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And for the first time since I’ve known him, they hold a new emotion.

Fear.

Blood-freezing, bone-crushing, mind-stopping fear.

For everything.

For all the tomorrows after that.

“Vita.” His voice breaks.

Just one word.

But it’s enough.

Enough to shatter something inside me.

Because Damiano is always brave.

Always.

And suddenly he isn’t.

He turns to the doctor. “Tell me what happens next,” he says quietly.

The doctor takes a breath. “We start treatment immediately.”

And just like that, our old life ends.

We tell our families and they immediately form a circle around us.

The kind where people get to work, no questions asked.

My mother and Chiara spend two days deep cleaning our entire home because we’ve been warned that Damiano’s immune system is about to become fragile and something as simple as an infection could become dangerous.

His parents take over everything else. Groceries, paperwork, insurance forms, phone calls, ordering all the things he’ll need when he’s allowed to come home between treatments. Masks, thermometers, disinfectant and a hundred things I never knew we’d need. Nobody asks if we need help. They simply show up and do it.

Even the Hawthornes start sending us food deliveries and flowers. Jude calls every single day, and every time he does, he tells us he should come and help, but Damiano shakes his head. “You hate traveling and I know the ranch needs you. You take care of my ranch. That is helping me.”

So Jude does that.

And somehow that makes it easier to breathe.

Because while the world is falling apart around us, the people who love us quietly step in and start holding pieces of it together.

Holding me together too.

Before AML, I measured time in birthdays, holidays and anniversaries. Now, I measure it in blood counts, platelets, white cells and hemoglobin. In good days and bad ones.

The first round of chemotherapy is brutal.

I walk into his hospital room on the second day carrying coffee and a bag full of things he won’t use. A book, his favorite snacks, fresh socks.

Hope and a manufactured smile.

I find him hunched over the side of the bed, a thick white paste coating his chapped lips and tongue. His skin is gray, his eyes unfocused and missing their usual spark, and for one terrifying second, I stop breathing.

I can’t do this…