“Nothing happened,” she repeated. “I promise. Now, go take a shower, and I’ll lie down until you’re ready to go. That way when we get home tonight, we can … you know.”
I smiled tightly, still mad about Jared. “You better fall asleep and get a lot of rest because I missed you last night.”
She rose up on her tiptoes and pressed her lips to mine. I grabbed her hips until our bodies were flush and then I deepened the kiss, staking my claim. I knew how douchebags worked. I used to be one. I broke our kiss once I couldn’t breathe.
“Next time, I’m coming with you in hopes we run into Jared.”
Brooke was panting as she shook her head slightly. “He’s not worth it.”
“I know, but I still want to see the look on his face when he knows he let the best thing that ever happened to him walk away.”
“Technically, I threw his clothes over the railing and made him leave.”
“Details.” I rolled my eyes.
“Easton, you’re the best thing to ever happen to me.”
I smiled, loving how she felt the same way for me as I did for her. “You should really stop before you don’t get your nap because I’m fucking you instead.”
She stared into my eyes for a beat. “Fuck it. I’ll drink coffee on the way so I don’t fall asleep.”
“So what was your kryptonite? Was it the Diet Coke?” I joked.
She laughed. “You’re silly.”
“I need to know, Superwoman, so I can keep it in my bag of tricks.”
“You really don’t need tricks. But being sweaty is definitely a plus.”
I chuckled. “Good to know. Now, in the shower or on the bed?”
“Seeing as you need a shower and we’re on a time crunch—”
“Shower it is.” I grinned.
I tugged her into our en-suite bathroom, and she stepped around me to turn on the water. I watched her ass as she bent over, turning the shower on. Her curves were tempting me, arousing me and causing me to ache for her. I couldn’t wait to slip inside her, burying myself till I couldn’t go any further.
“God I missed you,” I confessed as I lifted her shirt and tossed it on the floor.
“I missed you too.” She started to work the button of my shorts.
“I’ve missed this.”
“Missed what?” she asked, not looking up as she continued working my shorts.
“Us. Sex. You know?”
I felt her fingers stop. “Radiation kicked my ass. It’s still kicking it.”
Reaching down, I began working the button and then the zipper on her shorts. “You seem like you’re more energetic.”
“I’m … I’m just pushing myself. I want to live my life and not have the tumor and radiation hanging over me. Part of me thinks that if I feel good, I can’t have FAP.”
I stopped tugging on her shorts and grabbed her face between my hands, making sure we were looking at each other. “I’m not sure it works that way, Superwomen.”
“It has to,” she breathed.
I wrapped her in my arms, holding her tight. She didn’t know how strong she was, but I knew.
“I know I’m strong and a fighter,” she said. We were so in tune that she’d read my thoughts. “It’s just that we have something good and I don’t want to burden you with more.”
“Burden?” I asked, pulling her closer as though there was still space between us. “You’re not a burden. And God forbid if you do have FAP, but then I will be there every step of the way.”
Her eyes were starting to gloss over. “Promise?”
“With all my heart. Now, can we take a shower and forget about this until we know for sure?”
She gave a tight smile. “We can shower, but I don’t think I can forget about the C word.”
“Challenge accepted.”
We were totally late to my parents’ place.
When we arrived at my folk’s, Avery was already there. He always comes over for the weekly dinners because even though his last name is Scott, he is a Crawford. He’s my brother.
“Uncle A, where’s Nicole?” Cheyenne asked the moment she saw Avery in our parent’s kitchen.
I smiled tightly, apologizing for Cheyenne. He shook his head in a way that told me it was okay. She was only ten after all.
“She’s in Boston, C.C.”
“Why?”
He washed his hands in the sink as he responded. “She’s with her parents.”
“Why?” Cheyenne continued to ask.
“Peanut, that’s enough,” I warned.
“Why?” she asked again as she looked at me. “I don’t get why I can’t know where my favorite aunt is.”
I felt the room around me tense at her statement of Nicole being her aunt. Even if Nicole and Avery didn’t work things out, she’d still be her aunt since Brooke and Nicole are practically sisters.
All eyes turned to Avery as he took a deep breath. “C.C., Nicole and I broke up.”
“Why?” she asked, looking around the room.
“Come sit down. I have some bad news.” He gestured for her to sit at the breakfast table.
“Av—”
“It’s okay,” he said to me before turning to Cheyenne as she sat next to him. “Remember how we told you that you were getting a cousin?”
“Yeah.” Cheyenne smiled, leaning on the table with her head in her hand.
“Sometimes we can be wrong. I’m not going to be a …”
He stopped. He couldn’t finish the sentence, and I didn’t blame him. I stepped in, moving closer to the two. “Peanut, remember when Mommy died?”
“Nicole died?” Cheyenne whispered.
“No, Peanut, but remember how Mommy’s an angel now?”
Cheyenne turned back to face Avery. “I don’t get it. How can Nicole be an angel if she’s not dead?”
“Not Nicole, C.C. Our baby,” Avery clarified.
She paused, staring at him as though she was processing what we’d told her. “Your baby died?”
