by Marie Force
Mac raised his hands, and for a second, Joe thought Mac was going to hit him. But instead Mac gripped his hair, as if he was trying to occupy his hands so he wouldn't punch Joe. "Since when?"
"Since the night she caught David with someone else."
"Are you serious? The same day? You told me I could trust you. 'Who better than me?' That's what you said!"
"It was entirely and completely consensual, Mac."
"She was crushed! Devastated! How could you take advantage of her like that?"
"I did not take advantage of her. I love her. You know I do."
"God, Joe, I can't believe this! Why didn't you tell me?"
Joe snorted. "Right. So you could accuse me of taking advantage of her? So you could freak out and run me out of your life right before I'm supposed to be the best man in your wedding? None of us thought that was a good idea."
"None of who?"
Oh, shit. "Janey and me."
"And who else?"
"No one."
"Who else?"
Joe sighed. "Maddie."
Mac recoiled in shock. "No way she knew this and kept it from me."
"Janey confided in her, but she didn't want to upset you any more than we did. We all knew how you'd see this, and it didn't happen the way you think."
"Great, so you all conspired to keep me in the dark."
"It wasn't like that. We were going to tell you after the wedding."
Shaking his head, Mac looked down at the ground. "Three of the people I'm closest to in the world decided to keep something this big from me. I have no idea how I'm supposed to take that."
"We were thinking about you."
"Were you? While you were screwing my devastated baby sister, were you really thinking of me?"
"That's not fair. It wasn't like that." Although after hearing Janey's description of what had transpired between them, he had cause to wonder.
"I can't believe this."
"To be honest, it's really none of your business."
"None of my business? She's my sister! It's absolutely my business! And you know that, which is why you didn't tell me."
"She's also a full-grown adult, in case you haven't noticed."
"She'll always be my baby sister."
As Mac growled those words, the first of the fireworks exploded overhead.
"I'm going," Joe said. "If you're still interested, I'll see you at the bachelor party tomorrow night." Without giving Mac a chance to reply, Joe turned and walked away, hoping he could grab a cab back to town. Whatever it took to get the hell out of there.
Janey had never been more torn in her life. As the fireworks lit up the night sky, she dodged her concerned parents and loaded David, half drunk and sobbing, into her car to drive him to his mother's house. All she could think about was the look of utter shock on Joe's face when he'd heard her call what they'd shared cheap and meaningless. He had to know she didn't really think that, didn't he?
She wanted to go after to him, to tell him she'd just been reacting to David, that she didn't mean it. But first she had to deal with David and the bomb he'd dropped on her.
"I'm sorry," he said as they drove away from Mac's. "I should've told you sooner. I know that, but it all happened so fast."
"How long have you known?"
"A month."
Janey gasped and looked over at him, wondering if she'd ever really known him. "And you didn't think your fiancée needed to know you have cancer?"
"There was never a good time to tell you. I didn't want to just call you out of the blue and drop it on you."
"Instead, you kept it from me. Were you hoping I wouldn't find out?"
"I was going to tell you, but I wanted to see how I responded to the first round of chemo."
"You've had chemo."
"Yes."
"Jesus, David."
"It's Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Stage two. After I had strep last year, I had a raised node in my neck that never went away. I finally got around to getting it checked, and voila. Cancer. But the prognosis is pretty good. The chemo seems to be working, but I feel like total shit."
As Janey tried to process what he was telling her, she felt strangely removed, as if none of this was happening to her. Only a few weeks ago, this news would have devastated her. It was further proof of just how separate their lives had become during the long years they'd spent apart. That he could keep something of this magnitude from her while they were engaged told her a lot about what kind of husband he might have been.
"I need you, Janey." He reached for her hand and held it between both of his. "I can't go through this without you."
She tugged her hand free. "That is so incredibly unfair! You keep this from me for weeks, you sleep with someone else and then you still expect me to support you?"
"I love you, Janey. That hasn't changed."
Her eyes flooded with tears, making it difficult to see, so she pulled the car off the road and turned to him. "I'm not in love with you anymore. I'm sorry if that hurts you, but it's the truth. I don't want you to be sick, and I hate that you have to go through this, but it doesn't change how I feel."
"We can get through it together, like we've gotten through everything."
She shook her head. "I can't. You have your mother, your sisters, your friends. You won't be alone."
"Janey, please. I'm begging you. You're the one I need. You can't do this to me in the midst of everything else I'm dealing with right now. I even had to take a leave from my internship while I'm in treatment."
"You should've thought about how much you needed me before you slept with someone else."
"She means nothing to me! She's an oncology nurse who I met during my treatment. It was a one-time thing. I was scared and freaked out. It was comfort. That's all."
Surely, Janey thought, her head would explode any minute. "I need you to listen to me. Can you do that?"
His eyes bright with new tears, he nodded.
"I loved you so much. There was absolutely nothing I wouldn't have done for you. I gave up my dreams of being a vet to accommodate you. I waited for you. I was faithful to you—always."
