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Or that she did.
He was darker against the whitewashed walls of the hospital. His eyes were red and livid, and he looked very lonely, and very big, and very capable of protecting her from everything.
Everything but this.
And then she became acutely aware of her position, her body spread on the bed, about to be cut open, her scalp bare and hairless …
“No,” she gasped. Panic gripped her, and for the first time, she loathed her body, she loathed her life, she loathed this cancer, she loathed him.
“No. No. Look away, Cade. Look away.”
He took a step forward even as a nurse came to the door, her eyes wide.
“I don’t want him to see me like this!” she cried to the nurse. “Please get him out out out, oh, God, please get him out!”
She’d been saving her t
ears. Tears for when they told her she’d lost this battle. But instead, she found that she couldn’t hold them back, started feeling tiny tears tracking down her cheeks, followed by a line that wouldn’t stop, and when Cade came to her and pressed his jaw against her forehead, cupping her face in his hands so she could feel all his fingers spread over her shaved head, and when she felt his warm breath as he tried to kiss her lips she wanted to die. To die.
She could barely speak through her sobs. “Please … go … away…” She futilely struggled against his grip, turning her head away from his hands, his kiss. Him.
Oh, God! How could Cade ever want her now? How could he ever look at her with lust and desire now? When she was half a woman, half alive, torn in half inside?
“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
Ivy’s sobs were so uncontrollable, she couldn’t even hug herself, her arms trembled at her sides, every part of her body trembled. I’m sorry, she wanted to say. The words rushed through her mind because she’d been unfair to him and she never expected him to find this out—and if she did make it she thought she would just tell him they were not working and she would disappear from his life. I wanted something before I did this. I never thought to hurt you. You don’t care about anything, why would you care about me. Nobody should have to live through this once, much less twice …
And then the nurse came back with something injected into the IV, and Ivy soon didn’t think anything at all.
* * *
Cade paced outside in the waiting room, his guts ripped to shreds. He’d hit a wall down in the hall, and now his knuckles were bleeding … leaving a trail of blood under his feet. He didn’t even feel pain. He could cut off a limb and not feel pain … for his pain was centered deep, so fucking deep inside him, he was already dying a slow death.
He’d let down his guard with Ivy. Forgotten that he wasn’t a deserving man. Forgotten how easy it was to wish to be dead. No, he’d seen her and wanted her, wanted to be better for her. He’d thought he could be healed, he could pretend that, with her, his life could be normal like the rest of them. Pretend he could be happy with her.
But how could he? He was broken and he couldn’t make her right.
Nothing could make Ivy right.
A cramp gathered in his chest at the thought of the ways he’d taken her, the ways he had insulted this disease she was quietly fighting without him. The way Ivy had kept those lovely small breasts concealed from him … and agony and fury unlike any other toppled him over and sent the nausea up his throat.
Had he been her last fucking fling?
What in the hell had he been to her? A fucking joke? A fucking … manwhore ready to fuck her at her whim? Did she think because he was angry … he did not deserve to know? Did she think he did not fucking care that she … that she … had it?
He wanted to be angry. Aneurism-inducing, murderously fucking pissed. But among all the sensations roiling like a tornado inside him, anger was last on the list. He couldn’t forget her face. Couldn’t stop remembering Ivy as she’d been right now, in that small hospital bed, just like Laura. Pale and frail and scared, and feeling very much alone, and his windpipe shut and his eyes blurred and he wanted to rip his chest out.
Ivy, with her little bald head, crying for him not to see her like this. For him to go away.
Ivy, who was always helping people. Ivy, who made Cade want to … live. The hurt spread so deep and so wide, he felt it like a burn spreading up his chest, his throat, to burst into his eyes. He’d known with Laura, even before the wedding. That she was sick, and wouldn’t last.
He’d been “prepared” if that was even possible.
He’d tried to be a good husband. He’d tried to grant her all her wishes, even if he couldn’t ever physically love her the way she’d wanted. He’d punished himself for that flaw for years. But Ivy was spirited and bursting with passion, and she made his body come alive …
He remembered her smile when he’d given her those checks, the way her eyes had shined. Then he remembered how callous and mean he’d been, purposely trying to hurt her, when he told her he didn’t make love to her, he just fucked her. His chest caved when he remembered her last night, curled into that small little ball against him, as though she were trying to disappear inside of him. His heart ached, and he wished he’d had the chance to kiss her breasts and tell her they were so perfect and so pretty.
And now her breasts were being taken away from her …
