by Lily Harlem
“How do you figure that?”
“I wouldn’t have pursued her and she’d gotten the message loud and clear from me. Nothing else would have happened, ever. It was over before it had begun until you said otherwise.”
I swallowed tightly. Did I believe him? He said the words but my instincts told me something else.
“And also,” Quinn went on in a loud, superior voice. “You’ve been wrong to completely violate someone’s privacy. Eve thought she was in a safe environment, having sex with someone she knew. Everyone had consented, yet you and Liam were downstairs watching. It’s horrendous, an outrageous breach of trust.”
“I don’t trust her and after what she did it’s just as well we were watching. You couldn’t move, Quinn, you couldn’t have protected yourself if you’d needed to. If things had gotten out of hand you would have been hurt.”
“But I trusted her and she damn well trusted me. We were in it together, because you said we could, damn it. I knew I wasn’t going to get fucking hurt.” He paused and tipped his head. “Is that where you got the idea from to tie me up this morning? It is, 137
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isn’t it? You watched and you didn’t want me to have done something with her that you hadn’t done with me.”
“So what if it was.” I folded my arms over my chest and tilted my chin.
“After what I said about making love to you last night, Ariane, I thought you got that we were special and then, then you do that to me and I thought it was about us having sex and showing our love but for you it was about claiming a part of me.”
“Well, isn’t that what you do with me?” My voice was so loud it rang through my head. “How is it different, Quinn? Tell me, how is it different? You claim that part of me all the time.”
“Stop shouting!”
We both turned.
Liam stood in the doorway, his face twisted and a palm over his forehead. “For Christ’s sake, stop shouting,” he said in a quieter voice. “I can’t stand it.” As I stared at him, my heart skipped a beat and a terrible well of nausea opened up in my stomach. Suddenly I could see what I’d been missing. All this time Quinn and I had been wrapped up in Eve, an unimaginable horror was unfolding.
“Liam,” I said, stepping away from Quinn. “How long have you had a headache?” He dropped his hand and glanced at his feet.
“Liam,” I said again. “How long have you had a headache over your eyes?” I paused and scanned my mind backward. “It’s been for the last few weeks, hasn’t it?”
“Weeks?” Quinn’s voice was like a snapping whip around the room. “For fuck’s sake, Liam, you’ve had a temporal lobe headache for weeks and you haven’t thought to mention it?” He glared at Liam, then spun his angry black eyes to me. But behind the anger I saw fear—real, alive, pulsating fear. His brows dropped low and his jaw locked tight enough to crack teeth. Then he strode from the room, fast and furious.
I swallowed and the acrid taste of bile burned my throat. Squeezing my hands together to stop them from shaking, I fought to stay upright. The sleeping monster, the 138
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thing that scared me most in the whole world because of its absolute savagery, had awoken. It had awoken and charged into our lives as gracefully as being hit by an express train.
Liam walked over to me. “I’m sorry, baby,” he said. “I don’t want to give you something else to worry about.”
I looked into his eyes, eyes the color of the sky before a storm. “Liam, this is your health, this is the priority.” My voice was shaking, I couldn’t help it. “Over everything else, this takes precedence.”
“Damn right,” Quinn said, arriving back at our side as fast as he’d exited the room.
“This way.” He cupped Liam’s jaw and spun his head to his.
“It’s just a dull thud,” Liam said, looking directly at Quinn. “I thought it would go.
Thought I was just tired. The Yoni thing has been full-on.” Quinn grunted something incoherent, but it started with F.
“Liam, you’ve been tired before and not had headaches,” I said as Quinn shone a small white flashlight into Liam’s eyes, first his left, then his right and back to his left.
“And—” I gasped and brought my hand to my mouth. A sweet memory had suddenly turned sour.
“What?” Quinn said, drilling me with his gaze. “What else, Ariane?”
“He, he called me horse.”
“When?” Quinn asked.
“The other night, in bed, instead of hot he called me horse.”
