Hating You, Loving You (Inked Hearts 4)

"The results usually take a few days, but I can have the lab fast track it. So it's only a few hours."

"Thank you."

He says something in response, but I don't hear a word of it.

I end the call and slide my cell into my pocket.

Footsteps move into the main room.

They come closer.

Then Dean's fingers are brushing my shoulder.

And his chest is against my back.

And his words are in my ears.

"Everything okay, sunshine?"

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chloe

It's such a funny question.

Is everything okay?

I spent the better part of a year coming to terms with the possibility of dying. Hell, after two weeks of chemo, it didn't seem like such a bad option. Certainly better than another round of the treatment that killed me from the outside. At least, if cancer took my life, I wouldn't go out feeling like I was dying. At least, not until the very end.

But things turned around. The tumor shrunk. The double mastectomy was successful. The disease didn't spread past my chest wall (pretty much a death sentence).

I was glad to be done with injecting poison into my veins and struggling through surgical recovery and waiting around in dull hospital rooms.

But I didn't know how to be alive anymore. I didn't know how to face my future. I had no idea what to do with the world of possibilities that opened up in front of me.

For so long, my only choice was what to watch on TV, which frozen dinner to eat, spending my energy on drawing or meeting Gia for coffee.

All of a sudden, I could do anything.

It paralyzed me for a while. I was stiff and awkward amongst the healthy. But I figured it out, bit by bit. I went to aikido. I swam laps at the gym. I took figure drawing classes and got new tattoos and begged artists to consider training me.

And then Dean came back into my life and he opened up everything.

My world, my body, my heart.

I thought I was okay with this possibility.

With him sticking by my side no matter what.

I thought I needed that.

No, I do.

But I can't do it to him.

I can't be the weight around his neck.

I know what it feels like, watching someone you love die. Wanting, more than anything, to save them, but knowing there's nothing you can do.