She has cancer.
She has CANCER.
And Jesus Christ, I feel like a total asshole but I can’t do this. I just can’t do it. I can’t sit by and watch someone else that I love suffer. Can’t sit by and watch her die. If that happens, I’ll be shattered, broken into so many pieces that not even Z and Luc and Cam could put me together again.
And I can’t do that. I can’t break like that. Not when Logan needs me the way that he does. Not when I’m barely holding things together as it is.
Cancer. Tansy has CANCER.
The words are a litany in my head, a mantra in my soul and they’re growing louder and louder and louder, until they’re all I can hear. All I can think about. Until they’re all that I am.
How much worse must it be for her? How much more terrible must she feel, knowing that her body is betraying her? That there’s something inside of her that is slowly, inexorably destroying her?
It makes me crazy to think about it, so I don’t. Instead, I sit here, staring at her and trying to find the words to make better what happened in that hotel room. The words that will make this entire situation better.
But there are no words, because there is nothing that will ever make this better. Nothing except Tansy being cured and healthy and happy. And judging from her glazed, feverish eyes, that isn’t going to happen anytime soon.
The pilot comes on to tell us that we’re starting our descent, and asks everyone to buckle their seat belts. I make sure Logan—who is asleep—is buckled in, then start to do up my own seat belt. But I realize Tansy hasn’t moved from where she’s sitting cross-legged on the couch. I don’t think she even heard the announcement.
I get out of my chair, kneel in front of her and reach for her seat belt. My knuckles brush against her while I’m fastening it and she’s so hot. So goddamned hot. It scares me almost as much as her rapid breathing, almost as much as the glazed look in her eyes.
“We’re almost home,” I tell her softly, running my hand over her hair because I can’t not do it.
She jolts a little at the contact, her gaze clearing as she stares up at me out of wide, pained eyes. “Ash?” she whispers, and there are so many things in that one syllable, so many emotions and hopes and fears in the sound of my name on her lips, that I’m nearly crushed under the weight of them all.
“It’s going to be okay,” I tell her, though I don’t believe it even as I say the words. Nothing is okay. Nothing is ever going to be okay. That’s not how my world works.
The momentary brightness in her gaze fades and she sinks back against the couch. Closes her eyes. And doesn’t move again until we land in Salt Lake City.
The flight attendant opens the door and we all clamber for the front of the plane. Logan still isn’t talking to me, so I ask Luc to get him—which he does, no problem—and I reach down and scoop Tansy into my arms.
“What are you doing?” she demands, struggling against me. “I can walk! I’m fine.”
“I know,” I murmur in her ear, trying to ignore how good she smells. How right she feels in my arms. “But indulge me. Let me get you to the limo safely.”
Except, when we get onto the tarmac, it’s not the limo she wants me to take her to. It’s the red SUV parked next to it.
“My parents are here,” she tells me as a woman who looks an awful lot like Tansy comes rushing forward, along with a tall man with wide shoulders and eyes the same color as my girl’s.
As Tansy’s, I correct myself viciously. She’s not my girl. She was never my girl. Never meant to be my girl. I need to remind myself of that.
“Tansy! Oh my God, is she all right?” The woman, who I assume is her mother, stops short as she gets to me.
“I’m fine, Mom!” Tansy struggles out of my arms. “Ash is just … being an ass.”
I’m not sure what that means, but Z comes up with her luggage a minute later and I don’t have time to ask. Not that I would anyway.
“Oh, Tansy, sweetheart, you really are burning up.” Her mother presses a kiss into her forehead. “Get into the SUV before you catch a chill.”
Tansy rolls her eyes at her mother. “It’s eighty-five degrees out, Mom. I think I’m good.”
“Humor me,” her mother answers as Z loads her suitcase and overnight bag into the cargo space.
“Thank you for taking care of Tansy,” her father says to Z and me as Tansy’s mother walks her to the car, fussing over her the whole way.
“No problem. Is she …” I don’t want to ask if she’s going to be all right, because that seems ridiculous considering how sick she might be. But at the same time, I’m not okay just leaving things like this. Just watching her drive away into the sunset.
I hadn’t really given this part of things much thought, but I guess if I had to say what I imagined happening, it wouldn’t be this. I thought I’d go to the hospital with Tansy, make sure she was all right. But her parents are here and they obviously know what they’re doing and it’s just as obvious that she doesn’t need me with her. Doesn’t want me with her. Otherwise, she’d say something to me, right? She’d at least look at me as her mother gets her into the front seat of the SUV.