Never Stop (The Halo Series Book 3)

by Kimberly Knight

  With the move to New York and starting radiation, I’d forgotten that Dr. Bloom wanted me to see a genetics counselor until Dr. Fisch called me for a follow-up appointment. I’d thought after removing the tumor, and six long weeks of radiation, that the nightmare would be over. I didn’t want someone to tell me that it wasn’t over—that there was still more to this ordeal.

  I’d missed my sister’s graduation from college because of radiation. Of course, being the carefree, go with the flow sister, she’d acted as if she didn’t care.

  But I cared.

  It broke my heart.

  Thankfully, Bailee had decided to move back to Boston after graduation, which was only a short drive from me in New York, so I could see her whenever I wanted. And I wanted to see her as soon as she arrived. She was moving in with one of her high school friends, and whatever the genetics counselor told me—good or bad—I needed my sister.

  Having Bailee there for me was different from having Easton there for me. It was like the strongest friendship I could ever imagine having. I could tell her anything and, without judgment, she’d make life easier and better for me—or at least try. With Nicole, she’d sometimes pass judgment, not sugarcoating anything, and with Easton … well, I looked to him for the physical comfort. And while he was there for me emotionally, there was just stuff I didn’t want to burden him with especially since he had Cheyenne. He already had to care for her and make sure she had everything she needed. When she was sick. When she had homework. When she needed her father.

  And right now, after not seeing Bailee for so long, I needed her. I just needed a hug from my sister. Today, however, wasn’t the typical Monday I thought it was.

  I’d fallen asleep on the couch, something I often did these days, when my cell rang mid-dream. I winced as I reached for it on the table. I was still healing from surgery and under my arm always felt as though the skin was raw. Glancing at the screen, I smiled when I saw that it was Easton.

  “Hey …” My smile instantly faded, and a chill went through my entire body as I heard him take a deep breath.

  “You need to go to Av and Nic’s.”

  “What? Why?”

  He sighed. “Baby, I don’t want to tell you this over the phone.”

  “Just tell me.”

  “Trust me. You don’t want to know over the phone.”

  I swallowed hard and sat up. “You’re scaring me.”

  “Please go to their place. Nic needs you. I’ll meet you there as soon as I can. I’m waiting for Bethy to get here.”

  “What? Why?” I asked again. “Did something happen at the doctors?” I knew Nicole had her sixteen-week appointment today. He didn’t respond.

  I had my answer. Something had happened, and it wasn’t good.

  I didn’t want to think the worst, but that was all I could think about the entire time I drove to Avery and Nicole’s. I’d never been pregnant. I didn’t know what the sixteen-week appointment was for or what to expect. Could you see more than a bean on the ultrasound? Was it only for blood work? Were you able to hear the heartbeat? Was it to make sure you were gaining enough weight? Hell, I had no idea. Nicole seemed to be healthy—she’d looked healthy when I’d last seen her at Halo.

  Everything with my health felt as though it was pulling us apart. Not in the sense we wouldn’t be friends anymore, but more that we had people in our lives who were taking care of us and we didn’t need each other for that anymore.

  After parking on the street in front of their condo, I took a deep breath before stepping out of my car and walked to the door. My palms were sweaty, my heart was beating out of control, and my head was lightheaded from my medications, but everything appeared to be normal as I stepped up to the door. Birds were chirping. Cars were driving by, and the sun was shining.

  Avery opened the door after I knocked. The moment I saw his tear-stained face and red eyes, I knew for sure it was the baby. It wasn’t going to be a typical Monday. It was going to be one with many, many tears.

  “What—”

  Before I could ask him what had happened, he engulfed me in his arms, his body shaking as sobs broke from his throat. I couldn’t breathe as my face pressed into his chest, and I instantly started to cry. I wasn’t exactly sure why, but whatever was making this grown man break in my arms was enough for me to lose it.

