by Susan Ward
Upset? Was that how I looked?
“I’m not.” I cast a fast glance over my shoulder at him. “It’s just weird. My mom doesn’t do that.”
“What? Go on holiday with your dad?”
“No, leave when I’m home. I’m never alone if I’m home. I’m happy that she did it. It’s what I’ve always wanted, but wanting something and how it can make you feel can be very different things. Get it?”
I could tell he didn’t and I didn’t blame him. If I didn’t know the details, none of that would have made sense to me. I’d rambled in a Chrissie-like way.
“You’re not alone,” he reminded me gently.
When I opened the warmer I saw our two plates. Damn it. The alone comment had to have been received as insensitive if that was the part he focused on in the stream of gibberish from my mouth. I hadn’t meant to be unkind, but I wasn’t ready to explain to Damon why my mother taking off had me feeling at a loose end.
I took our meals from the warmer and set them on the place mats. “Why didn’t you eat?”
“After I saw the note I decided to wait for you.” His eyes smiled as he looked at me, even after I’d been snotty.
“You can be such a sweet man, Damon.”
“Sweet?” He grimaced like I’d offended him. “I swear to God you wouldn’t say that if you knew what I was out here thinking all morning after reading that bloody note on the counter.”
He leaned into me and his next kiss washed away the emotional mess in me left by my mom leaving. The second we touched, he was all I felt, and quickly my need matched his own.
And with a growl, Damon picked me up and whisked me to his bedroom.
Chapter Thirty-Six
THE HOURS FLEW TOO quickly, filled with wonderful moments of Damon and my mind in the clouds. I kept from my thoughts anything that would mar this precious time being with him. But whether I permitted myself to think about what next, Sunday came anyway to slap me in the face.
We were in Damon’s room, dressing to go to the Malibu house to have dinner with my family. The clock above the fireplace had just chimed twelve.
“It’s good that your family eats early on Sunday,” Damon remarked as he leaned forward, tying his Converse.
I turned, smiling at the picture he made. He’d slummed down again—baggy walking shorts, loose tee, and sneakers—because we were spending the afternoon at the beach. Even dressed like that he surpassed all other men.
My pulse ticked up at the thought of being with my family as officially an us.
Damon laughed. “Your face has the most delightful blush. What are you thinking?”
I shook my head. It was silly. I didn’t tell him.
“Ah,” he announced knowingly. “Nervous about facing your parents after having been nasty for three days with the naughty prince. I’m confident they know we didn’t waste our alone time walking and talking. No one in your family has even texted you since your parents left.”
My brows puckered, surprised. There had been communication silence from my family. I hadn’t noticed.
He wrapped his arms around my middle and held me to him. “I’m looking forward to being out there with you as a couple.”
I playfully nudged him. “Don’t make fun of my idioms. Besides, I wasn’t aware we were a couple now.”
“You could hardly not be aware.” The look he gave me was heated and full of message. “It’s what I want most, KK.”
“Me, too.”
His gaze flashed. “Are you asking me to stay?”
My heart froze as my stomach dropped. For three days I’d kept that question from us. There was so much I hadn’t told him about me yet, afraid it would change how he looked at me. Afraid if he knew everything he wouldn’t want me. “It’s a lot to think through, Damon.”
He kissed me. “Please ask me to stay.”
I stepped out of his embrace and busied myself looking for my purse. From behind me, he snapped, “Not exactly running any longer from questions you don’t want to answer, but the result is the same.”
The bite in his voice made me tense. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I asked you a question. You ignored it. And put a full stop on the discussion by going for your purse.”
My face heated. I didn’t want to get into this or fight with him, not now. Not when we felt so wonderfully good and the hours were out there chasing us. “We’re late, Damon. We don’t have enough time for that discussion.”
“It’s a simple yes or no question. How much time do we need?”
But, Damon, it’s not a simple yes or no question.
“More than we have,” I choked out, the energy leaving my body as I sank weakly down on the bed.
He crossed the room and crouched down in front of me, lightly brushing my cheeks. He took me in his arms. “Why are you crying?”
I didn’t realize I was until he said it. But, yes, on my cheeks there was a drizzle running to my chin. “You ask me things like they’re easy for me, but they’re not.”
“Hush.” He continued to kiss me softly, gently, across my face but a stronger wave of sobbing replaced the drip. “Please, talk to me, Khloe. Tell me what it is so I can fix it.”
“But you can’t fix it,” I whispered, my face against his neck, and as I heard the words I felt the truth in them. Damon staying longer here would trap him in the pit and misery of my illness. “You can’t stay here with me. I don’t want that.”
“I don’t understand. How could you not want that? You are everything I’ve ever wanted.”
“That’s because you don’t know me, Damon. Not really.”
Very gradually he eased back from me to look at my face. His expression changed—fearful—but his eyes on mine were a brilliant amber and searching. “You’re right. I don’t know you, not as much as I hope to. But we can’t have that without being together. And that’s what I want, Khloe. To stay long enough for us to truly know each other.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
His eyes were puzzled. “For what?”
“I can’t ask you to stay.”
He closed his eyes and exhaled. “Am I allowed to ask why?”
