by JC Szot
Dark Day, Bright Night
When Zane Miller is diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease, it only adds to his dark and surly personality. Now shattered and consumed with resentment, Zane struggles with the obstacles of his recovery. His new neighbor, the light and airy Meg Sullivan, makes it her holistic mission to save him. Zane recoils in annoyance.
A bet is placed at a card game on the last night of drinking prior to the start of Zane's treatments. Meg's loss turns into a rebirthing, awakening her once-dormant sexuality. As Zane battles the side effects of his chemotherapy and begins to recover, he finds himself opening up to Meg, soaking up her positive spirit like the warmth of the sun. For Meg, Zane breathes new life into her small world, giving her a sense of purpose. Will Zane's remission lead back to his dark, isolated world? Or will he grab hold of the lovely light that Meg has shown him?
Genre: Contemporary
Length: 35,694 words
DARK DAY, BRIGHT NIGHT
JC Szot
EROTIC ROMANCE
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Erotic Romance
DARK DAY, BRIGHT NIGHT
Copyright © 2012 by JC Szot
E-book ISBN: 1-61926-445-5
First E-book Publication: April 2012
Cover design by Jinger Heaston
All cover art and logo copyright © 2012 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
PUBLISHER
Siren Publishing, Inc.
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Letter to Readers
Dear Readers,
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DEDICATION
A book never solely belongs to the author. I want to thank my husband for all of his continuous support. I also want to thank my dear friend, Michele Heydecke, RN for assisting me with all the medical details of this story. Alice in Chains, one of the greatest rock bands to emerge from Seattle during the grunge years, provided me with much inspiration for this story. I listened to their music the entire time I worked on this manuscript. Their songs played a pivotal part in me being able to remain connected to my characters.
DARK DAY, BRIGHT NIGHT
JC SZOT
Copyright © 2012
Chapter One
“You can keep my ‘go green’ bags. That way you won’t have to deal with ripped paper.” Meg set the tote bags, stuffed with Zane’s groceries, down on the table. “It’s such a waste anyway.” She frowned. “Hey, your clock is wrong. It seems to have stopped.”
“Yeah, I know.” Zane rolled over, wincing as he sat up. His gut twisted with a burning cramp. He grabbed the remote, silencing the stereo. His new neighbor walked closer to the wall, gazing up at the antique timepiece that his uncle had given him. Zane’s eyes wandered down her tall, willowy frame. The girl needs a sandwich.
“That’s a shame. It’s such a pretty clock.” She faced him. Fiery-red curls fell over one emerald-green eye. She did have a unique type of sex appeal, but she talked too much, too many words for Zane to process. She was also quite friendly, which only fed his guilt, but she was just too much for him, so bubbly and happy—too happy.
“Yeah, well, actually…” Zane stood up, his head swimming for a minute. “It worked up until yesterday, but when I got home from the doctor’s, it was broken. Just like me. It’s stopped keeping time, and so has my body. Our lives are stationary, I guess.” He shrugged. It was really too deep a philosophical statement coming from Zane, but it was one he believed was true. He’d met Meg down in the vestibule, near the mailboxes, last week. Today he’d gone shopping, only to have dumped his stuff all over the floor of the lobby when his bags tore open. His bladder was on the brink of bursting, so Meg had waved him off, saying she’d bring his stuff up. Too nice.
Meg turned her back on the clock, her face creased with worry. Two thin, vertical lines deepened between her brows. She was sort of cute.
“What d’you mean?”
“Doc told me yesterday that I have Hodgkin’s disease.” Zane grabbed one of the green tote bags and headed into the kitchen. He tossed his groceries on the high counter that lined the edge of the kitchen. Meg was on his heels. She slid onto one of the stools behind the counter before he could blink. She toyed with a box of Pop-Tarts, eyeing the contents listed on the side of the box, her brows pulled together.
“I’m sorry.” Her wide eyes reached for him, her stare a bit intense. Zane instantly regretted divulging this information. He could almost see her head spinning off her thin neck, which had a sensual curve to it, he noticed.
“Listen.” Zane waved a hand through the air, reeling his thoughts out of the gutter. She talks too much, remember? “Hey, I’ve got a handle on it. I’m sure you’ve got somewhere you need to be…”
“No.” Her tone was laced with a mild hysteria. Zane stepped back, feeling her verbal fire. “I work at the Holistic Hut, you know, down on Seventh Street. There’s things you can do, besides the traditional medical treatments. Jesus.” Curls moved around her face, grazing the edge of her jaw. “If the disease doesn’t kill you, those damn chemo treatments just might.” Her lips pressed into a thin line. Seriousness crossed her face. “God, Zane, I’m sorry. It’s just that—”
“Meg, it’s okay, really.” She’s too much. Now I have her feeling sorry for me. Zane walked around th
e counter, helping her down. Her long, thin fingers were cool in his palm. Her brows were still knitted across her forehead. “I appreciate you bringing my stuff up.”
