His Inspiration

by Tanya Gallagher

  “Just got the BabyStrides stroller you requested,” she said to Sam.

  “Good timing.” Her brother’s voice was bright and hopeful, and her pulse sounded loud in her ears.

  “Why’s that?” She held her breath.

  “Because our birth mother’s in labor.”

  Bex slowed on the sidewalk, the words reaching her ears without comprehension. “Say that again.”

  “My son’s on the way. Dare and I are booking last-minute tickets to New Mexico try to get there for the birth.”

  “Oh my god.” Bex came to a full stop and pressed a hand to her chest. “Sam, that’s amazing.”

  There were moments in her life that she knew she’d always remember—her first kiss, getting her driver’s license, the moment she heard the news about her dad. This was one of those moments, and she reached for it with both hands. She was going to be an aunt. Her brother was going to be a dad. She wanted to cry.

  Sam’s voice dripped with pride, and somewhere in the background Aderyn’s voice called to him. “I know. We’re going to be gone for at least week.”

  “Well, I’ll make sure everything’s ready for you when you’re home.”

  “That sounds perfect. But I have one extra request.”

  “Okay,” Bex said. “What’s that?”

  “We’re rushing out of here, and Colton was our backup bartender for tonight, but his car got a flat on the way back from Los Angeles yesterday. He’s stuck outside Beacon Station.”

  She cringed. That was a hot ride, a lonely stretch of road with not a lot around. Towing the car anywhere was going to cost Colton a fortune. She was not jealous. “So you need someone to cover closing for tonight?” she asked.

  Bex wasn’t a whiz at cocktails, but she’d spent enough time helping Sam here and there when the bar launched that she could cover in a pinch.

  Sam sighed with relief. “Yeah. Could you?”

  “I’m on it.”

  She looked down at the empty stroller, and her heart swelled with emotion. Sam and Aderyn were going to push her nephew in this stroller. He was going to gaze up at the world from this spot. How very, very lucky they all were.

  “You’re a lifesaver, Bex.”

  “Why are you still talking to me?” she asked instead of accepting the compliment. “Go get my nephew. I demand photo updates as often as possible.”

  Chapter 30

  Gabe woke before the alarm went off, savoring the feeling of his body curled around Bex’s slim, soft frame. When she’d called at lunch on Friday to tell him that Sam’s kid was being born and that she was taking the closing shift at The Walton, it should have been a good thing. Instead, she’d sounded distant and rushed on the phone.

  “Can I come play barkeep with you?” he’d asked. “No need to do this alone.”

  “You’ll be too distracting,” she’d protested, brushing off his offer to help.

  “Distractingly awesome,” he’d countered.

  “Yes. But I have a hard enough time remembering the recipes as it is.”

  Gabe’s stomach had dropped, but he wasn’t going to let it show. He knew Sam and Aderyn had been waiting for this moment for a long time, and he didn’t want to jinx it with an argument. “Fine, Bex. I’ll leave the door open for you.”

  Between the rejection after their fight the other night and her refusal now, his chest tightened. But despite the open door, she hadn’t come to him, claiming that Colton still needed her help at the bar. Gabe had waited up for her on Friday, and then again last night. At least now that it was Sunday—or, technically, Monday—she was here.

  Bex had slid into bed at nearly 4:30 in the morning smelling like alcohol. She was going to run herself ragged this way, but Gabe knew she wouldn’t have it any other way. He loved that once she let her walls down, she gave everything to the people she cared for. She could love so fully and completely. But giving too much of yourself away could deplete a person.

  Gabe pressed a kiss to Bex’s shoulder. His agenda for the day was to finish matting the prints for the Trailblazer and deliver them to be hung. While he needed to get up and take care of things, he didn’t have a set schedule. Instead, he had set the alarm for Bex, knowing she’d still insist on heading into X Enterprises despite the late night.

  He reached for the alarm before it rang. “Hey, honey.” He nuzzled her neck. “Time to get up.”

  Bex groaned quietly. “Why did I think catching three hours of sleep would help? I should have just pulled an all-nighter.”

  “Three hours is better than nothing. And if it helps, I’ll start coffee for you.”

  He kissed her cheek and froze when startling heat radiated from the skin beneath his lips. “Bex, you’re so hot.”

  She waved a tired hand at him. “There’s no way you’re getting in my pants right now. I can barely lift my head.”

  “No, honey. You’re always sexy hot, but today you’re hot hot. You’re burning up.”

  She pressed a hand to her flushed cheeks and moaned softly. “I am. Shit.”

  “Go back to bed and take a sick day.”

  Bex shook her head. “I can’t. I’ve got to start judging this competition. The sooner the results are in, the sooner I can stop torturing myself. And anyway, I’ve got to wash all the baby clothes I bought and take them over to Sam’s house. They’re going to need them when they get back from New Mexico.”

  Bex’s nephew, Weston Robert Kingsley, had been born on Friday night, sometime around last call. Sam and Aderyn had made it just in time to see the birth, and Gabe knew how proud Bex was that she’d given them the freedom to haul ass out of town.

