Only Tyler (24 page)

“She’s getting the first plane out,” Katie told him when she hung up.

He looked haunted. “Okay then.”

“I’ll fetch her from the airport?”

Steve nodded, and left the conversation at that.

Katie took Tyler’s hand again and kissed it. “How can destiny do this to him, Steve? He’s only just learned that he’s not going to die, and now he’s lying in a hospital bed fighting for his life. It’s so cruel.”

Steve frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“The Huntington’s result.” What else would she be talking about?

For the second time in twelve hours, Steve’s face lost its color.

“Did you say Huntington’s?”

Her stomach dropped. “You didn’t know.”

He shook his head, gaped at her.

“Steve” She stared at him in dismay. “I… I assumed Tyler told you last week.”

Idiot! Tyler would never have said anything about the Huntington’s.

Pen wouldn’t let Tyler discuss her situation with Katie. There was no way she’d ever let him talk to Steve about it.

Oh shit. Shit, shit, shit. What had she done? “Steve, God, I’m so sorry.”

He closed his mouth. Opened it again. Closed it, then said, “Their father?”

He’d turned a pale shade of green.

She nodded, identifying all too closely with him. “Their father.”

Steve stood, stumbled and grabbed the chair for support. He looked at her blindly. Looked at Tyler. Gawked at Tyler.

“Steve.” She rose too, but he stopped her by holding out his hand.

“Kate, you’ve got to give me a minute on this one. Please.” He lurched away from the bed. “I just need a minute.” Then he turned and staggered out of the small ICU cubicle.

She stared after him, wanting to go to him, but she didn’t. She knew how he felt. Bewildered and dazed. In need of space and time to assimilate the information. When he was ready, he’d come back. he’d ask questions. For now he needed to be alone.

She looked at Tyler, stricken. “Christ, Ty, I’m so sorry.” Could he hear her?

It didn’t matter. She’d screwed up royally and needed to apologize.

“I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t realize he didn’t know. I’m such an idiot.”

She felt nauseous. Poor Steve.

Poor Pen.

She took Tyler’s hand again. Poor Tyler, goddamn it.

How had everything gotten so completely screwed up? Steve was in shock. Pen was in hiding. Tyler was in hospital and she was in hell. How had everything gone from stable to disastrous in so short a time? Had there ever been any stability, or was it all just an illusion?

“Oh. I must have dozed off.” Katie lifted her head from next to Tyler’s hand and stretched her now-stiff back. “How long was I out?”

Steve was back, once again seated in the chair opposite hers. “A couple of hours. Maybe more.”

She nodded and looked at Tyler. No change. Katie took his hand and sat back in her chair.

“Are you okay?” she asked Steve. Some of the color had returned to his face, but it didn’t mask his pallor altogether.

“I’m getting there.” He didn’t look okay. “When did you find out?

About the Huntington’s?”

“Last week.”

“What about…?”

Steve couldn’t finish his question. He didn’t need to.

“He wouldn’t discuss Pen. Tyler told me that whatever she had or hadn’t done with regards to the disease was personal.”

Steve looked ill. He was quiet for a long, long time before asking, “that’s why Tyler left, isn’t it? He knew there was a chance he’d develop the disease, and he didn’t want us to know about it.” When she nodded, he swore.

“Bloody idiot. Didn’t he know we were the first people he should have turned to? The obvious people to help him through it, no matter what the outcome. What the fuck was he thinking? That we’d shun him for potentially having a disease?”

Katie guessed that while Steve spoke about only Tyler, his thoughts centered on Pen as well. “I don’t think that he saw it in the same light you do. He wanted the dignity of deteriorating where the people who loved him couldn’t watch it happen.” Oddly enough, presenting the details from Tyler’s perspective helped Katie to understand his motives a little better. Tyler had tried to spare Katie and Steve from the cruel fate of the disease. In a bizarre way, his reasoning almost made sense. Almost.

“He didn’t even know if he had the goddamn gene,” Steve stormed.

“He left without finding out first.”

“Would you want to know if you were in his position?”

“Yes, damn it. I would. So I could live my life to the fullest while there was still a chance to live it.”

