by Lexy Timms
All I cared about was her scent swirling around my head. All I cared about was her clammy skin warming against my body. All I cared about was the full-bodied blush that was creeping all along her curves. I bent down and drew one of her nipples between my lips as she whispered my name like a luscious prayer. Her hands raked through my hair, pulling growls from me that stiffened her nipples further. I gathered her up in my arms and stood, barreling us both into a wall. Islammed into her, hoisting her body up the painted wall while pictures fell to the floor, and I shook the walls with my thrusts while she cried out with pleasure. “Bryan! Yes! Just like that, please!” I bit down into her neck just as her body finally released. I thrust deep and hard, pressing my hands onto the wall as I pinned her between my chest and my home, a home I wanted to create with her and fill with our children, one I wanted her to come back to and find me with dinner already made after she’d had a long day at the gallery. I wanted to paint every surface of our home with her scent time and time again while we both grew old and gray together. She clung to me while she shook, and the force of her climax triggered mine. I slid into her one last time, burying myself as deep as I could get while I sucked at that patch of skin on her neck. She moaned and quaked, her body pulling me deeper into her while it massaged from me every ounce I had to give her. I could feel our arousal dripping down my thickness, coating my skin as I slowly peeled her back from the wall. I dropped us both to the rug in my living room, our chests panting for breath while a sheen of sweat glistened on her forehead. For a little while, I simply lay there and watched her. I watched how long it took her to recuperate from our moment of passion. I clocked how long it took her to catch her breath. I watched how quickly that beautiful, youthful glow drained from her cheeks, leaving behind an almost gray tint to her skin that made her look sickly. She opened her eyes, those eyes I’d come to know as two sparkling suns guiding me through this life. Except they weren’t sparkling. They weren’t even lit up enough to guide a rat to its food. I raised my hand and cupped her cheek, feeling the cold sink back into her skin. I smoothed my thumb over her protruding cheekbone, and all I could think about was how she was deteriorating in front of my very eyes. I was losing the one thing I wanted to keep a hold on more than life itself, and I had no idea why. It made me was to scream and cry at the same time. “What brought this wonderful surprise on?” I asked. Her eyes connected with mine before she drew in a deep breath. “I just wanted to experience life, I guess.” “Well, you can always experience it with me,” I said, grinning. “What prompted this particular desire tonight?” “I want to live a bit more before I have to face death,” she said. Face death? What in the world did that mean? I felt my brow furrowing as her fingertips moved to smooth out the lines on my forehead. Her touch was so soft, so delicate and childlike like she was exploring me for the first time. Or maybe trying to memorize me. “Hailey, what’s going on?” I asked. “Bryan, I’m so sorry,” she said, whispering. “What are you sorry for? What’s going on?” “Please, don’t be mad at me,” she said. “Mad at you for what? Hailey, you know you can talk to me. You know you can tell me anything.” I saw tears rise to her eyes before she closed them, and in that moment, I felt as if I was two seconds away from losing the one thing I wanted more than anything in this world. And when she answered me, I was right. “The reason I shaved my head wasn’t that I had an artistic whim,”
she said as she opened her eyes.
“Okay? You know I don’t care about your hair.” “You should because I shaved it to hide the fact that I’m going through chemotherapy.”