  After crying in the doorway for a minute or two, Avery stepped back, and I walked in, wiping my eyes. I looked around for Nicole, but I didn’t see her.

  “Nic’s in our room.”

  “What happened?”

  We both sat on the couch. Avery hung his head after placing his elbows on his bent knees. “We lost the baby,” he whispered, confirming my worst thoughts.

  I didn’t think it was possible but my heart sank even more. I looked toward the bedroom. I wanted to wrap Nicole in my arms. I couldn’t imagine her pain. If it was anything like I was feeling, then I knew she was drowning in it. I wiped more tears from my face as I whispered, “How?”

  “She had a miscarriage three weeks ago.”

  My eyebrows arched. “Three weeks ago?”

  He sighed and rubbed both hands down his face as he leaned back on the couch. “Doc said it was a fetal demise or some shit like that. Supposedly it’s more common than we know.”

  “How could Nic not know for three weeks?”

  Before he could respond, Easton came through the front door without knocking. No words were exchanged as Avery stood and they hugged. Once again, tears were shed. Even though Nicole wasn’t far along in her unplanned pregnancy, we’d all wanted the baby for different reasons.

  Nicole’s baby wouldn’t be my own, but it would be close because Nic and I were almost inseparable. I couldn’t wait to have my own children. For so long, I’d taken care of Bailee, but there was something about knowing you created another person, and especially with someone you loved. I wanted that. I wanted that with Easton. And when Nicole told me she was pregnant, and she’d peered up at Avery, I had seen that look in her eyes. I wanted that. I wanted that so fucking bad. And now that look was gone from Avery’s eyes, and I knew if I went into the bedroom where Nicole was, that look would be gone from Nicole’s eyes too.

  “How did she lose the baby?” Easton asked.

  “I was just telling B.B.” Avery sat on the couch and leaned back, staring up at the ceiling as if all his answers were in the sky. When I was going through my tumor ordeal, I knew how tiring it was to keep repeating myself. And I knew the feeling of wanting to just … be. “Nic had a miscarriage three weeks ago,” I answered for Avery.

  Easton tilted his head to the side, and I knew he was questioning the timeframe. I shook my head slightly, still not understanding myself, so I grabbed my phone from my purse to search for answers. “Nic had no bleeding, no cramping, and her body thought she was still …” Avery couldn’t finish his sentence.

  I reached over and patted his knee. “It’s okay. I’ll tell him.” Avery nodded his head and closed his eyes, still with his head tilted up.

  I unlocked my phone and searched for a fetal demise, not wanting to put Avery in any more pain. I read what it was, tears forming in my eyes, and then I handed the phone to Easton. Because Nicole lost the baby before twenty weeks, it was considered a miscarriage as Avery had said, and often the cause was unknown.

  “She won’t speak to me.”

  I turned and looked at Avery. His eyes were still closed. “She won’t?” I asked as Easton handed me back my phone. We gave each other a tight smile.

  “All she was doing was crying in bed, but I think she finally fell asleep because her cries have stopped.”

  I looked to the closed bedroom door again. “Do you want me to try and talk to her?”

  He sighed and blew out a long breath before responding. “You can try.”

  I got up and quietly opened the bedroom door without saying a word. It seemed as though Nicole was sleeping. She wasn’t crying anymore, but I could tell that she had been not long before
. Her face was still tearstained and soaked from her tears. I wanted to crawl in the bed with her, wrap her in my arms and tell her that everything was going to be okay. Instead, I let her sleep. I knew as much as the next person that when you were sleeping, you weren’t in pain.

  Giving one more look over my shoulder before I left, I took a deep breath to hold back my own tears. I was done with both of us having heartaches and medical procedures. We were each dating our soulmates and life was supposed to be better, not worse.

  Over the next few days, Nicole refused to see me.

  She refused to talk to her mom too. It was my understanding that she refused to see anyone but Avery. I went over to their place every day to try and see her—I even brought frozen yogurt one day, but she never wanted to see me. When we went to the room, she wouldn’t look at us. Avery said she was barely eating, and the only thing she did was cry and sleep. It was like she was broken.

