The Bucket List (37 page)

"That's it?"

"Basically, yeah," the doctor said. "But we need to start treatment now. The tests showed that we don't have very much time before the eggs burst."

He was still struggling to believe it was true, to believe he wasn't going to lose her. The moment the doctor had said those words, the pain he'd carried in his chest since that horrible night she had told her she was dying had immediately disappeared to be replaced by this deep gratitude to whichever God had given her back to him.

But now the gratitude was mixed with something else.

She'd been on the drugs for a week at the hospital, and
Nate had been there right next to her more often than not. A full week in which Nate had lay by her in bed whenever he was there, whispering nonsense to her and laughing with her, painting her, making her happy...

That prick was seriously doing his head in!

Everyone was relieved, everyone was grateful Rae wasn't going to die. He got that, he really did. Hell, he was probably more grateful than most. But he'd hardly had a look in all week. There were people falling out of every crevice of the hospital room, dying to do things for her, things he should have been doing. He didn't want to sound like an ungrateful bastard, but he just wanted a minute alone with her, just a minute to show her how grateful he was that he would get to hold her in his arms longer than they'd all thought.

If she let him.
If she wanted him.

John had told him over and over again that he was just imagining things, that Rae would never have told her she loved him if she didn't mean it. But that was just how it was. She had given him no sign at all that she hadn't only said those words because they'd thought she was dying.

"Hey, we've been looking for you."

He took a final pull of his smoke and turned to face John as he flicked the butt into the bushes.

"What's up?"

"Your mom wants to know if you going to hers to eat something," John said as he stopped in front of him.

"I'm not really hungry," he answered as he lit another smoke and turned back to his view of the sunset.

The hospital grounds had been his sanctuary a lot the past few days. He just wished he could sit out there with a case of beers by his side and get plastered, but he was afraid he'd just storm up to her room and beg her to pretend to love him again.

"Is that because Nate just got here?" John asked.

He paused briefly mid-smoke at the mention of that name, but he knew John noticed that.

"He's Rae's friend. Why would having him here spoil my appetite?" he asked.

"Then you don't mind that he's asked to stay over at yours tonight?"

He bit down on his teeth to stop himself from saying anything.

"We've got no more spare rooms."

Well, that was true. Irving and Sara had one room. John still had his usual room, which he was sharing with Mandy at that moment even though they were still trying to see if they could work things out. He wasn't going to let him have Rae's bed, which was all made up ready for her to come home. And he certainly wasn't giving his bed up to the shit.

"We've got a few comfortable couches."

Well, he couldn't really argue with that. And the last thing he wanted to do was stand in the way of Rae's happiness. If she wanted the guy there, she could have him there. Who was he to stand in the way of true love? He was just grateful that she would live; he would be happy if she chose to be with someone else, as long as she was alive and happy.

He just wished it didn't hurt so
bad.

"Rae's been asking about you," John continued, stuffing his hands in his pockets as he also looked out at the beautiful view.

He liked this time of day, when the sun's orange glow kissed every surface, even the ugly ones, giving it a mask of beauty that didn't really exist otherwise. There was not much beautiful out there anymore. It was just an endless sea of selfishness and cruelty; he knew that only too well.

"She wondering how I'm holding up?" he asked with a little laugh at himself.

Was she wondering how bad he was going to hurt once she told him the truth?

"Yes, actually. From where she's standing, it looks like you actually wanted her to die."

"Don't be stupid!" he snapped. "I'm just giving her a bit of space to get her head around all this. And it's not like we can have any decent conversations with all those people coming in and out of her room."

"She hasn't really seen you in days."

"I sleep on her bed!"

"You crawl into her bed when you know she's fast asleep and leave the hospital before she wakes up," John pointed out calmly.

Because the last thing he wanted was to give her a chance to admit that she lied to him about how she felt. It would break him.

"John, you more than anyone know how I cried with relief when we heard that news. I had the worst time of my life, thinking I'd never get to grow old with her, that she'd never get to have my kids, that I'd never get to hold her again..."

"And now that we know she'll be fine, shouldn't you be stuck to her, showing her just how grateful you are?"

"She knows. Trust me, she knows."

"Has it occurred to you that she's probably thinking the same way you are? That she might think you told her all those things because you thought you were going to lose her, but now you're regretting it?"

"She knows I'd never treat her like that," he frowned.

"Does she?"

"Yes! Besides, it's not like we've had much of a chance to talk with
Nate all up in her hospital room like he's moved in. Doesn't he have to be at work or something?"

John had nothing to say to that. He guessed his friend was just tired of pointing out the errors of his thinking.

She doesn't love Nate... They're just friends... Well, if she didn't love Nate, then why the hell was he slowly but so damn surely taking his place in her life?

"Go in and talk to her," John said finally. "It would be a shame if you threw all this away a second time. And I don't think you'd get over her that easily this time round."

No, he wouldn't. Ever. He was going to love Rae till the day he died. But she had just been yanking him, and he didn't have the strength to hear that from her this soon.

"
All right. I'll talk to her," he lied.

He heard his friend sigh and knew he hadn't bought that. But there was nothing John could do. He planned on avoiding hearing those words, those stupid words 'I don't love you', for as long as he could.