“Tyler would disagree with you,” Katie said quietly. “For him it was easier to live without knowing. That way, he still had a fifty percent chance of living a full life. His future wasn’t yet cast in stone.”

Steve swore. “Christ, what a way to live.” His jaw clenched and unclenched.

“When did he have the test?”

“Just before he booked his ticket home.”

“And if the results had gone the other way, he wouldn’t have come home at all.” Steve first nodded his head, and then he shook it. “He did it because of us, didn’t he? He gave you up because he loved you, and then he found out you were going to marry his best friend.”

Katie nodded.

He clenched his jaw. “The fuckwit. If he’d never left, I never would have proposed to you. We’d never have been trapped in this vicious triangle.”

Katie suspected Steve tried to inject a little rage into his voice, but he failed miserably. He just sounded sad.

“It would have saved us all a lot of heartache,” she agreed.

“Hearing our news must have just about killed him.”

“He wasn’t happy.”

“Christ, he must have despised me. I took from him the one thing he loved more than anything.”

“You never took me from him,” Katie pointed out. “He left me.” Yep, Steve was right. Tyler was a fuckwit. He shouldn’t have gone away.

Ever. “Besides, he never despised you. Not for one minute. He understood. But he resented that another man was living the life he’d always wanted. The fact that you were the other man complicated matters a thousandfold. He didn’t want you to get hurt, but he didn’t want you to marry me either.”

“And yet when he thought you’d chosen me, he didn’t stay and fight.”

“I guess in the end, no matter how much he wanted to be with me, he would not destroy his friends lives.”

“I misjudged him.”

“No, you didn’t. You judged him with the information you had. You didn’t know all the facts.”

“I hit him. I actually punched the son of a bitch.”

“You were angry and you had good reason to be.”

“I was furious,” Steve corrected. “Was furious.” He seemed to run out of steam. “I’m not anymore. Now I just want him to wake the hell up and tell us this was some kind of sick joke.”

“Me too,” she whispered. “I just want him to be okay.”

Steve squared his shoulders and looked determined. “He will be, Kate. He has to be.”

Katie nodded as her throat clogged up again. She turned to Tyler.

“Did you hear that, Ty? You’re going to get better.” She choked on the last word.

“Please,” she whispered, “you have to get better.”

Over the course of the next forty-eight hours, Katie spent most of her time at the hospital. She organized for a locum to work at the practice, freeing up her and Steve’s time. She located a number for Tyler’s company in London and phoned to inform them of the accident.

Loath to leave his bedside, she returned home only to shower and change her clothes.

On the second day she left the hospital twice first to shower, and then to collect Tyler’s sister.

During the drive from the airport, Katie brought Penelope up to speed on the accident. Once back at ICU, she gave her some time alone with her brother.

She knew seeing him for the first time would be an emotional experience for Pen, and Katie respected her need for privacy.

A half an hour later, the two women sat quietly in the small, private ICU room, both their eyes and thoughts trained on the sedated man between them.

It was evening, and Katie didn’t expect any change in his condition.

“You broke his heart, you know,” Penelope said.

Katie’s stomach flipped. The subject had been hanging silently between them.

She wasn’t prepared for the candor of the statement. “Believe me when I tell you I never meant to,” she whispered.

“He loves you.” There was no accusation in her voice. “He was gutted when he first heard you you were getting married.” She hesitated. “But it just about killed him when he realized you weren’t going to call off the engagement.”

Katie nodded silently. Her stomach twisted into a thousand knots.

If there was any possible way she could fill Tyler in on the truth, any possible way of letting him know she and Steve had called it off, she’d do it. In a heartbeat. But Tyler was asleep. She could yell it from the rooftops, take an ad out in the Sydney Morning Herald or announce it on National Nine News, and it wouldn’t make a difference. Tyler wouldn’t hear it.

“I think it made him love you even more,” his sister said. “He was struck dumb by your loyalty to Steve.” Her voice caught on the name.

Katie would have laughed at the irony of her words, but she couldn’t. Her eyes welled again, and her throat was all clogged up. “I love him too,” she whispered. “I love him so much, and he doesn’t even know it.”

“He does. That’s why he was so flabbergasted by your decision.”