  All of us were sad and wanted to help Nicole. When I’d talked to her mom, she told me that Nic needed time to heal. I knew that one day she’d be okay, but I wasn’t used to my best friend shutting me out. We were supposed to be there for each other, not each of us keeping things from one other.

  I was starting to worry.

  It had been a few more days since Nicole’s miscarriage, and she was still held up in her room. I, however, had my appointment with the genetics counselor. I didn’t research desmoid tumors and try to find out what the genetics counselor was going to tell me before the appointment. I didn’t want to know, and I didn’t research much after Dr. Bloom told me my diagnosis after my surgery. I was more focused on healing and radiation than thinking of going through the nightmare again.

  I was done with tumors so why bother?

  I was done.

  Done.

  Done.

  Done!

  I was on a nerve medication because radiation burned some of the nerves where the tumor had been that sent pain to my tricep, and I was also still on a narcotic since I just had surgery. But I was done having any future tumors—at least that was what I was hoping for. Desmoid tumors were known to grow back, but I didn’t want to think about that. At any given moment I could have a regrowth—it just wasn’t going to happen to me; I’d had radiation.

  I was living in denial.

  Easton’s hand laced with mine as he drove us to my appointment. Since my first biopsy, he’d done this: held my hand without saying anything to try and calm me because I didn’t need for him to tell me everything was going to be okay. I knew only from his touch that no matter what happened—no matter what was said—everything would be okay. He would be there to pick me up when I fell.

  I’d finally found someone to take care of me.

  Easton pulled into the parking lot ten minutes before my appointment. I didn’t want to go inside. I was more nervous about this appointment than my biopsy because this one would tell me why I’d developed the tumor to begin with. Finding out the underlining reasons was terrifying. What if the counselor told me that I could get another one in a different part of my body? What if the counselor told me that I would have to be checked yearly for the rest of my life? What if the counselor told me that my kids would have these tumors too? What if the counselor told me I wasn’t done?

  “Ready?” Easton asked bringing me out of my thoughts.

  No. But I couldn’t wait any longer. The clock was ticking. I gave him a tight smile then sighed. “Yeah.”

  He kissed the back of my hand before releasing it. “I love you.”

  That was exactly what I needed to hear. “I love you, too.” I smiled tightly trying to hide my fear.

  Denial.

  I looked around the small office, my knee bobbing up and down nervously as Mrs. Hunter, or Megan as she’d told us to call her, closed the door. I was used to being in exam rooms, but this was an office as if we were having a meeting. I was expecting to be poked and prodded some more, my blood drawn and my scars looked at, but she walked over and sat at her desk.

  “So … how are you feeling?” Megan questioned.

  I was tired of that question. I gave the same answer no matter how I was feeling. It was always easier for me to answer the same way even if I was feeling different because I didn’t want to burden anyone with the truth, not even Easton. I took a deep breath before answering.

  “Fine.”

  “How much research have you done about desmoids?”

  Out of habit or maybe nerves, I looked toward Easton and then back toward Megan. “Not a whole lot.”

  “That’s good. I would rather give you the facts instead of you reading something that wasn’t true.”

  Easton reached over and stilled my knee. I hadn’t realized it, but my leg was still bobbing, and my hands were wringing in my lap. After my leg had calmed, he laced his fingers with mine and held it, comforting me.

  Megan leaned forward and crossed her arms on her desk. “I assume Dr. Bloom told you that desmoids are known to grow back, and that’s why you went through radiation?”

  I nodded.

  “Did he mention anything else?”

  I shook my head. “No, not really.”

  She handed Easton and me a packet of papers, and I stared at it as if I was reading Spanish. I had no idea what I was reading. There were words on there I couldn’t pronounce to save my life.

