by Jayne Rylon
The way she’d tried to separate them earlier had been part of the act.
He’d been so wrapped up in making sure she survived her shock over Steven that he’d dismissed the main problem as symptoms of another crisis entirely.
If it hadn’t been for everything with her husband, he would never have missed it.
Another reason to despise the man.
“Damn it!” He punched the side of his leg. “I think you’re right.”
“Tom, call us as soon as you know anything. Please!” Amber shouted to him as he ran, picking up steam.
“I will. Promise.” When he got out to the lot, he realized his car was missing. Shit. Willie’s was at her house from the day before. It must have been serious if she borrowed his without a word, not that he minded.
Tom sprinted to the Hot Rods garage.
“I need somebody’s keys. Now!” He roared loud enough to be heard over the whir of pneumatic tools.
Alanso popped up from where he leaned over the engine of a gorgeous 1969 Firebird, so fast he banged his bald head then stood there rubbing it while cursing in Spanish.
Rolling from beneath another vehicle on their creepers, Kaige and Bryce stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. He was about to if someone didn’t do as he’d asked.
Holden peered at him from where he upgraded the interior of a 500XL Ford Fairlane.
“Have you been drinking?” Roman asked when he and Carver looked up from their floor-standing toolboxes, where they’d been rummaging around for something or other. “You’re not driving if you have.”
“Fuck. No.” He scrubbed his hands through his hair, trying to tame the wildness in him. If he had to run to Middletown, he would. When had his kids become such irritating, pain-in-the-ass, responsible adults, anyway? “I need to go after Willie, and she took my damn car.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so instead of coming over here looking all loco?” Alanso dug in his pocket and tossed Tom the key to his crotch rocket. That would work nicely.
He jogged to the bike and swung his leg over it, appreciating the sleek, bright-orange Honda REPSOL 600 even if it had a giant #69 decal on the side and was probably twenty times too flashy for a guy his age.
It was also ridiculously fast.
Chapter Thirteen
The Hot Rods T-shirt Tom proudly wore flapped in the wind as if it were a flag. He hunkered lower on the bike, leaning into it as he sped down the road.
Concentrating on his driving distracted him from terrible thoughts of Willie’s fate.
Still, when he parked the bike near the main door to the medical center, a million different things ran through his mind. How he’d come to appointments with Michelle, held her hand when they told her there was nothing more they could do, left without her after she’d slipped away—he and Eli returning to their still, dark house by themselves.
It was difficult for him to even go inside. For Willie, he would.
Like he had for Roman last year after he’d nearly overdosed, Tom could smother his own panic if his relatives needed him. Willie might not be blood. She was still family, and he wasn’t about to let her convince him of anything else.
Wounded pride had nearly let her get away with deceiving him. She’d played off his insecurities. Never again would he allow his doubts to make him an easy target.
Steeling his spine, he concentrated on the only important thing here. Willie.
He dashed into the facility and checked the directory to make sure nothing had changed. It hadn’t. He remembered the scans Michelle had gotten, the ones that showed more and more of the cancer eating her alive each time they’d bothered, until the doctors had given up.
Swallowing bile, he lengthened his strides, tearing up the linoleum floor as he blinked against the lights, harsh even with his sunglasses still in place. When he got to the desk, there was no one around.
So he marched to the door. He didn’t give a shit about protocol.
If Willie was back there, he was going to find her.
Or he might have, if it hadn’t been locked.
A couple bangs on the door didn’t grab anyone’s attention so he cursed then kicked the damn thing. While thinking about what to do next, seeing as Willie still didn’t have her cell on her, and might not be able to answer in any case, the door opened and a man in a lab coat left.
Tom grinned and slipped in right behind the guy, who hadn’t even noticed him.
There was a hallway with a bunch of doors on either side of it. Some of them were open, giving him a glimpse at the changing and prep rooms. Some were closed. He rifled through the charts hanging in the clear plastic bins outside two of them, dismissing those when he didn’t see Willie’s name.
Impatient, he resorted to more direct methods.
“Willie!” he bellowed. “Willie Brown!”
“Sir, you can’t be out here.” A stern-looking nurse with over-plucked brows and pursed lips headed in his direction, closing in quick.
Conjuring some believable story, other than I’m trying to hunt down a patient who doesn’t want me involved in her treatment, he prepared to get booted out on his ass, or worse.
The nurse got within fifteen feet before a door, several down the hall, cracked open and Willie popped her head out. “Tommy! What are you doing causing a ruckus out there?”
He tossed the nurse a finger wave and muttered, “Got lost, sorry.”
A massive frown coupled with a glare ensured she didn’t believe him, but she let it slide when Willie made apologies and waved frantically for him to get inside her holding tank.
Fine by him.
“Have you gone bonkers?” Willie stood with her hands on her hips, looking every bit as hale and hearty as she had when she’d been meeting him thrust for thrust the night before.
“Only for you.”
“Sweet talking will not get you out of this.” She slapped her hand on his chest when he intentionally invaded her personal space. “Neither will kisses. Stop. Right. There.”
