by Jessie Evans
“I’m not lost,” she says, sitting up, cupping my face in her damp hands. “I’m found. In you. In us.”
I hold her gaze, unable to speak for fear I’ll start crying and never stop. I haven’t cried once since March, not a single time since the morning the doctor told me the hellish headaches I’d been having were caused by a tumor in my frontal lobe, a malignant monster with tentacles spreading out into the parietal and occipital lobes, ensuring surgery would be a roll of the dice with the odds not at all in my favor.
I didn’t see the point in weeping like a baby over something I couldn’t change. But back then I didn’t have near as much to live for.
I didn’t have love; I didn’t have her.
“You helped me find myself,” Caitlin continues, thumb brushing lightly across my lips. “I was so afraid of turning out like my parents that I spent all my time trying not to be like them, instead of trying to be me. I had no idea who I really was until you walked up to me on the dance floor and put all of this in motion, and I am grateful to you for that. No matter what.”
I press my lips together, teeth biting into my flesh, fighting for control before I speak. “Even if I’m a liar?”
“Even if you’re a liar,” she says, fresh tears sliding down her pale cheeks. “As long as you didn’t lie about loving me.”
“Never.” I choke on the word and lose the battle with the stinging in my eyes. “I love you so much. I love you more than anything, but I’m going to hurt you, Caitlin.”
“Stop,” she whispers, pulling me closer, pressing a kiss to my cheek.
“I never meant to.” I thread my fingers through her hair, pulling her close, gluing her forehead to mine, wishing she could absorb everything I’m thinking and feeling, that she could know without me speaking another word how much she means to me.
She is everything, and I would live for her if I could. I would walk through fire for her. I would face every fear, stand by her side through everything life would throw at us, because I would know I’d never find a better partner than this girl. This woman.
And she could have been mine. She could have been mine, and it shatters what’s left of my heart to know we have so little time left.
“I thought it would all be okay,” I say, pulling away to look into her sad green eyes. “I thought we could have some fun, do some good, and walk away without getting hurt, but I’m a fucking idiot and I hate myself for it. And I’m sorry, but I know sorry will never be good enough to make up for what I’ve done.”
She shakes her head. “Just tell me, Gabe. I can’t take the not knowing anymore. Are you sick? Is that it?”
I bury my face in my hands, wishing I could keep up the lie, and spare her this for another day, but I can’t. She deserves the truth. She deserves better than the truth, but at least I can give her that.
I lift my head, feeling like a balloon with all the air leaking away. It all comes out—the tumor, the large size and troubling shape, the location that makes it impossible to operate without shredding my memories, my personality, maybe everything that makes me who I am. I tell her about the decision not to operate, but to accept my six months to a year and make the most of them. I tell her about the hospice reservations my mother made today, and the plane flight I’m supposed to take the morning after next.
“But I’ll stay if you want me to,” I say, the urge to cry vanished, replaced by a massive hollow feeling. I’m a pillar of ash, all my life nearly burned away. All it will take is a strong wind to scatter what’s left of me to the far reaches of the earth.
Caitlin watches me with a strangely calm expression, but her eyes are dry now, too, and I can see the wheels turning in her mind. “What about the surgery?” she asks. “Why not try it now?”
I shake my head. “The chances of survival aren’t even fifty-fifty. The doctor gave me a thirty percent chance, and that was back in March, before the tumor had more time to spread.”
Caitlin’s brow furrows. “So? Thirty is better than zero. Ten is better than zero. You have to at least try. You can’t give up on us without a fight.”
“I could be a vegetable, Caitlin. I could end up needing help pissing and shitting and rolling out of bed in the morning for the rest of my life,” I say harshly, needing her to understand. “And even if there were a miracle and I made it through surgery relatively whole, I would lose huge chunks of my memories, my thoughts, my opinions. I wouldn’t be the same person. I…I might not even love you anymore.”
