The Family You Make

by Jill Shalvis

  She had no idea how or why, but he never failed to strip her defenses away—a double-edged sword because oh, how she hated being vulnerable or seeming weak. But she fisted her hands in his shirt and held on tight.

  They stood like that right in the middle of the front yard for a long moment, her a complete hot mess soaking up the comfort and peace she always found in his arms, him a solid, steady rock. And then suddenly she felt a gentle patting on her back from hands that weren’t Levi’s—which she knew because he had one hand cupping the back of her head, the other low on her spine.

  And then yet a third person’s arms hugged her from behind.

  “Jane?” It was Shirl. “Baby, what’s the matter?”

  “Whatever it is, we got you,” Tess said.

  “I’ve got an extra taco. Do you want it?” This was from Peyton, and Jane lifted her head to find that the entire Cutler family had come out of the woodwork to check on her.

  The front door was still wide open, and from inside the house came the most delicious scent of Mexican food. She’d interrupted their dinner. She looked up and saw Hank waiting on the porch, clearly not wanting to crowd her. Peyton had a makeshift bib of a paper towel tucked into the neck of her sweater and a taco in one hand. Jasper was at her side, very gently and stealthily licking the taco shell.

  “I’m sorry.” Jane swiped at her eyes. “I didn’t mean to interrupt a family dinner.”

  “Honey, don’t you give it a second thought,” Shirl said. “Come inside, I’ve got food. And hot tea.”

  “Yes,” Tess said. “And I’ve got something to lace the tea with.”

  “For me too, Mommy?” Peyton asked.

  “No, but you can have a lollipop.”

  Levi looked at his mom and sister. There was a silent exchange, and then everyone nodded and went back inside except Levi. “We don’t have to go,” he said. “We can go somewhere else, anywhere you want, name it.”

  She sniffed. “The food smells good.”

  He smiled. “Here it is then. Talk, or food first?”

  She’d never be able to eat until she got this out. “Talk.”

  He offered her a hand, and together they walked inside. He pulled her through the crowd of his well-meaning family and up the stairs.

  Despite the mountains of paperwork on the desk, Levi’s clothes over the back of the couch, and Peyton’s toys strewn everywhere, the room felt warm and cozy. She sniffed again, trying to get ahold of herself. “You really are a slob like Tess said.”

  “Ha-ha.” He reached out and swiped everything from the couch with a single swoop of a hand. “Have a seat.”

  When she did, he came up with a box of tissues from somewhere and sat next to her, pulling her into his side. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  Right. Now she had to say it out loud. “At breakfast this morning, there was something off about my grandpa, but I couldn’t place it. Last night I’d asked him about his health and he told me he was fine. Promised me, even.” She gulped in some air. “But he’s not. He’s got cancer.” Just saying the words out loud had the horror bubbling up all over again. Her eyes filled. “I just found him again and he’s going to die.”

  “Oh, Jane.” He hugged her tight, his jaw resting on the top of her head as he rocked her a little bit, and for a moment, she sank into him and let his strength seep into her.

  “What kind of cancer?” he asked. “So many are curable, now more than ever.”

  “Yes, if the patient elects to seek treatment.” A little bitter about that, she climbed off of his lap and began to pace the room, not easy with everything on the floor. But Charlotte was right, she was angry, very angry, and that was okay because behind that was a grief she wasn’t ready to face. “It’s lung cancer. Apparently he was successfully treated two years ago, but it’s back and . . .” She swallowed hard. “He is refusing treatment this time. He’s just going to let himself die, without telling me. How could he not tell me? How could he look me in the eyes and promise me that everything was okay when he knew, dammit, he knew that nothing was okay and it wouldn’t ever be okay again.”

  Levi rose to his feet and stepped into her path.

  She lifted her face to his. “How?” she demanded.

  He ran his hands up her arms. “It’s complicated. You more than anyone knows that. You’re only just back in his life. It’s possible he just hasn’t worked up the nerve to tell you yet. Cancer isn’t exactly an easy thing to talk about, especially with someone you love.”

