“Why are you telling me all this now?” she finally squeaked. “Why didn’t you tell me months ago?”
I shook my head, scrubbed a hand over my face. “I should have done everything the opposite of what I did. I know that’s small comfort now. I can’t get Heath’s words out of my mind—that I’ve handed you a death sentence…” My voice cut out, the words dropping like rocks in my throat.
She pushed off from the door, and came to me, crying again. She placed a hand on both cheeks and pulled my face down to look into hers. “You are not to blame for this. Okay? I should have told you about the diagnosis. I should have been more flexible—about everything. But I was scared, too. Of losing myself in you. That if I gave up completely on the goals I’d had before us, I was somehow betraying the person I was before. But you are right. We were an ‘us.’ It was no longer just about ‘me.’”
I wrapped my arms around her waist and pulled her to me. “I promise you can go anywhere you want to for school. I won’t say a word about it. Even if you want to go to Germany, I’ll follow you there—or anywhere. I’d freeze my ass off in Alaska or bake in the Sahara or wherever. I will be wherever you go. But you have to promise me that you’ll fight this, goddamn it.”
“I’m so lost, Adam. I don’t know what to do.”
That made two of us. Her head fell against my chest and she was crying again, into my shirt. I kissed her hair, swallowed that emotion that was rising up again. “The first thing you have to do is sleep, because you haven’t had any in a long time.”
The minutes stretched out until she gained some composure, then slowly I slipped her backpack off her shoulders. She didn’t resist, leaning heavily against me. “Come on…”
“I couldn’t sleep all night.”
“I’m here now. You can sleep, okay? I’ll even hold you as tight as you want.”
We went back into her room and I quickly cleared the bed of things she’d left there in her frenzy of packing. She slipped off her shoes and her jeans and all but collapsed into the bed. I pulled her comforter over her and smoothed her hair back from her face. “Why the white hair?”
She blinked lazily. “I figured it was all going to fall out anyway, so I wanted to see what I’d look like as a blonde first.”
A fist of emotion gripped me at the thought of her going through chemotherapy. I looked away, blinking. Was it going to happen now? This decision was completely out of my hands. It was her body. But I was terrified she was going to make the choice I couldn’t bear for her to make.
I bent down and kissed her brow. “You’d look amazing with green hair, or yellow or purple. But I like the original color best,” I said.
She smiled. “Hmm. That’s an idea…maybe green next week.”
“One day at a time, okay? Get some sleep. I’ll stay here with you if you want.”
She rolled over on her side facing the wall, just as she’d done that night after Heath and I had come home from the pub. I climbed onto her narrow twin bed, gathered her in my arms and held her tight. “You were in so much pain and I never knew. And I bitched about a couple fucking headaches.”
She reached up and put a hand on my cheek. “Shh. Let’s make each other a promise okay? No recriminations, self or otherwise. We’ve both made a lot of mistakes. But we’re smart people. We’ll learn from them.”
God, I hoped so.
She was quiet for a long moment, then she took a deep breath. “Tighter,” she whispered and she pressed her back and legs flush up against me. “I love you,” she breathed.
“I know,” I answered, wrapping her in my arms and squeezing tight.
“Your arms around me…the prescription for all that ails me.”
God, how I wished that was the case.
“They’ll always be here whenever you need them,” I whispered.
She relaxed in my arms. “I’ve been scared constantly, every single day since this happened. The only times I wasn’t were the times when you held me. It was the only time I felt like everything would be all right.”
I pressed my lips to her temple. “Sleep, my sweet Mia. I’ll be here to hold you.”
My heartbeat drummed against her back. With each thud, I heard the question, what the hell are we going to do? What in God’s name were we going to do? The question spread over me, like a thick blanket, threatening to suffocate me. I could feel the panic rising again inside of me. I had no control and I despised this feeling.