Unforgettable (Always Book 2)

by Lexxie Couper

  “It’s okay, Chase,” she said, cheek pressed to Tanner’s head. “I’d like him to stay. He did fly halfway around the world, after all.”

  Chase grunted. A part of me wanted to go with her to discover what she’d intended to say to me as we bought coffee. Of course, that part suspected it would have been a warning of the highest order about how she was going to make me suffer if I wasn’t the best father ever. Chase would never hold back telling me what she thought.

  With a quick grimace at me, she smiled at her sister. “Two sugars?”

  “Three.”

  I quirked an eyebrow. Three?

  Have you ever noticed when you’re caught in a major upheaval, when your life feels like it’s a kite being tossed about in a major fucking storm, you react to small changes as if they were enormous ones? Amanda had never taken sugar in her coffee before.

  She slid her gaze to me without lifting her cheek from Tanner’s. He wasn’t quite asleep. He watched me with heavy-lidded eyes, Optimus Prime clutched to his chest, his other hand resting on Amanda’s arm. “And that’s enough out of you, Bren,” she said with a small smile. “There’s nothing wrong with three sugars.”

  I chuckled, rising to my feet as I did. “If you say so,” I said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

  She grew still, her eyes locked on mine, her smile fading.

  Crap. What the hell was I doing? The action had been so unconscious, so . . . so . . . reflexive, I hadn’t even realized I was doing it until was done.

  Fuck.

  “Blech.” Chase pulled a face. “I’m out of here. Mom and Dad, you’re coming with me.”

  I twisted to look over my shoulder at Charles and Jacqueline still in the doorway of the room.

  Charles watched me with narrow eyes. Adjusting his folded arms over his chest, he shook his head. “Think I’ll stay here. Just to make sure Osmond does as well.”

  “Dad,” Amanda groaned.

  “Actually, Dad,” Chase said, snaring his arm by the hook of his elbow, “it wasn’t a question. Now the Wonder from Down Under is here, we should all let Amanda make up her own mind about what happens next and who’s with her when she does.”

  Charles opened his mouth, but Chase didn’t let him utter a word. Instead, she jerked his arm and pulled him from the room.

  I couldn’t help but smile a little at that. He may want to stay in the room and guard his eldest daughter from whatever hurt he feared I’d bring to her, but he loved his younger daughter just as much. And for all of Chase’s bravado, she was a tiny girl. If Charles had wanted to stay put and make my life a living hell, he could have.

  “We’ll be back in a little while,” Jacqueline told us. Unlike her husband, she seemed completely okay with leaving Amanda and me alone together. Although, with the nurse still in the room, making notes on the pages of charts at the foot of Tanner’s bed, we weren’t really alone.

  “’Kay, Mom,” Amanda answered.

  Jacqueline left.

  My heart thumped faster. I turned back to Amanda, suddenly at a complete loss for something to say.

  She smiled up at me. “Want to hold him for a second? While I go to the bathroom?”

  Every muscle in my body locked up.

  She chuckled, and then kissed Tanner on the top of the head. “Daddy’s going to hold you for a second, tough guy,” she said, the words a whisper that sheared through me. “Okay?”

  “Oppimus,” Tanner murmured, opening his eyes with sleepy languor before closing them again and holding his arms out to me.

  The world roared. Spun. For a second – a heartbeat – I noticed the nurse studying me, waiting. And then I slid my hands under Tanner’s armpits and lifted him from Amanda’s lap, lowering myself to the side of the bed at the same time. He weighed nothing. So light. I’ve lifted some heavy weights in my time – my personal best is two hundred and twenty kilos in a deadlift – but as light as Tanner was, lifting him was like lifting the world. I felt his weight all the way through to my very core. Or maybe it was something more significant.

  Optimus Prime thunked against my back as Tanner positioned himself half on my hip, half on my lap. His hot face pressed to my chest, his free hand bunched in the cotton of my shirt. “Tuck,” he said, giving the toy a tired shake.

