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“Thank you.”
I looked away, not wanting her to see the tears forming in my eyes, and worked to swallow them. A salty burn scratched at my throat. When my eyes returned to hers, they were met with heartbreak and compassion. As I worked up the courage to finish the story, to tell her the reason I’d basically run away from her, her sad eyes grew wide as saucers.
She’d put the rest together herself.
“It’s a genetic disease?” she said.
I nodded.
“So that means it’s hereditary, right?”
I looked in her eyes. “It can be. Huntington’s has a fifty-percent chance of passing to the child of a person who carries the genetic mutation.” I took a deep breath and conjured up every last bit of courage I had to say the words I’d never said to anyone but Derek out loud. “After my brother died, I chose not to have the test. I didn’t want to live my life waiting for symptoms. But after I left you and went back to California, I realized I wasn’t living my life at all. So I finally had the test done last week. The results should be in by the end of this week.”
Chapter 39
Natalia
I threw up.
I’d told Hunter I needed to go to the bathroom because I’d felt the familiar burn in my esophagus that happens right before. My vision was still blurry from tears as my head hung in the toilet, staring down at the water.
The bathroom door clicked open, but I couldn’t lift my head. Hunter sat on the floor and wrapped his body around mine. The warmth of his chest enveloped me like a heated blanket. I leaned my head against his shoulder and let it all out.
He held me tight for a long time, rocking us and silently stroking my hair. When our eyes met, he spoke low. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to tell you until I knew my results.”
“Were you even planning on telling me if the result was positive?”
He didn’t have to speak his answer. His look said it all. I wiped my nose. “Well, then I’m glad Garrett finally had a use. How did you know I was at my mother’s anyway? I hadn’t even told Anna yet.”
“Izzy told me when I went by your place.”
I leaned up. “You saw Garrett?”
“Yep.”
“How did that go?”
“He tried to make me think you were there with him, together.”
I exhaled. “Such an asshole. I hate leaving Izzy there with him, but I knew she wanted to spend time with him, even if she’d never admit it. She loves her father, and they have a lot of work to do to fix their relationship.”
Hunter nodded. He went quiet for a while after that.
“What are you thinking about right now?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I don’t know if I did the right thing telling you. This was really selfish of me. We can’t be together if it’s positive.”
“What do you mean we can’t be together if it’s positive?”
“I’m not going to subject you to that so that you can wind up being my nurse. I flew to New York because I’m a jealous asshole. I told you because I owed you the truth. The men in your life have all disrespected you with lies, and I couldn’t do that. But I won’t put you through watching what I saw happen to my brother.”
“That’s not for you to decide.”
Hunter closed his eyes. When he reopened them, he said, “There’s no point arguing over it now. I’ll have the results in two days.”
“Fine.” I needed a few days for it all to sink in and to formulate an answer to every one of the arguments he would make against us being together if, God forbid, the test was positive.
We sat on the bathroom floor for another hour while Hunter answered my questions about the disease. He was clearly well educated on the genetics and statistics, along with having experienced it first-hand with his mother and brother. The one positive thing I learned was that Hunter was past the age that would be considered early-onset, which was when symptoms occurred before the age of twenty. Adult-onset generally hit between the ages of thirty and fifty, but could strike even as late as eighty, and the progression of the disease was much longer—taking from ten to thirty years to cause death.
