“I’ve taken you away from Lilith.”
“Their daughter is coming to stay for a while. Maybe until I get home.”
“So how long do I have you?”
The knot tightened even more.
“As long as you need me.”
*
AJ needed her. How long he needed her was the question that had a grave answer. Forever. Unfortunately, AJ’s forever had a finite number of days compared to most other people. He loved his parents and even the newfound friendship he’d made with Brooke—an amends of sorts. The only reprieve from thinking non-stop about Jillian came with a weekend visit from Cage. He loved that boy. He loved him so damn much.
His parents took him to his doctor appointments, fed him, washed his laundry, and encouraged him in his dark times that had become more frequent as the effects of the radiation began to set in. Yet he started to resent their presence in his life because it all came at a cost and Jillian was that cost.
“You’re not eating enough.” She gave him her best evil glare as he poked around at his plate of room service food: grilled salmon, broccoli, and a twice-baked potato. “You only ate a dry piece of toast and a hard-boiled egg for breakfast.”
“You ordered everything on the menu.”
Jillian shrugged as she slurped in a long piece of spaghetti. “You were asleep and I didn’t want to wake you to see what you wanted.”
“I haven’t had an appetite worth shit for weeks.”
“Clearly.” She gave him the once-over look.
“Sorry.” He frowned at his barely-touched plate of food. “I’m not a great dinner date yet.”
“No worries.” She held up one of the paper napkins. “It’s not a real date anyway.”
AJ shook his head. “You’re impossible. I can’t believe with all the meals we’ve shared that none of them have qualified as a date because of the stupid napkin not meeting your standards.”
“Well, a girl’s gotta have standards.”
“You don’t see how ridiculous it is that your napkin standards exceed your dress-code standards for getting the mail?”
She sucked in the last piece of pasta then licked her lips. “I’ll have you know, I’ve been wearing more clothes lately to get the mail.”
“Because it’s colder outside. Right?”
A smirk stole her attempt to come across as a changed woman. “Maybe.”
AJ went to stand then grabbed his head, eyes squeezed tight.
“You’re in pain.”
“No.” His seething response contradicted the “no.”
Jillian riffled through his backpack, the only thing he brought with him. “These?” She held up a prescription bottle.
He peeked through his squint. “Yes.”
She handed him two and his water. “You only have four left. Maybe you should call your doctor’s office and see if they can call in a refill.”
AJ shook his head, swallowing the last of the water. “Something tells me when a cancer patient goes MIA, doctors don’t continue to offer up drugs.”
“You didn’t finish treatment?”
“Two weeks left. Close enough.”
“Jesus! You put in all that time and misery to quit two weeks before the finish.”
“Finish?” He laughed through the pain. “When they, as you put it, ‘fry my brain,’ I’m not sure there is a finish.”
“So now what?” Jillian moved their plates to the tray by the door.
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
Disbelief echoed in her sarcastic laugh. “What do I think? I think I let you go, gave you back to your family so they could be with you for as long as you had left. I think my whole fucking life has been an epic tale of bad timing.” Plunking down on the bed, she sighed. “I’m not going to lie. I wanted to use you. You triggered something in me and I couldn’t think about anything else. I wanted to make you bleed and suffer. The need to conquer you consumed me. There was something so cathartic about the fight for control.”
“But?”
Jillian shook her head. “But I’m not a monster anymore, even though I’ve done some things in my life that are unforgivable. I have this human side that still feels, and most of the time I hate those feelings that make me so vulnerable.”
Luke would have been proud of those words and that realization kept her talking.
“When we met, I saw someone in you … someone I hated.” Someone she murdered. “But then I saw someone else and everything changed.”
AJ held out his hand and Jillian took it, straddling his lap. “Who did you see?”
Brushing the pad of her thumb over his naked brow followed by the burn marks on his head, she shared a sad smile. “Me. Beneath your hardened exterior and need for self-preservation, I saw a painful vulnerability—one that you would never show. Some days when I look at you it feels like I’m seeing my reflection.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Jackson may have missed his calling. Playing music required one special gift, writing it encompassed a whole new level of talent. Of course, he could do both and made it look effortless. Playing meant he was in a jovial mood, composing happened only when he needed to completely forget about life. Ryn showed up unannounced on that particular forget-about-life day.