Chapter 24
Hailey
I had no idea how to feel. I wanted to cry and throw up at the same time. I wanted to scream and yell and beg for his forgiveness. As I laid there, my ribcage prominent and my energy wasting away, I watched the shock melt from his face. That stoic look I’d come to know during the first weeks of our courtship appeared, and I knew I had to get up and leave. The sparkle in his eyes fled and his hand slid from my cheek, and all I wanted to do was curl up in a corner and breathe my very last breath. We lay there on the rug, silent for quite some time. Bryan rolled over onto his back, staring up at his ceiling with his arm outstretched. I didn’t know whether to move closer to him or give him the space he needed, so I simply closed my eyes and listened to the silent night drape across the whole of San Diego. All around us, people were laughing and eating. Spending time with their families and watching their latest television shows. They were dining on succulent foods and making love, all the while enjoying their lives and smiling their big, flagrant smiles. And here I was, lying next to a man I’d hurt not once but twice. I rolled over onto my back and tried to cover myself with my hands. I felt naked. Ashamed. Angry. Weak. I felt like I’d turned into the woman my parents originally wanted me to be, scared and alone while following a road I felt I had no choice but to follow. I felt I was being led instead of being a leader. I felt I was abandoning my principles of strength and beauty just to try and reconcile what was going on with
my body. I felt that if I simply didn’t acknowledge it, then it didn’t exist, that if my body really was dying, then the least I could do was spare those I loved the hurt that would befall them to watch me die. Silent tears slid down my face as the carpet grew cold underneath my back. That’s how bad my body had gotten. I couldn’t even keep the ground underneath my skin warm anymore. My head was shaved, my eyes were sunken in, my skin was pale, and my appetite was gone. I’d lost over thirty pounds, trading my supple curves for humps of bone, and twelve hours of sleep still left me begging for more. Putting paintings on the wall left me breathless, and working the gallery for nine hours a day left me ready to die right there on the floor. Dying. Just like I was doing right now. Bryan was motionless. I looked over at him with his blank stare turned up toward the ceiling, and I knew what I needed to do. He needed his space to be angry. He had obviously learned from the first time this happened. He knew what would happen if he exploded in front of me, so he was giving me a chance to leave. And I heard him loud and clear. I pulled my aching body up off the floor as all my joints began to crack. Bryan slowly turned his eyes toward me, listening to my body give out with every step I took. I picked up my bra and slid it back on, clipping it behind me before I reached for my underwear. It took me a while to find my pants, but once I did I grabbed my shirt and headed towards the door. “Where’re you going?” His voice stopped me in my tracks. “Home,” I said as I pulled on my shirt. “Why?” he asked. “Because I know you’re angry, and I know you’re not unleashingbecause you’re giving me time to leave before you do.” My hand reached for the door, and in an instant, his hand was against it. I heard him scramble from the floor and leap toward me, slamming the door closed just as I had gotten it open. I whipped my wild eyes up to him, my heart pounding in my ears while the blood rushed through my veins. It was coming. I could feel it. The anger and the yelling. The sorrow and the questions. The intensity behind his eyes shook me to my core, and I leaned against the door to keep my strength.
“What in the hell is wrong with you?” he asked.
“Bryan, I’m so sorry. Please. Please don’t yell,” I said.
“I’m not—”
He pushed off the door and sighed, his naked figure walking away. He raked his hands through his hair while he ripped his clothes off the floor, and I watched him dress as tears flowed down my cheeks.
“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me this sooner?” he exclaimed.
I flinched at his voice before I felt his hands cup my cheeks.
“Look at me,” he said.
“No.”
“Just open your eyes, Hailey.”
I opened them up and felt his warm breath on my lips. I expected to see anger and resentment and hatred and sorrow. I expected to look into the eyes of the god of fire before his raging flames encompassed the whole of me. I felt like I was teetering on the edge of something dangerous, a monster trying to swallow me whole.
I was pet
rified that this was it.
I was petrified that he would throw me out.
But when I opened my eyes, all I saw was hurt. His eyes were filling with tears while his thumbs soaked up mine, and it was all I could do to keep myself from sobbing at his feet. There was hurt and numbness and sorrow, and yes, a bit of anger but nothing like I thought there would be.
Just a man who was worried sick.
“Why the hell did you suffer alone this entire time when you knew I could’ve helped you?”
He shook my head lightly like he was trying to shake some sense into me. More tears flowed down my face as my knees began to buckle, and then, his arms were around me. I buried my face into his neck and sobbed, allowing all the emotions I couldn’t release with anyone else flow across his shoulder. His skin felt so good against mine while his tears dripped onto my skin, and as he held me in the dim lighting of his house, I felt something I hadn’t experienced since my diagnosis.
Hope.
I felt hope spark in my gut.
We sank to our knees, and he sprinkled my neck with kisses. I cried endlessly, clinging to his back with all the strength I had. I shook against him while he held me tighter, trying to heal me by osmosis, trying to squish his very life into mine to see if he could fix this. I cried until I sobbed, and I sobbed until I heaved, and when I couldn’t cry anymore without choking on my own breath, he scooped me up into his arms and carried us to the couch.