"You haven't talked to him yet?"

She shook her head as she kicked the covers of her body.

She was sick of the hospital, of being forced to rest. The drugs made her feel like shit mostly and she was constantly tired, but she didn't think she had to be in bed all the time like everyone was forcing her to do. At least it was going to be over soon. Early the next day, she was going to have the surgery, and hopefully, if nothing went wrong, she'd be back on her feet in no time.

"Want me to go drag him in here?"
Nate asked.

"No. I don't really want him to tell me he was just
humoring me," she sighed. "I wouldn't know how to handle that."

"I'm starting to see what John meant when he said he feels like knocking your heads together,"
Nate stated as he helped her off her bed into a chair by the windows.

"
Corey regrets what he did, but I still love him and I can only hope he'll still want to be my friend. If I say anything to him, maybe he'll decide it'll be better if he wasn't around me," she said as she tucked her feet underneath herself. "Just leave it now, Nate. You're here to make me feel better, not to talk about Corey."

"You know you're probably not helping things much by having me here as often as you are."

"Why?"

"He knows what we had. Maybe he's out there now thinking we're trying to work things out."

She looked out the window of her second floor room and saw Corey standing with John in the landscaped grounds of the hospital as the sun sank behind the hills and valleys.

"I told him already how I feel. I'm not going to push it," she said firmly as she turned away from the window. "Now, talk about something else."

With a sigh, Nate pulled a chair opposite her and sat down.

"Dave said hello."

"How's he doing," she asked with a genuine smile.

"He's
all right," Nate answered.

"I wish I hadn't been so nasty to him before, though. He's been pretty good with listening to me talk about nothing for hours when he's probably trying to get to sleep."

"He called you?" Nate asked, surprised. "You're friends now?"

"Yeah, he heard what was happening and he just called to see how I was doing. I just happened to be pretty bored that day so I talked to him. He listened to me complain about everything and everyone," she shrugged, brushing it off. "He was being good to me."

"He's not still trying to get with you, is he?"

"Nah. Last night he was telling me how he bumped into
Peyton the other night and things got a little bit freaky," she chuckled.

"Dave and
Peyton?!"

"Shhh!" she laughed. "You didn't hear it from me."

"Even if I said something, I don't think people would believe me. They just so... not suited."

"Hey, she's got him out of my hair. You can't knock that."

They laughed together as Nate made himself more comfortable, sprawling his long legs in front of him as he played with Mr. Chuckles in his lap. She watched him, thinking how he'd been a Godsend to her the past few days. He'd only done minimal duties at work the past week to be by her side and she knew he was going to get into a lot of shit for that from Vince. But she was grateful. She'd needed him there so she wouldn't just break down. Corey was seriously breaking her heart.

This was supposed to be the best time of her life. She's been told she wasn't dying, she was supposed to be celebrating the fuck out of each and every day. Sometimes she felt really sick at the thought that she'd actually been prepared to fly to Zurich to die, that she'd actually slashed her wrists in a bid to die
... She would have died for absolutely nothing. She would have caused so much pain for nothing. She would have broken Corey for nothing.

But given
Corey's feelings, or lack of, she'd found she didn't really want to live anyway.

That was ungrateful, she knew that, but things were just different for her now without
Corey right by her side like he'd always been. She was finding it so hard to look forward to anything, to find any glimmer of hope at the end of the tunnel she was in. Corey didn't love her. Not the way she wanted him to. Now he was struggling to face her because he didn't want to hurt her with the truth.

"So what do you plan to do after the surgery? Going back to work?"

"I don't know. Maybe, but I won't be working as much as I used to. I might make Tammy partner or something, she fuckin' works harder than me!" she answered. "I've been given a second chance to do the things better so I don't want to live like I used to. The past few weeks I've had a chance to reflect on my life and I didn't like what I was. I can be a whole new me now."

"Will you be happy changing that much?"

"Yeah."

She could never go back to being the way she'd been. She'd been selfish and inconsiderate and it had earned her no friends. She wanted to do things that would make her mum and Greg proud of her. And she wanted to make her dad and her new family proud of her.

"No more sleeping around?"

She couldn't even if she tried. There could be no one else for her now, except
Corey. If only he loved her back.

"Maybe a little bit," she teased. "You think Dave will be up for it?"

Nate threw Mr. Chuckles at her and laughed just as the door opened and allowed John in. Corey was right behind him.

As always when she saw him, her heart missed a beat before it started beating triple times, making the blood rush through her body at warp speed and weakening her limbs.

How the hell did he do that? How was it that she had been his friend for most of her life but she was only feeling this now? It hadn't felt anything like this when she'd been sixteen, this was a whole new ballgame for her, a whole new level of consciousness. It was terrifying and exhilarating at the same time.

"Hey, guys,"
John said as he walked in to drop a kiss on the top of her head.

It occurred to her that she had slept with all these men within a week. She had put that right at the back of her mind the past week since everything had just seemed so unreal, like she was floating in a cloud and her feet quite hadn't touched the ground yet. But now she was feeling a bit awkward.

"Corey's mum's cooked for everyone, so we're heading back now," John said.

"Oh, I'm so jealous now. I'm stuck with this horrible hospital food," she chuckled.