Unforgettable: Always 2
Page 25
Caden’s test results come back negative. Parker transplants Robby Aames’ bone marrow into Tanner. Tanner’s body accepts it, after some serious medical help. He goes into full remission. Robby spends hours with Amanda as Tanner heals. Finally, he asks her out to dinner. She says …
Caden’s test results come back negative. Parker transplants Robby’s bone marrow into Tanner. Tanner’s body rejects it. He dies of complications. Amanda shuts down, emotionally, and no matter what I do, she never …
Tanner dies. No matter what Caden’s results are, Tanner dies. And I forget what it’s like to feel anything ever again …
“Bren?”
At the gentle sensation of being nudged, I opened my eyes, squinting up at the blue sky. Why was I on my back? Why was I outside?
“Bren?”
I blinked, rolling my head, my roaring, fuzzy head, and looked at Amanda, squatting beside me, her eyes red, her cheeks wet, her bottom lip shaking. Shaking. She was shaking. All over. Shaking and crying and sobbing my name.
“Bren,” she rasped, her hands on my arm. “Oh God, Bren …”
I sat up. My heart smashed into my throat. My stomach turned. No. Oh God, no.
“Have the …” I closed my hands over her shoulders and held her. “Have the results come back?”
Amanda nodded, fresh tears slipping from her eyes, down her cheeks.
I sucked in a ragged breath. And another. And another. “And?” I asked, even as I didn’t want to know. Even as I wanted to go back to sleep and stay there. Stay there and never wake—
“He’s a match, Bren,” Amanda cried. “Your cousin, Caden. His blood test … the initial one … it shows him being a match.”
Gravy AKA the Epilogue
Apparently Americans don’t do the whole Hip hip Hooray! thing at the end of singing Happy Birthday. So as a consequence, I looked bloody stupid shouting Hip hip at the top of my lungs in the park, with almost everyone at the party looking at me like I’d grown an extra head.
Thankfully Caden saved me, yelling out Hooray after the unexpected silence. Why he hadn’t yelled it straight away I’m not sure. Jetlag maybe? Or maybe it had something to do with Chase. They were sitting near each other, pretending not to notice the other was there. At least, Chase was pretending. Caden may have been asleep for most of it. He had, after all, arrived in San Diego only an hour earlier. Melbourne to LA on the red-eye, and Chase had collected him from LAX. I’d told him a month ago it wasn’t necessary for him to fly over for Tanner’s second birthday but he’d insisted on coming.
“Try keeping me away,” he’d laughed during our Skype conversation. “That kid’s got a piece of me in him. We’re bone marrow brothers now.”
I’d snorted, even as a rush of gratitude choked me.
“Which means,” he’d continued, a stern expression creasing his eyebrows, “I’ll be expecting a present as well, okay? I could really do with a new car. Or maybe a—”
I’d ended the conversation with a laugh, turned to Amanda where she sat on the floor of my office, the blueprints for my personal trainer business scattered around her as she built a Duplo tower with Tanner. “He’s coming.”
She’d grinned up at me. “Excellent.”
“Chase may disagree with you on that,” I’d said.
Amanda had laughed and turned back to Tanner. “Aunty Chase doesn’t fool anyone, does she, tough guy?”
“Nope,” Tanner had agreed, pressing a bright red block onto the tower.
On that day, he’d been cancer-free for four months.
Two months after the successful transplant, Parker had called us to his office and told us it was time to take Tanner home.
Home.
He’d explained we had a long road ahead of us, daily visits to the hospital, ongoing treatment, regular blood tests, and Tanner was restricted in the things he could do, but we were allowed to go home. Together. All three of us under the one roof.
Today, on his second birthday, he’d been cancer-free for five months.
Today, we were celebrating not just his birthday, but the fact he was well enough to come to a park and play.
Today, we were celebrating just how much of a fighter he was.
Today, we were celebrating life.
“Hooray!” he yelled, grinning up at Caden from where he stood on the park bench. He wore a T-shirt with the words Suck It Cancer printed on the front. A party hat sat at an angle on top of his head, partially covering a messy crop of blond hair that Amanda had spiked into a short Mohawk. “Hooray!”
I grinned at him. I don’t have to tell you I’d never been happier, do I?
Around us, the guests of his party laughed. Parker Waters shouted out his own hooray, as did Heather, who’d arrived two days ago and hadn’t stopped being – to use her own words – “the bestest honorary aunty ever”. Maci and Raph joined in the hoorays, along with my mum and dad (who, I have to say, hadn’t stopped spoiling Tanner since the first time they met him).
Jacqueline’s hooray was one of the loudest there.
I’d like to say Charles joined in with equal enthusiasm, but I can’t. Maybe next year? Or maybe he’d finally forgive his daughter when Tanner turned twenty-one? Maybe then, we’d get a hooray from him?
Maybe?
I wasn’t holding my breath. I wasn’t holding a grudge either. As I’d learned all too painfully, life is too fragile to hold a grudge.
Tanner may be in full remission, but the battle wasn’t won. When it came to the long-term outlook for a kid who’s had leukemia, well … let me just say, we were planning on celebrating Tanner’s life every damn day.
A warm arm slid around my waist and I glanced down at Amanda, a sense of concentrated joy flooding through me. She smiled, the signs of stress and tired worry I’d found in her face six months ago now gone. “Everything okay?”
I slid my own arms around her and smiled back. “More than okay.” I dropped a quick kiss on her lips. “Everything is gravy.”
“Gravy,” she murmured, turning back to our son.
I did the same, watching as he leaned over the Optimus Prime cake on the table and blew out the two candles on it.
“Hooray,” I whispered as I hugged Amanda closer to my side. As I held my wife, and our son laughed and lived.
Lived.
If that’s not a reason for shouting hooray I don’t know what is.
Hooray.
Hip hip hooray.
About Cherie M Hudson
Cherie M Hudson is happily married to the man of her dreams, a busy mum of two little girls (one nine going on sixteen, the other five going on twenty), a proud cat owner (although she suspects the cat thinks she owns her) and an insanely manic writer. She has written over forty erotic romances under the pen name Lexxie Couper. A long time ago she gave up trying to suppress the stories in her head constantly trying to escape and has been blissfully happy since.
Also by Cherie M Hudson
Unconditional: Always 1
First published by Momentum in 2015
This edition published in 2015 by Momentum
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Copyright © Cherie M Hudson 2015
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Unforgettable: Always 2
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