“Why, Willie?” His jaw clenched.
Refusing to meet his stare, she studied the ugly hospital gown she had on instead. “Because. If you don’t, I’m not going to be able to send you away again. This is no place for you.”
Score one for the girls.
“Anywhere you are is where I want to be.” He corrected her misguided thinking. Incredibly slowly, as if approaching a wild animal, he inched closer, his hands held out to her. “It’s your headaches, isn’t it? Something’s really wrong.”
Willie bit her lip, then nodded.
“Why don’t you let me hold you for a minute?” he asked, still gently. “You’re shivering. Pretend it’s to get warm if you want.”
Expecting her to decline, Tom got the wind knocked out of him when she flew to him and suffocated him with the tight grasp of her arms around his ribs. He hugged her back, rubbing his hands up and down her back to infuse as much warmth and reassurance as he could muster into her, given that his guts had frozen solid when she’d confirmed her health was poor.
“I’m going to talk for a bit. Just listen. And when I’m done you can decide what you want me to do. I’ll go along with it, whatever you pick. Okay?” He nuzzled the side of her face as he spoke low and calmly into her ear.
She nodded against his shoulder.
“I think you blew me off this morning because you found out you’re sick. Maybe really sick. I’m terrified. For you and for myself. For the girls, too. By the way, they were not fooled by your acting, though I was for a while. Nothing could be worse than being in the dark about what’s happening. If you’re not ready to talk about it yet—”
“I don’t know what’s wrong,” she admitted.
“I thought I was going to talk to you.” He smiled despite the situation. “Should have realized that was a silly plan.”
Willie looked up at him and broke his heart all over again with a watery smile. “Sorry. For everything. How I treated you earlier…it was reprehensible. I
hate myself. For that and for getting serious with you last night knowing there could be something wrong with me, even though I never imagined there actually was. It was just supposed to be a precaution when they did the scan the other day. I swear, I never would have done that to you on purpose. Not knowing everything. What you went through with Michelle, I mean.”
She was critically ill and she was worried about was him?
If that wasn’t love, he didn’t know what was.
For now, that would be enough.
“Willie, if you think that I didn’t love you because I hadn’t put my cock inside you yet, then you really do have something wrong with your head.” He wiped a tear from her cheek with his thumb then leaned in to give her a brief kiss.
She didn’t turn away or push him back.
“Oh, whoops, I can come back if you need time to sort out personal matters…”
From the way Willie jumped in his hold, she hadn’t heard the door open either.
“No, please.” She slithered from his grasp, took a few steps, and held her hand out to the nurse, who’d already turned around. “I’d like to get the last of these tests over with if you don’t mind.”
That last bit she said while looking up at Tom.
“I’ll be right outside whenever you’re ready, Ms. Brown.” The door closed with a quiet click.
Tom nodded when she peeked over her shoulder at him. “Whatever you need, Willie. I’ll be waiting when you get back, okay? We can figure the rest out then.”
“Thank you,” she said then sniffled, her back to him once more. “I don’t deserve you.”
“No, you deserve a hell of a lot more.” He rushed to her side, turned her around and laid a proper kiss on her lips then patted her ass through the gown. In his experience, the last thing a truly sick person wanted was to be treated differently than when they’d been well. “Go on. Be a good girl and maybe I’ll give you a lollipop to suck on later.”
“Tommy!” She may have sounded outraged, but she was smiling when she left him.
Tom sat in the crappy chair, only one step up from one of those metal folding kinds, for as long as he could stand it. Okay, so that was only like five minutes. Long enough for him to text Nola and tell her what little he knew. Mostly that he’d found Willie and she was having tests done.
Then he roamed the room reading every overly cheerful informational bulletin in the damn place. Everything from reminders to get an annual mammogram to diagrams of anatomical cross-sections to a description of neurological terms.
He focused on the ones that seemed relevant.
Aneurysm.
Subdural hematoma.
Intracranial pressure.
Brain tumor.
Wow, that had been a terrible idea. Except that he needed to be informed. For Willie’s sake. Last go around there had been so many things he didn’t understand, couldn’t process. He would do better if he had to now. By the time he’d paced the room—which had more in common with a jail cell than a waiting area—enough to have walked to his nephew Joe’s house a few states away, he’d started to tug on his hair. The motion made the strands stick out in weird ways that were exaggerated by the distorted reflection he kept catching sight of in the shiny metal canister that sat on the counter in the room.
He glanced at his watch. It had only been about forty-five minutes.
It seemed like a lifetime, especially when he didn’t even know what specifically they were looking for. Reaching behind him, he rubbed his neck.
And that’s when he heard Willie’s voice coming back to him, along with the nurse’s. The walls, though thin, garbled their discussions, keeping him in suspense. She sounded calm, though he’d only heard her lose it once. The day before.
When she came into the room, she crossed over to him and held his hand in hers. She was freezing, so he tried to rub some warmth into her fingers while she smiled softly up at him.
“They’re going to admit me for observation while we’re waiting for someone to read the tests,” she told him. “If you don’t want to stay, especially in the hospital section—”
“I’m going where you’re going.” There was no question about it.