“Yeah.” He choked on his words.
“I’m sorry, Uncle A.” She stood and wrapped her arms around his neck. After a few seconds, she pulled back. “But why did you and Nicole break up?”
“It’s been a tough time, C.C. She needed to get away.”
“But she’ll be back?”
“She will,” Brooke chimed in.
I turned when I heard her voice. I had no idea Nicole was coming back. Brooke failed to tell me about her visit with Nicole. Must have been the Diet Coke.
Avery looked up at Brooke, tilting his head slightly. “She will?” he mouthed as if he didn’t believe her.
Brooke nodded.
“Good because I really like her,” Cheyenne said. “What’s for dinner, Grandma?”
And that was how kids work. In Cheyenne’s eyes, everything was okay.
The next morning I met Avery at the gym. I didn’t think he was going to go since he had rarely worked out since Nicole left. But he walked into the locker room as I was putting my things into a locker, and grinned when he saw me. I hadn’t seen him smile like that in almost two weeks.
“Nicole’s back,” he stated, happy as fuck.
Well, that answers that. I smiled back. “Good. I’m happy for you, dude.”
“And …” he said, dragging out the word, “we’re getting married!”
My arm stopped as the locker door slammed shut. “Say what?”
“We’re getting married.”
“Not that I’m not happy for you, but you two just got back together last night.”
He leaned his back against the locker. “I went all in. It was either get married or break up.”
I stared at him for a beat. It was too soon, but then again, they’d been together for longer than Brooke and me. He threw his keys and wallet into my locker, and I closed it. “Well, shit, Av, I’m glad you two worked everything out. I finally get to throw you a bachelor party.”
“We should have a double bachelor party.”
I shook my head. “That’s dumb.”
“Right.” He chuckled. “Sorry. I’m just really excited. We’re both getting married.”
We started walking toward the door. “Except neither one of us knows when, right? I mean, Brooke and I haven’t set a date yet.”
“Yeah, why is that?”
I took a deep breath. “It’s best to explain over beers.”
He grabbed my arm to stop me from walking toward the treadmills. “But you two are still getting married?”
I smiled. “Of course. There’s just something looming, and we need to find out what’s going to happen before we set a date.” At least that was why I thought Brooke hadn’t mentioned a date to me yet.
“Well, now I’m confused as fuck.”
Explaining FAP to Avery was something I wanted to do in private. I wanted him to process it and not make Brooke think more about it. She was already stressed about the C word, so shoving it in her face wasn’t the best plan.
I started to walk again. “Let’s hurry up here and then grab that beer.”
When we were finished at the gym, Avery followed me to Halo. After all, we could practically drink for free there. We greeted out staff and told them we were just going to be in the office for a few before we grabbed two bottles of beer from behind the bar and then made our way upstairs. Avery shut the door after us, and I sat behind the single wood desk as he took the black leather couch against the wall in front it.
The air around us felt weird. We told each other everything, and I wanted to tell him what was going on, I just didn’t know how to tell him.
“Just tell me. You know I can handle anything,” he prompted.
I took a few pulls of my beer and sighed. “It’s not that I don’t think you can handle it. I’m scared as fuck.” I frowned.
“Well, shit, you’re scaring me.”
I watched him take a few sips of his beer. “Brooke might have colon cancer.”
The bottle halted at his lips and then he lowered it. “Come again?”
“The day you got shit-faced here? We went to the doctor beforehand.”
He scrunched his eyebrows. “Right …”
“Except it wasn’t a doctor. It was a genetics counselor. Brooke’s surgeon back in Boston wanted her to meet with a genetics counselor because there’s typically an underlining reason for desmoid tumors.”
“Okay …”
I sighed again. “So we met with her, and she explained that people with these tumors usually have a genetic condition called familial adenomatous polyposis that’s referred to as FAP.”
“What the fuck is that? Does she have it?”
My throat began to tighten. Around Brooke, I was trying to stay strong—for her, but my nerves were just as high as hers. I didn’t want to see her suffer again, and there was no telling what was entailed if she did have it. “We don’t know. She has to get a colonoscopy on Wednesday, and we’re waiting for the genetic testing to come back, which could take a month or more.”
“Fuck,” he muttered.
“Anyway, I don’t want to rain on your parade about getting engaged, but that’s what’s been going on.”
“Has Brooke told Nic?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”
He took a few more pulls of his beer and I did the same. “How am I not going to tell Nicole? She’s Brooke’s best friend.”
“Focus on your engagement.”
He huffed. “I do need to get her a ring. I kinda proposed spur of the moment.” There was a slight smile on his face.
“Do that then. Enjoy being back together. We’ll be fine. Brooke will fight this, and if she has FAP, then we’ll decide if we want kids.” I shrugged, trying to show that I wasn’t worried, but in reality, I was scared as fuck.
He tilted his head to the side. “What? What do you mean?”
I hesitated for a beat. “If she has FAP and fights the cancer, we might not have kids.”
“Why?”
“Because there’s a fifty-fifty chance she can pass the gene to our child.”
Avery looked away. “Sorry, give me a minute…”
“Are you okay?”