  “You’re putting a lot on your plate,” he said, brushing the back of his hand across Bex’s forehead. She needed to stay home and take care of herself. Hell, if he could, he would ply her with chicken soup and DayQuil until she let him strip her out of her pajamas and remind her of the healing power of a solid orgasm or two.

  “I’m coming through for my family.”

  “Yeah, but if you’re sick, you’re no good to anyone.”

  Bex flinched, and pain bloomed in his chest. Wrong choice of words. “I’m fine,” she muttered.

  “Will you at least make a doctor’s appointment? I’ve got to take these prints to the gallery, and I won’t be able to focus if I’m worried about you.”

  Bex made a face.

  “I’m withholding coffee until you say yes.”

  She cracked a small smile. “Nothing gets between me and my coffee.”

  “Good girl.”

  Vinny’s name appeared on the screen of Gabe’s phone as he drove toward the Trailblazer Gallery. He hit the speakerphone, and his brother’s voice filled the car.

  “Which club are you taking me to on Thursday?”

  Gabe winced. “None of them.”

  “I thought we were going to hit the town in anticipation of your art world debut.”

  Maybe Gabe would feel more like partying after the show, but for now, everything felt wired tight. Especially with the way Bex had slid out the door this morning in her pencil skirt and heels, looking so tired that he’d almost changed his mind and forced her to stay home. “I thought you were coming out here to look at places to live, not to party.”

  “I can do both. Consider our visit a chance for me to checking out prospective bars to work at.”

  Gabe snorted. “That’s a technicality.”

  “I’ll still take it.”

  Gabe smiled. “Fair enough. I’m going to bow out on joining you until after the show, though.”

  Vinny’s voice came through easy and light. “Suit yourself, big brother. I should be at your place around six on Thursday. Get some clean sheets ready for me.”

  Gabe was so surprised he almost missed his next turn. “My place?”

  “Your crash pad.”

  “I might have missed something here. My crash pad is currently occupied.” Or, at least, he hoped it would be later this week. With the way things were going with Bex
, he couldn’t be sure if she’d be naked in his bed or running more errands as an excuse to hide from him. They needed to talk, and Vinny sleeping in his apartment was going to put a damper on that.

  “Such a warm welcome,” Vinny teased.

  Gabe pinched the bridge of his nose. “Sorry, I’m being an ass. You can take the couch.”

  “Attaboy.”

  Vinny clicked off without further comment, and Gabe resumed the drive toward the gallery. By the time he pulled open the doors to the gallery, his nerves were shot.

  Angelica, at least, was happy to see him. The gallery manager greeted Gabe at the door with an air kiss on each cheek. She waved him inside, taking one of the frames from his full hands and leading him toward the two walls she had cleared for his show.

  “These look great,” she said, eyeing the first few pictures in the stack.

  Gabe set them down gently. “Thanks. There are more in the car.”

  Angelica instructed him where to unload the prints and left him to gather the rest of the frames. For the most part, Gabe had assembled framed prints in single mats—crisp and minimal, so as not to distract from the photos themselves—but he’d also included a huge image that he’d printed on canvas because it felt especially like a painting.

  When he arrived with the second batch of prints, Angelica had already begun arranging the photographs in a mock layout on the floor. There was a magic to arranging everything in the right place to make the best impact—finding the right height, considering the spacing and groupings of photographs. Angelica seemed to have mastered the art of hanging photos, and the images all fit perfectly together.

  Gabe stepped back and watched her work for a moment, her careful eye assessing the pictures to select the right one for each space.

  “Everything okay, Gabe?” she asked, glancing up from her spot in front of his wall.

  His wall.

  It was still surreal to be here, to know that in four days he’d have an opening, a showing. After years of working, he’d started to make the impact that he knew he was capable of.

  “Yeah,” he coughed. “I’m good.”

  She gave him a knowing look. “There’s no reason to be nervous. Your pictures are fantastic.”

  Was he nervous?

  Dammit, he was.

  But the pictures weren’t the problem.

  Gabe forced himself to stop fidgeting, then flashed her a weak smile. “Thank you.”

  “If this is it, I can take it from here,” Angelica said with a kind voice. “We’ll get these pictures hung and ready for Friday night.”

  “Right.” He nodded and backed away. The pictures would be ready, sure. Gabe himself, though, might just be falling apart.

  Chapter 31

  After dragging through the last three days with a splitting headache and a fever that wouldn’t surrender to medicine, Bex had admitted it was time to go in to see her doctor. Only now that she was here—sitting on the exam table in her pencil skirt with the paper sticking to the back of her legs—a knot of dread bundled in her stomach.

  In theory, doctors were supposed to help you get better. And sometimes they did—for sprained ankles and runny noses. But she had too many memories of hospital rooms—first with her dad, then with Sam—to be immune to the tightening of anxiety in her chest.

  The exam table paper crinkled under Bex’s thighs as she shifted, waiting for her doctor to return. When a soft knock sounded on the door, she invited her doctor in.

  Doctor Yamato pulled her wheelie chair closer to the end of the table, then sat and thumbed through her notes. “Here’s what I’m going to do, Bex. The symptoms you’re experiencing—the fever, fatigue, and weight loss—could be from a host of causes. It’s likely that you’re going through an especially tough time right now and your body isn’t handling it well.”

