by Lauren Layne
She nodded. “Okay. Fair enough. But you don’t have cancer.”
He smiled grimly. “Heather—”
“You don’t,” she said emphatically. “And if you do, then we’ll—”
And there it was.
He’d known it was coming eventually, but he’d been putting it off. Living on borrowed time.
But it couldn’t go on.
It was time.
“There is no we,” he said, making his voice go sharp. Firm.
Her lips parted. “What do you mean? I—”
He reached for her hand. He wasn’t sure if it was possible to couch rejection in kindness, but he had to try. He cared about her too much not to.
“You get it now, don’t you, 4C? Why I didn’t want a girlfriend?”
“Actually, no. Not at all,” she said.
“Because of this.” He gestured down at this hospital-blanket-covered legs. “Because of this.” He gestured at the machines around him. “This is my reality, Heather, but it doesn’t have to be yours. I won’t let it be yours.”
She squeezed his hand. “Josh, this could be nothing. It could be the flu—”
“Whether it’s cancer this time or later, it’ll always be there. The possibility, just looming over us, over any future we might have together. My particular kind of leukemia has a high chance of recurrence.”
She swallowed. “Okay. Okay. Wow. So it’s a shitty lot in life, but that doesn’t mean you have to get rid of me.”
“I’m doing it for you, 4C. You’re one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met. And you want to get married and have lots of babies. Don’t deny it.”
“Of course I won’t deny it,” she said with a sad smile. “I do want that.” She took an audible gulp of air and looked him straight in the eyes. “But I want that with you, Josh.”
She might as well have reached over and stabbed him right in the heart, maybe added in a sucker punch to the throat, because Josh suddenly felt faint. “Don’t. Heather, please, don’t.”
“Don’t what? Don’t love you? Too late, neighbor. It’s been too late for that for a long time now.”
“We said we wouldn’t—”
“Fall in love. I know. But I broke the rules, and now you have to decide what you’re going to do about it.”
He saw from the familiar cocky smile beginning to shine through her clouded face that she thought she knew what he was going to do with that information.
Heather Fowler loved him.
He lied. He didn’t want to hear it.
It nearly broke him.
She was here, holding his hand, even though she knew that their time together might be ripped away by fucking cancer, one of the cruelest of destiny’s hands.
“You love me, too,” she pressed on. “Or at least you’re close. And I have every intention of sealing the deal, so—”
“Heather. Stop.”
She broke off, pain flickering across her face before she tried to resume her former smile.
He couldn’t do this. He wouldn’t do this. Not to her.
Josh shook his head slowly. “This thing we’ve had . . . it’s been fun, and it’s like I said, you’re one of the best girls I’ve ever known, but—”
“No,” she said quickly. “No buts.”
This time it was he who squeezed her hand, wondering how to push her away and not break her heart. But as he looked at her face, a face he knew nearly as well as his own, he knew that she meant what she said. She loved him. There was no way to do this kindly, so he just had to do it.
“I can’t take care of you and take care of me,” he said.
“I’m not asking you to take care of me, Josh,” she said, sounding hurt.
Josh winced at her change in tone, but it was too late to go back. “You know what I mean. I’ve got a rough road ahead, and it’ll take all my physical strength just to make it. All my emotional strength is going to go toward helping my family get through it. Helping myself get through this. I won’t have anything left to give.”
I won’t have anything left to give you.
He left it unsaid, but he saw from the widening of her eyes and the fresh onslaught of tears forming in her green irises that she heard it anyway.
“Can you at least wait until you get the test results?” she asked, her voice so quiet and pleading it nearly broke him right then and there. “You may not even need to do this whole weird noble thing.”
“Even if the tests come back fine”—and they won’t—“I’ll always be sleeping with one eye open. My life is a solo journey, 4C. I need it to be. For me.”
“But why?”
Because when I die, that sure as hell is going to be a solo journey, too.
“Please understand, Heather.”
For long minutes they said nothing, and his heart twisted because he knew she was waiting. Giving him a chance to come to his senses and change his mind. To ask her to stay.
He didn’t.
He saw the moment she realized it. Her eyes shut down first, turning from vibrant green to shadowy moss. Then her lips, pressing together in the age-old tell of someone trying not to cry.
And then finally, lastly, her hand slipped away. Her fingers releasing his one by one, her palm sliding away from him until her hand was limply at her side. They were no longer touching.
Heather picked up her purse, sliding it onto her shoulder as she stared at him.
For one terrible minute, he was afraid that this was how it ended. With her hating him. And if she did, maybe that was okay. Maybe it was better.
But then she stepped forward, bending at the waist until her lips were near his ear. “I love you. I’ll always love you.”
She stepped back, holding his gaze for a heartbeat before she turned and walked out of the hospital room, out of his life.
He waited until he could no longer see her. Until he no longer heard the click of her boots on the squeaky clean hospital hallway.
Only then did he close his eyes and do what he hadn’t done once, not a single time since he’d first gotten his diagnosis all those years ago.