“Okay, folks. Let’s go.” A nurse helped Willie into a wheelchair. The sight had his chest constricting.
“I can push her,” he offered.
“Don’t tell my boss.” The nurse nodded and led the way.
It took a while to get settled, every second testing his patience anew.
When they were alone, or as alone as they would be in the hospital, he asked, “What are we looking at here, Willie?”
“They’re trying to rule out an aneurysm and any kind of clot or bleeding on the brain.” She sighed. “I’m not sure what I’m hoping for, but if it’s not that then it could be…”
“A brain tumor,” he finished for her.
Willie nodded. “Something is increasing the pressure inside my skull. They may have to do a procedure to drain fluid if my vision gets worse or they detect a big enough change from the scan they did the other day. They also did a bunch of blood work and other labs to see if they can detect any signs of cancer.”
Her eyes closed when she said the c-word.
For his benefit more than her own, he was sure.
“Honey, it’s okay.” He clasped her hand in both of his. “I can handle this.”
I think.
For you.
“I wasn’t hoping for a relationship with you only when everything was going great or when both of us were doing fine. If you’re sick, I’ll take care of you. Like you would do for me. What I feel for you isn’t conditional.” He promised, “Whatever happens, we’ll handle it together.”
Willie opened her mouth a few times, like she wanted to say more. In the end she settled for a tiny nod. “Can you do me a favor?”
Tom’s smile grew ten sizes. That she would even ask was progress. “Sure.”
“Call the girls. If they want to come down here, I’d like to have them with me.” She swallowed. “You’re right. It’s better to keep the people you love close.”
Though she still didn’t speak the three tiny words he craved, Tom knew she meant him, too.
If she couldn’t say it now—wouldn’t—because of her fears for the future, it was okay. He didn’t need the verbalization to know it was true.
*
Almost the entire day had passed with hardly any updates. Tom grew restless as Willie’s anxiety built. He got the nurses to administer her medicine, which they’d left at home, but even that didn’t seem to help as the afternoon sunshine turned to twilight.
Despite her understandably elevated blood pressure and the increased stress of the day, Willie reported only a mild headache. After their earlier discussions, Tom actually believed her. A good sign, he hoped.
She looked over at her daughters. “Nola, maybe you should go on home. Ambrose—”
“Is fine. Kaige has her. She’s got bottles prepared.” Nola slouched, hunkering down instead of getting up to go. If her back and ass hurt even a fraction as much as Tom’s did, he sympathized.
As Willie geared herself up to argue with her daughters, a doctor came into the room.
“Ms. Brown?” He held out his hand and shook Willie’s slighter one.
“Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise. I’m Dr. Rotman, your neurologist.” He opened her chart then retrieved a printout and held it up. “This is the scan we took two days ago. This area here is where we’re concentrating.”
He gestured with the tip of his pen.
“Here’s the scan of the same type we did earlier.” He held up a second sheet of paper.
Tom though it was like watching static on an old, crappy TV. He couldn’t tell much, except maybe it looked less white. Was that good or bad?
“It appears the area of concern is changing.”
“What does that mean?” she asked.
“Well, if it’s a fluid buildup it could mean some of it is be
ing absorbed by your body, which is great. It also helped us to rule out a few things. Combined with the other tests you have, we’re confident you’re not suffering from an aneurysm or a hematoma. That’s a plus. Both of those are critical emergencies. What we’re dealing with here is more stable.”
Willie’s gaze shot to Tom’s. Brain tumor? No.
“If we find a mass in the final images that were taken from alternate angles, which take longer to analyze, or chemical proof of cancer in the labs, then we’ll refer you to a specialist who can discuss your options for a more specific diagnosis.” He cleared his throat then looked around the room. “However, what we hope we find, is nothing. No definitive answer.”
“What?” Tom couldn’t help himself from questioning the guy. Willie couldn’t keep walking around with headaches, blacking out now and then.
“There’s a possibility, though I don’t want to get your hopes up, that this could resolve itself on its own.” He shrugged. “There’s a condition called pseudotumor cerebri. Frankly, we don’t know what causes it, though it occurs most often in women between thirty and fifty. For some reason, our bodies can overproduce intracranial fluid. The increased pressure results in the same symptoms as a legit brain tumor. The drain you were informed about before would be one treatment, or, it could disappear gradually on its own.”
“Those are a lot of ifs…” Willie’s defeated tone had Tom squeezing her hand.
“Yes.” The doctor didn’t deny it. “Until we get the results of the rest of the tests, there’s nothing more we can do for you.” He tapped the foot of her bed twice with his pen.
“So she can leave?” It surprised Tom, given how dire things had looked that morning.
“The reality is, it’s either going to be good news or bad news. Not much in between.”
Nola and Amber looked about as ill as he felt at that declaration.
Willie peeked at them then shrugged. “Well, crap. What can you do?”
“I’m going to have the nurses discharge you so you can go home and get a good night’s rest. Nothing much better than sleep for your body.”