by Julia London
Kyra took his advice and worked to keep one foot in front of the other. But she was distracted, plagued by so many what-if scenarios.
For two days, she and Dax both went through the motions. They had dinner together. They walked along the lakeshore and watched Ruby and Otto run ahead, picking up things, discarding things, chattering about nothing and everything.
When Friday finally rolled around, Kyra was up before dawn. She would miss a good shift today, traded to Deenie for her Monday shift.
Dax was all smiles when he showed up on their porch to escort them into Manhattan for Ruby’s doctor appointment. If she couldn’t put up the necessary front, he would do it for both of them.
“Where are we going?” Ruby asked. She was dressed in a yellow dress with bumblebees embroidered in dizzying patterns. Kyra had put her hair in a high ponytail. She had on her pink boots and looked adorable.
“To the doctor, sweetie.”
“For me?”
“Yes, you.”
Ruby frowned. “I’ve already been to the doctor. Why do I have to go again?”
“Guess what?” Dax said. He was leaning against the door frame, and Kyra was momentarily struck by how strong and confident he looked. She wanted to sink into his arms and bury her face against his chest.
“What?” Ruby asked.
“We’re going to McDonald’s today.”
Ruby gasped. “We are?”
“We always go after a doctor visit.”
She giggled. “We don’t always go,” she said. But she walked out the door and down the steps to Kyra’s car.
An hour later Kyra, Dax, and Ruby were in a glass high-rise in midtown Manhattan, in the offices of the neuropathologist, Dr. Mehta. After what felt like an interminable wait in the waiting room, they were finally shown into an examining room.
Dr. Mehta reminded Kyra of a mad scientist. She was short, wore a white lab coat, and her short hair, streaked gray, looked as if she’d been shoving her fingers through it all day. She carefully reviewed Ruby’s films as Ruby played with Kyra’s phone, then performed a cursory examination of her.
“Well,” Dr. Mehta said when she’d finished examining Ruby and Ruby’s attention was focused on Kyra’s phone once more, “let’s start with the good news. The growth in Ruby’s head is quite small.”
Kyra sat, waiting, immobile. That was not good news. She didn’t care how small it was, it didn’t belong there.
“That’s good,” Dax said.
“That’s very good,” Dr. Mehta agreed. “It’s an easier surgery.”
“Surgery,” Kyra slowly repeated. Of course she knew it would require surgery, but she needed to say it aloud.
Dr. Mehta fixed a dark, brown-eyed gaze on Kyra. “We’re going to want to get it out of there, obviously, and have it biopsied. It’s on the cerebellum, just behind her ear, which is easy to reach. I think we have an excellent chance of getting it all.”
“Then what?” Kyra asked.
“Then, depending on what the biopsy reveals, we’ll hopefully need only to monitor her for seizures and keep an eye on her to see if it comes back. Often, these types of growths in kids don’t come back.”
“And . . . if you can’t get it all? If it’s malignant?” Kyra asked flatly.
“Well, then we’ll have to talk about radiation and maybe chemo,” the doctor said. “Even if it’s benign, if we can’t get it all, we would not want to risk a malignancy.”
Kyra said nothing, processing that news.
“I don’t understand any of this,” Dax said. “She had the classic symptoms of absence seizures.”
Dr. Mehta nodded. “Focal seizures can look exactly like absence seizures,” she said. “It’s not common, but it happens. This is all good news, Mrs. Kokinos. If your child has the misfortune of being diagnosed with a brain tumor, this is really the best of all possible worlds. I’ll have my surgical coordinator get in touch with you to go over insurance and procedures. We’ll want to get another MRI before the surgery to see if anything has changed. Sound good?”
No, it sounded like a nightmare.
Dr. Mehta moved to the door. “Take all the time you need,” she said.
When the doctor had gone out, neither Kyra nor Dax spoke, both of them lost in thought, both of them staring at the bland tile floor. Ruby came around and stood in front of Kyra, and when Kyra looked up, she started—Ruby looked furious. “Mommy, you said I wasn’t sick,” she said accusingly.