Josh Tanner cried.
Chapter Thirty-Two
HEY, TWINNY, HOW GOES the kissing disease?” Jamie asked, entering the hospital room just as Josh was buttoning up his shirt.
“Shut up,” he muttered.
“Strange,” she said, coming all the way into the room without knocking and plopping on the bed, just like she had countless times when they were kids. “I don’t recall Dr. Rios listing asshole as a symptom of mono . . .”
Mono.
He had fucking mononucleosis. As in the “kissing disease” that went around high schools and colleges like wildfire. Not his high school, apparently. Or if it had, he’d somehow escaped exposure and never developed an immunity.
“I’m glad though,” Jamie said quietly, her voice turning serious. “I’m so, so, so, so glad.”
Josh felt a tickle in his throat that he knew had nothing to do with the mono. Jesus, was he going to cry at everything now? He reached over and chucked his twin sister gently under the chin. “You and me both, kid.”
She held up a finger. “We’ve talked about this. Me being all of seven minutes younger doesn’t warrant the kid moniker.”
“I’m taking a free pass today.”
“Yeah, it’s been a rough one, huh?”
“I feel like a fool,” he said, dropping his hands to his sides after he finished with the last button.
“Because you let Heather walk away. No, I’m sorry . . . because you shoved Heather away.”
Pain tore through him at the reminder of what had transpired hours before. Hours? It felt like fucking days.
“Not about that,” he said gruffly. “I did what I had to do.”
“Hate to tell you, but I think she
’s already been exposed to your kissing disease,” Jamie said, deliberately misunderstanding him.
Still, she had a point. The doctor had said that mono, benign as it generally was, was wildly contagious. Spread through saliva, hence its nickname.
Josh didn’t know where he’d gotten it from. Apparently it stuck around for weeks before showing symptoms, which meant Heather had most definitely been exposed. Chances were she’d be fine. The doctor had said most people were exposed to the virus as children, never exhibiting symptoms beyond the common cold. Most everyone else was exposed in high school or college.
Josh, apparently, was the rare exception.
Still, on the off-chance Heather was also an exception, he’d have to tell her.
Tomorrow. He’d tell her tomorrow.
Right now he wanted a shower, and to be out of the fucking hospital. Maybe a big-boy dose of NyQuil and a good night’s sleep.
“Heather’s not the reason I feel like an idiot,” he said, locking hands around the back of his head and looking up at the ugly ceiling of his hospital room. “I dragged you guys down here for nothing. Put you through hell—again—for nothing. For mono.”
“Stop,” she said quietly. “Don’t forget that I was there when the doctor explained how closely mono can resemble the symptoms of something much more serious. You were right to worry. The doctor was right to insist you come here today for tests. And you were right to tell us. You were.”
Jamie was at least partially right: The symptoms of mono were easily similar to his early leukemia symptoms, the very ones he had originally dismissed as just a persistent cold. The sore throat, the fever, the persistent, weeks-long fatigue. Even more wily were the swollen lymph nodes and the tender left side courtesy of a swollen spleen. Symptoms of both leukemia and, apparently, fucking mono.
But while Jamie had a point about his worries being well-founded, calling his family had been premature. Calling them before he’d had the test results had been downright selfish, and his mom calling Heather on top of that had been downright disastrous.
Still, maybe it was for the best. He and Heather were going to end sometime, might as well be now. Granted, the ripping off of this particular Band-Aid had been horribly painful.
But it was off now, and he could go back to being . . .
What, exactly?
Alone.
“Okay, don’t bite my head off for saying this, but you look—”
“Like hell, I know, okay? Give me a break. I’ve got a fever, my head feels like there’s a hammer rattling around inside, and it hurts to talk.”
“Not what I was going to say. I mean, yes, you look like you’re ready to keel over, but I was going to say that you look lost.”
Lost.
Heather had told him the same thing once, and he’d written her off. Correction, he’d bitten her head off.
But here was another woman he cared about saying the same thing, using the exact same word to describe him.
Josh sat down hard on the stiff hospital bed. “How so?” he asked gingerly.
Jamie sighed and stood up, shoving her hands into the back pockets of her black pants before looking at him. “I know you’ve got the whole ‘live like you’re dying’ thing down pat. I wouldn’t be surprised if you told me you’d literally walked on coals and skydived and sang karaoke naked. But Josh . . . you’re also living like you’re dying. You get the distinction, right? The same phrase can have wildly different meanings, and you’re heading toward the depressing one.”
Every single one of her words struck a painful chord, but he still resisted. “Didn’t we just have this talk?”
“Yes!” she said, half shouting. “And you were in love when I last saw you, and you’re in love now, but you let her walk away. No, you pushed her. All because . . . why?”
“Because I might be dying, Jamie! You got that memo, right? The cancer could come back at any time. I’m not going to leave Heather a”—he struggled to get the word out—“a widow.”