I shook my head. It was better this way. In such a short time he’d become so dear to me. It was agony to let him go, but there was no tomorrow for Damon and me, and ruining his life by letting him stay here with me wouldn’t change that.
He closed his lids as if he couldn’t take looking at me. “I don’t want to go.”
“I don’t want you to leave. But I can’t ask you to stay.”
A myriad of emotion crossed his face before he opened his eyes. His expression was bleak. “I’ve fallen in love with you, Khloe.”
My heart caught. I’ve fallen in love with you, Damon.
“I’ll remember you always. You’ve been the best little bit of wonderful I’ve ever had.”
“We could be so much more than a little bit of wonderful.” His voice was anguished.
“No. I’d rather end us in this happy place.”
“Are you saying you’re not willing to try to make a go of us?” he whispered, his voice raw.
“Yes.” The pain was so much I almost couldn’t bear it. I cupped his cheek with my palm and his eyes shot to mine. “You don’t belong in Pacific Palisades with me. My world is small, I like it that way, but you would be miserable trapped in it. And I can’t ever be out there with you. Being hunted by paparazzi, hounded everywhere, fodder for the tabloids, people digging through my life, being hating for no reason, adored for no reason, but never left with a moment of peace. I couldn’t survive it, Damon. Either way—you staying here with me or me being out there with you—we’re an impossible equation.”
“Enough said. There’s no point in belaboring my negatives.” His voice was hard, grim. “I can’t change who I am, Khloe. But who I am loves you and is willing to fight anything to have you.”
I closed my eyes. I couldn’t bear to look at him. “If I could figh
t I would, but I can’t.”
I felt him straighten up. “Well...I wasn’t prepared for a brush-off today, but at least it isn’t one I don’t have experience with.”
How he said that made me wince.
He grabbed his suitcase from the chair and dropped it on the ground. I jumped. “Damon, what are you doing?”
“It’s better I leave before the afternoon with your family.”
My stomach turned, panicked. “No, please don’t leave early.”
“There’s no point in me staying any longer. When it’s time for me to leave, it will only make it harder for the both of us.”
Damon packed like a whirlwind, throwing his stuff into his suitcase before my stunned eyes. He looked broken, a man in pain, exactly how I felt, and it was my fault. I knew where we would end before we’d begun. And I did it anyway. I was so ashamed of myself.
He snapped shut his suitcase, then grabbed his laptop and phone. At the door, he looked back at me, his expression one I was certain would haunt me forever. “I will always love you, Khloe.”
I felt tired, hollow inside, and I wanted to run across the room and stop him. But I couldn’t.
Part Two
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Eight Months Later...
DR. HERN SCANNED MY lab reports then turned from the monitor. “Everything looks good, Khloe. There’s been no change since the treatments ended in April. Fatigue doesn’t always have a specific cause. It’s a nuisance patients are plagued with from time to time.”
“Oh, thank God,” my mom whispered and exhaled in relief. “I’ve never seen her as tired as she’s been the past eight months. I’ve been so worried about her.”
Dr. Hern rocked back in his chair, tapping his pen on the arm. “There is a new drug that’s been made available for the Right To Try Cardiac Sarcoma Trial. It’s provided improvement for many of my lymphoma patients for fatigue and to maintain their weight. It’s a nightly injection. Nothing that Khloe can’t manage for herself. We monitor it with her monthly lab. I can have the nurse send you home with thirty days of injections. And if they prove beneficial and Khloe doesn’t have any side effects, there’s no reason why she can’t stay on them indefinitely.”
“Is it safe?” Mom asked.
“Very safe, Chrissie. I’ve included it in my treatment protocol for my other cancer trials for a year. Khloe was doing so well without it there wasn’t a reason to put her on it.”
Mom’s golden brows puckered as she nodded. “What do you think, Khloe? It might help.”
I shrugged. “Whatever you think is best, Mom.”
“I’ll go have the nurse put together your injection case.” Dr. Hern rolled back from his desk, stood, and left the room.
I scrambled off the exam bed and grabbed my clothes. “I told you I didn’t need to see Dr. Hern. I told you I was fine, Mom.”
“You haven’t been yourself, Khloe. You’re tired all the time. You hardly leave your bedroom, much less the house. When Cia and Gretchen went off to Europe at the beginning of spring you stayed behind. You always travel with your friends before you start back up with your treatments in the fall. I thought we should be safe rather than sorry. I was afraid something was wrong.”
Something is wrong, Mom. I miss Damon. And not even getting lost in my wandering circus will cure that.
I focused on my dress instead of looking at her. “It’s okay, Mom. I’m sorry I snapped. It’s being here. It always makes me edgy.”
“I know, dear.” Mom surrounded me with her arms. “Don’t trouble yourself over me. You’re fine. That’s all that matters.”
After a stop at the nurses’ station to learn how to inject myself with the pens, we left with my shiny silver case of drugs and went to the car.
Mom climbed into the driver’s seat as I set my medication on the floorboard.
“Do you want to go to lunch, Khloe, or straight home?”
“Home, Mom.”
