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Chapter 18
“We need to talk,” I say as Rory parks. I glance over at my building, where Chema is sitting on the stoop. I signal for him to wait.
Rory takes off his seatbelt and faces me. The city’s night lights render him more handsome than ever, and I know this will be harder than I thought. “Okay,” he says with a wide smile.
“I want to thank you for being there for me and forcing me to accept help when I really needed it.”
“Okay.” Rory runs a hand through his hair, mussing it up in the sexiest bedhead way. “You’ve already thanked me for that. Valentina, I was happy to do it.”
“You’re amazing, and I really did need . . . someone, even if I wouldn’t admit it.”
“I know. What’s really going on?” he asks.
I suck in a deep breath to strengthen my spine. “Now that Chema’s here, and treatment’s almost over, at least for a while, I’m set. You don’t need to check in on me anymore.”
“That’s not what I’m doing here. I’m not checking up on you. I want to spend time with you—”
“Rory—”
“Don’t you like spending time with me?”
“That isn’t the point.”
“That’s exactly the point because that’s all I’m doing.”
His piercing gaze lingers on me, but I don’t cower under those angry eyes. He knows what’s coming. He has to.
“Rory, I don’t want to keep spending time with you.”
“Bullshit. You do, and I know you do.”
I shake my head, though I know I’m trying to persuade myself as much as him. “I don’t. Chema has agreed to stay through the end of my treatment. I’ll also have Mandy and the girls around, so I won’t be alone.”
“You being alone is not what I’m worried about.”
“You don’t have to worry about anything. That’s just it. I’m taken care of.”
“Dammit, Valentina. I’m not trying to take care of you. I’m not your fucking nurse, and I’m not your fucking doctor. I’m just a man who has feelings for you, I—” he runs his hand through his hair more angrily now, then his eyes narrow. “Valentina, I’m in—”
“No. Don’t say it. I can’t handle it if you say it.”
Rory’s eyes remain narrow slits, but he stays quiet. I knew it almost the minute he started looking at me differently. It was a shift in his eyes when he would drift off, and I knew he was making plans for us—for our future together. He’s taken steps, meeting my parents, bringing his parents to meet me—all of it to show me how deeply he cares about me. I should have stopped it sooner, but I couldn’t.
I love him.
I love the man who didn’t bat an eye to stay in bed with me and just sleep because I was too tired. The man who fed me watermelon cubes when I was nearly delirious with fever and hadn’t eaten in days. The man who stood proud as he pushed me around in my wheelchair, never once giving off any indication that he was embarrassed by the sick woman with him during our date tonight.
But I can’t tell him. He can’t know I’m in love with him because I won’t saddle him with a dying woman. My eyes prickle with tears, and for once, I don’t draw them back in. I’m giving up perhaps the most perfect man in the world.
That small excursion to the art gallery, as brief as it was, took all the energy I had for the day. I’m a prisoner in my own body—the very body I once commanded with pride—and there isn’t so much as the briefest hope of escape from this prison. I mourn for the loss of my health, the loss of what my body once was—what Rory got to enjoy so briefly so many weeks ago and that I will never be able to gift him again.
“Hey, hey, what’s this?” Rory coos, all the hardness in his face gone. He adjusts in his seat to be as close to me as he can and wipes away the tear rolling down my cheek.
“I don’t want to keep spending time with you. Before, you were just a meaningless one-night stand.”
Rory shakes his head. “That’s not true.”
“And then I let you hang out because I didn’t know anyone here, and I was bored. You were a distraction, Rory.”