Kyra didn’t know what to say. “I don’t think you’re sick, pumpkin,” she said, cringing inwardly at her lie. “But the doctors want to make extra sure.”
“Can’t you just tell them I’m not sick?”
She swallowed. “I can, pumpkin, but they want to make sure. Because if you are sick, they want to make you better.”
“I don’t like the doctor,” Ruby said.
Kyra reached for Ruby and drew her into her embrace. “I know. I don’t like any of this, either. I hate it. You know how bad I hate it? I want to stomp it into the ground like we stomped on the mud patties last week.”
Ruby smiled a little. “I made a huge splat.”
“Yes, you did.”
“Can we go to McDonald’s now?” Ruby asked.
“Yes,” Kyra said and ran her hand over Ruby’s head. “You bet.” Today Ruby could have whatever she wanted.
“Yay!” Ruby said and ran around Kyra to pick up Kyra’s phone. “Can I play on your phone until we get there?”
“Yep.” Kyra stood up and looked at Dax.
He reached for her hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. It was all he could give her. There was nothing in this world that could possibly make this better for any of them except for that tumor to disappear.
Kyra had to hand it to Dax—over the next few days he did everything he could to cheer them all up. He made Ruby a set of furniture for her Barbies that she thought was the greatest thing to be produced in the history of toys. He made Ruby and Kyra homemade pizza Saturday night and produced an expensive bottle of wine.
“You’ve been holding out on me,” Kyra had said when she looked at the pizza. “Who knew a guy like you could make a pizza like this?”
“You have no idea of the depth of my talents,” he’d said.
“I think I have an idea,” she’d said, winking at him.
Dax laughed and glanced at Ruby. “What do you think, Coconut, is it okay if I kiss your mom?”
Ruby looked up from her dolls. “Why?”
“Because I like her. I like her a lot.”
“I know you like her,” Ruby said and looked at Kyra.
“I like him, too,” Kyra said. “Do you like him?”
Ruby giggled. “Is he your boyfriend?”
“Ah . . .” Kyra glanced sidelong at Dax. “Yep. He is my boyfriend.”
“Then okay,” Ruby somberly agreed. “Kiss her.”
Dax wrapped his arm around Kyra and kissed her squarely on the lips for the first time in front of Ruby. And then he bent down, grabbed Ruby up, and kissed her, too, while she writhed and laughed and said, “Don’t kiss me! I’m not your girlfriend!”
Sunday, they went to the movies, Dax’s treat.
“You’re doing too much,” Kyra said. She knew he was trying to help, but it was beginning to feel like charity.
“Stop counting,” Dax said and shoved a big bucket of popcorn at her. Kyra wasn’t feeling so indebted as to protest popcorn. But she was aware that it was too much, that she’d sprung too much on this man too soon in too short a time. It wasn’t fair. None of it was fair, but it especially wasn’t fair to him.
Kyra took another day off work and went back into the city to meet with the surgical coordinator, who basically explained that anything short of cutting into her daughter’s head wasn’t an option. They reviewed Kyra’s sorry insurance and all the things that were covered. Then they reviewed all the things that weren’t covered. The bottom line was that no matter how many procedures were covered, it was still going to cost Kyra a pr
etty penny. She would sell her soul if she had to, but the question of where she would possibly get the money she needed weighed on her.
Forget studying—it was impossible for her to concentrate. So Kyra funneled her restlessness into work as much as possible. For the first time since she had moved in, her cottage was spick-and-span. She worked as much as she could at the bistro. She was able to pick up an extra shift or two and made up some of the money she’d lost to missed shifts because of doctor appointments.
And then the call came. In three weeks Ruby was required to get a follow-up MRI. The surgery was scheduled about a week after that, and Ruby would have that horrible tumor removed.
Kyra didn’t know how she’d endure it, and she was grateful to have Dax to lean on. She didn’t know how she would ever make this up to Dax. She didn’t know if it was even possible. But she was so grateful to him for his support, so indebted.
Too indebted. As much as she needed him right now, their budding relationship felt dangerously out of balance.