“Yeah.” She glanced up at him, her expression startled. “I’ll see you later…I guess.” Her voice lowered. Zane escorted her to the door, her body moving slowly, as if she were sedated. She looked dazed and confused. Meg quickly grabbed her purse off the table, some paisley-fringed sack. The material at one time could’ve probably been a pair of curtains dating back to the seventies.
“Thanks again.” He put on his best smile, holding the door for her, his face pained from the charade.
“Sure, Zane, sure.” She nodded, her face still a bit perplexed.
Zane laughed, watching her tiny ass shimmy down the hall. Her purple gauze shirt billowed out around her. Could a body that petite create such a potent breeze? A clean, fresh smell rushed into his nose. It wasn’t baby powder—was it floral or fruity? Yeah, fruity, that’s what Meg was, totally fruity. Zane chuckled, turning and walking back into his apartment. It would become his dungeon of disease once he began his treatments. He’d find out more about that tomorrow at his next appointment. He supposed the doctor didn’t want to bombard him all at once.
“Fuck!” Zane punched his fist into the wall. The sheetrock cracked under his curled fingers, sending a searing pain through his hand that settled into a throbbing burn that wrapped around his wrist.
Chapter Two
“You should have him do a cleanse. It’s very important to clean out the colon, especially because of the chemo. It’s toxic.”
“I don’t know him that well. I’m not sure how he’ll take it, me butting in, you know.” Meg was picking her boss’s brain, feeling rattled by Zane’s diagnosis.
“What’s this man’s name?” Nora stacked the bottles of vitamin E up on the shelf, taping up a Buy One–Get One Free sign on the bottom.
“Zane Miller.”
Bottles fell from Nora’s hands, clattering to the floor. “You don’t mean Zane Miller, the tattoo artist from The Ink Well?” Nora’s face was stiff with shock.
Meg bent down and started picking up the scattered bottles, glancing up at Nora’s worried blue eyes. “I’m not sure. I’ve only been in my new place for about three weeks.”
Meg had moved from Glenside to Manderville because the holistic center she previously worked in had folded. Both Pennsylvania towns were similar, though Manderville was smaller. It was a simple, blue-collar town. Its driving force was industry. Two factories on the opposite ends of town were what kept its economic wheels turning. If you didn’t commute to New Jersey, then you worked in the paper mill, the lumber yard, or one of the small stores downtown.
Before yesterday’s incident with Zane’s groceries, she’d only seen him in passing. She always said hello. She greeted everyone, wanting to be the friendly new tenant. Zane only ever smirked or mumbled a strained hello in response.
“Well, did you see any ink?” Nora’s voice rose, exasperated.
“I can’t remember.”
“If it was him, you’d remember. He must’ve been heavily clothed, because I gotta tell you, Zane Miller’s art can’t be missed. He’s a marked man!” Nora removed the bottles from Meg’s hands.
“He did have a hooded sweatshirt on, come to think of it.”
“Well.” Nora’s face creased into a frown. “I’d start with the cleanse and try to talk to him and find out if he’s getting chemo, radiation, or both. Then we’ll plan your attack. He really should come in. I’d like to talk to him. He’s tough, though.” Nora stood back, checking her shelf work. “He’s not the most approachable guy.” She chuckled sarcastically.
“So I take it you don’t know him well?” Meg had become preoccupied with Zane, and too quickly.
“If this is the same man, he did my son’s tat. Other than seeing him or his partner, Sean, opening and closing, no, I don’t know him personally.” Nora went back to her stocking.
The buzzer above the door sounded. Two customers meandered down the aisles. Meg returned to the back to finish unpacking the inventory. She was having trouble concentrating today. Zane’s condition was rolling around in her brain. How long would he be sick? She’d done some research last night. Hodgkin’s had a high cure rate, almost 90 percent. It was the non-Hodgkin’s that was the worse of the two cancers.
Nora’s comment about Zane being unapproachable seemed accurate. It sounded alarms. People like Zane were hard to help, but he had piqued Meg’s curiosity. There was something dark and forbidding about him. Was it that bad-boy image? Everything about him appeared hard and cold, his face and jaw tight and firmly set.