“So?” she says, but I can see the hope leaking from her expression. “Then I’d just have to make you fall in love with me all over again.”
I smile even though it hurts. “Not if I’m not me. Not if I go back to being the same arrogant, self-involved asshole who sat behind you in study hall for a year in high school without realizing the most beautiful, fascinating person he’s ever met was sitting three feet away.”
Her face crumples, but she fights through the wave of emotion, sucking in a ragged breath as she shakes her head. “I won’t believe there’s no hope. I can’t. There’s still a chance, and if you love me the way you say you do, then you will fight for it. You told me that love like what I feel for the kids is worth fighting for. Love like what we have is worth fighting for, too. You know it is.”
“I do. But what if I wake up from surgery with a memory of you choking the life out of Pitt, and no context to place it in?”
She pales and I know she’s already traced that hypothetical to its logical conclusion.
“There are so many potentially dangerous memories inside me,” I say. “And I don’t know what kind of moral compass I’ll wake up with. I could still be the same old me, or I could wake up a monochromatic person, with a black and white view of the world, who thinks anyone who steps outside the law should be punished.”
“I would risk it,” she says, lower lip trembling. “I’d rather be in prison, and know you’re alive, than be free, and live without you.”
“I love you too much to risk it,” I say softly. “And I like who I am. The person I’ve become is important to me. I don’t want to lose myself. That’s part of the reason I made the decision not to have the surgery in the first place.”
She watches me for a long, silent moment, evidently reading the determination in my face. Finally, she sniffs, draws her knees to her chest, and drops her chin to rest on top. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Cancel the flight,” she whispers. “I want you to stay.”
“Are you sure?” I ask, wanting her to know what she’s signing up for. “It will probably be bad at the end. Maybe too much for you to handle alone.”
“We’ll hire a nurse if we have to,” she says, still refusing to look at me. “I want you to stay. I want every minute I can get.”
“I want that, too.” I reach out, brushing her half-wet hair over her bare shoulder, needing to put this conversation away. “And right now I want to wash your hair. I’ve never washed a girl’s hair.”
She blinks and takes another deep breath before she stretches out her legs, lying back in the lightly soapy water, wetting the rest of her hair before sitting back up to lean against the side of the tub.
I fetch the sandalwood shampoo from the bottles in the basket latched onto the side of the tub, realizing as I remove the lid that it is the source of Caitlin’s spicy, earthy smell. I spill a cool dollop of light brown liquid onto my palm and work it through her hair. I scrub every inch of her scalp, massage the tight muscles behind her ears and at the base of her skull, funneling all the love I feel for her into every touch, every caress.
I tell her with my hands that I never want to leave her, that I will love her forever, in whatever place I end up after my life is through, and by the time she dunks her head to wash away the shampoo, tears are streaming down her cheeks all over again.
“I wanted to help you stop crying,” I say as she emerges, swiping soap and water from her face.
“You’re really good at washing hair,
” she says, sniffing as she reaches down to pull the plug from the tub. “Like a professional.”
“I could have made a career of it, you think?” I tease. “If the lawyer thing hadn’t worked out, and I hadn’t grown myself a tumor?”
She turns to me, the ravaged look on her face banishing my smile.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m an asshole.”
“You are an asshole,” she says as she reaches for me, snatching my face in her wet hands and pulling my lips to hers.
The kiss is desperate and hungry and sad, but it’s hot, too. It’s electric because Caitlin and I are electric together, no matter what the sad ass circumstances. In a moment, my blood is pumping faster, in two, my cock is rock hard and pulsing between my legs, dying to be inside her, to shove into her tight heat and lose myself in the woman I love.
“Bed,” I mumble into her mouth as I pull her out of the bath and into my arms.
She wraps her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist and clings to me, dampening the front of my clothes with her fresh-from-the-bath body. She is hot and wet and smells like flowers and smoky spices and Caitlin, a potent combination that makes my head spin.
