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Wolf’s tongue eased over his lips. He was squeezing me now, my shoulders in a firm grip in his hands. “It came back, Red.”
It. Came. Back. Red.
I think I was only above water because he was holding me now, and if he let go, I would have fallen. He said he had cancer. And for months? I faced him. “Did it happen after us?”
I didn’t know why I asked that. I think it was shock and wondering how long he’d actually known. If all this had happened, and he’d kept quiet about it during the holidays.
If he’d kept me in the dark that long.
No sooner had I asked the question than Wolf gazed away. His hands slid up and down my freckled arms, and the air puffed out in gasps again. “Wolf—”
“It was before us,” he said, cringing, and my mouth dried. My throat dried. His jaw moved. “I found out shortly before.”
I really didn’t understand now. I didn’t fucking understand. I shook my head. “So the fake relationship? Helping your family?” My words quivered, my throat thick. “This really was for them?”
I didn’t understand in what way, but it had to have been. He’d said back then that he wanted the relationship to help them, and he hadn’t been talking during that time like they knew.
They didn’t know.
No, they couldn’t possibly have. I’d been with his family and friends only weeks ago. I’d seen them, and they’d only laughed during the holidays. They’d been joyful, and the few times there had been tension surrounded when they’d found out about the fake relationship and what Wolf had done to me.
They didn’t know.
There was no way he’d told them about all this. If he had, I would have seen it. I’d never been around a family before when someone had a serious illness, but that topic would have come up. They would have asked about Wolf and made sure he was okay and doing well.
Why hasn’t he told them?
Why hadn’t he told me and what was all this? Wolf swallowed. “I knew things were about to change, yes, and I guess I was buying time.” He scanned away. “They needed a distraction.”
A distraction.
My heart broke again, and at this point, the pieces couldn’t be swept up. They were too fine, microscopic.
I was the distraction.
What was crazy was I couldn’t even be mad at him. I wanted to be. God, how I did, but who could have known this would have happened between us? Who could have known us could have happened?
God.
I rubbed at my chest. Something had happened between us. Something so deep. I scanned his eyes. “How much pain are you in?”
We’d made love tonight. We’d made fucking love, and let’s not even talk about all the things I’d had him doing tonight. He’d been carrying my stuff, and I’d been commanding him around. He’d taken every direction and hadn’t said a fucking thing, and then there were all the times we’d been intimate before tonight. He hadn’t looked stiff back then, but he had tonight.
He had tonight.
I felt so fucking ill. Like someone was carving me with a dull knife, and as if Wolf knew all the thoughts whirling around in my head, he made me focus on him. His hand went to my cheek, which was apparently wet. I knew because his thumb slid down a trail of tears.
“I don’t want you to concern yourself with that, okay?” he stated, and a sound left my lips. It was something between a croak and a cry. He was in pain. He had to be.
I wondered for how long.
I wondered how long he’d suffered. Had it been way back when he’d first found out? Maybe it had been to some degree, and if there had been pain, he’d clearly been hiding it back then like he was now.
“How bad is it?” I didn’t know how I managed to ask the question. My insides were breaking so fucking bad. “Wolf, how bad is your condition?”
He didn’t look like he wanted to answer the question and didn’t at first. No, he wasn’t running away from this. He couldn’t. Fucking no.
“Ares, how bad is it goddamnit!” My voice shook the walls, the only sound in this room besides my labored breathing. I was trying so hard to keep it together, but I was failing.
