Chapter 5 #2
Before I know what I’m doing, I sprint out the door with my shoes clutched in my hand as I stumble and almost fall down the steps.
I stop at the edge of the property just long enough to drag my sneakers on, then run in the direction of Kyle and Cassie’s house.
Their rusty Ford truck is sitting crookedly in the driveway, which means one of them has to be home.
I practically throw myself against the front door, pounding like I’m being chased by wolves.
After twenty seconds that feel like an hour, Cassie flings it open in a bathrobe, her wet hair up in a towel. She steps back at the sight of me, her eyes bugging out. “Jesus, Cann. What’s wrong?”
I don’t do enough cardio, so I have to rest my hands on my knees and gasp for breath before I can speak. “Give me the truck. I need to get to the hospital.”
Her face goes pale. “What happened? Who’s dying?”
“No one. I just need to go there. Now. Please.”
“Okay?” She pulls a ring of keys off the little hook by the door and holds it out to me. “Do you need me to come with…” She qives up on the sentence halfway through because I’ve already snatched the keys and sprinted to the car. “Bye, asshole.”
“Thank you!” I holler, waving out the window at her as I zip backward onto the road and floor it for the county hospital.
I haven’t been to this hospital since I was born in the maternity wing twenty-six years ago.
The sprawling gray building keeps getting bigger and more confusing the longer I circle it in the truck, searching for an open spot.
I park next to a big facility map with a sense of relief, until I realize Reed never even told me why he was coming here.
Did he forget? No, I don’t think that man forgets anything. He didn’t want me to know.
“Please,” I pant over and over as I jog to a random entrance next to an ugly fountain. I don’t know who I’m asking or what I’m asking for. I’ll take anything at this point.
The sign over my head says Emergency Department.
I scan the cramped, overflowing seats around the wall, and the line of eight people waiting to talk to a single stressed-looking nurse.
She clearly doesn’t have time to help me, so I start speed-walking up and down the hallways, checking every nook and peeking through windows into the waiting areas of each specialty department.
When I finish that floor, I take an elevator to the second level and start again.
It’s so gloomy, with just the rumble of industrial air conditioning, the distant beeping of monitors, and the smell of disinfectant stinging my nostrils.
Now that I’ve seen his quiet independence, I realize Reed must have been so scared if he wanted a stranger to come wait with him.
And now he’s here alone because I’m a clingy, selfish bastard.
Even if he never wants to see me again, I need to fix this.
By the time I finish the second floor, I haven’t seen anyone besides a single nurse pushing a wheelchair out of the gastroenterology clinic.
Maybe I don’t have a choice but to get in that godforsaken line and try to convince the woman to tell me where Reed might have gone.
My feet hurt because I never tied my shoes properly, and I feel like I’m going to puke.
As I jog back to the elevator, I almost miss a choked whimper under the slap of my sneakers.
But something makes me slow down long enough to hear it again.
Someone’s crying violently down a hallway to my left that I didn’t notice before.
My brain hasn’t spent enough time with him to recognize it yet, but my body knows.
I run down the hall into a stuffy, dimly-lit seating area that looks like it was made specifically to keep sad people out of sight of everyone else. Reed’s curled up into a little ball on a corner bench with his head buried in his arms, sobbing wretchedly into a folder of paperwork.
Everything in my body goes cold when I see the sign on the wall, next to a door that leads deeper into the building.
Oncology. A sharp, vicious pain pierces my chest. This.
Whatever this is, it was the reason he ran.
He knew I couldn’t take it. Until now, I would have said he was right.
But the Cannon who spent today with him, who found a home in his eyes and felt that shy laugh against my skin, that Cannon won’t let him face this alone. Even if it destroys me.
“Reed.” I meant to sound strong, but my voice breaks. His head jerks up, his flushed face shiny with snot and tears, and gapes at me. I don’t know what to say, so I just whisper, “I’m here.”
Another sob shakes his body as he stretches out his arms toward me like a little kid.
