Slow Burn (40 page)

I push the tears off my face. Knowing my words are so true but so desperately wanting to be selfish and ask him to stick it out. Deal with all the crap because I’m so damn worth it. But I can’t. He may be in the ring, but I’m just not sure if I can force him to fight for something that’s going to devastate him.

“I know what I’m doing is right, Lex. If you could see what you leaving has done to Danny … it’s …” I squeeze my eyes, trying to shut out the images of him broken and crying so hard, he couldn’t speak. Of him looking like a zombie to the point my parents took Maddie for a bit so that he could get himself together enough not to scare her.

And then I realize I don’t want to push the thoughts
away. I need to remember them, use them as a steadfast reminder of why I can’t drag Becks into this.

Why he can’t know that I’m in love with him too.

Hell yes, I’d step into the ring with him, would love him to fight beside me.

“I love him,” I whisper into the silence. “And I’m scared to death.” The sobs rack my body as I finally say the two things I’ve been holding in, have been ignoring over the past two weeks. And there’s something about saying a hard truth aloud that makes it both more real and more cathartic. Almost like even if it’s just me in a cemetery, I still can’t take the acknowledgment back.

“Give me a sign, Lex. Please give me something to tell me that you’re listening. That I don’t need to be scared because your wings up there are shielding me from the worst of it. I need to know you’re by my side.”

“She is by your side.” His voice startles me. Scares the hell out of me really, and I know a part of it’s because I thought I was alone, but the other part is I wonder how much he’s heard. “Every second of every day, she’s by your side.”

I’m wiping the tears off my face with my shirt as I turn around to face Danny. He’s standing behind me, his hands shoved deep in his jeans’ pockets and his head angled to meet my gaze. “Until she had Maddie, you were the one she took care of. The one she thought of before herself. We used to fight about it, actually. How she’d think of you before she’d think of me.”

I push myself up from my seat, my right foot numb from sitting for so long. I know I look like a mess, but I don’t care because Danny’s words captivate me. Something about Lex that I never knew. Something to hold tight to when I thought there’d never be anything new again.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper but all the while a little part of me smiles at how lucky I was to have that connection to my sister.

“Don’t be,” he says, taking a step toward me and then looking at her grave for a moment. “That’s one of the things I loved about her. Her commitment to her family, to you. I knew that when we had kids, she’d be fiercely protective and incredible with them because of the way she was with you.”

I bite my lip to prevent more tears from falling and know already that I’m going to fail miserably. I step beside Danny, my posture echoing his as we both stare at the dates on the stone marker, which reinforce that Lex is never coming back.

“You didn’t tell me.” The hurt woven into his voice squeezes my heart. I reach over and put his hand in mine and keep it there as I try to explain why I didn’t tell him about my diagnosis. “Your mom told me last night when she dropped Maddie off. She needed to talk to someone besides your dad about it and didn’t realize that I didn’t know yet…. I’m so sorry. Had…. I don’t even know what to—”

“There’s nothing to say,” I tell him. “It is what it is. They caught it early. Hopefully, that will help.” I say the words but don’t feel any truth behind them. I feel like a broken record on repeat because there is no conviction in my voice. He just nods his head and squeezes my hand, the silence that was comforting now filled with unease. “It’s all so raw still … Lex being gone. I thought maybe if I waited to tell you until after the surgery, I’d have better news. It would dredge up less of
everything
for you. I don’t know.” I shake my head and exhale loudly. “I don’t know anything right now, Danny. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but I was just trying to do what I thought was best for you.”

“You don’t get to make those decisions, Haddie. For me. For anyone.
That’s my choice
. That’s their choice. You’re not God, so stop playing everyone’s cards for them. You’re robbing us and yourself of possibilities because of it.” He falls silent, which only serves to emphasize his words as he turns
to face me. When I lift my eyes to meet his, I see a different man before me. Yes, I see the grief still weighing heavily, but I also see a quiet resolve that hasn’t been there before. He stares at me for a moment before just barely shaking his head and then pulling me into him and wrapping his arms around me.