Chapter Twenty-One
There had to be another pair of pink cowboy boots in the universe, and Dax was determined to find them. Ruby’s toes were sticking out the ends, and one of the boots had stopped lighting up at all. So one afternoon he piled his trusty sidekick into his truck—the two-legged one instead of the four-legged one—and headed to Black Springs to find them.
It turned out that pink cowboy boots with lights were not as common as Dax had assumed. But he did manage to convince Ruby that a pair of tennis shoes with Velcro straps and lights might be a suitable substitute. They walked through a very long aisle of pink and purple shoes, none of them acceptable to the coconut until she suddenly gasped, screeched, “Elsa!” and begged for them.
Elsa, Dax learned, was a character in the Disney movie Frozen, and Ruby seemed more than a little perturbed that he didn’t know it. He reminded her that there were a lot of things that she didn’t know, either, and he didn’t hold that against her.
She wasn’t listening because she was studying every facet of those damn light-up tennis shoes.
This little shopping excursion was, under normal circumstances, the last thing Dax would want to do. He despised shopping in all its forms, and especially with a female, even if that female was six. But it had been a welcome diversion from the constant emotional tug-of-war in him—the worry about Kyra and Ruby, the elation of having a newborn son.
He returned to the cottages and delivered Ruby to Mrs. McCauley, who had invited her to help make a birthday cake for one of her grandchildren. Why anyone would willingly ask for Ruby’s help in the kitchen was beyond Dax, but Ruby was excited. “Remember,” he said as he walked her up to the big Victorian house on the hill, “you need to include all the ingredients.”
“Maybe we can put M&M’S in the cake. Taleesha’s mom makes cupcakes with M&M’S in them.”
When they reached the door, Mrs. McCauley was waiting for them.
“Her mother should be home in a couple of hours,” Dax said.
“That will be perfect,” Mrs. McCauley said. “It takes time to create great cake art for my granddaughter.”
“How old is she?” Ruby asked.
“Well, the truth is, I forget how old any of them are, but I know it’s Mia’s birthday because I wrote it down.” She winked at Ruby and took her by the hand. “Don’t worry about us, Dax.”
Well, that was impossible.
He walked down to his cottage, but as he neared it, Kyra’s Subaru pulled into the drive at Number Three. As he walked across the lawn, Kyra stepped out of her car. She was wearing red pencil jeans and a sleeveless denim shirt. Her hair was pulled back into one long tail. She had on huge, dark sunglasses, and as he couldn’t see her eyes, he couldn’t determine her mood. She looked like the tourists who strolled up and down Main Street.
She waited for him, leaning against the fender of her car. When he reached her, Dax took the sunglasses from her face and studied her.
“What?” she said, brushing her fingers across her cheek. “Do I have something on me?”
“Nope. I just needed to see your face. I thought you were at work.”
“I was. I left early to go check on some things.”
“What things?”
She smiled a little. “Money things.” She pushed away from her car and started toward the cottage. “Where’s Ruby?”
“She and Mrs. McCauley are making a cake,” he said, following her. “What money things?” he asked.
“Oh, nothing. I went by social services,” she said. “I thought maybe there was some program, something to help me with the cost of Ruby’s care.” She glanced over her shoulder. “There’s not. And surgery is expensive.”
Dax walked with her into the kitchen. “But you have insurance.”
Kyra snorted. “Crappy insurance. A huge deductible and a low ceiling of maximum expenses. You know . . . the cheapest I could find. And I actually make too much money to qualify for aid. How ironic is that?”
“How much money do you need?” he asked.
“A lot. I’m looking at at least ten thousand in out-of-pocket expenses. And then there are things that aren’t covered, like any psychotherapy she might need because of the trauma, and some of the rehabilitation.”
Dax felt lucky to have good insurance. It cost him a small fortune, but it was excellent coverage, particularly for out-of-pocket expenses, and . . .
And why didn’t I think of this before? I have excellent insurance.
The idea that just occurred to him was ridiculous. Really far out there. He looked at Kyra as she sifted through some bills on her kitchen table. God, but she was beautiful. The last couple of weeks had been so tense he’d forgotten to notice.
