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“You need to really think about this, Max. My situation is anything but assured. I have four more years until I’ll be considered cured of my illness, and even then, it can still come back.”
“Are you planning to spend those four years doing nothing until you get the all clear?”
“Well, no, but—”
“No buts. You’re going to live, so why can’t you live with me and Caden? Why can’t we make a life together?”
“Max,” she said on a long exhale. “It doesn’t work that way.”
“You said last night that you came back for me. Here I am, offering you anything you want. Since last night, I realized I’ve been looking for what I had with you since the day I last saw you, and I’d like to think I’m smart enough to know by now that what we had doesn’t come along every day. It has never come along again for me, that’s for sure.”
Lexi fanned her face, which felt flushed suddenly.
“I love that you blush now. It’s very cute.”
“It’s an effect of the chemo, and I hate it.”
He shook his head. “You’re not allowed to hate it. I love it.”
“What I said about my health is something you need to think about for longer than twenty-four hours.”
“Let me ask you something.”
“Okay…”
“What if I was the one who’d battled a serious illness and was facing an uncertain future? Would you shy away from me because I might have health problems again?”
“No, but this isn’t your run-of-the-mill health problem.”
“I fully understand what you’ve been through, and it doesn’t matter.”
“You can’t fully understand it in a matter of a few hours. You’d be bringing me into your son’s life. If something were to happen to me, we have to think of him.”
“Something could happen to me, too. The work we do on the mountain isn’t without risks, not to mention my brothers and I are on the Search and Rescue Team, and we like to do all sorts of things that could get us killed. We’ve had some close calls, here and there, like when Hunter took a bad fall when we were rock climbing, and Lucas nearly died in the fire in the inn. Shit happens. Life happens. I don’t live in fear of dying.”
“What about Caden, though?”
“If, God forbid, something were to happen to me, Will and Cameron have agreed to be his guardians. My cousin Grayson put that in writing for me a long time ago.”
“You’ve thought it all out.”
“I had to. I’m a single parent. I needed to ensure that he’d be okay if the worst happened. I’ve always been very close to Will, and now I am to Cam, too. Caden is best friends with Chase, and he loves Molly and Murphy. He’d be happy with them, and he’d have the rest of my family around him, too.”
As he spoke, Max got up and cleared their plates, loaded the dishwasher and wiped the table. “What?” he asked when he caught her watching him.
“You’re very domestic.”
“I have to be, or my house would be a disaster.”
“As the youngest of ten kids, you should be completely useless.”
Laughing, he said, “Sorry to disappoint you, but my mother wouldn’t have tolerated a useless kid, even if he was the youngest.”
“No, she wouldn’t have.”
He held out a hand to her. “Come with me.”
“Where to?”