But it’s a lustful head spin this time, and the pain and vertigo blessedly leave me the fuck alone as I snatch a towel from the overflowing door hanger and throw it around Caitlin, concealing her nakedness from any kids who might be wandering the halls as I carry her from the bathroom into her bedroom.
But as soon as the door shuts behind us, she squirms out of my arms, pulling me toward the bed, helping me strip out of my clothes with shaking hands. I can feel her desperation echoing through my bones, and I know this isn’t going to be slow or sweet. This is going to be me and Caitlin, raw and hungry, affirming that we are still alive and still in love and neither death, nor murder, nor pain, nor anything else is going to steal that away from us.
Not yet. Not fucking yet.
I fall on top of her on the bed, swallowing her cry of need with another kiss as I spread her legs with a sharp nudge of my knees and guide my cock to her entrance. I shove inside, groaning at the feel of her body fighting me as I push through her only slightly damp outer folds, but then I reach the core of her and she is molten hot and wet and as crazy for me as I am for her.
She arches her back, taking me deeper, coating me with her slick heat and then I am gone. I am soaring above it all with the only girl who has ever made my blood rush like this, made my heart break open, and love I didn’t know I was capable of come spilling out. She is my match, my partner, and the only girl I will ever love for however much longer I will live.
Chapter Eighteen
Caitlin
People live in each other's shelter. –Irish proverb
He drives to the end of my unprepared body and it hurts, but only a little. It’s not enough, not near as much as I want it to hurt. I want to be bruised by the force of our coming together. I want my body to feel as ravaged as my heart. I want to come screaming for mercy, not begging for release.
I dig my nails into his ass, forcing him deeper, faster, harder. I arch my back, shoving my hips into him until I start to feel sore and tender, and still I fight him for more. I score his skin with my nails, dig my teeth into his lip, his neck, the thick muscle of his bicep. I mark him, crying out in relief as he marks me back. His teeth dig into the sensitive skin between my neck and shoulder, and his fingers pinch my nipple hard enough for the sting to go rushing out along every nerve ending.
“Yes,” I growl into his ear. “Harder. Fuck me like you mean it.”
“I always fuck you like I mean it,” he says, shifting the angle of his penetration until his cock rams even deeper inside me, the thick head of him slamming against the entrance to my womb, sending sharp waves of discomfort coursing through me with each battering thrust.
But I don’t want discomfort. I want to hurt. I need to hurt.
“More,” I beg, wrapping my legs around his waist and lifting my hips. “Fuck me, Gabe. Please, fuck me. Don’t hold back, don’t fucking hold back.”
He grips my hips in his hands, taking control of my body, jerking me up and down his cock as he slams home again and again, taking me so hard and fast my breasts shake and my spine twinges from the reverberations of each brutal thrust. My jaw begins to ache and my temples pulse as every muscle in my body strains closer, closer, until I’m tearing at him with my nails, gritting my teeth against the dark wave of pleasure-pain rolling in to pull me under.
My orgasm slams into me with the force of a tsunami hitting shore. It is savage and cruel and beautiful, all at the same time. The pleasure is smothering, blinding. It sucks me down to the sea floor of myself, down into the utter blackness where there is no light, and no place to hide, and it is so cold and lonely there. It is barren and bleak and empty, a post-apocalyptic landscape where nothing will ever grow again.
No matter how fiercely I cling to Gabe as he loses himself inside me, down here, down at my very core, I’ve already let him go. He’s already gone, already dead, and I am a shell of a person who will have to find some way to keep going without him.
“God, I can’t,” I whisper, tears streaming down my face for the thousandth time tonight. “I can’t do this without you.”
And then I am crying my eyes out again and Gabe is holding me close and whispering that he loves me and that he’s sorry and that I’m beautiful and strong and he’s going to make everything as easy for us both as he can. He doesn’t promise everything will be okay; he doesn’t say I’ll be fine. He just keeps repeating that he loves me, and believes in me, and that he will love me forever.