  “No.” She twisted away, turned her back on him and his empathy. “It’s exactly the thing you talk about to someone you love. In fact, it’s the first thing he should’ve told me. Like: ‘Hi, I’m so glad you’re back. You should know, though, that I’ve got cancer, but I love you enough to tell you the truth.’”

  “Jane—”

  “Stop.” Deep in her head somewhere past denial and anger, she knew she was being unreasonable—irrational, even. She knew there was never an easy way or a convenient time to talk about something like this, but she had thought when it came to her and her grandpa, their relationship was real this time. Clearly she’d gotten it wrong. Hell, maybe she was still nothing but an inconvenience. He certainly couldn’t possibly really love her “to the moon and back” if he’d kept such a huge, unforgivable secret.

  “This might have nothing to do with you or your relationship with him,” Levi said quietly. “This might just be about him, and, Jane, you may have to accept that.”

  “He still should’ve told me right away.” She hugged herself, staring out the window. “He knows I’m going to be gone again soon.”

  “Is it possible that he didn’t want to spend the last of his time with you talking about death and being sick, or defending his choice of treatment? That he just wanted to soak up every moment he could with you before you go?”

  There was a tightness to his voice, but she shook her head. “He chose no treatment. None. Zero. Zilch.”

  “Again, his choice.”

  Fueled by panic and anxiety and fury, she whirled on him. “Are you actually trying to defend his decision to me? There are treatments available, Levi. There is no defense for what he’s doing.”

  “I assume you’ve talked to him about this. Calmly. Rationally. No judgment.”

  She tossed up her hands. “Of course I haven’t. I came straight here.” She felt her eyes fill. “I’m just so mad at him,” she whispered. “So mad.”

  He nodded and came slowly toward her, making his way through the roadblocks without any trouble. “It’s understandable,” he said. “But it’s possible he made his choice before you were back in his life.”

  She stared at him as his words hit her like a one-two punch to the solar plexus. “So it’s my fault for not reaching out to him sooner?”

  “No, of course not. But I do think he might’ve made a different choice now—something you won’t know unless you talk to him.”

  She pressed the heels of her hands to her temples. “You don’t get it. His decision was made months and months ago, and cancer doesn’t waste time. There’s no going back and fixing this in the here and now.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Oh, Mr. Fix-It, but I do know it. I accessed his records, Levi. All of them.”

  He was toe-to-toe with her now, but not touching her, looking suddenly both incredulous and angry, and she’d like to know what he could possibly have to be angry about. She was the angry one, as was her right.

  “Let me make sure I understand,” he said carefully. “You said he seemed off. Then he told you he had cancer, and you pressed for more information and he showed you his medical records. Yes?”

  She looked away. “He did seem off. And I didn’t press him for answers because he wouldn’t have given them to me.”

  “So you, what, accessed them without permission, meaning you risked your entire nursing career, not to mention your license, to avoid a difficult conversation with your grandpa?”

  Shi
t. Well, when he put it like that . . . But her fuse had been lit, which meant rational thought and logic were backed up behind the huge ball of emotion in her throat. “Family matters more than any job,” she said. “Or at least it should. And you’re one to talk about avoiding a difficult conversation. You made up a pretend girlfriend!”

  “Guilty. And for the record, I stopped pretending a long time ago. As I told you, this”—he paused to gesture between them—“is real for me, Jane. Very real.”

  She sucked in a breath. She was never going to get used to that.

  Levi gave her a small, tight smile. “But clearly you haven’t gotten there yet.”

  “I haven’t let myself go there,” she corrected. Paused. “I do know you’re important to me, Levi. Very important.”

  “As important as your job? As important as your love of going far and wide without any tether longer than the length of your next contract?”

  “Work doesn’t factor into this.”

  “The hell it doesn’t. Work gives you an excuse to leave.”

