by Susan Ward
“Uh-huh. Both times. First message: ‘Fingers and toes crossed for today.’ Second message just an emoji. A heart.” I clicked off my phone and settled back against him. “My sister’s so sweet. She always remembers clinic day. Only one of my brothers and sisters who does.”
“Is she upset I’m taking you today instead of her? I know that’s how it used to be. That your mom always had Krystal take you. That it turned into a bit of a sister ritual.”
I kissed his chest. “No. She understands.”
He gave me the look.
“All right,” I amended quickly. “She accepts it. Her understanding is going to take time. You know my sister gets drunk with power, and I’m part of what she’s used to managing.”
Damon checked the clock. “Free hour done with.” He dropped a quick kiss on my lips and stood up, holding a hand out to me. “No more dillydallying. Hop in the shower. Be fast. I need to take another one and dress as well.”
“Well, that’s a rather anticlimactic ending for sexy time.” I pouted. “I wasn’t done flirting with you.”
“Khloe.” Half ordered, half growled.
“Okay, okay.” I let him pull me to my feet. “But I expect some serious flirting in the car to make up for that really disappointing after-sex pillow talk.”
“You’ll get better after-sex pillow talk when we’re in Wyoming.”
I felt a bit let down. There was no telling how long my treatments would keep us in Pacific Palisades. I would float the idea of getting our own place here, but that came with its own set of problems more troubling than the lack of privacy my family caused.
On my parents’ estate we could remain a well-guarded secret instead of becoming internet and tabloid fodder. Keeping the news of our engagement among only my family was like trying to keep lightning in a bottle. Marrying him was an even more impossible challenge for us, though Damon wouldn’t accept that.
My chest tightened with terrible yearning mixed with a dash of fear. I loved him so much, but it wasn’t enough to make me survive publicly proclaiming we were together. I wasn’t even sure it was wise to let him go to the clinic with me today, except that Dr. Hern got his funding from my father and had every motivation to move heaven and earth to protect our secrecy. But my suggestion that I go without Damon died the second I said the words. I could see the determination in his amber eyes. And the pain. I couldn’t go through this without him, not anymore, not without making him feel shut out and hurting him.
Shutting Damon out of any part of me was no longer an option, not anymore.
I let out a shaky breath. “I’m sorry I can’t be everything you need me to be. That my problems are costing you a lot.”
“Stop it.” He swung around and dragged me to him. “You’re more than I could ever want. You are my total want. You’re costing me nothing. You’ve made me a richer man than I ever dreamed possible.”
I looked up at him, admiring the way his amber eyes shone without guile from his extraordinary face. “You don’t regret not being in line for succession to the throne? That you have to step out of your royal life to be with me?”
“Never. Not for a second.” He eased my chin upward so he could look in my eyes. “You’re my future, Khloe. My family is the past. I wouldn’t change that for anything.”
His body language was open and relaxed, and my worry left me in a rush. If he was lying and regretting what he’d given up for me, it didn’t show in his expression or how he looked at me.
“Good,” I said softly, placing my hand on his chest above his heart. “It would devastate me to lose you now.”
“That won’t ever happen,” he said determinedly. “There is nothing that could ever take me from you.”
I thought about the lengths his father had gone to in an effort to get Damon to submit to his duty. I also knew he’d been raised with a strong duty to serve, and his dedication to me was in part a reflection of that. He sounded very sure, but I could never allow myself to forget all he’d given up and what he’d been born to do.
I sighed. “That was a much better after-sex talk than complaining about my family, Damon. Now I’m ready to shower.”
“Jesus.” He scrubbed his face in that way he did when I digressed quickly from the serious into the silly. “I would appreciate it if you’d stop doing that, Khloe. We’re beyond playful banter to hide what we’re really feeling. We were having a moment here, and you ruined it with a joke.”
I made a sad grimace. “I’m not hiding my feelings. I’m not hiding anything. Just having a bit of fun, Damon.”
“That cost you. I won’t be participating in any flirty talk in the car.” He said that firmly, determined.
“Of course you will,” I taunted. “You won’t be able to stop yourself.”
He glanced at me with loving—though a bit irritated—eyes. “This habit you have of making light in the wrong moments really needs to go. We’ve progressed. I’ve been lax in letting you keep this going. It stops now. It won’t matter how cheeky you are. I won’t bite.”
“Bullshit.” I rolled my eyes. “You always bite. You can’t help yourself because I’m not cheeky, I’m fun.”
Laughing, I scurried into the bathroom and shut the door between us.
“TAKE THE SEPULVEDA TUNNEL, CODY. It’s faster.”
“If you want to drive, Khloe, be my guest.”
“I don’t want to drive, I just don’t want to be late.”
“I know my way to the clinic better than you do.”
“But I know the best ways to avoid traffic in LA.”
“Says you.”
I smelled the coffee Damon was holding and, without asking, took it from his hand. With my gaze locked on his, I suggestively closed my lips on the rim before taking a sip.
“Hmm. So good. Nothing makes a woman’s mouth happier than coffee.”
I waited.
“Should you be drinking that before your tests?” Damon asked dryly.