“Forever,” he whispers into my hair as he cradles me close. “Until men are fairy tales, and the world goes up in a ball of fire.”
Finally, his soft voice and his hands stroking my back—as gentle now as they were ruthless a few minutes ago—calm me. I curl into him, resting my cheek on his bare chest, holding him close. My hip muscles are sore and aching and the delicate tissue between my legs is so bruised I know I’ll need to sit carefully tomorrow, but I’m glad. I will treasure this evidence that Gabe is real and alive and still with me, at least for a little longer. I wish I could keep these little hurts for the rest of my life, wish I could have proof of the man I love imprinted permanently on my body.
“I want to get a tattoo,” I whisper against his skin, words slurred by the exhaustion pulling at the backs of my eyes. “Tomorrow. I want us to get one together.”
“What do you want to get?” he asks, fingers trailing lightly up and down my arm.
“Dandelion seeds.” I kiss his chest, and flick my tongue out along his sweat-damp skin, wanting the taste of Gabe in my mouth before I go to sleep. “Dandelion seeds blowing away in the wind.”
He hums, vibrating my cheek. “Off in their different directions, but from the same source. Always a part of each other.”
I smile even as pain tightens the skin between my eyebrows. He understands. Of course he does. He always understands, in a way no one ever has, and no one else ever will.
“We’ll go tomorrow,” he says. “I know a good shop in Charleston. We can get tattoos and then go make another deposit in your account. I’m leaving you my trust fund—I’ve already had the will drawn up—but it might take time for the lawyers to sort that out after. I want to know you’re taken care of until then.”
“I don’t want your trust fund,” I say, knowing I’d start crying again if I had any tears left.
“Well, you’re getting it, so suck it up, blondie,” he says, making me smile.
“I love you,” I whisper as I fall asleep.
“Forever,” he says.
It is the last word I hear before I’m sucked into a cold, hopeless sleep, where no dream dares to tread.
Chapter Nineteen
Caitlin
Health to the men, and may the women live forever. –Irish toast
We don’t wake up until ten, which is a minor miracle in itself. I can’t
remember the last time I slept this late. The kids usually would have made way too much noise for such a thing to be possible, but when I finally drag myself out of bed and head downstairs, I find all the Cooneys camped out on the couch watching The Wizard of Oz, one of the only movies that captivates both toddlers and big kids, alike.
Danny has made popcorn, and everyone is so sucked in to the flying monkey scene they barely notice me padding down the stairs.
“I called the diner and said you were sick, then I called the daycare,” Danny says, nodding in my direction with a casualness that belies how scared I know he was when Gabe and I came home early this morning. “I told them Emmie and Sean were both shitting all over the place, so we were all going to stay home until we weren’t contagious.”
I nod as I head toward the coffeemaker. “Good.”
I’m too tired to get on to him about cussing, and who gives a shit, anyway. Let the kid cuss. Let him have his big bad words if it makes him feel powerful and in control. I have bigger problems than a brother with a colorful vocabulary, and so does the world.
“Danny, if I call Sherry to see if she can come help, can you help hold down the fort today while Gabe and I go take care of some errands?”
Danny shrugs. “Yeah, what are you going to go do?”
“Gabe’s going to be moving in with us for a little while,” I say, dumping water in the back of the coffeemaker and hitting the start button. “So we need to head into Charleston and put a few things in order.”
“He is?” Ray asks, tearing his attention away from the screen with a grin. “That’s cool. When is he moving in?”
“Today.” I focus on fetching mugs and milk and sugar, not wanting to make eye contact with my brothers. I’m going to have to sit everyone down and have a hard talk about what’s happening to Gabe, and how we’re going to help him, but not today. I’m not ready for a talk about death and pain and all the fucking unfairness of life, today. We’ll have that talk later, when I’ve had time to pull myself together.