At first I just stand there, the numbness I choose to feel dictating my immobility. His words are soaking into my psyche, a verbal backhand to my way of thinking. And I know he’s right. Every single word. So when the guilt and shame and acknowledgment over what I’ve done to Becks, done to him, hit me like that Mack Truck Rylee warned me about, everything I’ve held in comes bubbling up.

I start to move, start to feel again. I wrap my arms around him and cling there, tears escalating in strength and volume as the house of cards I’ve built to protect my heart comes tumbling down. Danny holds me as I get it all out, quiet murmurs of support being said but nothing else besides that until all that’s left in me is hitching, tearless sounds.

He keeps his arms around me for a moment longer before we separate, both of us wiping away tears. He steps forward and kisses his fingers before he runs them over her etched name.

“I miss her so much, Had. Every single moment of every goddamn day.” He falls silent as he reins in the tears before continuing. “Every day I think she’s going to walk through that front door, that I’ll hear her bitch that I left my shoes in the way, hear her laugh as I tell her about my day, watch the love in her eyes as she holds Maddie … every damn day….” His voice fades off.

His words tear into me and reawaken a sadness that somehow was untapped somewhere, and before I can think, the question is off my tongue. “Do you ever wish you’d never met her?” His head snaps up, the shock and anger in his eyes has me scrambling to explain myself. “I mean, was loving her worth the risk? If you hadn’t met her, then you’d
never have had to go through all of this. You’d never have had to watch her die, be alone….”

Danny hangs his head for a moment before looking back toward her marker. “I don’t regret for a single day any moment I spent with her—good, bad, and ugly.” He looks up to meet my eyes. “She was my everything, Haddie. And, God … fuck, it broke me, watching her suffer, watching her die…. Look at me. I’m still broken,” he says, holding his hands out to his sides, “but I wouldn’t give up a single second I had with her because even though the end was brutal, do you have any idea how much of her light she left me to hold on to?” A ghost of a smile spreads across his face, and somehow it reaches his eyes for the first time since she died. “She gave me hope and laughter. She gave me love so strong, I’ll always feel it, feel her. She gave me a lifetime of memories in the few years we had together … and most important, she gave me Maddie.”

And the way he says that, with astonished gratitude, has a soft smile spreading on my lips too.

“Would I give anything to have her here? Give up everything I own so that she could watch Maddie grow up and so she could sit in a rocker on the porch and grow old with me? Without a fucking doubt, I would … but you know what? We lived every moment together like it was our last, even before she got sick. We used to always say
no regrets
. How little did we know what that motto would come to mean for us….” His voice trails off.

He runs a hand through his hair as he takes a few steps away from me and then stops. “You asked me if it was worth the risk,” he says before turning back around to look at me. “I miss her. I lost her … but look at all that I would have missed, never experienced, if I’d never opened myself up. Is fate cruel? Hell yes, it is. Would I have rather not have loved her so I didn’t feel this constant grief? Never. She was worth it … every fucking risk…. She was worth every single
one.” And even though there are tears glistening in his eyes, his voice has never sounded more resolute.

We stare at each other for a moment before he mutters that he needs a moment to compose himself. He starts to walk away, and I tell him to stay. I’ll wander so he can have some time with Lex.

I walk carefully through the cemetery and come to an unoccupied grassy patch up on a hill overlooking the rest of it. I lower myself to the grass and prop myself back on my hands, raise my face to the sun, and enjoy the warmth of it drying my tears. Danny’s words strike a chord in me, my heart so happy that my sister was able to experience that kind of love in her short life. And then I start to think of Becks, and I begin to wonder if I’m robbing us of a chance at that.

Could he be the one? Could we have a love like that? I have no clue, but Danny’s right. Who am I to try to control fate for us? Hell yes, the fear is still there and the desire to push him away to protect him, but at the same time, I feel that tiny thrill of possibility.

