matter how low the doctor said the levels would be by now, radiation was still radiation. This woman had some guts. “Kay, I’m a danger to the public. You shouldn’t come any closer.”
“I like dangerous men,” she replied, giving him the kind of smile she used to give him when he would initiate sex. “You should have come with a warning,” she replied, nodding, “But I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.”
“I know you can, I’m not implying otherwise.” She had still come through for him when any other woman in her shoes would have told him to go to hell. His entire opinion of her had changed the more he had gotten to know the real her. She had it all—the looks, the chutzpah, the heart of a saint and the body of a Greek goddess.
And she cared about him.
She was his path to redemption and she didn’t even know it.
“I love you being here, I really do, but I don’t want to put you in any danger.”
“The doctor said it was fine, and I trust his judgement over yours.”
“Which doctor?”
“Dr. Santini, at the hospital.”
He frowned. The dark-haired guy he’d seen before his surgery? “When did you get talking to him?”
“At the hospital. He said you’d be safe after a week, they only add in the extra days as a precautionary measure. And since I’m not pregnant, and we don’t have kids, there’s no big problem. You should be thankful I came.”
“I am. I am. You have no idea,” he said quickly, not wanting to push her away. While he didn’t want her to become ill on account of him, if the doctor said it was safe, he wasn’t going to argue about it. “I’m really, really glad you came. I haven’t even heard from Marie.”
“That’s because she’s in Miami, checking out some potential properties you told her to look at.” She peered at him, craning her neck forward. “Didn’t you know? You’re the one who sent her.”
He swiped his hand over the back of his neck. “Right,” he said, nodding, “I keep forgetting a whole heap of things.”
“Are you okay?” she asked, putting her bag down and walking over to him.
“Yeah,” he replied, taking in the sight of her, because it was so welcome, after so many days of almost solitary confinement.
“I love that you came,” he said, not bothering to rein in his words. She cared, and she was doing this for him in spite of all the bullshit he’d given her.
She looked momentarily puzzled.
“What?” he asked, wondering what he’d said.
“That’s way too cheesy, especially for you.”
“But I do love that you’re here.”
“Only because the doctor said.”
“You didn’t have to come, though.” So, by his deduction, she had come because she had wanted to, only she wasn’t going to say it. He was about to remind her that she had a lot going on at work, and he knew she was ducking and diving to slice time out for him, time she didn’t owe him and yet, here she was. But he didn’t say any of that. It wasn’t his intention to get into any type of disagreement with her. He was grateful for her company and as much as he wanted to fix things, he wasn’t quite sure she did. She was here in the capacity of a Florence Nightingale, not as someone he’d been intimate with, and while sex or intimacy were the furthest things from his mind, he was eager to talk, to plan for the future, to try and figure out if they even had a future.
“Marie’s away for a few days, and Dr. Santini said you’d been alone for over a week—”
“Do you have a hotline to Dr. Santini?” he asked, something uncomfortable settling in his belly.
A flicker of indignation crossed her face. “He was your consultant. I needed to know what I was letting myself in for.”
“Letting yourself in for?”
“Are we going to have a disagreement again?” she asked, looking none too pleased.
“No. We’re not.” He needed to drop this like a hot stone. She was here. For him. He had to remember that the past didn’t have any say in his future and he had to stop acting like it did.
He still felt like shit. The metallic taste still lingered in his mouth, and he didn’t feel his usual self. Maybe he never would feel completely 100%, and that was something he was going to have to deal with. But he smelled like shit too, and hadn’t bothered to shower today. If he’d known she would be coming over, he would have made a concerted effort to clean up.
“Good,” she said, appraising him as she lifted her head. “You don’t look too good,” she said, walking towards him. “It’s fine,” she said, when he put his hand out in front, trying to halt her.
“I feel like shit,” he confessed.
She sniffed. “Have you been sick?”
Fuck. She could smell it on him. He took a few more steps back. “It’s a side effect.”
“You don’t look well at all.” She set down her work bag, and took off her jacket.
