I couldn’t lose Mom. She was everything to me and to so many other people. She kept us all glued together. Without her, our family would completely fall apart.

Mom cleared her throat. “Listen, Lexa. I don’t want you to tell your brother or your uncles about this. Jet knows, and so does Spider. But the others don’t. I want to wait until we have all the results back before we tell everyone else. Okay?”

Scrubbing my hands over my face, I pulled away from her enough to nod. “Yeah. I won’t tell anyone. I promise.”

???

My eyes felt swollen but oddly dry as I climbed into bed an hour later. It was still fairly early, but I couldn’t be around the others tonight and not cry.

I couldn’t just sit around and do nothing, though. I needed to make plans. Mom was sick, and there was no damn way I was just going to leave again at the end of the summer. Anonymity at Oregon had been nice, but I was needed at home.

Getting my laptop out of my backpack, I enrolled online at the local university to start the ball rolling. Mom had been dropping hints she wanted me to move back home for months, but I knew she wouldn’t let me quit college. She hadn’t gone herself, but she wanted me to.

After taking care of that, I started searching for all the information I could on cervical cancer and its treatment.

I was neck-deep in WebMD hell when my phone rang. Still reading, despite my vision going blurry from my latest fight with tears from what I was taking in, I lifted my phone without looking away from the computer screen. “Hello?” I

rasped out, sniffling before wiping my nose on one of the many tissues already crumpled around me.

“Lexa?” Ben’s voice was all growly, and oddly, the sound of it eased some of the pressure around my heart I’d been feeling since Mom dropped her bombshell on me.

“H-hey,” I hiccupped. “Hold on a sec, okay?” Without waiting for him to reply, I dropped the phone on the bed beside me and grabbed a fresh tissue to blow my nose.

When I picked it up again, he was already talking. “Did you make it home okay?”

“I’m home.” Closing my laptop, I pushed it to the foot of the bed, then fell back against my pillows. Grabbing the extra one, I pulled it to my chest and hugged it as tight as I could.

“What’s wrong, baby?”

Closing my eyes, I wanted to tell him everything, but I’d promised Mom I wouldn’t tell anyone. Ben was an outsider, so I couldn’t tell him even if she hadn’t asked me not to. “Just family drama,” I told him instead, and the ache around my heart intensified.

“Lexa,” he groaned. “I wish you would tell me. I can hear how upset you are in your voice, beautiful.”

“I…can’t,” I told him honestly. “My mom asked me not to tell anyone, and I’d never break a promise to her.”

“Yeah, okay. I get it.” He blew out a tired sigh. “Whatever it is, though, I’m here if you need me.”

Tears fell from my eyes again, and I scrubbed at them. “Thank you,” I whispered.

“I wish I was there so I could hold you.”

Me too.

Clearing my throat, I changed the subject. “What are you doing right now?”

“Sitting in my living room, missing you.”

“You just saw me two hours ago,” I reminded him, a smile teasing at my lips despite all the pressure trying to cave in my chest.

“I started missing you as soon as your car backed away from the deli earlier.” I heard him shifting and then swallowing, and I imagined him with his feet up on a coffee table, a beer in his hand…

His shirt off and in nothing more than a pair of boxers with his hair wet from a shower.

Need burned through me at the mental picture I was creating, and I had to squeeze my thighs together to alleviate some of the tension building there.

When I opened my eyes again, I glanced down at the ragged old T-shirt and sweats I’d changed into after my own shower earlier. There was nothing exciting or the least bit sexy about my typical pajamas, and I wanted to be both those things for him.

“Beautiful? You still there?”

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