Katie had yet to tell Pen that she’d chosen Tyler. Before she could say anything, the door to Ty’s cubicle opened, and Steve stepped inside the room.

Katie knew he’d been in the hospital all along, but he’d given Tyler’s room a wide girth for the last hour or so.

“Hey, b-” His voice broke midsentence. “Hey,” he said instead, and focused his gaze solely on Katie. “How’s he doing?” Steve didn’t look too good. There were shadowy smudges below his eyes, and his color was still a little off.

“Same, same,” she answered. “Dr. Lavine was here a little while ago.

They’re going to decrease the Hypnovel tomorrow.”

Steve nodded thoughtfully and his gaze wandered first to Tyler, and then almost reluctantly to Pen. The muscles in his neck corded.

Pen stared at him, her face an expressionless mask. “Hello, Steve.”

Only her panicky eyes gave her discomfort away.

It took a good ten seconds before he responded. The profound silence echoed through the room. “Hello, Pen,” he answered finally.

“It’s good to see you again.”

“It’s good to see you too.”

Tension reverberated through the air. Katie felt like an intruder watching Steve and Pen’s first meeting in two years. Penelope, who had been remarkably composed for the last couple of hours, now fidgeted awkwardly. It was, however, the raw emotion on Steve’s face that broke Katie’s heart. She’d been engaged to him for two months, and not once had he looked at her the way he now looked at Penelope.

Steve stared at Pen, his face a mixture of open hunger and closed pain.

Penelope stared at the floor, a polite smile camouflaging the desperation in her eyes.

Katie stared at both of them and then at Tyler, and a hopeless sorrow overwhelmed her.

She could have wept for Steve. Pen had walked away from him just like Tyler had walked away from her. Just like Tyler, Pen had a fifty percent chance of developing Huntington’s Disease.

Indeed, fate could be very, very cruel.

At six a.m. the next morning, there was some good news. Instead of decreasing the dosage of sedative, the neurosurgeon elected to stop it altogether. She’d monitor Tyler’s progress, and if he became too agitated she’d reintroduce the Hypnovel. In the meantime, things were looking up.

Four hours later there was absolutely no change. Tyler was still fast asleep.

Five and a half hours later, Steve, who’d paced the length of the room obsessively for the last thirty minutes, burst out, “I have to get out of here.” He clenched and unclenched his hand. “I’m going to get some coffee. Kate? Would you like something?”

Feeling a little stir-crazy herself, she briefly contemplated going with him, but if Tyler woke up and she wasn’t there she’d never forgive herself. “I’d love a long black, with an extra shot of coffee and two sugars.” Usually she liked the drink milky and bitter. This morning, she needed a powerful caffeine-and-sugar hit.

He nodded, and his gaze slid across the room. The lines around his mouth tightened. “Pen?”

Pen shifted in her seat. She frowned and looked uncertainly at her sleeping brother. “I think I’ll come with you.” And then she added hesitantly, “If you don’t mind?”

Steve motioned with his head towards the door. “Let’s go.” He held up his phone to Katie, and she nodded in response. If anything happened Steve was a phone call away.

Katie stared thoughtfully at the closing door. Steve had taken Pen back to her hotel last night. Had they had a chance to talk? She’d considered asking, but really it was none of her business.

She took out her book. If she didn’t focus on something other than an unconscious Tyler, she’d lose her mind. With every intention of reading aloud to him, she opened Pride and Prejudice and instead stared in silence at the inscription.

‘Sweet Katie,

You were right.

We cannot replace the things we love and lose no matter how hard we try.

Enjoy the book anyway,

T’

He was right. She’d tried to replace him, and look how successful that had been. She still loved him with all her heart. God help her, she was not going to lose him now. Not again.

Not. Ever. Again.

That’s when the anger hit, with such intensity it almost knocked her over.

She was suddenly incensed. Infuriated that just as she’d been this close to getting him back, everything had fallen apart.

More than that, she was outraged at Tyler’s audacity. How dare he storm back into her life, make her fall in love with him all over again and then go and get himself almost killed on his damn motorbike? How bloody dare he?

“You idiot.” She slammed the book down. “You brainless, stupid fool.

What the hell were you thinking buying that godforsaken bike, anyway?