With him, I remind myself, I don’t need to pretend.
He follows silently just behind me as I make my way toward the sliding glass doors.
Nila, the receptionist, waves at me from behind her desk at the intake counter.“Hey, Chloe.Take a seat and Dr.Rhea will be right with you.”
I swipe my hands down my skirt, but the clamminess remains.Ethan sits next to me, one foot thrown over his knee, his arm across the back of my chair, looking as steady as ever.
“You don’t have to do this,” I say.
His eyes don’t leave mine.“Maybe I want to.”
“Why?”
Something deepens in his gaze, but before he can answer, the nurse calls me back into the room.I stand, take a deep breath, and?—
Ethan grabs my hand, giving my fingers a squeeze.
I steal some of his strength before letting his hand fall and following the nurse through the door.
CHAPTERTWENTY-SEVEN
ETHAN
This waiting roomis too damn small.Small and hot...like being trapped in a subway station elevator.
I snatch the fashion magazine off the side table and wave it in front of my face to stir up some air, ignoring the billion viruses I’m probably blasting all over me.
Really not my biggest problem right now.
What’s taking so long?Chloe said it would be a “fast appointment.”Why hasn’t she come out yet?What if she’s being told right now that her skin cancer has come back?
I lean forward to stare at the closed door she went through and the chair creaks under me.My elbows dig into my thighs, my hands locked together so tight that my knuckles ache.
It’s been twenty minutes.
If the spot on Chloe’s arm was nothing, she’d already be out.Right?
Shit.
I get up and start pacing the room.
The receptionist glances at me, parading back and forth in front of her, as sheclick-click-clicksher fingers against the keyboard, the sparkles on her two-inch long pink nails winking at me from here.
I flop back onto the plastic chair, dragging a hand down my face as I close my eyes.
And all of a sudden, I’m not here at all.
I’m in my truck.
The June sun was beating down through the windshield, the muted horns of cars and buses choking down the streets outside.
Five minutes of rest… that was all I wanted.
I’d been working fourteen-hour days for weeks, with so many delays and screw-ups on the apartment building job.Every corner that my boss could cut, he had.My brain felt like the wet cement that I’d yelled at one of the cubs about the day before, after he’d walked across it too soon.
The pounding on the window jerked me awake.
Georgia, one of our site workers, looked like she’d seen a fucking ghost.
