“I can’t take care of you and take care of me,” he said.
“I’m not asking you to take care of me, Josh,” she said, sounding hurt.
Josh winced at her change in tone, but it was too late to go back. “You know what I mean. I’ve got a rough road ahead, and it’ll take all my physical strength just to make it. All my emotional strength is going to go toward helping my family get through it. Helping myself get through this. I won’t have anything left to give.”
I won’t have anything left to give you.
He left it unsaid, but he saw from the widening of her eyes and the fresh onslaught of tears forming in her green irises that she heard it anyway.
“Can you at least wait until you get the test results?” she asked, her voice so quiet and pleading it nearly broke him right then and there. “You may not even need to do this whole weird noble thing.”
“Even if the tests come back fine”—and they won’t—“I’ll always be sleeping with one eye open. My life is a solo journey, 4C. I need it to be. For me.”
“But why?”
Because when I die, that sure as hell is going to be a solo journey, too.
“Please understand, Heather.”
For long minutes they said nothing, and his heart twisted because he knew she was waiting. Giving him a chance to come to his senses and change his mind. To ask her to stay.
He didn’t.
He saw the moment she realized it. Her eyes shut down first, turning from vibrant green to shadowy moss. Then her lips, pressing together in the age-old tell of someone trying not to cry.
And then finally, lastly, her hand slipped away. Her fingers releasing his one by one, her palm sliding away from him until her hand was limply at her side. They were no longer touching.
Heather picked up her purse, sliding it onto her shoulder as she stared at him.
For one terrible minute, he was afraid that this was how it ended. With her hating him. And if she did, maybe that was okay. Maybe it was better.
But then she stepped forward, bending at the waist until her lips were near his ear. “I love you. I’ll always love you.”
She stepped back, holding his gaze for a heartbeat before she turned and walked out of the hospital room, out of his life.
He waited until he could no longer see her. Until he no longer heard the click of her boots on the squeaky clean hospital hallway.
Only then did he close his eyes and do what he hadn’t done once, not a single time since he’d first gotten his diagnosis all those years ago.
Josh Tanner cried.
Chapter Thirty-Two
HEY, TWINNY, HOW GOES the kissing disease?” Jamie asked, entering the hospital room just as Josh was buttoning up his shirt.
“Shut up,” he muttered.
“Strange,” she said, coming all the way into the room without knocking and plopping on the bed, just like she had countless times when they were kids. “I don’t recall Dr. Rios listing asshole as a symptom of mono . . .”
Mono.
He had fucking mononucleosis. As in the “kissing disease” that went around high schools and colleges like wildfire. Not his high school, apparently. Or if it had, he’d somehow escaped exposure and never developed an immunity.
“I’m glad though,” Jamie said quietly, her voice turning serious. “I’m so, so, so, so glad.”
Josh felt a tickle in his throat that he knew had nothing to do with the mono. Jesus, was he going to cry at everything now? He reached over and chucked his twin sister gently under the chin. “You and me both, kid.”
She held up a finger. “We’ve talked about this. Me being all of seven minutes younger doesn’t warrant the kid moniker.”
“I’m taking a free pass today.”
“Yeah, it’s been a rough one, huh?”
“I feel like a fool,” he said, dropping his hands to his sides after he finished with the last button.
“Because you let Heather walk away. No, I’m sorry . . . because you shoved Heather away.”
Pain tore through him at the reminder of what had transpired hours before. Hours? It felt like fucking days.
“Not about that,” he said gruffly. “I did what I had to do.”
“Hate to tell you, but I think she’s already been exposed to your kissing disease,” Jamie said, deliberately misunderstanding him.