Her brows puckered as she tapped on the ignition. She waited for me to shut the door and buckle up. As she backed out of the parking space, she said, “It’s a gorgeous day. We should have lunch on the pier.”
“I want to go home, Mom.”
She didn’t argue with me, but her lips tightened.
We were on PCH two miles from home when my phone rang. I knew it was Damon calling by the ring and I was trapped in the car with Mom.
Crud.
I fished through my purse for my phone. I tapped dismiss instead of answering it.
“You can talk to Damon while you’re in the car with me,” Mom murmured, annoyed.
“Just trying to be polite, Mom.”
Chrissie laughed. “I don’t think it’s impolite to take a call from a busy prince when you’re in the car with your mother.”
“He’ll call me back.”
And Damon would. Ending us eight months ago hadn’t accomplished a thing. His plane hadn’t left the runway at LAX before he texted me. A few days later the calls started. He was as relentless as the waves hitting the shore, tenacious and seductively so. No was not an answer Damon accepted...it only made me ache and love him more.
My leg started to jiggle. Maybe I should have said fuck it and answered the phone even with Mom there to listen. It hurt so much to talk to him. It hurt more not to.
“I’m surprised Damon hasn’t showed up in Pacific Palisades again,” Mom mused softly.
I shrugged. “He’s busy with his own life, Mom. He hasn’t been able to break away from work.”
“He could invite you to visit him. That’s what your dad did back when he used to tour. Flew me to him.”
I stared out the window at the bright sunny day. “He has offered, Mom. He’s on his ranch in Wyoming. Every time he calls he asks me to fly to him.”
“Every time?” Mom was girl-talk giddy.
I nodded, regretting discussing Damon with her.
“It sounds to me like he’s pretty hung up on you.”
I shrugged.
Chrissie frowned. “All this time I thought when you didn’t show up at the Malibu house with him that you and Damon had broken up. You don’t sound broken up to me.”
“We’re not broken up. We’re not together. We’re not anything, Mom. We’re text and phone friends.”
“It doesn’t sound like that’s the way Damon wants it. Why didn’t you go to Jackson Hole and see him, baby girl?”
My heart clogged my throat. “Winters in Wyoming? It’d be too much for me, Mom, while doing the treatments. You know that.”
Her brows furrowed more. “But it’s not winter now. It’s summer. The weather is delightful there in June.”
“Can we drop this?”
“When you have guy trouble, it’s good to talk about it, Khloe. Having it only turning in your own head is generally a woman’s doom.”
It was hard enough not running to Damon without talking about him and having my mother all but push me in his direction. “I’m not having guy trouble. Nothing is turning in my head. There’s no doom.”
“Oh, baby girl,” Mom said in her cutesy voice as she patted my head. “Now I know why you’ve been tired. I wish you had told me sooner that you were moping over your guy. That I would have understood, and I’d have worried less. I used to miss your dad something fierce when he was touring. There were days I didn’t even want to get out of bed.”
I slouched back in the passenger seat and stared at her in dread. I could tell from her expression what was coming next.
“When I was in college, stuck in Berkeley, your dad was on a worldwide tour for nine months. It was so hard not to be with him. But everything hard can be something easy if you each give a little to make it that way. It’s compromise that holds a relationship together and smooths out the bumps when you have them. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was miserable and cramming for midterms and he called me from Rome one night...”
On my best days, it was excruciating to hear about her and Dad’s something fierce chapter
s of their life together. Every sad story my mom told, no matter how grim, had a happy ending somehow. It was maddening, but with my heart aching for Damon and my future buried in hopelessness, it’d be more than I could take.
“...and after my saddest Christmas ever. I spent the whole break alone with your grandpa Jack in Santa Barbara eating Mexican food and missing your dad. And before I knew it, there was your dad spanning the globe to be two days with me in Malibu. It’s when things seem their most impossible men do the most extraordinary things to convince a woman he loves her. A smart woman doesn’t let a man like that go. God, I love your father.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
WHEN I GOT BACK TO the house, Kaley and Krystal were in the kitchen with Dad. They were seated at the marble breakfast bar drinking margaritas and devouring guacamole.
I set my silver case on the island. Dad looked at it but didn’t ask; he’d wait for me to tell him what happened at the clinic. Krystal, on the other hand...
“What’s that?”
“My new Right to Try miracle drug for your Right to Try sister,” I said glibly, pouring myself a giant margarita.
Kaley glared at me. “You don’t have to be flippant with us, Khloe. We’re here because we love you and care. OK?”
My face heated. “Sorry. I wasn’t being flippant. It just sounds better to say it that way than non-FDA approved experimental treatment for your terminally ill sister.”
Krystal looked inside the case. “Look, there’s cute little pink injector pens. They’re even blingy. Wow. There’s a lot of them.”
“I’ve gotta take one a day. Probably forever. It’s supposed to make me peppy again. Who knows?”
Kaley pouted. “At least they make it pretty and easy for you. Look. They’ve even labeled the dates in the injector pen cubbies so you don’t screw up. It’s good they remember it’s Dad they get the funding for their clinic from.”
“Did you have to say that?” I snapped. “It makes me feel awful that right to try really only means right to try if you’re special and can afford it.”