Touching Down(76)

“At least the size of one,” I grumbled before taking a tentative sip. My body shuddered. “How can this stuff actually taste worse than it smells?”

Grant shook his head. “My god, woman, you are difficult.”

My eyebrow lifted as I forced down another sip. “Yeah, well, you aren’t no picnic yourself.”

He pulled another bottle of toxic sludge from the fridge and twisted it open. “Cheers,” he said, clinking his bottle against mine.

“Yay,” I deadpanned as he chugged his in all of five seconds.

Slamming down the empty bottle, he rolled his shoulders a couple of times. “Okay, so Charlie.” The skin between his brows set. “I told Ravi about her last night. I trust him—he won’t say anything to anyone. The world won’t find out she’s my daughter until you’re ready to tell the world.”

When I took a bigger gulp of the supposed superfood drink, I grimaced. There was no way a person could ever get used to this stuff. “I’m ready to tell the world whenever you are.”

Grant’s face softened, a slow smile working into place. “Let’s see what Charlie wants and go from there.”

“Solid plan.” When I set the half-drunk bottle on the counter, Grant stared at it with a raised brow. With a grumble, I picked it back up and kept sipping.

“Ravi told me the only way to know for sure if Charlie will one day develop Grass is with a blood test.”

Whenever I thought about Charlie having this disease, it made me feel like someone had just swung a sledgehammer into my sternum. This time didn’t feel any different, but this time, it didn’t make me stagger back. This time, I managed to hold my ground.

“Yes, the only way to know for sure is with a blood test,” I said.

Half of his face grimaced. “I don’t like thinking about her getting poked and prodded. Needles suck.”

“The twenty-hundred-sixty-pound wall of muscle who wasn’t scared the time a gun was raised to his head by some strung-out tweaker and who doesn’t flinch when he winds up on the bottom of a pile of defensive linemen is afraid of a little needle?”

He crossed his arms at me. “When it concerns my daughter, I am.”

“That’s sweet, but Charlie is tougher than both of us put together. It’s like your and my badassery multiplied when we created her.” I tried chugging the last of the green juice, but I couldn’t do it before I gagged.

“You’re about to puke from the taste of a smoothie. Not so convinced of your badassery at this moment.”

My eyes narrowed and I finished what was left of the drink, just to prove a point. It was next to impossible not to grimace or shiver in revulsion, but I made it.

“Fear of needles or not, you can’t legally test a minor for Grass. The medical community deems it unethical, arguing that each person should be able to make up their own mind if they want to find out if they’re a carrier.”

Grant unlocked his jaw. “And how do you feel about that?”

I twisted the empty bottle in my hands, debating my answer. HD made it hard to reason logically at times, making my mind feel disconnected and hazy. After the drama of last night and the added stress of no sleep and worrying today, my mind was struggling to cooperate.

And how do you feel about that?

How did I feel about testing my daughter without her consent for a truly terrifying disease? As a parent, I wanted to know. At least I thought I did. Putting myself in her shoes, I wasn’t sure I’d want to know though. Would the fear of knowing what was coming paralyze her from living her life? Would having to watch her mother go through the very devastating stages she’d eventually go through be too much to bear?

I hadn’t found out I had HD until the disease had already made itself known symptomatically. If Charlie did have it, she could have decades before any symptoms might surface.

Would knowing create peace of mind? Or would knowing only torture her mind?

“I don’t know,” I answered at last, my fingers suddenly jerking. The bottle tipped over and rolled across the counter before falling and shattering on the floor. “Dammit.” I glared at my hands still spasming beyond my control. “I’m sorry. I’ll clean it up in just a minute.”

Grant was already moving toward a closet door. “I’ve got it,” he announced, pulling out a broom and dustpan. “Shit, I’ve broken so many of those things I’ve got a system and everything.”

“I’m not sure how I feel about you trying to make me feel better.”

He bobbed his brows at me as he came around the counter toward the shattered mess. “Really? Because it seemed pretty obvious to me how you feel about me making you feel better.” His gaze roamed down my body, his smile forming when it landed on the hem of my dress floating above my knees. “I think it was the unbridled shrieking that really gave you away. Or it could have been the way you couldn’t stop moaning my name into the pillow. Or maybe it was how damn wet you—”