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“They do if they have cancer.” Willow’s words echo into our silent room.
I no longer hear the music playing outside of our door. I just hear one sound, her pain-soaked sobs, and one word—cancer.
I look over to Shane, and he’s not okay. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him look this shocked and helpless before.
“Willow. I’m so sorry. What do you know about it? How is Annie?” My heart breaks for the hell she’s been trying to manage all on her own.
As much as I hate Dale, Annie is Willow’s daughter too, and I feel an instant affection for the little girl I’ve never met.
“The doctors are optimistic. They keep saying her chances are good.”—She sniffles between sentences—“There are new tests and medications all of the time. The tricky part is being able to—” Her thought trails off. Her words have brought her full circle to why she walked through our doors tonight and realization sinks in for the both of us.
“—pay for them.” Shane answers quietly for her, and she nods her head then lets out a sigh.
“There’s nothing I won’t do for her. I had to try, and I know I hurt you. I’m so sorry for that, but I couldn’t just—” She pushes down the last of her words and shakes her head.
Of course she came here trying to win the money. If I had a child, there is nothing I wouldn’t do to keep them safe and alive if I felt I had no other choice.
“Why didn’t you just come to us?” Now it’s my turn to sound angry.
I’m hurt she didn’t trust us, and this could have all been solved a long time ago.
“I didn’t know I could anymore. We haven’t been close in awhile. Not like we were.” Then lowering her head, she confesses. “I miss you both so much. This has been hard—by myself.”
Her words drop between us like a ton of bricks and they seem to have landed on Shane who’s frozen in his seat.
Before either of us can tell her how we feel, she continues.
“I know you moved on. It’s okay. We grow up, right? A year before I met Dale, I heard about your new—friend. She came into the coffee shop and we started chatting. She told me she was seeing both of you.” She looks at Shane. “She said she thought it was so adorable that you called her your new kitten.” Willow looks like she wants to vomit at the thought, and Shane is getting back in touch with his anger and he has every right to.
None of that is true.
Okay, we were fucking her together, but that’s where it ended. There was never a replacement for Willow in Shane’s mind. He never called Tiffany by that name. She could never compare to our Willow.
She must have overheard us talking about Willow at some point and wanted to make sure her competition was firmly out of the way.
She didn’t end up lasting long.
We didn’t keep her around because she held our attention. Bright red hair and tits for miles, Tiffany placed no value on herself so why should we? She was a walking freebie. She offered, we took.
But to go to Willow and outright tell her this behind our backs is classless. It’s typical Tiffany. That must have been right around the time Willow wrote us off completely and stopped trying to reach out to us.
She thought she was on her own and she handled everything that came at her by herself.
I once thought that giving her some distance was what would serve her best and now that we are sitting here, faced with all of these obstacles, I’m finally seeing just how wrong Shane and I were to let her go.
Maybe we weren’t right for her at the time, but letting her go out on her own was the worst thing we’ve ever done to her, and I can’t let the results of our actions continue on.
The world we’ve built up for ourselves has felt empty for a long time, and the only thing that will fix that is sitting right in front of us.
We fill our time with women, money and business, but it has never felt like a life. Not until Willow walked through our front doors tonight, and I don’t want to let her walk out.
SHANE
As Willow tells us about our time with Tiffany, my face heats up. She had no right to go to Willow and tell her those lies.
“I never called her that.” My side of the story leaves my mouth without thought.
How could that lying bitch have said those things to Willow. She’s lucky she’s not in this town anymore. I would take great pleasure in crushing her for causing Willow this unnecessary pain.