“I was half-asleep,” Liam said, shrugging. “I was just dozing off, thinking about that big new horse in the field by Ridgeway Farm and you climbed on top.”
“You’ve had dysphasia and you didn’t tell me? Un-fucking-believable.” Quinn tutted.
“One word.” Liam frowned and tried to jerk his head from Quinn’s hand. “One lousy word, okay?”
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“I haven’t finished. Open your eyes,” Quinn snapped, wielding the flashlight like a sword.
Liam dragged in a sharp breath. His wide chest pulled up and puffed out. I reached for his hand and twined our fingers together.
“Pupils equal and reacting to light,” Quinn muttered. “At least that’s something.” He poked his pen-sized flashlight into his jeans pocket. “Arms.” He held his own arms out as if demonstrating the size of a fish. Liam placed his just inside, so the backs of his hands were against Quinn’s palms. “Resist,” Quinn said.
For several seconds, both men’s arms tensed against one another. They’d obviously done this before, but not that I’d ever witnessed.
“Press,” Quinn said, switching their positions so the backs of his hands were against Liam’s palms. Again their muscles tensed.
I stared at Quinn’s face, looking for clues as to what he was doing and what the results were. “Well?” I asked, gnawing at my bottom lip.
“Seems okay,” Quinn said. “But he’ll have to come in.”
“Is that really necessary?” Liam asked.
“You know the drill,” Quinn said, pulling in a deep breath. “Go pack a bag.” Liam looked at me. His beautiful eyes were shrouded with worry and a vertical line plowed between his brows. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Really I am.” I fell against him. “Don’t be sorry,” I said, sliding my hands up his back and holding him tight. “It’s not your fault if you’re ill.” Quinn already had his mobile out of his pocket. “Five minutes,” he said as he flicked it open. “Then we leave.”
*
Liam and I were ushered into a side room on the neurosurgery ward opposite the linen cupboard. Any other occasion and I would have looked at the linen cupboard with fondness. It was the place Quinn and I first admitted to each other we were falling 140
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in love. I’d taken him in my mouth and forced him to give up some of his fierce control.
I’d known he’d never fully love me without surrendering some of his need to dominate and govern everything in his life. My plan had worked.
But today, as Quinn made calls at the ward desk, Liam and I listened to a young nurse explaining the call bell system. She handed Liam a pale blue hospital gown.
“Take off your clothes and put this on,” she said with a shy smile. “They’ll be here to take you soon.”
“Where are they taking him?” I asked, glancing nervously at the wall behind the bed—it was full of tubes and taps, monitors and leads.
“Dr. Gilbert has booked phlebotomy, optometry and radiology.” I nodded as though I knew what she was talking about and turned my attention to Liam. He was pale, much paler than when we’d left the house. The dark rings under his eyes were back, a shade of brown fading to purple.
“Okay,” I said to the nurse. “Thanks.”
She slipped from the room and pulled the door shut.
Liam stripped off his t-shirt and toed off his sneakers. He pushed down his faded Levi’s and chucked
them onto a big, soft chair next to the bed.
“Here,” I said, holding up the gown. “Let me help.”
“Other way ‘round,” he said. “They go on back to front.”
“Oh, okay.” I turned it and he slipped his arms in and then faced the door. “Do I need to tie these ribbons?” I asked, looking at the gaping back.
“Yeah, but loose, these things are always too damn tight for me.” I drew in a shaky breath and willed my fingers to stop trembling as I made bows in the three laces at the back of the gown. He was right, the gown didn’t fit his broad frame very well. It was so sad that he knew that would be the case.
He sat on the edge of the bed and stared out the window. We were high up and the view over Cardiff toward the distant green hills would normally have been something 141
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we’d linger over. But not today. Today our lives had been turned upside down. Today our lives could be about to change forever.
