I tilted up my chin enough so she could see my eyes and read my need to lash out.
“Let’s get some air,” she murmured. Then without waiting for a reply, she turned to my parents. “He just needs a minute. It’s a lot to process.”
The soothing, cool hands turned much more controlling. Her arm slipped around my waist and pushed me toward the large glass doors leading out onto the deck with a view fit for a king.
I laughed a bitter sound. Not even kings were immune to cancer.
Blustering wind blew, plastering my shirt to my chest and whirling the hair on my head all around. Lifting my cheeks, I let winter take a bite out of me. My hands gripped the railing. I stood with my back to the house, staring out over the grand resort my father had built.
“It’s not fair,” I whispered. “It’s not fucking fair.”
“No. It’s not.” Regardless of my mood, Bellamy ducked beneath my arm, positioning herself between my body and the railing. She didn’t face the view, instead looking solely toward me.
I sucked in a ragged breath and avoided her eyes.
“Hey,” she demanded, grabbing my cheeks and pulling my head down. “Go ahead.”
Confusion pierced the haze of turmoil. “What?”
“You want to yell at someone, yell at me.”
I made a sound.
She gave me a shake. “I mean it, Liam. Fighting with your parents is the last thing you want to do right now. Yell at me.”
All the fight drained out of me. Truth was I didn’t want to yell at anyone. Except maybe myself. “Cancer, Bells. He has fucking cancer.”
Before I realized what she was doing, the sling was ripped off over her head and tossed at our feet. Both her arms came around my waist, enclosing me in a bear hug, a bear that was half my size.
But damn. It was the most encompassing hug I’d ever felt.
One of her hands smoothed up and down my back as her cheek rubbed lightly over my chest. My body remained rigid for the first few moments. I took the comfort, but it was all I was able to do. I stared out across the snow, allowing the frosty wind to blow everything out of focus. Bellamy didn’t let go or loosen her grip.
She remained.
Eventually, despite that frost around us and inside me, I began to thaw. Enclosing her in my arms, I hugged her back, rubbing my beard over the top of her head.
“It’s why they weren’t in Denver as much.” I realized. “At the time, I’d just been pissed off that they weren’t. I was selfish. I couldn’t see past my own surgery. Past my own life.”
“You aren’t selfish. Your entire world had been flipped upside down.”
“So had theirs. And I wasn’t fucking there.” The guilt of that might eat away at me forever.
Bells pulled back. Strands of her long hair caught in my beard, creating a visible tether between us. “You’re here now.” Her cerulean eyes searched mine. “Maybe he wasn’t ready to tell you, to tell anyone. But you know now. You’re here now.”
My mind was going a mile a minute. So many thoughts and feelings. So many questions. I took a deep breath and blew it out slow. My palms settled against Bells’s face. “You’re right.”
I didn’t know before, but now I did. Now I could be there for them. I could be the strong one like they’d been for me all my life.
Her hands fisted in the front of my shirt and tugged. “I’m not going to tell you it’s all going to be okay, because I don’t know if it will be. But I’ll be here for you. Whatever you need.”
I pulled her in, briefly closing my eyes and just feeling her and the calmness she brought to me. “I love you,” I whispered.
“I love you,” she whispered back.
I bent down and picked up the sling. “You took this off.” I gave her a disapproving look.
“You needed both my arms.”
My stomach flipped. She was right.
After pulling it back over her and making sure it was in place, I turned back to the house. My parents were still at the table. They looked up when I approached.
“I’m sorry about that. I shouldn’t have gotten so pissed.”
My father half smiled. “I understand better than you think.”
A hollow cavern opened up inside me. I couldn’t imagine what he was going through. From here on out, I was going to be strong for him and Mom. What I felt didn’t matter. This was about them.
I cleared my throat and pulled the chair back out to sit down. “So you said the treatments didn’t work?”
“No,” Dad replied. “The cancer is more aggressive than they originally believed.”
“Okay, so we’ll try something else. What’s the next step?”
“Chemotherapy and radiation,” Mom replied.
Bellamy sort of teetered behind us, part of the conversation, but not really. Without turning around, I held my hand out to her.
So much for a nice meet-the-parents dinner. Or brunch. Hell, at this point, any kind of meeting that didn’t involve some sort of dire circumstance would have been welcome.
Her fingers slid across my palm. I pulled her around into the chair beside me.
“And they think that will beat this?” I asked.
Mom and Dad shared a look.
“What?” I demanded.
Mom answered, her voice shaky. “It’s not good, Liam. The prognosis. Even with the heavy treatments.”
“How could they possibly know that?” I stressed. “They can’t. I’ll make some calls. We’ll see a few specialists. I’ll—”
“Liam,” Dad said. “I’ve seen specialists. Here and in Denver. I even flew to California to see someone. We haven’t just accepted what we were told. It’s been an entire year of doctor visits and medication and tests.”
“So what?” I said, absorbing what he was telling me. “You want me to just accept it now?”
“There’s not much left to do.”
Mom produced a tissue from somewhere and dabbed at her eyes, then her nose. “Your father isn’t certain he wants the heavy treatments.”