I straddled his lap and lay against his chest, feeling his heart rapidly beating against my cheek. He was so full of life, so full of color and animation. He was living a life I wanted to live, the life I wished I still had that seemed so out of reach now.
“I want you to take all the time you need because when you’re done, we need to talk.”
I felt my entire body seized up at his request.
“It’s not a bad talk, Hailey, but you’re going to start from the beginning,” he said.
“I’m so sorry,” I said breathlessly.
“We’re past that. I know now. So that’s what we need to focus on.”
I raised my puffy red gaze to his and sniffled deep.
“You’re not kicking me out?” I asked.
“No,” he said.
He sighed deeply, and in that moment, he seemed to realize part of why I was so nervous coming to him. “I’m sorry, Hailey. I owe you an apology too. I’m sorry my previous actions in times like this made you feel like you couldn’t come to me with this. I knew something was wrong. Drew saw it at dinner, and Anna kept giving me all these looks, and I just—” I leaned in and pressed my lips to his, silencing his words before I drew in a deep breath. “Remember all those headaches you got on me about?” I asked. “Yeah?” “That’s what they were coming from.” “You have a brain tumor,” he said. “When I went to the doctor and had tests run, they found a mass on my kidney. It metastasized to my brain, and that’s what was causing all the migraines I was having.” “Oh, Hailey.” “He, um, the doctor told me to get my affairs in order,” I said breathlessly. “He, uh, told me I only had about a ten percent chance of recovering.” I felt Bryan’s arms tense around me as he pulled me back into the crook of his neck. “Hailey, I need you to listen to me, okay? I don’t give a damn if we only have a limited amount of time left. I want to spend it by your side, taking care of you and supporting you.” “Bryan, you have a wonderful job offer ahead of you. You need to live your life the way it should be lived.” “Which is dictated by no one else but me,” he said. “And I choose to spend it working, debating over this job offer, and taking care of you.” Tears slipped from my eyes as I drew back and hooked my gaze with his.
“You said you’re going through chemotherapy, even though there’s a slim chance. Does this mean the doctor thinks you’ll recover?” he asked. “There have been a lot of things thrown around, honestly. My diet’s changed.” “I noticed,” he said, grinning. “It’s part of the immunotherapy I’m doing. It’s coupled with very strong chemotherapy shots. It’s slowed the growth of the tumors, but it isn’t reversing anything.” “What about surgery? Couldn’t they remove your kidney altogether and then go to regular chemo to attack the one in your brain?” I’d always known Bryan to be an intelligent man, but I gravely underestimated his ability to put pieces together. “Surgery’s been thrown around, yes,” I said. “Then why hasn’t something been scheduled?” “Because if I’ve only got a certain amount of time to live, I don’t want to spend it with poison in my body only to die of the common cold.” “But your doctor wouldn’t suggest it if there wasn’t enough of a chance it could help,” he said. “It raises my recovery rate to about thirty or so percent, yes.” “Then why are you not scheduling it?” “I just told you, I don’t want to—” “No more lies, Hailey,” he said. “No more secrets. This is me you’re talking to. Bryan McBride. The man who loves you no matter what. You’ve hidden this long enough. Tell me what’s really scaring you.” I started shaking in his lap as his hands started massaging up my arms. I didn’t want to say it. It sounded so pathetic now that he was looking me in my eyes. All this heartache and arguing with my sister, and all of it because of one little fear, one little drawback, one little thing I knew would take me to my knees.
