“Seems okay,” Quinn said. “But he’ll have to come in.”
“Is that really necessary?” Liam asked.
“You know the drill,” Quinn said, pulling in a deep breath. “Go pack a bag.” Liam looked at me. His beautiful eyes were shrouded with worry and a vertical line plowed between his brows. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Really I am.” I fell against him. “Don’t be sorry,” I said, sliding my hands up his back and holding him tight. “It’s not your fault if you’re ill.” Quinn already had his mobile out of his pocket. “Five minutes,” he said as he flicked it open. “Then we leave.”
* * * * *
Liam and I were ushered into a side room on the neurosurgery ward opposite the linen cupboard. Any other occasion and I would have looked at the linen cupboard with fondness. It was the place Quinn and I first admitted to each other we were falling 140
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in love. I’d taken him in my mouth and forced him to give up some of his fierce control.
I’d known he’d never fully love me without surrendering some of his need to dominate and govern everything in his life. My plan had worked.
But today, as Quinn made calls at the ward desk, Liam and I listened to a young nurse explaining the call bell system. She handed Liam a pale blue hospital gown.
“Take off your clothes and put this on,” she said with a shy smile. “They’ll be here to take you soon.”
“Where are they taking him?” I asked, glancing nervously at the wall behind the bed—it was full of tubes and taps, monitors and leads.
“Dr. Gilbert has booked phlebotomy, optometry and radiology.” I nodded as though I knew what she was talking about and turned my attention to Liam. He was pale, much paler than when we’d left the house. The dark rings under his eyes were back, a shade of brown fading to purple.
“Okay,” I said to the nurse. “Thanks.”
She slipped from the room and pulled the door shut.
Liam stripped off his t-shirt and toed off his sneakers. He pushed down his faded Levi’s and chucked them onto a big, soft chair next to the bed.
“Here,” I said, holding up the gown. “Let me help.”
“Other way ‘round,” he said. “They go on back to front.”
“Oh, okay.” I turned it and he slipped his arms in and then faced the door. “Do I need to tie these ribbons?” I asked, looking at the gaping back.
“Yeah, but loose, these things are always too damn tight for me.” I drew in a shaky breath and willed my fingers to stop trembling as I made bows in the three laces at the back of the gown. He was right, the gown didn’t fit his broad frame very well. It was so sad that he knew that would be the case.
He sat on the edge of the bed and stared out the window. We were high up and the view over Cardiff toward the distant green hills would normally have been something 141
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we’d linger over. But not today. Today our lives had been turned upside down. Today our lives could be about to change forever.
I stepped between his knees and gently ran my fingers through his hair. I could make out the deep crevice on the front and back of his skull, but barely touched them. I knew how sensitive they were. “I’m sure it will all be all right,” I murmured and bent to kiss his head. His hair was thick and soft on my lips and smelled of his lemony shampoo.
He wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me until his cheek was against my breasts. “I hope you’re right,” he said. “But what if you’re not?”
“Then we’ll face it together.” I leaned back a fraction, crooked a finger under his chin and raised his face. “You won’t be on your own this time.”
“I…I don’t think I can go through it again, Ariane.” His gaze searched mine.
“You’ll have to, Liam. If it’s back, you’ll have to go through it again.” He shook his head. “I don’t want you or the girls to see me like I was before.”
“But that’s not important.”
“It is to me, I was in a terrible state—thin, so thin, my hair was shaved and Quinn put damn staples right across my scalp to hold the skin back together after he cut into my brain. The girls will think I’m Frankenstein, they’ll be terrified of me.” He swallowed and closed his eyes. “I can’t put them or you through that, it wouldn’t be fair.”
“This isn’t about fair and it isn’t about us. This is about you and getting you well. If, and that is an ‘if’, the cancer is back, we’ll cross the hurdle of telling the girls when we come to it. We’ll explain, we’ll prepare them, Quinn will know what to say.” Liam opened his eyes, shook his head and when he spoke his voice was so low and so adamant it made the hairs on the back of my neck rise. “No,” he said. “If it’s back it means my time has come. I’ve had over fourteen years since the first diagnosis, most of that has been with you. You, the girls, it’s all been a bonus. Something I wouldn’t have 142
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had and I am truly grateful for it, you’ve all completed my soul.” He stared me in the eye. “So I won’t be having any treatment.”