His hair was dark, clipped close to the sides and a bit spiked on top, a type of styled disarray that worked. And those eyes—Meg couldn’t decide what color they were. They weren’t quite blue. They had a gray undertone to them, like a lake frozen over in winter. He was tall, towering over her petite frame. She was certain there was some muscular definition to him underneath all that material. If his skin sported all the ink that her boss implied, she’d lay money on the fact that it looked good. If there were two other things that went well together, just like burgers and fries, they were muscles and ink. Being a tattoo artist certainly posed a problem. Ink was full of poisons. If one was trying to beat cancer, then all toxins must be avoided. Meg wondered what the doctor would have to say about that. There were a lot of things Zane could do to successfully treat his condition, medically and holistically. Meg was sure she could help him. But Zane Miller would have to be handled delicately. His hardened demeanor wouldn’t welcome another species like himself. She’d have to go with the opposite in her approach. She needed to tread carefully, though. Zane was much bigger than she.
* * * *
“We’ve caught the disease at its early stage.” Dr. Reed closed Zane’s chart, tilting back in his enormous leather chair. Zane eased back into his on the other side of his desk. That was the first bit of good news today. “I’m going to start you on an oral form of chemotherapy first, and we’ll see how you do. If you need intravenous treatments, you’re looking at one session every other week for about four months. I’m hoping for no radiation, you should do the same.”
Dr. Reed went through all the possible side effects. Zane would be ingesting a cocktail of four different drugs. After the third or fourth one, his voice receded. Zane drifted away, swept out into a ruthless sea he wasn’t sure he could swim out of. Things got smaller, the world going black around him. The slow droning of Dr. Reed’s clinical voice echoed in his head before breaking up in his ears like static. Images barreled through his mind’s eye. Late nights drinking cold beers and playing darts down at The Red Bone. Then there were the girls, tats, and camping. Maybe some partying, and getting a little from the girls. Fuck!
“Zane.” Dr. Reed’s chair creaked. The deep hole he’d fallen into tossed him back, dropping him right back into Dr. Reed’s office, the afternoon sunlight reflecting off his artfully framed medical degrees. The guy didn’t look much older than him. He must’ve started going to school at the age of four.
“Yeah.” He shook off the mental images. “Sorry.”
“I strongly suggest no tattooing.”
“Jesus Christ, Doc, I’ve lost everything else.”
“Some of my colleagues may not agree, but I would prefer it if you didn’t. I know you take precautions, but accidents can happen and the dirty needles are a concern,” Dr. Reed advised. “The treatments are going to make you vulnerable to infection.” Dr. Reed caught the roll of his eyes. “This kind of outlook isn’t the best for your recovery.” Dr. Reed’s stare kept him nailed to the chair. “You can draw the designs, but your partner is going to have to handle the ink and the needles. It’s best to stay away from all the risks at this time. I’ll handle all the necessary paperwork for your disability.”
“Great, so I guess I’ll be hangin’ at home, sleeping and puking.”
“Zane.” Dr. Reed stood up and
circled around his desk. “If you want to beat this thing, the one thing you’ve got to kill is your attitude. You’re twenty-nine years old. We have to fight for your life, and I mean ‘we.’” Dr. Reed moved his hands between them. “You have to meet me halfway. I’ll do my part, but you’ve got to do yours.”
Chapter Three
Meg fussed with all the information she planned on giving to Zane, stacking and restacking it on her kitchen table. Her nerves were rattled. If he doesn’t want my help, he’ll just tell me to get lost. The last thing she wanted to do was grate on anyone’s nerves, especially Zane’s. As soon as she had gotten the guts to go see him, she noticed another visitor out in the hall, banging on his door. It looked to be one of his “kind.” One of his thick, corded arms was decorated in vibrant color. A tattoo sleeve, they called it. His entire left arm was inked. Vague images of faces, vines, and predatory-type features had her closing the door abruptly, her pulse racing.
Meg fixed some green tea and waited it out. She had pamphlets and a bag full of all the supplements that Zane should start taking, along with some ginger tea for the nausea that she knew he’d have. Nora had helped her put everything together. She also had a list of foods to eat and the ones to avoid. She had a protein shake and a list of exercise regimes. Yoga and swimming were the best, aside from walking, of course. Meg didn’t want to overload him, but she did want him to be well-informed. Nora had already given her a few things for free. She did tell Meg if she could get Zane into the store, she’d give him a 15-percent discount.