“It’s still fresh.”
“Right. Sorry …”
“At least you have C.C.” He smiled a thin smile.
“Just because I have Chey doesn’t mean I don’t want kids with Brooke.” He was starting to irritate me. I wanted to give my woman everything she wanted.
“I know, but what if Nic can never have kids either?”
“Shit, I’m sorry. We shouldn’t be thinking this crap. Nic will give you a baby, and Brooke will have one too.”
“I hope you’re right.”
I leaned back in my chair and stared up at the off-white ceiling. When I watched Avery with Cheyenne, I knew he wanted his own one day. And he was right, I had Cheyenne and had experienced fatherhood already. Except I want to give Brooke everything she desired in life. She had been beaten up in the short amount of time I knew her, and she deserved everything she wanted.
“Just like I tell Brooke, let’s not worry until we know for sure.”
“Jesus,” he sighed, “how are any of us going to sleep?”
“By fucking our women until we pass out.” I joked with a grin. Fuck, it would be nice to do it, though.
He laughed. “I like your thinking.”
In a month, my peanut was going to be eleven. Eleven! Time was flying by. It seemed like just yesterday when I’d held Cheyenne in my arms and swore I’d never let anything happen to her. I had no idea then that Dana would die, but since that time, I’d made sure that Cheyenne’s only heartbreak. Now she was turning eleven, and in a few years, some boy would break her heart. It was a fact. No one went through life without having their heart broken. Mine was broken in sixth grade when my neighbor Paige decided she wanted to kiss other boys and not only me. I was elev—
Fuck!
Well, Cheyenne had already had her first kiss and thankfully wasn’t heartbroken. But she would be in middle school in a few months—kissing more boys.
Nope.
Nope.
Nope.
I needed a gun.
“Remember when I took Cheyenne to dinner?” I asked Brooke as we sat on the couch with her head in my lap.
“Yeah.”
“I asked her what she wanted to do for her birthday.”
“What did she say?”
“That she wants to have a sleepover.”
Brooke chuckled. “Most girls do at her age. Well, until we’re twenty-one. After that, we usually only have sleepovers because someone is too drunk to drive home.”
I grimaced. “You’re not making this easy on me. I already fear the day I have to shoot a boy.”
Brooke full on laughed and turned on her back so she could see my face. “You’re not going to shoot a boy.”
“I will when he breaks her heart.”
“And then we’ll all move to Canada?”
I shrugged. “Yeah. We’ll go on the lam and I’ll forbid her to ever date again.”
“So this is what it’s like to have a dad.” She frowned.
I grinned down at her. “Well, if you’d had a dad, then we would have never met because you would have already been in Canada,” I said, trying to lighten the mood.
“This is true, but I also wouldn’t have let Jared string me along for so long.”
“We’ve been through this. Things happen for a reason.” I brushed back her dark brown hair from her forehead.
“I know.” She sighed. “But I might know if there’s colon cancer in my family.”
“All right, we are not talking about this right now.” I stared into her eyes trying to convey I meant it. “We need to plan for this twelve girl sleepover.”
“Twelve girls?” she screeched and sat up.
“I know. I’ve been trying to process it myself.” I closed my eyes briefly and thought about twelve young girls screaming through my house.
“Why did you agree to have twelve girls sleep over?”
I shrugged. “It’s her birthday, and I want her to have whatever she wants.”
She grinned. “You’re such a sucker.”
“I’ll give you something to su—”
“Daddy!” Cheyenne screamed from the front entry.
Fuck!
“We’re right here, Peanut. You don’t need to yell,” I responded.
“Did you tell Brooke about my birthday party?” She sat in the olive green recliner across from the sectional couch.
“We were just talking about it.”
“Are you sure you want that many girls here? What are you going to do to entertain them all?” Brooke asked.
“Courtney said she heard at Kate’s party that they played a game where there are questions written on a big ball, and they pass it around in a circle. You have to answer the question it lands on when it’s your turn.”
“What kind of questions?” Brooke inquired.
Cheyenne shrugged. “I don’t know. Stuff like your favorite color, favorite candy, who your best friend is, what boy you like—”
I choked on air. “What boy you like?”
“Yeah. Like I like—”
“You like a boy?” I grilled, not believing my ears.
“Well, I did kiss him.” Cheyenne rolled her eyes as if I was the ridiculous one.
My body tensed at the thought of Cheyenne and this kid. I wasn’t happy about it then, and I sure as fuck wasn’t happy about it now.
Brooke reached her hand out and placed it on my knee. “I think it sounds fun, Chey. We’ll work out all the details and send the invites to everyone,” she affirmed.
“Yes!” she exclaimed. “I’m gonna go tell Courtney.”
“And I’m going to go to work. You two have fun tonight.” I turned and kissed Brooke’s lips as Cheyenne ran out the front door.
Brooke grinned. “When you get home tonight, I’ll be well rested and ready to … suck.”
While going through radiation, weeks passed by where Easton and I didn’t have sex. Looking back, I now realized that we didn’t do it once in those six weeks. Hell, we didn’t have sex more than that because of my surgery.
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