  For a heart-stopping moment, she was eight years old again, too much trouble to keep, to fight for, to want. She’d fixed that, though, by always leaving first. “That’s not fair.”

  “No? You’re the one who, in the same sentence about your grandpa’s cancer, also talked about leaving Tahoe. How convenient for you to have a built-in escape route. But things change, Jane, and you could change with them. Because no one’s asking you to leave this time. You don’t have to take another contract. You could stay here and enjoy the time you have left with your grandpa.”

  She stared at him, trying to fight the rising panic she couldn’t explain. Maybe because he made it all sound so simple when it was anything but. Wasn’t it? “I’ve never lied to you. You’ve always known I was going to leave.”

  He looked . . . disappointed. Hurt. “You’re running away again, this time from people who really care about you, because you’re too afraid of getting hurt to even try and build a real relationship.”

  Is that what she was doing? Finding reasons to take off before she could be asked to leave? Holy shit. Abruptly, she sat down on the couch, ashamed and furious with herself. She didn’t know how to respond.

  Levi sat on the coffee table facing her.

  Still not touching her . . .

  The silence stretched where she didn’t say anything, could hardly even think over the blood pounding in her ears and the panic squeezing her throat. Panic, because this was it. She was going to lose her grandpa and Levi in one fell swoop because of the ever-present desperate need to run from anything that made her feel too much.

  “Jane, what do you want me to do here?”

  “I want you to do whatever you want,” she said dully.

  He nodded and stood. “All right.” He was clearly waiting for her to do something. Walk out, she realized, so she stood too, and without another word, did just that, without looking back. That was the trick, she reminded herself. Never look back.

  But for the first time, she wanted to.

  Chapter 28

  Levi heard the front door shut and felt it reverberate in his gut. Well, you screwed that up pretty good, didn’t you.

  He ran his hands through his hair and then asked himself why he wasn’t going after the best thing to ever happen to him. To hell with that, and he strode down the stairs and to the front door.

  Jane’s car was gone.

  Okay, so onto the gut-wrenching portion of the evening, apparently. He turned in a slow circle in the living room, wondering how in the world he was such an idiot when it came to women. And why had he ever made that stupid promise to not fall for her? He stopped when he realized the double doors leading to the kitchen were closed.

  They were never closed.

  He pushed them open and his entire family leapt away from the doors, trying to look busy. His mom was suddenly doing dishes, his dad reading his newspaper—upside down, which wasn’t a dead giveaway at all—and his sister was searching through a drawer looking for . . . he had no idea. He doubted she knew either. Only his niece was left standing suspiciously close to the wall next to the kitchen door.

  The eavesdropping wall.

  She gave him a guileless smile. “Hi! We had our ears to the wall listening to you and Jane upstairs. Grandma was using a glass cuz she said it carries sound better.”

  Levi cut his eyes to his mom, who had the good grace to grimace. “Kids,” she said. “They say the darnedest things.”

  “Why is Jane mad at you?” Peyton asked him. “Did you do something bad? Cuz you gotta ’pologize when you do something bad.”

  Ignoring the three guilty-looking adults in the room, Levi crouched before Peyton. “First, never change, okay?” He tugged her ponytail. “You’re perfect. And second, sometimes adults disagree, and that’s okay.” He rose to his feet and shook his head at the rest of his family. “You couldn’t give me ten minutes of privacy?”

  His dad snorted. “Son, you blew that whole thing up in under five.”

  Tess nodded her agreement. “I don’t even think one of your PowerPoints could have saved you.”

  “I’ve got this,” he said with a certainty he didn’t feel.

  Tess looked at her parents. “Please note that, in fact, he does not ‘got this.’”

  Levi shook his head and turned to his mom. “And you? The leader of the pack, the nosy instigator, you don’t have a smartass comment for me too?”

  “Ask is a bad word,” Peyton said.