  “But everything that’s happening in my life is good,” Bex said. She’d filled her doctor in on the adoption and on her nephew entering the world, not to mention the late hours she was pulling. The matter of her distance from Gabe, though, she’d kept to herself, along with the design competition she’d finished judging yesterday. She’d handed out a handful of reluctant high scores to designs that weren’t her own, and yeah, that wasn’t the best feeling in the world. But her shredded self-esteem was a little too embarrassing to disclose. Her doctor may have known how to heal her body, but she wasn’t going to be able to help her heart.

  “Sure,” Dr. Yamoto agreed. “But good things can bring stress with them too.” She consulted her notes before flicking her eyes to Bex’s face. “Other illnesses could be at play, like mono or the flu. But you’ve mentioned you’ve had these symptoms for a while now.”

  Bex nodded, her throat dry. “About a week.” She’d been so busy rushing around that she’d ignored the signs, but in the cold light of the doctor’s office, she had to admit they’d been around since even before last weekend.

  Doctor Yamato’s face pulled into a frown of kind concern, and her Asian features softened as she studied Bex. “Given your family history, what I’m going to do is order a blood panel to rule out any larger issues and try to narrow down what’s going on here. I’m going to send you over to the lab now, and I’ll email you the results within a day or two.”

  The moment Dr. Yamato stepped out the door, Bex’s shoulders caved. She hadn’t even needed to get undressed for the exam, and she still felt naked and raw.

  She slipped down the hallway and called Gabe from the waiting room of the lab.

  “I can’t make it over tonight,” she told him.

  “You sure, honey?” Gabe’s voice rang so deep with concern that she pressed a hand to her mouth.

  “Go enjoy your brother.” She didn’t want to need anyone, and she didn’t want to need him now. This had all been a terrible idea.

  “Bex, is everything okay?” Gabe’s voice almost broke her.

  “Yes,” she lied. “I’ll be fine.”

  The phone rang the next morning just before Bex needed to step out the door.

  “Bex? It’s Dr. Yamato.”

  Bex found her voice. “Hi. What did you find out?”

  She was so ready to hear the doctor say it was just the flu. But her doctor’s voice was somber. “I was hoping this would be an easy diagnosis, but you’re a bit of a puzzle. The test results from yesterday were inconclusive, so we need you to come in for another blood draw.”

  Bex nodded numbly and coughed out, “Sure.” Her fingers tingled as she clutched her car keys, and everything felt distant and far away.

  What her doctor meant was that she was trying to rule out cancer. Because even the vague, general symptoms she had listed yesterday could point to something way more serious than the flu. Sam’s illness had started with a fever that wouldn’t go away, after all, and Gabe had even told her that deep-seated fatigue could come from a person’s thyroid.

  Fear spilled down Bex’s back with a chill. Her mouth went dry, and a high whine rang in her ears. “Yes, of course,” she heard herself say.

  But after the second blood draw that afternoon, she sat in her car in the parking lot, unable to move. Despite whatever tests Dr. Yamato ordered, Bex already knew what they would say.

  Cancer.

  That’s where this was all pointing. The big black monster that had haunted her family, that had taken her father, that threatened Sam. It was coming for her.

  That was the thing about having cancer in her life—sometimes she forgot about it because it was something she lived with, and then on other days life bitch-slapped her into remembering. Today, on the edge of Sam’s son being born, on the edge of all this new life, the disease reached a wicked claw into her chest and ripped it open.

  Remember me. I am here.

  She noticed. Her whole world spun dark.

  Bex had spent her entire life not letting anyone in because bad things happened to the people who loved her. Devastating things. And sitting in the parking lot, falling apart, she realized for the first tim
e that she was the bad thing they never saw coming. Letting Gabe love her was going to tear him apart when she died.

  This was the truth, after all—she was going to die and leave him.

  What had Gabe said earlier? You’re no good to anyone if you’re sick.

  And it was true. She’d watched the disease drain her dad and deplete her brother. Caring for someone so sick—loving someone so sick—was exhausting and cruel. It killed you by slow degrees, and even after the person you loved was gone, you were still a shadow of who you used to be.

  She needed to let Gabe go, or she was going to pull him down with her. She loved him too much to let that happen. Gabe deserved a life full of opportunity—a chance to be young and talented and to live his dreams. He did not need to cart around a dying girlfriend. And even if he wanted to do it, she wouldn’t let him. He deserved more.

  Bex called Gabe from the parking lot of the doctor’s office, sitting in her car without turning the key in the ignition. She flipped down the vanity mirror and looked into her own eyes while the phone rang, steadying herself. She needed to do this.

  “Bex. Did the appointment go okay?” Gabe’s voice was a hug she wouldn’t let herself feel.

  “I guess. They’re doing a blood panel.” She peeled the band-aid off the crook of her arm a touch too soon, and blood welled, bright against her pale skin. Her stomach turned over at the sight of it, and she drew a shallow breath. “But I’m not going to be able to come to your show tonight.” Because I’m going to be breaking apart.