  “Autobots, roll out,” I quoted the only Transformer phrase I knew as I adjusted myself on the edge of the bed. I was nervous the oxygen tube in his nose would get tangled in my awkwardness, would tug on his face and hurt him. Was there a trick to holding him? To not hurting him?

  “Bots . . .” Tanner mumbled.

  I knew he was asleep when his weight grew heavy and still. For one horrible, horrific moment, I was sure the room was going to flood with doctors and nurses screaming and shouting things like “get a crash cart” and all the other stuff they yell on TV shows when a patient dies. For a horrible, horrific moment, any optimism I had was stripped away by the soul-crushing fear that I’d discovered I had a son only so I could hold him while he died.

  And then my brain registered his breath heating my chest through my shirt like a warm fan, and I let out a silent chuckle and rested my cheek to his head.

  I was holding my son. My son was in my arms, his heart beating in his tiny body so close to mine.

  I was holding my son.

  “I’ll be back in a second.” Soft fingers touched my shoulder and I looked up to find the nurse smiling at me. “To get him into bed.”

  “Do you want to do that now?” I asked, praying she’d say no. It was too soon. I’d only just got him, it was too soon to let him go.

  “In a little while.” She walked around the bed to the other side and then raised the railing until it clicked into place. “I think being held by his daddy is more beneficial right now. For you both.”

  She left before I could thank her.

  I didn’t move. I stayed perched on the edge of the hospital bed, listening to – and feeling – Tanner’s deep breath. Holding him while he slept.

  A soft thud behind me told me Optimus had slipped from his fingers. I brushed my cheek over the top of his head. My brain wanted to point out why he’d lost his hair, wanted to dwell on it. Wanted to imagine the pain of the chemotherapy responsible for that hair loss, for the loss of his blond Mohawk.

  I refused to let it.

  Banishing the tormented fears, I breathed in his smell, enjoying the way the top of his head gently slid against my cheek as he moved with my intake of air.

  “So, Tanner,” I murmured, reveling in the feel of his name on my tongue, “I’m thinking we need to get some ground rules sorted out. You need to continue to be wonderful and gorgeous and completely an Optimus Prime fan. And it’s very important you keep making your mother smile. That’s your number-one job, okay?”

  I paused, closing my eyes and doing nothing but existing with him for a long, glorious moment. “And I,” I whispered, drawing him a little closer, my eyes still closed, “will give you everything you need, anything you need, to be healthy. To beat this thing trying to take you away from us. I promise. You keep being wonderful, I’ll keep you breathing, okay?”

  For an answer, Tanner snuggled in to my chest. My eyes welled up with tears, but there was no damn way I was taking my arms away from him to wipe them.

  I’m not quite sure when it was I stretched out on his bed with him. But I did. Tucking him against my upper body, I lay on my side, resting my head on my arm and curling my legs up until they nestled against his feet.

  “I’ll take you to Australia when you’re well enough,” I told him, the words barely more than a breath. “One of my old lecturers at uni is the patron of the koala enclosure at the zoo. I’ll tap a favor and get us a private visit. Your mum loves the koalas.” Another quiet chuckle left me as I remembered the first time Amanda saw the koalas at Taronga Zoo. She’d stared at them, utterly enrapt. I’d had to resort to kissing her senseless right there at the enclosure to regain her attention.

  My heart quickened at th
e memory.

  “By the way,” I went on, doing my best to deny the warmth in my heart the memory awoke, “I have a friend over here who is a koala expert. Maybe we can give Maci and Raph a call. You’d like them both. Sure, he’s a broody, grumpy pain in the ar . . . butt most of the time, but his sister married a prince. Reckon I could convince him to send a crown your way.”

  Tracing the tips of my fingers over the exquisite curve of Tanner’s skull, I wriggled a little deeper onto the mattress and closed my eyes. “Oh and my mum, your nanna, is going to spoil you rotten. Nanna and Poppy Osmond. Did you know you have an uncle as well? Uncle Ben. He’s brilliant. Way smarter than me. And stronger. Don’t tell him I said that.”

  I let the noises of the room waft over me. At some point the nurse would be back in here. I probably should have sat up. I must have looked a ridiculous sight; a six foot two, muscle-bound guy crunched up on his side in a hospital bed-slash-cot. But I didn’t want to sit up yet. I was comfortable.

