“And what are you holding out for? A girl who loves you for you?” I fired back, wiping the shock from my face.
“God, no. Nothing as far-fetched as that.” His head shook. “I’m waiting for a girl who wants me for my body. You know, something deep and genuine like that.”
The level of seriousness he’d managed to express was a true testimony to how he’d honed the art of smart-ass.
Fighting a smile, I replied, “You’re covered wrist to ankle in ‘compression tights,’ nursing a wounded shoulder, and your thumb’s three times its normal size. And you smell like you just finished a practice during the first week of summer training.” I curled my nose in his direction. “Good luck finding some poor martyr to want you for your body.”
He jacked his brows at me a few times. “I certainly seem to remember a certain ‘martyr’ who didn’t seem to have any hesitations when it came to my body.”
The insinuation in his voice made me shift. To distract myself, I reached out to pick up Charlie, not realizing I didn’t know where I was taking her to bed until I had already wrestled all sixty pounds of her against me.
“Whoa, muscles. Easy, I can get her.” Grant popped off from the couch and reached for Charlie’s limp body draped around mine.
“No, I’ve got her.”
“Ryan—”
“Grant, really. I want to,” I said, winding my arms tighter around her. “It won’t be long before . . . I won’t be able to carry . . .” I couldn’t complete any of my thoughts, all of them too painful to finish. “I’ve got her. Just, would you mind showing me where I can put her tonight?”
Grant watched me clutching Charlie, probably doubting if I could carry her on my best day without adding Huntington’s into the equation, but I had this.
“Yeah, sure. Follow me.” He moved across the living room and waited for me in the hall. “Her bedroom’s upstairs next to yours.”
I followed him down the hall. Thankfully he’d gone to the elevator instead of the stairs because I could already feel the weight of her tiring me out. I’d carried Charlie to bed plenty of nights, but the space in a one-bedroom apartment was a heck of a lot different than the space in a mansion.
“It’s nice there’s already an elevator built into the house. It’ll save us from having to install one when, you know.” Grant punched the up button a few times, sighing like he’d just said something he wasn’t supposed to.
“When I’m confined to a wheelchair?” I said what he couldn’t. “Grant, when I get to that point, I don’t want to be here. I don’t want you two to have to see that all day, every day. When I have to go into a wheelchair, that will mean things are bad. My mind, my speech, it won’t just be my body malfunctioning.”
When the elevator doors opened, Grant let me go in first. When he followed, his eyes were trained on the floor.
“I want you two to remember me like this, not be haunted by me like that.”
He took in a slow breath. “Ryan, I’d hire a nurse. A doctor. A hundred of them if I have to, but we’re not just shipping you off to some home. Get that out of your head right now.”
My eyes narrowed on the elevator panel as I waited for him to punch in the floor number. I didn’t know if we were going to the second or third floor. Finally, he punched the three button.
“No, you get out of your head the plan to keep me here, because that is not happening under any circumstance. This is my life, and I get to call the shots. There are good facilities for people with Huntington’s. With trained staff equipped to deal with patients with this disease specifically.” I didn’t know why I was explaining this to him. I shouldn’t have to. This was my choice. Not his. Mine.
“What anyone needs when they’re sick is to be around the people who love them and want the best for them. That place is here.” Grant’s hand curled around the handlebar running around the elevator, his knuckles pressing against his skin.
“I’m not ‘sick.’ I can’t ‘get better.’ There’s no hospital I’ll ever be able to check into where I can check out and be healed.” My voice shook, but my stare remained unwavering. “I’m going to get worse. Every day, I’ll be worse than the day before. Until one day, you won’t even recognize me. I’ll be a shell, an empty room. That is not how I want my daughter to remember me, Grant Turner.” I backed out of the elevator, so I didn’t have to break eye contact with him. “That is not how I want you to remember me.”