“It’s fine if I drink coffee. Cody and I always drink coffee during the ride there.”
He smiled in a tight-lipped way that seemed to say discussion over. I took another sip then flicked my tongue along the rim.
Nothing.
I exhaled. This had never happened before. Damon not joining in on flirty time with me. I looked toward the windshield and found Cody staring at me in the rearview. My cheeks heated, and I gave back Damon’s travel mug.
My head tilted into Damon. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“For what?”
I refrained from rolling my eyes. “Making jokes when we were serious. You’re right. I do do that too often. It’s part of my coping mechanisms. I’m not making light of you. Or us. It’s how I emotionally manage things.”
His long fingers closed over my hand. “It’s one of the things I love about you. How you’re upbeat no matter what curveball life sends you. But there’s nothing more upbeat than us sharing what’s in our hearts. You don’t need to use your humor in those moments, love. In fact, it diminishes the power those moments can give us.”
Now I felt bad, because Damon was right. I’d gotten so used to laughing off the scary, the disappointments, the guys who’d let me down that I’d forgotten you don’t need to laugh off the wonderful.
“I love you. I’m sorry.” I kissed his bicep and peeked up at him. “Can we be friends again? It’s not fun being flirty in the car all by myself.”
He buried his lips in my hair, and I could feel from his body he was struggling between laughing and groaning. It took a few moments for him to settle his emotions how he wanted to. His arm tightened around my back. “I know you’re nervous over what the results are going to be. But we’re in this together. Lean on me, Khloe. I’m not going anywhere.”
“I know.” Tears stung my eyes. “What we are isn’t something I’m used to.”
“Me either.”
I melted more into him. “Why do you want to take this on
with me?”
“There’s only one you, Khloe. Unique and irreplaceable. Any man lucky enough to be with you should want to be with you through everything. It’s what I want most. To be with you through anything and everything.”
He said that as if it were indisputable. I saw myself as just some wacky girl from California with rock star parents and cancer. His words were flowery and spoken in a charming voice. My relationship history told me I shouldn’t bank on those sentiments lasting should my condition deteriorate from where it was. It was the kind of thing guys said when they didn’t know how bad cancer could get.
Yet a lot of things became inconsequential after Damon made the pronouncement. Like flirty time to make light of how much I loved him. Like trying to guard my emotions not to be hurt should the dark days of my illness, the kind that drove men away, take over my life again.
Useless endeavors, the jokes and my fears of what may be. Damon wanted only to love. How could I not love him openly and without caution?
Chapter Four
Khloe
The Past
I WALKED ACROSS DR. HERN’S office and dropped into my usual chair.
My palms were sweaty just thinking about getting my results; I was steeling myself for not only the worst—something I’d never done before—but also Damon’s reaction that would follow.
It wasn’t that I expected bad news or thought there’d be any earth-shattering change in my prognosis. It was just that I’d grown accustomed to how grim things sounded, and Damon hadn’t been through this before. I couldn’t shut off my anxiety, even though I had every reason to believe that Damon, regardless of the results, wouldn’t let me down now or ever.
My gaze dropped, and I realized the discomfort I felt in my fingers was from how tightly I clutched my bag. The pretty, sparkling engagement ring glimmered in the fluorescent light. I released my grip on my bag and dropped it to the ground beside my chair.
“It’s going to be all right, love,” Damon said reassuringly, his hand encircling mine now that I wasn’t holding anything. “Whatever the doctor tells you, we’ll deal with it together.”
Nodding, I closed my eyes as I absorbed his husky, determined voice. It sounded a little raspy, which was unlike how Damon normally sounded, and I could feel he was struggling to maintain his calm like I was. I’d thought that having him with me would make this part of my monthly checkup easier; it didn’t. It made the nerve-racking stretch of time between the exam and the report worse than ever. It reminded me of what there was worth fighting to live for and what a single exam could cost me.
The door opened and Damon straightened up.
“Dr. Hern,” I said to him. “We’ve really gotta stop meeting this way.”
The doctor laughed as he settled in his chair before the desk. “Khloe, believe me, I’d miss you—you’re my favorite patient—but I’d be very glad for us to stop meeting this way.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” I teased. “You wouldn’t get to see my mother and flirt with her anymore.”
A ghost of a flush rose on the doctor’s face as he continued to type away on his computer “You’re as outrageous as ever. You must be feeling well.”
“Very well.”
“Any changes to your daily routine I should know about?” He rattled off the list of medications I was prescribed, and I confirmed I continued to take them. “Any supplements? Exercise programs or changes?”
“Only one. But you’ve already met him.”
Dr. Hern’s lips broke into a full smile, and he gave a slight nod toward Damon. “Having the support of a partner can make cancer treatment more beneficial to the body and less difficult.”
“You were right all along, Dr. Hern. I should have followed your advice years ago. I think having someone to love is better than chemo for kicking cancer’s butt. He’s beneficial to the body and less difficult.”
The doctor choked on a laugh, but Damon chided me with his eyes. I shrugged. The joke was out of my mouth before I could stop it. Some old habits were going to end more slowly than others.
Dr. Hern wheeled his chair a few inches back from the desk. He had the dreaded remote for the wall monitors in his hand.