I caught a sob in my throat. “You can’t say that, Liam. You can’t mean it.”
“We all have an expiration date and mine has been and gone a long time ago.” My eyes welled with sharp, stinging tears. I tried to blink them away. I couldn’t.
“But I want you to fight, Liam. You beat it once with Quinn’s help. I want you to fight and win again.” His words had created a knot in me and it hurt—it was tight, it squeezed my chest and my guts. “Please, say you’ll fight it, we need you. I need you.”
“I’m sorry, baby.” He reached up and caught a stray tear running down my cheek with his thumb. “But it hurt like hell and the nausea, the vomiting, that was only the tip of the iceberg compared to all the other disgusting, grim side effects of the chemo. I don’t think I could do it again. I’m just so damn tired.”
“You’re tired because you were up all night,” I said with a scowl, balling my fist on his shoulders. “And even if you’re tired you’ve got to fight. You owe it to me and the girls to try to be here.”
“I’ve transferred their money into the Barclays high-interest account.”
“What?”
“Their money, it’s in Barclays, the account number is in my red file. There’s enough for university fees, weddings, first cars and a healthy amount to put down on their first house. I will leave them provided for.”
“Liam, that’s not important.” I grabbed his hands and clutched them to my breasts.
“Money isn’t what we need, we need you. The girls want their dad around. They need you to cheer them on at pony competitions, walk them down the aisle, go and choose their first car and help them move into their first flat.” Liam shook his head. “They’ll have Quinn.”
“No, no, it doesn’t work like that and you know it.” I looked at his defeated, sad face and felt a sudden anger that he could consider giving up so easily. “And what 143
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about me?” I asked. “I need you in all of those tomorrows too. I need you, Liam.
Haven’t you thought of me?”
“Of course I have, and I know Quinn will be there for you, baby. You’ll have Quinn.”
I stared at him full of disbelief. In all the years we’d existed as a threesome this was the first time I hated it. Liam was ready to give up his fight against cancer because he could pass over all his responsibilities to Quinn. I pulled in a deep breath. “I love you, Liam, I love you so much. Having Quinn there will not make up for the fact that you’re gone, not in a million years. So you can just damn well shake off that stupid thought right now, because I will not tolerate it and I will not let you use Quinn as an excuse to die.”
“Excuse me, sorry to interrupt.”
We both turned. An elderly porter stood behind a wheelchair in the doorway. “Mr.
Rosser?” he asked.
“Yep.” Liam stood.
“I’ve come to take you to radiology,” the porter said. “Then on to phlebotomy.”
“Can I come too?” I asked, my voice stiff and tight.
“Afraid not, miss. Staff only on Sundays.”
Liam looked down at me and cupped my face in his hands. “Will you wait here? So we can talk about this later?”
“Of course I’ll wait. Where else would I go?”
“Home.”
“No, Liam, I wouldn’t go home and leave you here, would I?” I shook my head and sighed. “I’m staying here, with you. When I go home we’ll go together. I won’t go home without you.”
His mouth tilted into a half-smile and I stifled a sob as he leaned forward and pressed his lips to my forehead.
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As I watched him sit in the wheelchair, his big body folding down and his knees coming up, I wrapped my arms around my waist. Squeezed myself tight and tried to hold my emotions together. I wanted to fall apart. I wanted to drop to the floor, allow my body to scatter across the hard linoleum, roll like marbles into every corner until I could feel no more.
Liam couldn’t die. I wouldn’t let him. And neither would Quinn. I knew Quinn wouldn’t let him die, Quinn loved him too.
The wheelchair reversed from view and I paced the room and stared out the window at a single wispy cloud drifting over the crystal-blue autumnal sky. It was like a web with a spider at the center, a long, sticky web spreading into a perfect sky. Quinn had once likened Liam’s tumor to a web and the sight of the cloud sickened me all the more. The spider was back. I hated the spider web but I hated the spider that spun it more.
