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‘Relax, baby, relax …’ He was holding her in the chair now, crooning softly as he smothered her face in tiny comforting kisses that held none of the previous passion in their depths. ‘It’ll be all right, I promise you—’
‘It won’t, Blade.’ The strength to speak came from somewhere and she swallowed deeply as she raised herself just enough to look into his face, seeing the hard features and dark eyes that were soft and desperate with love with a mad pounding of her heart. ‘It can’t be.’
Now she did struggle to get down, but he drew her tightly against him, so close she could hear the crazy throbbing of his heart that belied the outward composure. ‘Whatever this is we’ll face it together, my love, now—’
‘Blade, I’ve got a disease that is going to kill me slowly over a period of years,’ she said with icy numbness, her body as stiff as a board. This time he allowed her to draw away just a little so she could look right into his face, and what she saw shattered the numbness into a million tiny pieces. His face was as white as a sheet, his eyes stricken. ‘I won’t be beautiful any more, I won’t be anything. I won’t be able to walk at first, then other muscles will begin to be affected and eventually—’ She stopped abruptly and then forced herself to go on. ‘Eventually I’ll be bedridden on a machine and then I’ll die.’
‘Stop it.’ He shook her gently, his hands warm on her cold flesh. ‘Don’t talk like this.’
‘But it’s the truth, Blade. You wanted the truth and now you’ve got it.’ She should never have told him. Her mind was screaming denunciation at her. He wouldn’t be able to cope with this thing, why should he? It wasn’t his problem; in all he had only known her for just twelve months. It wasn’t fair to expect him to give up years of his life too when he could be free and happy and—
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he asked quietly. ‘What have I ever done to you, Amy, that you couldn’t tell me?’ The words seemed torn out of his very soul. ‘Didn’t you trust me at all?’
‘I love you, Blade,’ she said dully.
‘And that’s an answer?’ He was breathing hard, his voice husky. ‘You love me and so you leave me? You take away the only thing that makes life worth living and you tell me that’s love?’
‘Blade—’
‘No, you listen to me now.’ He stood up with her in his arms, placing her feet on the ground as he took her forearms in his hands, and she could feel the shaking of his body even through her own trembling. ‘When I came back and found that note I wanted to die.’ His eyes held hers, piercingly dark, and the pain and hopelessness in their inky blackness chilled her bones. ‘I didn’t want to live, Amy. I would never have imagined a woman could do that to me before I met you, and when I did …’ His voice trailed away for a moment, and then he continued slowly, ‘When I did meet you I knew I could trust you completely, I knew it.’
She stared up at him, incapable of speech.
‘But you couldn’t trust me.’ He took a long deep breath. ‘Why?’
‘It wasn’t that—’
‘The hell it wasn’t.’ He wasn’t shouting, but the pain in his voice was more agonising than any rage. ‘You ran away, you didn’t give me a chance, and you faced this thing all on your own. You shut me out, Amy …’
‘But the flowers,’ she whispered slowly. ‘It wasn’t fair to ask you to accept this when you felt that way. I didn’t want you to pity me, I didn’t want to disgust you—’
‘What other world have you been in?’ he asked tautly. ‘How can you even think for one minute …’ He pulled her to him with such violent suddenness that her hair flew out behind her in a golden arc, and then his mouth descended on hers for one blindingly sweet moment before he put her away from him again. ‘We have to talk.’ He eyed her tensely. ‘And this time I want everything. But first—’ he sat her down in a chair and moved to kneel in front of her, his eyes holding hers with such gentleness that she began to cry without even knowing it ‘—first I must tell you how it is, my darling. I love you. I love you more than anything or anyone and I always will. If this disease takes you, if we can’t find a cure—’ she moved to speak but he put his hand to her mouth ‘—then I’ll die too. Oh, I might go on living for another ten, twenty, thirty years but I’ll be dead. And if you left me now that’s how it would be.’