"Until recently," he muttered.
"I never went near another man until I saw you screwing a big-breasted blonde!"
"Janey—"
"Wait, I'm not finished. Anything and everything I ever felt for you died the minute I saw you with her. And now I find out that you've had this huge thing going on in your life and never saw fit to tell me. I should've been your first phone call, David. I should've been there when you got the diagnosis. I should've been there when you settled on a treatment plan and when you decided to take a leave of absence. That's what people in committed relationships do—they include each other in big decisions. But I was denied all that because you chose to keep me in the dark—about this and God knows what else."
"I didn't mean to."
"The minute you chose not to pick up the phone and tell me you were being tested for cancer is the minute you made a decision about our entire relationship. The minute you decided to bring that woman home to our bed, you made another decision. I suspect you've probably made a few others I don't know about. Either way, this isn't how I want to live."
"I'll make it up to you. This is just a bump in the road, honey. I've learned a valuable lesson, and it won't happen again. I promise you that. You were right all along. You should've moved to Boston to live with me while I was in school. If we'd done that, none of this would be happening now."
"Or it might've happened a lot sooner."
"I don't believe that."
"Here's what I think happened—we got complacent. We went along for years on autopilot and began to take each other for granted."
"That's not true!"
"If it wasn't true, David, you never would've felt the need to sleep with someone else."
He shook his head. "I never took you for granted."
"Yes, you did. And I did the same. We assumed our relationship would be
fine even if we never put any real effort into it."
"How can you say we didn't put effort into it when we were together for thirteen years?"
"Can I ask you something? And will you tell me the swear-to-God truth?"
"Yeah."
"Swear to God?"
"Yes!"
"When you … had sex … with her, was it better? Than it was with me?"
"You can't ask me that!"
"I just did, and you swore you'd tell me the truth."
"I'm not going to talk to you about that."
"You just answered my question," Janey said softly.
"How?"
"If it wasn't better, you would've said so."
"Now you're just playing games with me."
"No, I'm not," she said. "It's over, David. We both know it, so let's not make a mockery of all we shared in the past by hanging on to something that died a long time ago. It's too bad we both refused to see that. We could've saved ourselves a lot of trouble."
"I thought for sure you would come back to me when I told you about the cancer," he said sadly.
"I wish I was a better person. I wish I could forget what I saw that day in your apartment and be there for you during your treatment. But I can't do that. The old Janey might've done that, but I've changed in the last week, and I can't go back to who I was before I saw you with her."
"I'd give anything to take that back."
She was on the verge of saying she would, too. "You know, you may not understand this, but in hindsight I'm kind of glad I saw you. It probably stopped us from making a huge mistake."
"I'll never believe we would've made a mistake by getting married."
"We would have, and it would've been so much worse to find that out after the wedding."
He took her hand again, and she let him. "It's really over?"
"I'm afraid so. But I hope we can still be friends. I'll want to know how you're doing, how you're feeling, how the treatment is going. Will you keep me informed?"
He nodded. "I'd like for us to be friends, too," he said, reaching for her.
Engulfed in sadness, Janey leaned into his embrace.
David kissed the top of her head and held her tight against him. "I'm sorry I hurt you. After all the time we were together, you deserved much better from me."
Tears burned her eyes. Since she couldn't dispute that statement, she didn't try.
"Can I ask you something?"
Janey pulled back from him. "Sure."
"Is it better with him? With Joe?"
Her face heated under his scrutiny, and she was grateful for the dark. "I'm not answering that."
His face lifted into a sad half smile. "You just did."
Chapter 17
After everyone left, Maddie cleaned up the kitchen while Mac carried items in from outside. They worked together for about fifteen minutes before she realized he was giving her one-word answers and otherwise not speaking to her. A cold ball of dread lodged in her belly. She'd seen him chase Joe after the confrontation between Janey and David but hadn't had a chance to ask him what had transpired. By now she had a pretty good idea.
"That's the last of it," he said as he put the grill utensils in the sink.
"It was a nice party."
"Uh-huh."
"Why don't we leave the rest for the morning and head up to bed?"
"I'm going for a run."
"Now?"
"Yeah."
"But it's so dark! You could get hit by a car."
"I'll wear a vest."
"Mac…"
He turned to her, and what she saw on his face stopped her heart.
"Why don't we just talk about it and get it over with?"
"Get what over with?" he asked.
"You're clearly mad at me."
"No, I'm disappointed."
"I couldn't tell you! You would've lost it, and Janey didn't need that when everything else was such a mess. She begged me not to tell you, and I agreed that was the best thing at the time."
"So you chose her over me."
"No." Her heart ached from the sadness she heard in his voice. "I'd never choose anyone over you or Thomas. You know that."
"We have a deal, Maddie—a deal you insisted on."
"I know, and I was so torn, but I thought you'd want me to do anything I could to help her. That's what I tried to do."