My eyes rounded. “Why the hell not?”
“Because it will greatly decline the quality of life I have left. And they might not even work.”
The life I have left.
Bellamy’s hand fisted in the shirt against my lower back. “It’s hard to live like you’re already dead,” she whispered.
I stiffened.
Dad’s eyes swung to her, and an inkling of what looked like relief shone through. “That’s exactly how I feel. I want to be present for as much as I can. I don’t want to be hooked up to machines, enduring the many side effects of the chemo and radiation. I want to live, not buy time to waste away.”
There was that anger again. It rose so fast, like bile from an acidic upset stomach. I wanted to rage so badly. To demand that he do everything humanly possible to save his own life. That he fight. That he not lie down and accept his fate.
“You can’t just give up,” I said.
“I’m not. I won’t. I’m still working with my doctors. There are alternatives I haven’t tried yet. Ones that won’t have such severe effects.”
“There’s still hope,” Mom said. I heard in her voice just how much she clung to that hope.
My parents had been together nearly thirty years. What was it like for her to look into the future and not know if her other half would be there?
My stomach clenched and ached. “I want to come to your next appointment. I want to talk to your doctors.”
He nodded. “Of course.”
“As soon as possible.” Prickles of panic began eating at the rage inside me. Along with it, the sound of a ticking clock whispered that time might be running out.
Mom nodded. “I’ll call and set something up.”
“I really wish you told me about this sooner,” I rasped.
“We were doing everything that needed to be done,” Mom replied. “We didn’t want you to worry.”
I glanced at Dad. “This is why you wanted to start
training this spring, isn’t it?”
He swallowed. “Partly.”
Not partly. Totally. My father wanted to train me in running the resort as soon as possible because he didn’t know how much longer he would be here.
Jesus.
And I dragged my feet.
“We’ll start tomorrow,” I declared.
Dad shook his head. “That’s not necessary.”
“No better time to start.”
“Your knee, Liam.” Mom reminded me.
I made a sound. My damned knee was always getting in the way. “After the procedure, then. It’s a same day thing. I can be up and moving around the day after.”
“Liam,” my father said in that fatherly tone he always used when he wanted to have a serious conversation.
Like we weren’t already having one.
“I don’t want you to commit to taking over BearPaw if it’s not what you truly want.”
“I do want to.”
“Then why have you been wavering until now?”
I glanced at Bells. She offered me a supportive smile and nodded.
“I’d been considering going back to the pros.”
Mom gasped. “You are! I didn’t think that was possible.”
“My trainer called about a month or so ago. A few sponsors were hoping I’d come back. I was considering it… you know, for the Olympics next year.”
“They are in our back yard.” Dad agreed.
They were. It was the first time in a decade that the winter Olympics were going to be held here in the States. In Colorado, no less. What a rush it would be to win another medal in my home state, where it all began for me.
It would be like coming full circle. It would be a chance for me to leave the sport on my own terms, on a high note. And not forever have my career ended by a bad run.
That was before.
“It doesn’t matter now,” I said. “Going back isn’t going to happen.”
“Because of your knee,” Bellamy said, guilt creeping into her tone.
I snatched her hand and kissed the back. “I told you that’s not your fault.”
“What about the thermal shrinkage? What’s the recovery time on that?” Mom asked.
“Recovery time is minimal, but there’s no way to know if it will even work well enough to make me pro ready,” I replied. “It doesn’t matter. I’m staying here. Taking over BearPaw.”
“This is exactly what I didn’t want,” Dad said, becoming agitated. “You giving up your life because mine is ending.”
His blunt words hit me in the face, knocking me a little sideways. I didn’t want to ask. Dear God, what the hell kind of question was it? But I had to. Sort of like a queer fascination or a bad movie you couldn’t look away from.
“How long?”
Everyone looked at me.
“Liam…” Mom implored.
I shook my head, my stomach caving in. “They told you, didn’t they?”
“There’s no way to really know. The body—” Dad danced around the question. Which meant I wasn’t going to like the answer.
“How long did they give you to live?” Beneath the table, I reached for Bellamy’s hand.
“A year.”
And suddenly, my father’s life, our moments, memories, and everything left unsaid, was on a timeline. A very short timeline.
“You’re terminal?” I rasped.
Is that what they’d been trying to tell me this whole time and I just hadn’t grasped it? My mind had just refused to go there.
“I’m afraid so,” Dad answered, sullen.
Bellamy slipped out of her chair and went around the table. The next thing I knew, she had her arms around my father, hugging him.
He glanced at me, surprised, but then he hugged her back.
Mom got up from the table and left the room. Part of me wanted to go after her; the other part of me knew it wouldn’t matter if I did or not. Nothing I could do would make this better.
When Bellamy pulled away, my father cleared his throat. She slipped back beside me and put her hand in my lap. I clutched it, grateful for the lifeline.
“I don’t want you to give up on your life so you can finish mine,” Dad said. He was almost stoic about this. Accepting.