  More than comfortable. I was calm. And centered. And relaxed.

  More than relaxed. I was chillaxed. Gravy. I was . . .

  Okay, you probably guess what happened next, right?

  Yeah, I was asleep.

  When I woke – hours later, if the way my knees ached and my mouth tasted was anything to judge by – I found Amanda sitting in the chair next to the bed, her chin resting on her palm, her eyes closed.

  I didn’t move. Not just because I didn’t want to disturb Tanner, who was still nestled against me, his breath a warm fan against my chest, but because I wanted the time to truly look at her. Since touching down, I’d seen her in so many guises. Conflicting, confusing guises.

  I’d seen the sexy girl I’d never got over, the new tired girl with a secret. I’d seen the woman who stirred me in the most fundamental, physical way. I’d seen a deceiving stranger I didn’t want to know.

  And I’d seen the mother worried about her sick child, swallowing her pride and opening herself up to a world of new pain and guilt and heartache to save that child.

  My brain couldn’t align any of them.

  I kept going back to the past, to when she was my Amanda and I knew her better than I knew myself. But that Amanda was gone. I don’t know if she’d faded from existence the night I told her I loved her, or if it had happened later, as she struggled with being pregnant.

  Or had it happened even later? Had the Amanda I loved still been there, waiting for life to lead her back to me, until that life was forever shattered with the news Tanner had leukemia?

  What was Philadelphia leukemia? Was it the reason she’d called me? I knew it was rare for parents to be donors in normal leukemia cases, but was it different for Philadelphia leukemia? If Tanner just had normal leukemia – if there was such a thing – would I be here? If a cure were available without my presence, would she have even thought to contact me?

  So many questions, feeding a resentful anger in me I needed to address.

  And yet, even with those questions and the bitterness they stirred, I gazed at her face and remembered doing so morning after morning, my body, my heart aching for her, craving her . . . loving her.

  I don’t think I’d ever felt so conflicted. I hated her. And I still loved her. That was obvious. I hated what she’d done, but loved what we’d done together before she sent me away. Fuck, there was even a messed-up part of me that loved her for the fact she had sent me away. For the reason behind her decision.

  And still, I hated her.

  But she’d given me the little person currently asleep beside me. How could I hate her for that? I tried to imagine what I would have done in her place, but couldn’t. That kind of scenario was beyond my male mind to process or fathom.

  I sighed, louder than I’d intended. Tanner drew a deeper breath, shifting a little on the bed before settling back to quiet sleep again.

  Amanda opened her eyes. I watched her pupils dilate as she focused, saw the edges of her lips curl into a smile before she caught it. Giving her head a shake, she raked her hands through her hair and puffed at her fringe. “Hi,” she murmured, moving in the seat.

  I held a finger to my lips, not wanting her to inadvertently wake him.

  Amanda let out a soft laugh. “When he’s out like that, he’ll sleep through anything. I’ve been told kids who spend a lot of time in hospital get used to turning off noise when they sleep.”

  “How many nights has he spent here?”

  “Every night since he was diagnosed. Kids with leukemia have a vulnerable immune system so they need to be in a sterile environment. At first we were in a room with another child, a little girl with acute myeloid, but they couldn’t find a donor match for her and she . . . she died, and then they moved us to this room.”

  My head whirled with the information, doing the math on how many nights Tanner had been here – at least thirty – and reminding me what the American medical system was like. Once again, my knowledge came from Hollywood – the movies and TV shows I’d seen where patients were denied care because of a lack of insurance, or hidden clauses in their policies.

  An utterly irrational urge to tell Amanda we were moving to Australia – all three of us – now, slammed through me. I didn’t though, no matter how powerful. Whatever future lay before us, I didn’t need to fuck it up with an Australia-versus-America attitude.