I stepped between his knees and gently ran my fingers through his hair. I could make out the deep crevice on the front and back of his skull, but barely touched them. I knew how sensitive they were. “I’m sure it will all be all right,” I murmured and bent to kiss his head. His hair was thick and soft on my lips and smelled of his lemony shampoo.
He wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me until his cheek was against my breasts. “I hope you’re right,” he said. “But what if you’re not?”
“Then we’ll face it together.” I leaned back a fraction, crooked a finger under his chin and raised his face. “You won’t be on your own this time.”
“I…I don’t think I can go through it again, Ariane.” His gaze searched mine.
“You’ll have to, Liam. If it’s back, you’ll have to go through it again.” He shook his head. “I don’t want you or the girls to see me like I was before.”
“But that’s not important.”
“It is to me, I was in a terrible state—thin, so thin, my hair was shaved and Quinn put damn staples right across my scalp to hold the skin back together after he cut into my brain. The girls will think I’m Frankenstein, they’ll be terrified of me.” He swallowed and closed his eyes. “I can’t put them or you through that, it wouldn’t be fair.”
“This isn’t about fair and it isn’t about us. This is about you and getting you well. If, and that is an ‘if’, the cancer is back, we’ll cross the hurdle of telling the girls when we come to it. We’ll explain, we’ll prepare them, Quinn will know what to say.” Liam opened his eyes, shook his head and when he spoke his voice was so low and so adamant it made the hairs on the back of my neck rise. “No,” he said. “If it’s back it means my time has come. I’ve had over fourteen years since the first diagnosis, most of that has been with you. You, the girls, it’s all been a bonus. Something I wouldn’t have 142
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had and I am truly grateful for it, you’ve all completed my soul.” He stared me in the eye. “So I won’t be having any treatment.”
I caught a sob in my throat. “You can’t say that, Liam. You can’t mean it.”
“We all have an expiration date and mine has been and gone a long time ago.” My eyes welled with sharp, stinging tears. I tried to blink them away. I couldn’t.
“But I want you to fight, Liam. You beat it once with Quinn’s help. I want you to fight and win again.” His words had created a knot in me and it hurt—it was tight, it squeezed my chest and my guts. “Please, say you’ll fight it, we need you. I need you.”
“I’m sorry, baby.” He reached up and caught a stray tear running down my cheek with his thumb. “But it hurt like hell and the nausea, the vomiting, that was only the tip of the iceberg compared to all the other disgusting, grim side effects of the chemo. I don’t think I could do it again. I’m just so damn tired.”
“You’re tired because you were up all night,” I said with a scowl, balling my fist on his shoulders. “And even if you’re tired you’ve got to fight. You owe it to me and the girls to try to be here.”
“I’ve transferred their money into the Barclays high-interest account.”
“What?”
“Their money, it’s in Barclays, the account number is in my red file. There’s enough for university fees, weddings, first cars and a healthy amount to put down on their first house. I will leave them provided for.”
“Liam, that’s not important.” I grabbed his hands and clutched them to my breasts.
“Money isn’t what we need, we need you. The girls want their dad around. They need you to cheer them on at pony competitions, walk them down the aisle, go and choose their first car and help them move into their first flat.” Liam shook his head. “They’ll have Quinn.”
“No, no, it doesn’t work like that and you know it.” I looked at his defeated, sad face and felt a sudden anger that he could consider giving up so easily. “And what 143
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about me?” I asked. “I need you in all of those tomorrows too. I need you, Liam.
Haven’t you thought of me?”
“Of course I have, and I know Quinn will be there for you, baby. You’ll have Quinn.”
I stared at him full of disbelief. In all the years we’d existed as a threesome this was the first time I hated it. Liam was ready to give up his fight against cancer because he could pass over all his responsibilities to Quinn. I pulled in a deep breath. “I love you, Liam, I love you so much. Having Quinn there will not make up for the fact that you’re gone, not in a million years. So you can just damn well shake off that stupid thought right now, because I will not tolerate it and I will not let you use Quinn as an excuse to die.”