“I don’t want to have this surgery and then be told it didn’t work,” I said breathlessly. “Come here.” Bryan pulled me back into his chest, and I felt my entire body collapse. My joints felt like they were on fire, and my stomach was empty with hunger. My eyes were heavy with exhaustion, and I didn’t even want to open the gallery tomorrow. I just wanted to crawl into bed, wrap myself up in him, and wait for all of this to be over. I wanted to wait until I woke up from this terrible nightmare. “It’s going to be okay, Hailey,” Bryan said into my ear. “No matter what happens, I’m going to stand by your side whether you want me to or not.” “What if I have this surgery, and it gets my hopes up for nothing? I’ve coped with the fact that I’m dying, Bryan.” “No, you really haven’t.” His statement startled me so badly, I tried to rip away from him, but all he did was tighten his grip and keep me in his lap. “If you’d dealt with it, you would’ve hired someone to work the shop for you. If you’d dealt with it, then you wouldn’t be fighting with your sister. If you’d dealt with it, you wouldn’t be crying the way you are right now. You haven’t coped with it. You’ve relegated yourself to thinking it doesn’t exist.” I sighed heavily, feeling my eyes close but unwilling to open. And for a second, I panicked. “It’s okay. You’re all right. You’re just tired, Hailey, and it’s completely understandable.” My eyes weren’t opening, no matter how much I wanted them to. They felt so heavy, and my head was pounding so furiously. I felt my heart rate skyrocket while my hands began to shake. I felt my body grow tense while Bryan scooped me closer to his body. I finally got my eyes to open, staring at the neck of the man I’d come to love. My eyes wouldn’t open, and the feeling was petrifying.
He was right. I hadn’t coped. I had merely avoided, thinking it would simply go away. And it wasn’t. It was only getting worse. “I have something for you,” he said. “I’ll be right back.” “Please don’t go,” I said. “I promise you. I’ll only be a second.” I reluctantly let him go as he slid from the couch. I propped myself up and stared at his wall, feeling his bite mark rise to life against my neck while I listened to his footsteps dissipate behind me. My eyes felt heavier than I’d ever known them to feel, and that same panic started pounding my heart again. I could feel it pressing against my sternum, threatening to fracture every bone in my body with the intensity of its blasts. It felt like my eyes were giving up. Leaving me behind while they gave in to the fight. But my heart was pounding louder than ever, screaming out that it was still here and still fighting, even though I wouldn’t fight alongside it, even if I had curled up into a corner and abandoned it. I felt Bryan sit down next to me on the couch, and my eyes popped open. It was like they were tethered to his presence and they didn’t want to stay open unless he was around. Bryan, my support and my muse,
my drug and my antidote. my lifeline and my prayer. “I wanted to wait for the right time to do this,” he said as he pulled out a box, “but every moment is precious when I’m with you.” I felt my eyes widen, pressing against the exhaustion that weighed them down as his fingers pried open the box. Inside the little velvet container was the most beautiful ring I’d ever seen. A canary yellow diamond was surrounded by onyx stones, and the band of the ring cascaded with chocolate brown stones. It shimmered in the moonlight streaming through the open windows of his home, and all I could do was gawk at the sight in front of me. “Every moment with you is precious. The night we created that painting together, when you were writhing underneath me, I looked into your eyes and realized you captured every single part of me. You brought me back to life in ways I never thought I’d experience again. We’ve been tethered together for years, even before we knew one another, and I knew that night there wasn’t anyone else I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.” “Bryan,” I said breathlessly. “I’m dying.” “Then,” he said as he grabbed my hand, “there’s no one else I’d rather spend the rest of your life with.” My jaw quivered, and my lips trembled. My hand shook, and my eyes leaked tears I didn’t think they could shed any longer. I looked up into the eyes of the most beautiful man I’d ever known, and before I could even register what I was doing, I nodded my head in acceptance. The smile that crossed his face was effervescent, and it filled me with a warmth I thought the chemotherapy had drained from my veins. I watched him pluck the ring from the box and hold it up to my ring finger. “Hailey Ryan, will you marry me and allow me the opportunity to ride out the rest of this life with you, no matter what that timespan is?” “Bryan, I-I... oh my gosh, this ring is absolutely beautiful.” “There’s just one catch,” he said. My eyes ripped from the ring and connected with his long enough for that devious smirk of his to crawl across his face. “What? Didn’t get enough the first round?” I asked. “If you say yes, then you’re also saying yes to the surgery.” In that very moment, I felt my face fall. I knew there was going to be a catch. I knew this was too good to be true. I felt myself waver as my hand went limp in his, but he continued to hold me up and hold that ring right in front of my finger. “Why is everyone so dead set on me having this surgery?” I asked. “Everyone is trying to fight for you because you don’t have the en