Turning to the bed, I looked at the crease in the sheets where Liam had sat. My fingers itched to touch it and I found myself tracing the indentation. I spun suddenly, head whirring, saw his crumpled clothes and set about tidying them and folding them. I pressed his top to my face and inhaled deeply. Liam’s smell always did funny things to me. The citrus, heavy male scent was like a signature of love and sex, strength and fragility and conjured up so many emotions and desires in me. I was so lucky to have him, so honored that he’d shared his life with me. I sucked in a deep breath, let myself get drunk, high on him. I wanted him back―now. I wanted his skin, his hair, his arms around me. I wanted Liam like I wanted my heart to keep beating.
A sob broke free, a deep, painful sob that cramped my diaphragm and tensed my throat.
“Ariane.”
A gentle hand rested on my shoulder and I pulled my head from Liam’s top. Eyes the color of the forest floor were staring into mine, gentle eyes that held a serene 145
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calmness I needed. “Eve,” I gasped as sobs took control. They didn’t hold back, they erupted like Vesuvius, unharnessed and abandoned.
“Oh god, come here,” she said. In an instant her slight arms were around me, dragging me close and locking me in a surprisingly tight hold.
I didn’t protest. I just needed to be held. I became jellylike. I broke down, buried my head in her shoulder and wept.
She stroked my hair, murmured soothing words into my ear. They didn’t mean anything but they were there. My palms came up to my face and I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes. The tears were hot and burning, they flowed on and on. Her hands smoothed up my back, holding me firm but gentle.
“Shh, shh,” she soothed. “No need for tears when there’s no results yet.”
“But, but,” I managed, my words muffled in her soft sweater. “But he says he won’t have treatment and that he’s too tired to fight. If he needs more surgery and chemo he’s going to refuse it.”
“He’s just scared,” Eve murmured. “I’ve seen it before. He’s scared and worried about putting his family through it. He’ll come ‘round to treatment.”
“But what if he doesn’t? What if he just gives up?”
“He loves you too much to give up, Ariane. It’s plain to see you’re the center of his universe, you complete him, you make him who he is.” She paused. “And at least
he’s
not the stubborn one.”
I pulled back and looked at her face. Her eyes were soft, her skin pale. She was right about Liam not being the stubborn one. I shuddered in a breath and regained some control of my breathing.
“Here,” she said, reaching a large red mug from the windowsill. “I thought you could use a coffee.”
“Thanks.” I took it and sat heavily on the chair. Eve handed me a tissue box then perched on the edge of the bed. “Liam can be a bit stubborn,” I said, dabbing my 146
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dripping nose. “But he’s not in the same league as Quinn when it comes to changing his mind about stuff. I can usually get Liam to come around to my way of thinking, but I can’t with Quinn, he never changes his mind… Well, not until recently anyway.” Quinn’s name hung between us. I looked at her hands folded on her lap and thought of them on Quinn’s body, touching his skin, his hair, his cock. I looked at her mouth, remembered her kissing his lips, his chest and stretching her jaw around his shaft. I waited for a bubble of anger, a shard of jealousy to strike me. But it didn’t. I knew what they’d done, then she’d left and he’d made love to me. Quinn was mine, I’d just let her borrow him. Let him live out part of his fantasy.
I took a sip of coffee. It was hot and strong. Last night had seemed such a cataclysmic event at the time but now it had faded into the background. Eve was pretty and charming, she had needs and desires and also empathy and elegance. I did like her and I held no grudges. I couldn’t afford to—the fear inside me was all-consuming, there was no space for anything else.
“Where is Quinn?” I asked.
“He’s gone down to study the results as soon as they’re through. As soon as he knows anything, you will too.”
“Good,” I said, cupping my hands around the mug and trying to suppress a shiver running up my spine. “Good, we need to know what we’re facing as soon as possible.”
“Can I get you anything else?” Eve asked.
“No, thanks, the coffee is perfect, nice and strong.”
“I made it in the staff room rather than using the machine.”
“Thanks.”
“I don’t think Liam will be too long, there’s not much happening in the emergency room today, so everywhere is pretty quiet.”
“Oh, that’s lucky then.”
Eve studied me. “Would you like me to leave you alone?” 147
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I glanced out the window. The clouds were increasing, the wispy strands spreading out more and more into a giant web. “No,” I said. “Please stay. If you’re not too busy that is.” I smiled weakly. “I’d be glad of the company.” She nodded. “Of course I’ll stay.”