  Amanda smiled at our sleeping son. “He’s handled it so well. Being here, being sick. He doesn’t like the PICC much. It’s that needle you can see taped to his arm. It’s a central catheter they use to get his medication directly into his bloodstream without needing to repeatedly insert a needle into his vein. He doesn’t like it, but I think he’s come to understand it means less pain. At least, that’s what I keep telling him when he gets grumpy about it. He’s going to have a phobia of needles if he . . .” She paused. “When he’s older.”

  I lowered my gaze to Tanner, skimming my hand over his head as I considered the intravenous catheter embedded in his left arm just above his elbow. Amanda was struggling to be positive. Another change in her. Her positivity had been one of the things that had drawn me to her the first time we met on the ski slopes, ignoring the base sexual lust I’d felt for her the second I’d laid eyes on her, of course. But once I’d gained control over my purely physical reaction to her, once I’d actually started to talk to her, I enjoyed the way she laughed her way through her days and nights. Even when she almost broke her collarbone on a black run, she’d laughed about it.

  “Hey,” she’d said grinning at me as we waited in the emergency department of the hospital, “at least I’ve still got all my teeth.”

  I’d fallen hard and fast for her, in part because she shared such a similar philosophy to life as me: it’s to be enjoyed. I could only imagine how much heartache and grief she’d been going through the past month to drain her of her positive outlook. Or how many times she’d had to watch Tanner in pain, crying . . .

  Closing my eyes, I pressed a gentle kiss to the top of his head.

  “He’s responded to chemotherapy so far,” she went on, the words a whisper, “but his leukemia is a particularly rare and vicious one. The high dose of chemo required to kill off the Philadelphia cells can also kill off his own healthy bone marrow. He needs a bone marrow transplant to give him new bone marrow. Unfortunately, with his type of leukemia, both chemotherapy and a B.M.T are required.”

  She stopped for a moment, as if the words were too traumatic to say.

  “The chemo has been an attempt to get him into remission for when a donor is found,” she finally said. “When Chase and Mom and Dad were ruled out . . .”

  The room fell silent, save for the noises of the instruments surrounding us.

  I opened my eyes and met hers. “When they were proved not to be a match, you called me?”

  A tear slipped down her cheek. “There were other candidates. Other donors. None matched. Philadelphia is a . . .” A frown pulled at her forehead. “It’s like leukemia decided to fuck with
itself. It’s not good enough to try to kill people by over-producing cells, it wants to turn the cells in their bodies into even more malicious abnormalities, just to say ha, fuck you, science. You think you know how to deal with cancer? Think again, fuckers . . .” She trailed off.

  Tanner stirred at my side. Was he aware of his mother’s distress? Or was it her slightly raised voice?

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, slumping in the chair and gazing out the window. It dawned on me the room was full of bright, afternoon sunlight. The world, my world, had changed so much in the last few hours.

  “For what?” I murmured back.

  A soft snort left her. “For everything. But most of all, for telling you we were over all those years ago.”

  Ah fuck, I wasn’t ready for her to grab my heart again. I wasn’t. Call me a coward, call me callous, but I wasn’t. So instead of telling her I was sorry for that as well, I shifted my focus to Tanner again.

  And found him gazing up at me.

  “Tuck,” he whispered.

  “Dad,” I answered, mouth dry, throat constricting.

  He looked at me with a solemnity beyond his age, and then smiled. “Da.”

  I don’t know if he was saying Dad, but that short, simple sound ripped me apart. I sat up, making sure not to disturb him too much, and swung my feet to the floor. I couldn’t see. My vision was a wet blur. The colors and lights in the room danced together, garish and stinging. A small hand touched my back, at the base of my spine. Patted me over and over.

  My son trying to console me? Surely to God my eighteen-month-old son who was dying from cancer wasn’t trying to console me?

  “Tuck, da.” The hand continued to pat. “’Sokay ’sokay.”

  “Bren?” Amanda was in front of me, sliding her palms over my wet cheeks. Lifting my face upward.

  I tried to blink away the tears blinding me, tried to regain some semblance of macho control, to tap into the essential Brendon-ness of who I was.

  “It’s okay, Bren,” she whispered, brushing her thumbs across the path my tears made down my face. “It’s okay. We’re going to be okay.”