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“Hey,” I said. “Did you make it home?”
“I made it to the circus,” she said. “I can’t believe I’m driving in Dallas traffic. I put my life and our unborn son’s life at risk every time I merge onto 635.”
I winced.
She wasn’t lying about 635. It was a fucking shit show.
And the fact that they were doing fucking construction 100% of the time all along it didn’t help matters.
“True enough,” I said. “You’re going to send me a video?”
Was that too much eagerness I heard in my voice?
Probably.
“I’m just going to let you watch. I’ll leave it on while I work,” she answered. “Do your reading. Look at me whenever you want.”
Then she did just that.
But I got no more reading done, because I was so damn mesmerized by her.
“Damn, she’s bendy,” Hoyt said, looking at the screen of my iPad.
“Shh,” I said. “You’re ruining it.”
Hoyt chuckled. “Fuckin’ perv.”
• • •
Chemo Round 3
This was seriously getting old.
I hated going to treatments.
I hated even more that I had to spend the next four days throwing up and being a burden.
But at least the last couple I got to be the caregiver for Zip and not the other way around.
“How’s your wife doing?”
Wife.
Three days ago, we’d gotten married at the courthouse so my mom could attend.
My mom who was doing so badly that her last dying wish was to see me married.
So that was what we did less than a week ago.
I was sure that Hoyt had let it slip since he was up here quite a bit seeing patients.
“She’s doing better. She got over that food poisoning yesterday, but it was a sketchy three days because she couldn’t keep anything down, and her sciatic nerve would shoot pains down both of her legs each time she heaved.” I shook my head.
“Oh!” she said. “Does she have a pillow?”
“Pillow?”
“Yeah, one of those pregnancy pillows,” she answered. “When I was pregnant with my second, I had really bad sciatic nerve pain. It went away after I got the pillow. It was how I was sleeping at night. I was all cocked weird, and I would wake up in the worst pain. It also helped when I got a really great mattress.”
The mattress at my parents’ place was still the same one I’d had when I was a kid.
I never thought to change it, but now that I thought about it, it was rather uncomfortable.
And, half the time, Zip would be sleeping in a chair so she didn’t accidentally get thrown up on.
Dammit, man.
“Oh,” I said. “What kind of pillow is it?”
So that was what I was doing during chemo today.
I bought a mattress, a pregnancy pillow, and sheets.
Because an Alaskan king was fucking huge, and regular sheets didn’t fit on it.
My phone rang about halfway through my purchases, and I talked with Zip for a few short minutes before she went to hang out with her family.
At that point, we knew she had to be occupied, and it was decided before I left that her sisters would come to take her out to breakfast.
That didn’t stop her from worrying, though.
I got three more calls before Tyson arrived to take me home.
God, I loved her.
• • •
Chemo round 4
“Fuck this place.”
I hated it, too.
“Are you sure that you don’t want me to sit in the waiting room?” she asked.
I gave her a look. “Go to that coffee shop down the street. Get a hot chocolate. I’ll text when I’m almost done.”
She harrumphed, and it was so cute that I couldn’t stop myself from pulling her forward for a kiss. “Now hop over here, baby. I love you.”
She didn’t hop as well as she could a few months ago, but it was still amusing to watch her finagle her pregnant self over the middle console into the driver’s seat.
“Jesus,” she panted as she leaned back against the seat. “That was a workout.”
I snorted. “You literally can do thirty-five unbroken strict pull-ups. You went to work out today at the gym, and you’re complaining about crawling over a middle console?”
My teasing made her roll her eyes. “I’m tired. I’m growing a baby here, man.”
I patted my baby and was rewarded with a kick.
“How’s my baby doing?” I asked, pressing in.
The baby didn’t like that and showed me with a swift kick of his foot.
“Keeping me up when I want to sleep,” she reminded me.
I grinned. “Just preparing us for the inevitable, sweetheart. Love you.”
She leaned forward and pressed her lips to mine, then pulled away.
I closed the door and walked into my own personal hell.
• • •
Chemo round 5
She was doing downward dog on the bed, and I reached out and smoothed my hand over her ample backside.
“Hey, none of that,” she teased.
We hadn’t had sex in so long I couldn’t remember what it felt like.
In the time since she’d come back, every single thing that could go wrong, had gone wrong.