A dandelion catches the corner of my eye, and the sob chokes in my throat. Memories light up my mind, and I can’t help but think of this as a sign that Lex is hearing me, understanding me, rooting for me.

I lean over to pick the dandelion up and hold it up in front of my face, staring at the plethora of seeds tempting me to blow them into the wind. I close my eyes, the first tear slipping over, but this tear is a combination of acceptance, sorrow, and relief.

“I wish I may, I wish I might, have this wish I wish tonight,” I say, repeating our dandelion duo mantra. “I wish for
time
so I can make a thousand more wishes on my own.” Then I close my eyes and blow as hard as I can. I open them to watch the seeds take flight and dance across the breeze. And I can’t help but waste one of those wishes right
now as I wish to be one of them, free and in flight without a worry.

“Time is precious, Haddie,” Danny says off to my right as I continue to watch the dandelion seeds.

“Waste it wisely,” I finish Lex’s motto for him.

And I’ve already wasted too much of it.

T
he
percussion section in my head has finally quieted down some as I sit on the balcony. I’m slowly fading into recovery sleep, feet propped up on the railing, and a bottle of water in my hand.

My mind whirls a million miles an hour, after spending the better part of the morning on my laptop doing Google searches on mastectomies and what to expect as the caregiver when helping someone going through chemo and radiation.

Scary fucking shit.

Basically kill you to try to cure you.

You’d think modern medicine would have a better solution than this, but I guess you take the tried-and-true route until you need to take a different one. Stick to what works and all that.

And it’d better work. No ifs, ands, or buts.

Now I just need to see her. Hold her. Tell her face-to-face the gloves are on, and I’m waiting in the ring.

Then the first of many waiting games will begin.

After she apologized for not telling me, Ry promised to
call the minute she heard from her. She said she thought Haddie was visiting Lexi and already had her brother-in-law on the way to see if she was at the cemetery and to make sure she was okay.

I put the cap back on the water bottle and lower my hat over my eyes. My phone alerts me to a text—probably the hundredth of the day between Ry, Colton, and myself—so I don’t have any expectations when I lift it up to look at the screen. But when I do, the gas is knocked from my tank.

Meet me in the ring?

The smile spreads wide on my face, the response giving me so much more than the simple request it reads as. I tell myself to calm the fuck down, that we’ve been here before, and that if she gets spooked, she’ll run again.

But that doesn’t stop the surge of relief that comes.

I scramble to respond, pissed when the doorbell rings because answering this text is ten times more important. “Come in,” I yell, head down and focused on texting her back.

Rex lifts his head to look toward the door, and I’m just about to hit
SEND
when I look up and drop the phone with a loud clatter on the table.

Haddie stands in the doorway of the patio, shorts, tank top, sweatshirt tied around her waist, but it’s when I come to her feet that I’m knocked off my stride.

Damn
.

She’s wearing a pair of pink flip-flops.

I shove away my mom’s stupid-ass dream about the shoes—she’s just being crazy, after all—but I can’t help the lingering notion that this was meant to be. That my mom just might be right. I draw my eyes up from Haddie’s feet to take in her hair pulled back in a clip, cheeks flushed, and eyes red and swollen from crying.

She looks like she’s been to Hell and back, but I’ve never thought her more beautiful than right now.

Her eyes hold mine. So many emotions are in her gaze,
but the ones I see and hold on to like a green flag on race day are the hope, the acceptance, the resolve that’s there.

I rise from my chair, not wanting to take my eyes off her for a single second, taking in everything about her, and make my way to her, heart pounding, smile widening.

I hope she feels this—whatever this is between us—because I feel like every single part of me wants to prove to her—right here, right now—how much I love her. How much I’m going to be there for her.

When I get close to her, my feet falter as I notice the story in her eyes—I can see it clear as day now—and I just hope she lets me help write its happily ever after.

B
ecks
walks toward me, the muscles of his bare torso bunching with each step, a cautious smile on his face, and every part of me knows this is the right decision. That I want him, need him beside me. That he’s good for me.