Or maybe in the last year, he’d had a lot of time to digest. To come to terms with this.
Was that even possible?
“Running BearPaw is what I want,” I told him. It was the truth. “I always planned on coming back here. You know that. I just ended up home sooner than planned.”
Was it fate?
Was a higher power at work here? Was my injury the best thing because it brought me back to find Bellamy again and to have this time with my father?
“If you can go to the Olympics next year, then you have to go.”
I felt like an overcooked steak. Done. I was tired, too many emotions coming at me at once. I didn’t want to debate this. I didn’t want to argue.
“How about we plan to start training as soon as possible? If the thermal shrinkage goes well, then I will consider returning just for one last season. But I still plan on running BearPaw, Dad. I still plan on following in your footsteps.”
What’s going to happen when his footsteps disappear?
My time as a pro snowboarder was over.
As important as that had been in my life, there were now more important things.
Bellamy
I went to the store and bought a suitcase. The duffle I came here with wasn’t for travel. It was for escape. I couldn’t look at that dark bag and not think of the reason I kept it all these years, its purpose.
For emergency only.
That’s the way I saw it. And though I guess a large portion of my life was an emergency, I was trying not to live as though it was.
Or maybe I was just in denial.
Or stupid.
I preferred to think of it as trying to move on.
That’s what this trip was about. Moving on. Moving forward. Merging my life with Liam’s just a little bit more.
This wasn’t an emergency. The clothes I packed in this suitcase weren’t necessity only. I wasn’t shoving an envelope full of cash in the pocket to get me by.
I was still nervous, though. Even as I neatly tucked my clothes inside, adrenaline made my heart beat more rapidly, and a funny, queasy feeling took over my middle. Going back to Chicago wasn’t going to be easy.
Stepping foot into my apartment would likely bring back vivid memories of the last time I was there. You know, that fun night when a fake UPS driver broke in and pointed a gun at my face.
Mmm. Good times.
Not.
It was time. Time to face the past so I could move into the future. I wished I could say I would be leaving it all behind, but I wasn’t. The past was coming with me to BearPaw. Hell, it had already followed.
I made my choice. Liam and I both did. There would be no sitting holed up in the cabin, though, jumping at every noise and creak. Life was far too short, something fate reminded us of again and again.
And again.
I glanced over my shoulder. Liam was standing motionless in the doorway of the closet. Forgetting about my suitcase and my own internal struggle, I went to him.
As I went, I tossed the sling over my head, letting it slap against the wood floor. Both my arms went around his waist from behind, and my cheek rested in the center of his back.
Liam made a sound, covering my arms with his.
Funny how I was the one hugging him, but he made it feel as if it was me in his arms.
“I can fly to Chicago by myself.” I began.
Before I could say another word, he made an angry sound and turned.
“No way in hell,” he intoned, voice hard and cool.
I persisted, tugging on the front of his shirt. “We can meet in Denver, then fly home together.”
“No.”
“It’s only—”
Liam grabbed my hands, folding them in his. �
�The answer is no. You are not going alone back to the place where someone tried to kill you. Even if there weren’t still men out there plotting against you, the answer would still be no.”
“You’re stupid.”
His lips twitched. “That the best you got?”
I slid my hand down his abs, over the front of his jeans, and cupped his manhood.
He smirked. “Sweetheart, not even your sweet little seduction and those naughty hands of yours could convince me to let you go to Chicago alone.”
I made a frustrated sound and dropped my hand.
He laughed.
“I just wanted to give you more time with your dad.” I confessed. “I know you don’t want to leave right now.”
Hooking an arm around me, Liam pulled me against his body with a groan. He kissed the top of my head and angled closer. “I fucking love you.”
“I love you, too. Which is why—”
He growled. “Don’t fucking say it again, Bells. You are not going alone.”
“Maybe Alex…” I suggested.
His body stiffened instantly. “I’m not sending my best friend to take care of my girl. That’s my job. A job I happen to like.”
I wound my arms around his waist again. “What am I going to do with you?” I wondered.
“For starters, you can put your hand back on my dick.”
I gasped. “Liam!”
“You’re teasing me, baby.” His eyes twinkled when I glanced up.
Ridiculous. He was utterly ridiculous. And charming. And protective. And the keeper of my heart.
Holding his eyes, I slipped my hand back down to the front of his jeans.
“That’s better,” he rumbled. “Now. What was I saying?”
I rubbed against him. “You were being stupid.” I reminded him.
He chuckled. “Right.” With a deep inhale, he cupped my face and searched my eyes.
“You aren’t any less important than my father,” he said quietly. “Yes, I want to be here with him, and yes, I plan to spend as much time with him as I can.” A broken, haunted look passed behind his stare. “Especially since our time is limited…”
“Liam,” I whispered and leaned up to kiss him softly.
After I pulled away, he shook his head once. “You’re important, too, Bells. Just as important. I’m coming to Chicago. I’m going to help you pack up your stuff, make sure your landlord doesn’t give you a hard time, and see the place you lived before you came home to me.”
Blizzard (BearPaw Resort #2) Page 9