  “Peyton’s right,” his mom said, nose in the air. “And anyway, the answer is no. I don’t have any comment for you because I’m not talking to you. You felt the need to make up a girlfriend. And then lied to me about it.”

  Levi tossed up his hands and walked out of the kitchen, no particular destination in mind as he was already in hell. And oh, goody, Mateo was walking in the front door. The guy took one look at Levi and his smile faded. “What happened?”

  “He just destroyed his relationship with Jane,” his mom said over Levi’s shoulder, having followed him from the kitchen.

  “Not quite true,” Tess said, coming in behind his mom. “Jane dumped him.”

  “Actually, what Jane said was that he could do whatever he wanted,” his mom said.

  Mateo shook his head. “Ah, man, when a woman says that, you do not do whatever you want. You stand still. You don’t blink, you don’t even breathe, you just play dead.”

  “Awesome,” Levi said. “That was super helpful, thanks.”

  His mom looked at Mateo. “Can you tell your best friend he’s an idiot?”

  “I think he already knows,” Mateo said.

  Levi sighed and turned to his mom. “I thought you weren’t speaking to me.”

  “I’m not!” She sighed. “Okay, yes, I am. I’m sorry you messed it up, Levi. So sorry. Are you okay?”

  Levi pressed his hand to his aching heart and shook his head. “I’ll let you know if I ever get sensation back in my soul. Not that I should let you know—my personal life shouldn’t be up for debate.”

  “Aw, sweetheart.” She cupped his face. “Who taught you that your personal life has to be separate from your family?”

  “Who do you think?”

  Sadness filled her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “You were just always so private that we tended to do whatever we had to in order to find out what was up with you. I can see now, with perfect twenty-twenty hindsight, that wasn’t always healthy for you. But in our defense, we just love you so much.”

  “I love you too, Mom, but you guys couldn’t even give me two minutes to process what just happened before you were breathing down my neck about where I went wrong. You think I don’t already know?”

  Looking stricken, she sucked in a breath. “You’re right, we should’ve given you time. We just didn’t want you to take so long that you missed out on something that made you so happy.” She drew a deep breath. “That night you called me from the gondola. It wasn’t to
tell me you had a girlfriend. It was to say goodbye, wasn’t it?”

  The regret was yet another bitter pill.

  “But you couldn’t do it,” she said. “You loved me so much that your last thoughts were of how to make me happy.” She pressed her hand to her chest. “Your heart’s in the right place. You meant well. I’m sorry that I ever made you feel like you had to be something you weren’t. I’m sorry you felt judged by us. I know we overreact to everything, but, Levi, you uprooted your life and moved away, and we miss you so much. So yes, when you come home, we go a little overboard. But it’s not because we want you to be someone you’re not. It’s not because we don’t love you. It’s because we can’t help ourselves.” And then she did it, she killed him dead when her eyes filled with tears.

  “Mom,” he whispered, reaching for her. “Don’t cry.”

  “I can’t help it. I want to go after Jane for you and fix this myself.”

  “Okay, but you won’t, right?”

  She both cried and huffed out a laugh against his chest, and he realized that while maybe his family didn’t always understand him, he’d never taken the time to understand them either. He never imagined that his moving away would bother them so much. At the time, he’d been desperate to find his own space, so much so that he’d unintentionally cut the people who loved him right out of his life.

  And wasn’t that what he just accused Jane of doing?

  Shit.

  Legs weak, he dropped onto the couch and realized everyone was giving him a moment, offering silent support. “I really am an idiot.”

  His mom started to open her mouth, but Tess gave her a subtle shake of her head and his mom pinched her mouth together.

  Progress, he supposed. Too bad he couldn’t appreciate it with the taste of failure swamping him. Why had he pushed Jane so hard? Why push a truth she hadn’t wanted to hear, making her face her past and inadvertently playing off her worst fear—being walked away from. She’d done the walking, but still. He’d definitely pushed her into it.

  He hated that, and at the moment, hated himself too. He needed to prove to her that it was real between them. “I made mistakes.”