“Young love.” My dad shook his head. “Don’t you get it, Wes? It’s not about her. I worry about you. I worry she’s going to break your heart. I worry, I worry, I worry. I can’t lose both sons.” His voice broke. “I’ve lost everything. It would kill me to lose you too. Your focus — it needs to be on getting better, not losing yourself in her. Have you even taken your meds today?”
My last pill burned a hole the size of Texas in my pocket. I nodded jerkily and then shrugged. “I have my last pill for the weekend, and then I start the final set Monday.”
Dad sighed. “Just, don’t let her get in the way of your progress, son. You need to live, I can’t—” His voice broke again.
“You have to come to grips with something, Dad,” I said in a thick voice. “I may not live.”
“No, don’t say that. I refuse to believe it. The doctors said—”
“The doctors said there was a chance I’d be fine. The doctors also haven’t worked with this aggressive of a tumor before. It may be too late already. Okay? Just… don’t put all this pressure on me to live — when my reality may be the exact opposite. Don’t get me wrong. I’ll fight hard as hell to stay here as long as I can, but don’t burden me with guilt — if fighting still isn’t enough.”
The room was blanketed in a tense silence. Then I saw my dad do something I hadn’t seen him do since Tye’s death. He fell into a heap on his chair and burst into tears. Shoulders shaking, the sobs coming from his mouth were heart-wrenching. My gut twisted as I made my way over to him and put my hands on his shoulders.
He gripped my hands and continued to sob. “It isn’t fair.”
“Cancer’s rarely fair,” I mumbled. “And we were never promised life would be fair.”
“It should be.”
“Dad.” My voice croaked. “Life isn’t fair, but living? Living is heaven. Living is a gift. Every gift is different — every path is different — for some reason this is ours, and the sooner we accept it, the sooner we can stop crying and start living.”
“When did you get so smart?” He laughed through his tears.
“All that damn therapy you made me go through — and sometimes, Dad, it takes going through hell to reach your heaven.” I looked at the door.
“That bad huh?”
“What?”
“You like her that much?”
“No.” I swallowed. “I love her.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Little by little I was beginning to live for his smiles, his touch, just anything. Heck, if he waved, my heart would still be doing somersaults.
Kiersten
“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” I grumbled, dropping my bathing suit bottoms to the ground and clenching my eyes shut. Brave. I needed to be brave.
“I’m not stealing your virtue, so don’t worry about that.” Wes chuckled from the pool as he splashed around. “And I’m going to turn away while you slowly ascend the stairs. Though I’m not gonna lie, I have a very vivid imagination, so while you get into the pool I’ll be daydreaming.”
“Not creepy,” I joked.
“Not creepy at all. Beautiful, it’s damn beautiful.”
“Huh?”
“Sorry, started early,” he called. “Now hurry up!”
“Shit.”
“Aw, Lamb said a dirty word,” Wes teased. “Stepping out of your comfort zone makes you such a bad girl.”
“Okay, I’m getting in.”
“Turning.” I heard water splashing as I walked over to the edge and dropped my towel. The moon outlined Wes’s body perfectly. His sculpted back was what every single love song was talking about — his body was what leading men fought for. Beautiful, the water lapped around his waist. I looked lower. Fantastic. Well, the water wouldn’t be leaving a ton of things to the imagination if I was standing directly under the moon. Just to be safe, I walked along the edge of the pool and got in where the moon had cast a shadow. I wasn’t taking any chances that Wes would see me, not that I was ashamed of my body or anything. But yeah, it was a little much, being naked in a pool with another person. It could have been Lisa, and I would have still been freaked.