“We’re all dying, moron. I could get cancer tomorrow. Or Heather could. Or Dr. Rios. Are you a little more likely to get it? Sure. Just like Kevin’s more likely to have heart disease because it runs in his family, and just like Dad’s more likely than Mom to get hit by a golf ball because he actually golfs. We’re all dying of something, but only the cowards among us base their lives around that.”
Josh reached for his jacket and shrugged it on without responding.
“You can ignore me,” she said quietly, “but it won’t go away. You are lost. You won’t let yourself care about anything, and it’s getting tiring. You’re boring.”
After her whole speech—and it was a good one—for some reason it was that last line that gave him the most pause. “Boring,” he repeated slowly.
She nodded emphatically. “Yup. You’re a cancer survivor, but you’re not being one of the cool ones who keeps on trucking, waving your ‘I beat it’ flag and taking on the world. You’re one of the scared ones who’s letting it beat you. Not physically, but mentally and emotionally, the leukemia is whipping your ass.”
He let out a surprised laugh. “I swear to God, having a twin is the worst.”
But even as he said it, a strange sense of calm was settling over him. He wished that the self-realization would have come from within. That he could have figured shit out for himself. But having it come from the sibling he’d shared a womb with was probably the next best thing.
And Jamie was absolutely right. Josh had been patting himself on the back for being a survivor for years, but he’d only physically bested the cancer.
He’d let it mess with his mind. And definitely his heart.
A heart that absolutely knew what it wanted. And what it wanted was a certain curly-haired wedding planner with green eyes and a heart of gold.
But he didn’t deserve Heather as he was now.
Heather was a go-getter. A firecracker. She deserved a man who knew he had his shit together. A man who did something more than amble through his day from breakfast to dinner with zero purpose beyond doing it all again tomorrow.
He rose from the bed and stomped toward his sister, wrapping both arms around her. He intended to lift her off her feet, but he settled for a bear hug instead. “Thank you,” he whispered.
She swatted the back of his head, then hugged him back. Hard. “You’re welcome.”
He released her and stepped back before heading toward the door.
“You going after Heather?” she asked.
“Of course,” he replied. “But there’s something I have to do first.”
“Wait, you’re not leaving,” she said. “I know you sweet-talked the doctor into discharging you as long as you monitored the fever, but mom’s already been talking about how she’s going to make your favorite chicken parmesan tonight. Let them take you home with them. Take care of you.”
Josh paused and sucked in his cheeks as he thought. It wasn’t right to drag his family all the way out to Manhattan and then bail. Not to mention, it would serve his rapidly forming plan well if he avoided his own apartment for a few days.
“I’d love to,” he said, meaning it. “But I need to make one phone call first.”
Seven minutes later, Josh had made his phone call.
He also had received and accepted a job offer from Logan Harris.
His body would do what it wanted. He was dealing with that.
His brain though, he could do better by. With one phone call, he’d just taken the first step.
Now for the last, and most important.
It was time to do right by his heart.
“Actually, guys, is it cool if I make one more phone call?” Josh asked as he left the hospital with his family and headed toward the train station.
“Honey, you can make as many phone calls as you want,” his mother gushed.
/> Jamie rolled her eyes.
Josh pulled out his phone and made the call.
By the time he hung up, he was grinning. The girl in 4C didn’t stand a chance.
Chapter Thirty-Three
HEATHER FLIPPED YET ANOTHER gossip magazine closed with a frustrated huff, tossing it on the countertop next to her drink with more force than was probably necessary.
She’d gotten to JFK a full hour before the customary two-hour window recommended by the airlines. It wasn’t her usual MO. She was more of a run-up-right-before-last-call kind of girl. But when you were on a temporary hiatus from work, getting ready to board a plane to hide out in Nowhere, Michigan, while you licked the wounds of a broken heart, why not get to the airport earlier, grab a drink, and read guilty-pleasure magazines?
She’d been half-successful. The pear martini was a hit, the magazines were a bust. Every single one headlined the Danica Robinson wedding that hadn’t happened.
Pass.
On the heels of Josh’s earth-shattering rejection, Heather had wanted to lose herself in work, but Alexis had refused, insisting that Heather take some time off.
It was an order.
And one Heather hadn’t wanted all that much to push back against. She’d always thought that when she finally got that promotion, everything would change. That life would be better.
And though she was still ecstatic that the professional dream she’d been chasing for years was finally becoming a reality, it wasn’t the game changer she’d thought it would be. The earth hadn’t shaken. The heavens hadn’t parted.
At the end of the day, it was just a job. A job she loved, but still . . . a job.
Her mom had been so devastatingly right. It wasn’t the wedding-planner role Heather had wanted so much as the wedding.
The wedding with the right guy, and the right guy didn’t want her.
She’d heard from Josh only once since he’d dumped her a week earlier. Could you be dumped by someone who had never really been your boyfriend to begin with? Whatever, it didn’t matter. She’d been dumped by Josh and had heard from him only once via text.