  “As you may or may not know, desmoid tumors are rare. There’s not a lot of research yet, but what we do know is that they are more common in women in their early thirties, are mostly found in their arms, legs and abdomens and—”

  “But mine was by my lung.”

  “Right. These fibrous tumors are still in the early stages of research, and we aren’t sure how the mutation is formed. What we do know is that a percentage of people with desmoid tumors are linked to having what’s known as familial adenomatous polyposis.”

  I stared at her as if she were speaking Spanish.

  She smiled. “We call it FAP.”

  “What is FAP?” Easton asked.

  “The short answer? Colon cancer.”

  I stared at her. This. Wasn’t. Happening. Cancer, tumors, familial whatever, wasn’t supposed to be in my vocabulary anymore. I’d had surgery and radiation dammit!

  I was done.

  “And the long answer?”

  I took a deep breath at Easton’s next question. Did I really want to know? The short answer had the C word in it.

  “When a person develops more than a hundred adenomatous colon polyps—”

  “Hundred of what?” Easton asked.

  Megan smiled. “An adenomatous polyp is an area where normal cells that line the inside of a person’s colon form a mass on the inside of the intestinal tract. The average age for polyps to develop in people with FAP is in the mid-teens. More than ninety-five percent of people with FAP will have multiple colon polyps by the age of thirty-five. If FAP is not recognized and treated, there’s almost a one-hundred percent chance that a person will develop colorectal cancer.”

  I still wasn’t able to speak. I never in a million years thought I could or would have colon cancer. I had a tumor near my right lung, not near my colon—my lung. And now I could have hundreds of polyps in my colon? I didn’t have any signs or symptoms of colon cancer except the tumor. My bowels were working like they always had, and I definitely had no bleeding.

  My hand clenched in Easton’s, and his thumb rubbed the back of my hand as if to soothe me. It wasn’t working. My leg continued to bounce, and I started to sweat as I thought about the hundreds of tiny cysts that might be growing inside me.

  “So you’re saying that Brooke could have had FAP since she was a teenager?”

  My gaze darted up to Megan at Easton’s question.

  “It’s very possible,” she responded. “We’re not sure why people have the desmoid mutation or why thirty percent also have FAP. It’s best to get genetic testing and a colonoscopy to rule it out.”

  “And if,” I cleared my throat, finally finding
my voice. “And if I don’t have FAP?”

  “Then you’re among the rare group of people living with the mutation. Even rarer because of the location.”

  “And …” I sighed. “And if I do?”

  “You’ll need to see a specialist and know that there’s a fifty-fifty chance that if you have FAP, your kids will have it. Do you have any children?”

  I shook my head and she continued asking me questions, but my thoughts were all over the place. If I had this FAP bullshit, I wouldn’t have kids. I would never take the fifty-fifty chance of putting my children through the hell and the pain of the never-ending nightmare.

  I responded to the appropriate health questions like, “Do you know anyone in your family with cancer?”

  “Does anyone in your family have polyps?”

  I didn’t know my family history on my father’s side. I wouldn’t know the man if he walked past me on the street. And as for my mother—fuck, I needed to call her and find out any history she could give me. My nightmare had gone from bad to worse.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Easton

  Nicole ended up moving back to Boston. I never thought she’d do it, especially without telling Brooke. She not only took Avery’s heart with her back to Boston but I knew she took a part of Brooke’s as well.

  We were all adults, but I would be lost without Avery, so I understood what Brooke was going through without Nicole. She was more than her best friend. She was like her sister, and now wasn’t the time for Nicole to go back to Boston.

  Everyone was hurting. Avery and Nicole had lost a baby, Brooke’s tumor ordeal might not be over, and I might never be able to give her the family she’d always wanted. If Brooke wanted to adopt down the road, I’d do it in a heartbeat, but I knew from talking to her she wanted her own flesh and blood one day. She’d already raised Bailee growing up, and now she was helping me with Cheyenne. It was finally time she had her own child—once we were married, of course. But if she had FAP …