"I wish you had told me. I would've been cool about it."
She shot him a look full of skepticism.
"What? I would've been!"
Maddie went to him and curled her arms around his neck. "Do you know one of the things I love best about you?"
"No," he said, his body rigid and unyielding. His arms dangled loose at his sides, even as she tightened her hold on him.
"Your fierce love for your family. It's overwhelming and beautiful and it makes you you. As much as you love them all, though, Janey holds a special place in your heart. While you might wish to believe otherwise, you would not have understood Joe hooking up with her the same night she found David in bed with another woman. And you would not have believed Janey initiated it."
He tried to wiggle free of her embrace, but Maddie held on tight.
"I guess we'll never know how I would've reacted, because no one told me. Am I such a jerk that you guys got together and decided to keep this from me?"
"It wasn't like that at all. We were protecting you until some time had passed and you would've been more reasonable about it."
"So I'm not a jerk, but I am unreasonable?" He reached for her arms to draw them down and away from him.
"Mac, honey, come on. Try to understand."
"I need to get out of here for a while. I'll be back." With that he turned and dashed up the stairs to get changed.
Frozen, Maddie watched him go, her heart racing. He had never rebuffed her like that before, and she began to wonder if she might lose him over this. "No," she whispered. "That can't happen. It just can't."
But as she finished cleaning up her sparkling new kitchen and got ready for bed, the thought nagged at her. A life that had once been empty and difficult without him was now joyful and magnificent—or it was until today. First her mother's disapproval and now this… Just what they needed a week before their wedding.
Wearing one of the silk nightgowns he loved so much, Maddie got in bed and pretended to read a book while she waited for him. Her thoughts wandered back to the day she met him. He'd accidentally knocked her off her big clunker of a bike when she was on her way to a housekeeping shift at his parents' hotel. With her knee, elbow and hand bleeding, she'd been unable to work at the hotel or help out at her sister's daycare. Mac had stepped in for her, taking her place at both jobs so she wouldn't lose either of them, and taking care of her and Thomas until she recovered from her injuries. He'd been taking care of them ever since.
More than an hour passed before he finally returned, sweaty and breathing hard as he came into the bedroom and made a beeline for the shower without a word for her. He stayed in there long enough that Maddie deduced he was still avoiding her.
Slipping out of bed, she tugged the nightgown over her head on the way into the bathroom and stepped into the spacious, steamy shower.
He startled when she put her arms around him and hugged him from behind. "What are you doing?" he asked.
"Hugging you."
"I thought you were asleep."
"Were you hoping I'd fall asleep if you stayed gone long enough?"
"Maybe."
Maddie urged him to turn around. "I could never sleep knowing you're mad with me."
"I'm not mad."
"Disappointed. Same difference. You're not happy, so I'm not happy."
He shrugged. "It's all so screwed up. How could Joe let that happen, especially when she was such a mess?"
"It was all her. He tried to tell her it was a bad idea, but she worked on him until he caved. I'll tell you what I told her earlier: I think she was halfway in love with him before any of this
happened with David."
Mac shook his head. "I don't think so."
"I do."
"And what makes you so smart?" he asked with a hint of amusement that buoyed her sagging spirits. "You haven't known us that long."
"Janey said the same thing," Maddie said with a small smile and a lot of relief. At least they were talking. "I happen to know that when a man pays special attention to a woman, when he looks at her like she's the most beautiful creature in the world and hangs on every word she says, of course she starts to have a little crush on him. How can she not?" Reaching for his bottle of soap, she smoothed some over his chest and was gratified when his lower half sprang to life as she massaged him.
"And you have some experience with this, do you?"
"Mmm hmm. Recent experience."
His face shifted into that devilish grin she so adored. "I know what you're doing."
"What am I doing?" she asked, full of innocence.
"You think if you get me all worked up that I'll forget you kept something rather important from me after we made a deal to never do that."
"It was wrong of me, Mac. I know that now, and I knew it then. But it was what Janey needed at the time, and I really, really want her to be my very best friend. Do you know how long it's been since I had a friend I like as much as I like her?"
He combed his fingers through her long wet hair. "How long?"
"Since my friend Sydney used to come for the summers with her family when we were in high school. We were so close, but we grew apart when she stopped coming out. I saw her a couple of years ago when she was here with her family."
"She's Luke's ex-girlfriend, the one who lost her husband and kids, right?"
Maddie nodded, still saddened by her friend's terrible tragedy. "Yes." Maddie had written to her after the accident but hadn't heard back from her.
"Well, you'll be glad to know I've decided to forgive you."
Maddie looked up at him, a smile tugging at her lips. "Is that so?"
"I asked you to help me take care of my sister, and that's what you did. I suppose I can't fault you for not breaking her confidence."
"She's all grown up, Mac, and she has to follow her own heart, even if it leads her to Joe."
"I know that," he said through gritted teeth.