My good humor instantly crashed.
“There’s something I want to show you.” His voice was bland, unrevealingly medical in tone, and for a split second I remembered sitting here with Cody the day I found out the tumor in my heart was worse.
As Dr. Hern focused on getting my scan images up on the row of screens, my fingers tightened around Damon’s, and concern flooded his amber eyes.
The doctor stood up. “This was Khloe’s heart in October,” he explained, more to Damon than to me probably, because I’d already seen this grim presentation once before. His finger made a circle around the mass. “Her cardiac sarcoma had grown significantly her last year on the immunotherapy, Your Highness. The team determined that her best course was to get on the transplant registry and restart traditional chemo to shrink the tumor and improve the likelihood a transplant would be successful. Additionally, she’d developed other complications from the immunotherapy. Her kidneys, liver…”
My insides began jumping like a jackhammer, and I tuned out his voice. This wasn’t how the doctor always presented my results to me—he usually kept it light—and I suspected it was having Damon there that changed it. All this overly detailed, very frightening medical-terminology-dense commentary. Like he was speaking peer to peer, or worse, was this man-to-man medical-speak?
Ugh. This was a disaster.
Damon was engrossed in every word he spoke, and I didn’t like the doctor’s realistic approach undermining my view of my illness as I’d shared with Damon.
Jeez, Louise, I could ruin a relationship all on my own if I wanted to. I didn’t need Hern’s help to do it.
“And what fun the chemo has been,” I interrupted after minutes of thorough discussion of risks and benefits of chemotherapy. I exhaled heavily. “Please, Dr. Hern. Can we skip over everything and go straight to my results today?”
“I was getting to that, Khloe,” he announced, moving to the last monitor with my most recent scan on it. He made a wide circle around the image of my heart. “This is the scan we took today of Khloe. We’ve seen this result more and more with patients who start on chemo, switch to immunotherapy, then return to chemo. Immunotherapy helps the body fight cancer. Chemo is designed to eliminate the cancer. What we have here is the result of those two forces working together.”
“My God.” Damon released a ragged breath. “The tumor is significantly smaller than it was two months ago.”
“It has reduced in size by eighty percent,” Dr. Hern announced happily.
My eyes opened wide. “Eighty percent? Are you saying you can cure my cancer completely with the chemo now that I’ve had immunotherapy?”
Dr. Hern returned to his chair.
He was silent for a moment. “Theoretically, it’s a possibility.”
“How much of a possibility?” Damon asked anxiously.
“Better than seventy percent, I would say.”
An elated smile flashed on Damon’s face as he turned in his chair to look at me. “Seventy percent, KK,” he said as though amazed. “Certainly those are better odds than you’ve ever had.”
I stared at him, not smiling.
His expression fell. “Why aren’t you happy, love? It’s excellent news.”
I lay a hand on Damon’s chest. I could feel his heart racing beneath his shirt. But I could see in the doctor’s eyes there was bad news also.
Good news then bad news.
That’s how my exam reports always went down.
Illness was an emotional roller coaster. I’d learned years ago not to jump at the first bit of cheeriness.
“There’s more, isn’t there, Dr. Hern?” I asked quietly.
“Yes,” Dr. Hern replied tonelessly, and beneath my fingers I felt Damon’s body tense.
; I settled back against my chair and swallowed down the lump in my throat. This time I closed my fingers around Damon’s.
“Your body isn’t tolerating the chemo any better than the first time we put you on it,” the doctor began slowly. “Your lab work is not what we hoped for given the greatly reduced dosage you’ve been on the past two months. The team’s recommendation is that we terminate the weekly chemotherapy treatments to preserve the present status of your health while we wait for a transplant. A transplant is your best option moving forward.”
“What are the risks of taking me off the chemo?”
Damon leaned forward, very alert.
The line of Dr. Hern’s mouth softened. “Less than continuing the chemo.”
“What does that mean?” Damon snapped harshly. “Give me numbers. Odds. How can we make a decision without knowing the extent of risk for each decision?”
Dr. Hern’s gaze rested briefly on mine.
I nodded to the silently asked question I found in his gaze.
Damon needed to know the complete prognosis and the unvarnished reality of me. And I needed to know what today’s results meant to us.
I slouched in my chair as Dr. Hern very carefully worded his response. But for all the percentages and complex diagnoses he laboriously explained to Damon, it boiled down to three things which I’d lived with since October: if I continued on the chemo or the immunotherapy, they would kill me; if I didn’t get a heart transplant before the tumor destroyed my heart, I would die; and the likelihood of finding a heart in time was slim to none.
WE STEPPED INTO THE WAITING room, and Cody sprang to his feet.
“Well?” he asked, rushing to me. “What’d the doctor say?”
It was a relief to see my dearest friend after such crushing news. He was the anchor I’d relied on through all my medical storms to date, familiar, comforting, and less emotionally chaotic for me than Damon was at present.
I stepped into his open arms. “Good news. Bad news. Which do you want first?”
“Good.”
“Remember how big and ugly my tumor was? Well, the chemo has reduced it to half the sized it was when I was first diagnosed nine years ago.”