“Excuse me, sorry to interrupt.”
We both turned. An elderly porter stood behind a wheelchair in the doorway. “Mr.
Rosser?” he asked.
“Yep.” Liam stood.
“I’ve come to take you to radiology,” the porter said. “Then on to phlebotomy.”
“Can I come too?” I asked, my voice stiff and tight.
“Afraid not, miss. Staff only on Sundays.”
Liam looked down at me and cupped my face in his hands. “Will you wait here? So we can talk about this later?”
“Of course I’ll wait. Where else would I go?”
“Home.”
“No, Liam, I wouldn’t go home and leave you here, would I?” I shook my head and sighed. “I’m staying here, with you. When I go home we’ll go together. I won’t go home without you.”
His mouth tilted into a half-smile and I stifled a sob as he leaned forward and pressed his lips to my forehead.
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As I watched him sit in the wheelchair, his big body folding down and his knees coming up, I wrapped my arms around my waist. Squeezed myself tight and tried to hold my emotions together. I wanted to fall apart. I wanted to drop to the floor, allow my body to scatter across the hard linoleum, roll like marbles into every corner until I could feel no more.
Liam couldn’t die. I wouldn’t let him. And neither would Quinn. I knew Quinn wouldn’t let him die, Quinn loved him too.
The wheelchair reversed from view and I paced the room and stared out the window at a single wispy cloud drifting over the crystal-blue autumnal sky. It was like a web with a spider at the center, a long, sticky web spreading into a perfect sky. Quinn had once likened Liam’s tumor to a web and the sight of the cloud sickened me all the more. The spider was back. I hated the spider web but I hated the spider that spun it more.
Turning to the bed, I looked at the crease in the sheets where Liam had sat. My fingers itched to touch it and I found myself tracing the indentation. I spun suddenly, head whirring, saw his crumpled clothes and set about tidying them and folding them. I pressed his top to my face and inhaled deeply. Liam’s smell always did funny things to me. The citrus, heavy male scent was like a signature of love and sex, strength and fragility and conjured up so many emotions and desires in me. I was so
lucky to have him, so honored that he’d shared his life with me. I sucked in a deep breath, let myself get drunk, high on him. I wanted him back―now. I wanted his skin, his hair, his arms around me. I wanted Liam like I wanted my heart to keep beating.
A sob broke free, a deep, painful sob that cramped my diaphragm and tensed my throat.
“Ariane.”
A gentle hand rested on my shoulder and I pulled my head from Liam’s top. Eyes the color of the forest floor were staring into mine, gentle eyes that held a serene 145
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calmness I needed. “Eve,” I gasped as sobs took control. They didn’t hold back, they erupted like Vesuvius, unharnessed and abandoned.
“Oh god, come here,” she said. In an instant her slight arms were around me, dragging me close and locking me in a surprisingly tight hold.
I didn’t protest. I just needed to be held. I became jellylike. I broke down, buried my head in her shoulder and wept.
She stroked my hair, murmured soothing words into my ear. They didn’t mean anything but they were there. My palms came up to my face and I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes. The tears were hot and burning, they flowed on and on. Her hands smoothed up my back, holding me firm but gentle.
“Shh, shh,” she soothed. “No need for tears when there’s no results yet.”
“But, but,” I managed, my words muffled in her soft sweater. “But he says he won’t have treatment and that he’s too tired to fight. If he needs more surgery and chemo he’s going to refuse it.”
“He’s just scared,” Eve murmured. “I’ve seen it before. He’s scared and worried about putting his family through it. He’ll come ‘round to treatment.”
“But what if he doesn’t? What if he just gives up?”
“He loves you too much to give up, Ariane. It’s plain to see you’re the center of his universe, you complete him, you make him who he is.” She paused. “And at least he’s not the stubborn one.”
I pulled back and looked at her face. Her eyes were soft, her skin pale. She was right about Liam not being the stubborn one. I shuddered in a breath and regained some control of my breathing.