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Alix leaned back, listening to the crunch of Ross’s steps on the street below. She watched him slide in his car, watched his headlights flare to life, watched him drive away.
Her heart was still fluttering. Her palms grew damp. She could still feel the lingering warmth of his heat leaching into her shoulder. Still smell his dark, spicy, maleness in the air around them. Her lips tingled with the roughness of his kiss. The echo of his pain filled up the night around her.
He wouldn’t have meant it before. He never would have confided in her. He’d been there for less than an hour, but their whole lives had shifted. He wasn’t the same Ross he was from this morning. And she wasn’t the Alix she’d been when she got up here.
She didn’t know what that meant. She realized how little she knew about anything.
All she could do was sit up there and send out her hopes to the universe.
CHAPTER 10
Alix
It turned out Ross meant it.
Evelyn was proud. She wanted as few people to know as possible. She did her best, going through rounds of chemo and radiation, taking it all with a smile while hiding the pain, the nausea, the fatigue, the hopelessness and the fear.
The Rivers didn’t tell anyone. Not even Alix’s own mom. Ross’s dad, Dale, took Evelyn to her treatments when he could. He was a financial analyst and she didn’t want him to give up his work, even though they had enough money to retire. He loved his job and she loved the normalcy it brought to their lives. She was changing. Everything was changing. She wanted as many things to stay the same as possible. The rest of the time, she and Ross took Evelyn together.
Alix was stunned when Ross texted her the first time. He’d confessed to her that he couldn’t do it alone. He needed someone. Not her. Someone. He’d literally typed the word. She didn’t care. If he wanted someone, she could be his someone.
For weeks, they took Evelyn between home and the hospital. She never followed them in when they got back. She knew without even asking that it was too intimate a thing, to be in their home, watching Ross care for Evelyn when she was at her worst. Their home was their sanctuary, where they could come apart, fall apart, break apart in private. Where they could do it together without the world intruding.
It was a Monday morning, nine grueling weeks since she’d first arrived home. Summer had come and gone. She’d barely noticed its passing. Her own family got on with it. She became very good at faking it. At telling them she was going out with friends, going job hunting, blah, blah blah. It was the first time ever that she was glad that her parents were rarely around, and Chance was busy with his own life.
She would have been enraged at them for not even noticing that someone else’s world was caving in, but Ross stopped by the house. Evelyn called a few times and made excuses. It was her parent’s busy time, gearing up to do their trade shows again, since it was becoming more and more apparent that they were never going to stop selling RV’s.
Though it was mid-August, the heat blanketing the city was still as unrelenting as ever. Alix stood alone in her parent’s kitchen in front of the blender, combining things she’d found in the fridge for an attempt at a smoothie. She wasn’t sure if carrots could be mixed in with everything else, but she decided to give it a try, seeing as her mom had just splurged on one of those fancy blenders that were supposed to work kitchen miracles.
Apparently, pureeing a carrot was one of them.
She was about to throw in a banana and half a can of dubious looking pineapple she’d found shoved halfway to the back of the fridge when her phone dinged.
Pretty much the only person who ever texted her anymore was Ross. She dropped everything and lunged for it.
Just met with mom’s doctors. It’s good news. The cancer treatment is responding well. They can’t believe it either. It’s almost completely gone. A few more treatments and they’re hopeful that she’ll be back in remission. It’s pretty much a #fuckingmiracle.
She grinned to herself. That was so Ross. She typed back a response before she even thought about it.
OMG! OMG! Seriously! That is THE BEST news! I’m so ridiculously happy for your mom! And you. And your dad. We should do something to celebrate.
Her phone dinged a minute later.
She’s not out of the woods yet.
Right. She nodded her head in the kitchen, holding her phone, in the middle of making a massive mess trying to put together a stupid smoothie. She was standing there nodding and grinning like a fool and she didn’t even care. Not one bit.