“I don’t think this is a good idea, Kay.” Seeing him when he didn’t feel so great was one thing, but seeing him when he didn’t feel so great and looked and smelled like crap was too much even for him. He hated that she was seeing him at his worst, and even though she seemed to brush it off, as if it didn’t matter, it mattered to him. It made him wonder if he would have done this for her had the tables have been turned.
“I’m going to take you up on that offer,” she said, taking out her laptop and setting it on the table.
“What offer?”
“To use your Wi-Fi.”
“You’re working tonight?”
“I have some things to finish off by tomorrow.”
“I’m going to shower up and go to bed. Sorry, I’m not going to be good company.”
“Go ahead,” she said. “You might feel better after it. I’ve got some things I need to look through.”
“I don’t want to get in the way of your work. I know you’re under a lot of pressure.”
“You won’t get in the way if you go to bed,” she replied, giving him a solution he wasn’t keen on. He couldn’t go to bed knowing she was here, in his living room. He didn’t want to go to bed. He wanted to talk to her, wanted to get back what they’d had before. Wanted to make some in-roads at least. It begged the question why she was here anyway, when she could just as easily have gone home.
Unless she wanted to be here. Unless she was holding back. Unless she had realized that they could build on something, after all.
“Don’t worry about me. It’s fine. I’ve got this.”
She was the real deal. The whole entire, beautiful package, and he’d been blind the whole time. He didn’t leave straightaway, couldn’t help but look over at her and be thankful that he had met her.
“What?” she asked, looking up and catching him staring at her.
He’d missed her, and with all this goddamn time on his hands, he’d had more time to think about things. “Thanks for coming. It’s been weird, being in isolation.”
“Even for you?” she asked, “The man who doesn’t need anyone?”
He ground his teeth together, smarting at the reminder. “It’s my experience that people always let you down, but you never have, even when I’ve been a total jerk to you.”
“Don’t go getting all sentimental on me now,” she said, throwing her hands up in the air and making light of the situation. It didn’t matter that the doctor told him he’d be cured, and be able to continue with his life, he couldn’t help but think abou
t mortality, and things going wrong. The cancer spreading, or coming back, of his life changing.
It had been a sobering few days of reflection, but in between the darkness had been the one thought: he was still alive, and even though this vile, deathly, malignant thing had been growing inside him, he had overcome it. He was still walking through that dark tunnel, but he was going to make it. He was going to come out the other end. And he had plans for how things were going to change. Plans to be done with the things that he had held on to for too long—things that had damaged his twenty-something year old self.
He had flipped it around, and in his own twisted way had come to see his cancer as a gift. A wake up call. Something which had sobered him up and forced him to look at life without the shackles of his past.
“I’ve had a lot of time to think about things.”
But she was shaking her head. “Not now, Luke. I’ve got an urgent report to look at.”
He nodded. She was punishing him for all the times he’d made her feel like dirt. “I think I’m one of the luckiest guys alive.”
She didn’t smile, but let out a deep breath, as if she was waiting for him to leave.
~ ~
It dawned on her that she had what she had wanted all along, for Luke to need her.
But things had changed, and he could no more unsay what he had said to her, than she could forget.
She reminded herself that he was a sick man who had nobody else apart from her and Marie, and this in itself made her indispensable to him. If he said nice things to her now, it was because he had nobody else; she needed to remember that, and not be lulled into a false sense of his feelings for her. A sick man being nice to you was not a barometer of the strength of a relationship.
She made up her mind to stay for a few hours, reading up on her reports, and making the necessary changes. A couple of times at work, her guard had slipped. It had been tough juggling work and Luke, especially with her ever-changing feelings about the man. She had managed to hold it all together in the meetings, and Remington wasn’t on her back as much, but privately, at her own desk, she would often sit back and look at the path her life had taken lately. If Luke hadn’t been so brutally honest with her, if he hadn’t lashed out and told her what he had really thought of her, she might have found a way to believe in them. She could never forget what he had said.