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“And even if I hadn’t, I won’t be your problem,” he said now, and this was the first time I heard something in his voice. I’d been the one who was a mess this whole time, but his deep tone definitely cracked in that moment. It wavered, strained. His forehead touched mine. “I want you to live your life and not worry about me.”
He really was doing this, again, he was doing this. “Why don’t you let me decide that?”
It wasn’t fair what he was doing, and he was making me want to hate him again. It was impossible, because even without his cancer, I couldn’t hate him. He’d made me love him too hard, too deep.
“Because if I can do one thing for you, it’s to keep you out of this,” he said, my heart shattering all over again. His eyes closed. “You never should have been a part of it, and for that, Fawn, I’m sorry.”
My shoulders shook, my body racked with sobs. I wasn’t even holding it back anymore, and Wolf was barely keeping it together himself. His eyes clenched tight, his hands bracing me. “I wronged you so badly, Fawn Greenfield. You never should have been a part of my life. I brought you in selfishly, and now, fucking now…” He kissed my forehead. “Now, I’m saving you from this. The next few months of my life are going to be fucked, and I can’t have you be a part of it. I fucking can’t.”
He didn’t need to save me. I was strong, and he knew that.
He knew that.
Even still, he wasn’t giving me the option. He got up from the tub, and I saw how agonizingly slow he did this. Slow like he was truly in pain.
So slow.
I really should have known, but none of us knew. He did it too well. Fooled us all. “Why doesn’t your family know yet?”
This was a guess, but the signs of that were there too. It was true, and he couldn’t possibly do whatever was next on his own, by himself?
Wolf stopped walking, but he didn’t face me. He simply gripped the doorframe. His back was on display as well as that beautiful art. He probably didn’t do much of his art anymore. He’d said his cancer had messed up his hands in the past.
It made my heart rip apart in new ways. How much he’d lost. How much he was losing…
“Just be happy, okay? Do that for me. Be happy,” he said, and that strain in his voice made me grab my mouth. I would have audibly sobbed if I didn’t. I would have broken down worse than I already was. Instead, I waited until he left the room.
I couldn’t remember when I stopped.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Ares
“Eh, Wolf?”
I turned on the couch, Thatcher’s voice behind me. He came over with Wells to play video games with Dorian and me at our dorm. They did this all the time. I mean, they lived across the hall, so we were always in and out of each other’s dorms. Eventually, we all planned to get a house together.
That’d been the plan.
Plans were different these days for me. In fact, there was no plan. There was reality and how I aimed to handle it. There was death and there was life.
There was life and then there was death.
I’d made a choice a long time ago that I’d do anything I could to make my family happy. That I’d take on any burden so they wouldn’t have to. This became especially important after everything I’d put my family through in the past. I’d get stronger, braver, and I’d done that every day since I’d decided. I wasn’t weak, and I handled my own shit. I wasn’t anyone’s burden and refused to be.
Refused.
Today, I was supposed to break that promise. I asked the guys over to talk to them. This would be the icebreaker that would lead into discussing everything regarding my health with everyone. I needed my boys and had even left my sister out of this. I’d made sure she wasn’t here today when I asked them over, not ready…
I needed the guys’ strength and their bravery today, but here I sat on the couch. I wasn’t even playing videos games. I just watched.
I was weak.
My strength had left me after speaking to Red. That shit broke me and severely. I had nothing left after that. All that fight I had in me… the wolf persona I’d fought so hard to create had shattered after only one day with Fawn Greenfield. Being with her had destroyed it all and annihilated the last strength I had to talk to the guys. I’d had to hurt her again and that shit ruined me.
And wrecked her.
I wondered if it was possible to be whole again after that. If she’d be whole, but the only way she had a chance was far away from me. I’d told her what she needed to know. I’d used her and let her know that.