She glanced up and smiled, her gaze questioning. “What? I know, you’re going to tell me to quit being such a sad sack, right?” Her smiled turned rueful. “I’m working on it, I swear I am.”
“That’s not what I was thinking.”
She waited for him to explain. Dax had to think of how to say it.
Kyra tucked a strand of hair away from her face and laughed a little. “You’re worrying me now. You look so serious.”
“I was thinking that I have excellent insurance.”
She nodded, but her expression didn’t change. She didn’t get what he was saying.
So Dax said it again. “I have excellent insurance.”
Kyra’s expression changed to surprise. “Dax . . .”
“Just hear me out, okay?” he asked. “What I’m about to say is for Ruby’s sake. You and I could get married, and I could put her on my insurance. It’s against the law now to deny her coverage. She would be covered. You wouldn’t be out so much money.”
Kyra was shaking her head before he’d finished his sentence. “No, Dax. I can’t let you do that.”
“Why not?”
“Why not?” she echoed incredulously. “Haven’t you done enough for us? Don’t you see how you’re always bailing me out? I won’t let you sacrifice everything for us. I won’t do it.”
“It’s for Ruby—”
“I don’t care. It’s not fair to you.”
“Look, we’ve been great together, haven’t we? It could work. And it would be a huge help to you.”
“We’ve only been together a month. You’re talking crazy.”
“Let’s assume it could be great,” he said. “But if it’s not, okay, we divorce when she’s in the clear. But the point is, you don’t have to worry about money or coverage and you can concentrate on being there for her.”
“You don’t get it, Dax,” she said, sounding frustrated now. “I don’t want you to save us. I want to be an equal, not an anvil around your neck, and so far Ruby and I are the anvil that just keeps getting heavier.”
He didn’t agree with that. He’d been happy to be needed for a change, and he was disappointed in her adamant rejection of his idea. “We’re talking about your daughter’s health, Kyra. Not your idea of what this relationshi
p should look like.”
Kyra laughed. “You think you can shame me? Get in line. If anyone should be helping me right now, it’s Josh Burton, not you. If I have to, I’ll get a lawyer. He needs to pony up.” She picked up a towel and began to wipe down her countertops with a vengeance.
Dax watched her. He felt weird. Like maybe he’d read this situation with Kyra all wrong. Like he’d forgotten all about his broken heart when maybe he should have been tending the cracks. “Getting lawyered up to go after a man who hasn’t seen his daughter could take more time than you have.”
“Maybe. Maybe not,” she said. She put down the towel and turned around, folding her arms across her body. “Dax . . . I can’t thank you enough for being there for me. I have needed you so much—but I think maybe I’ve needed you too much.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, frowning.
“I’m not sure,” she said and glanced down a moment. “But the balance is all wrong between us.” She risked another look at him. “I need to think about it.”
Alarm bells began to sound in Dax’s brain. This thing between them, this amazing, wonderful thing, felt as if it was suddenly in danger of exploding. “Okay,” he said with a shrug, as if he didn’t care, which couldn’t be further from the truth. “But the offer stands. Think about it.” He glanced at his watch. “I need to get some work done.” Not true. He just needed to get out of there. He stepped around her and walked out of her cottage. And he kept walking all the way to his house without looking back. What was wrong with helping her when she needed him? Why did it have to be equal? Life wasn’t equal. Life was ups and downs and it wasn’t equal for anyone.
Dax had a frozen meal that night, one he found deep in his freezer and the first he’d had in a few weeks. Funny how one’s dining habits changed when one was part of a couple.
After that unsatisfying meal, Dax wandered around his cottage. He was too at odds with himself to work. He took Otto for a long walk along the lakeshore, where he debated with himself over and over again. Had he lost his sense of how to be in a relationship? Was he wrong about what he’d felt between him and Kyra? Had it all been wishful thinking on his part? Or was Kyra simply running scared? Yes, what had happened to them was a lot to digest after only a few short weeks of being an item, he got that, and Kyra had raised valid points . . . but Dax thought there was something deeper to them, something that allowed them to hopscotch over the insecurities.