I crash onto my knees next to him and wrap him up, gather him to my chest and cradle his head in my neck.
As his tears drench the collar of my t-shirt, I close my eyes and try to prepare myself, so I can keep it together for him when he tells me the news.
Finally he pushes against my chest until we’re sitting face to face. I grab the corner of my jacket and try to help wipe the mess off his face while he hiccups in painful gasps of air. “Hey, it’s okay,” I murmur. “Breathe, baby.”
The first words he manages to choke out sound like I’m happy. I tell myself I’m making things up, because I can’t live with the hope if it’s not true. But he shoves my hands away and says it again. “I’m happy-crying, Cannon,” he blubbers, trying to get control of his voice. “It’s good news.”
“Huh?” I grab his face in both hands and stare into his eyes to try and find proof that he’s hiding something from me again. But that deep, crushing sadness is gone. “What are you talking about?”
“I—” He starts to hold the paperwork out to me, then gives up and drops his head in his hands again.
“Oh, god. I’d been feeling weird the last few months.
I got a CT scan, and they found a huge mass near my pancreas.
The doctor said it looked like stage IV metastatic cancer, like worst-possible-scenario, a-few-months-to-live type shit. Today was my biopsy results.”
All my shaky courage drains out of me as I drop back on my heels and blink at him. He thought he was dying. I was going to be the last person to hold him before… I can’t fucking think about it. “But it’s not?” I whisper shakily, desperate to hear him say it.
He shakes his head quickly, reaching out to stroke my cheek. “I don’t even remember how to pronounce it, but it’s like retroperitoneal fibrosis?” If I wasn’t falling apart, I’d find it cute how he fumbles over the word so seriously. “It’s an inflammatory condition that can mimic signs of cancer.”
“But you’re…you’re going to be okay?” My brain needs him to stop fucking around and say those exact words.
His face softens. “I’m going to be fine, Cannon. I’m so sorry that I—”
I reach up and quickly press my palm over his mouth. “Don’t you dare apologize for any of this.”
After gawking at me for a moment, he nuzzles his face into my hand as his shoulders relax. “Can you hug me again, please?”
“Jesus fuck,” I mumble, scrambling up onto the bench and pulling him into my arms. “You can have anything you fucking want.”
He buries his face in my chest and I tuck my nose against his spring-smelling hair, running my fingers through it.
Mine. I shouldn’t, but my brain chants it anyway.
Mine, mine. I’ve messed around with a lot of guys, and tried to settle down with some of them too, and none of it has ever quite worked.
Nobody takes me seriously as more than a small-town loser himbo who’s good for some drinks and a fuck, so I never asked for more. But this man makes me feel like enough.
I don’t realize how tight I’m holding him until he fidgets with a grunt of pain.
“Sorry,” I croak. No matter how hard I try to unwind myself from him, my body won’t obey.
After the fucking roller coaster of today, I don’t have much courage left today to be the strong one.
“Please,” I breathe, the same plea I put out into the universe as I ran through the parking lot.
“Please don’t make me let you go again.”
I can feel him shake his head, then struggle just enough to get his arms free and hug me back. “You’ve got me.” He rubs his cheek against my ear. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
Reed
I’m not dying.
I get to torment my students with new essay prompts and group projects in the fall. I have another chance to take the cheer squad to State. I get to grow old in the male body I worked so hard for.
I’ve spent the last two weeks bracing myself for the worst. Pretending it made some kind of sense. Because I like logic, and with scan results like that, hope wasn’t logical.
Now the overwhelming darkness that descended over my world is starting to break apart and peel back, letting in flashes of air and light.
And Cannon. The boy I barely know, who is currently clinging to me with a shaky desperation I can feel in every part of his body.
God, I made such a mess of this. I truly thought it would be two strangers messing around for a day and going our separate ways without a word.
Until it became him, until everything I told myself I didn’t need to be happy—laughter, intimacy, love—started to feel like a possibility.
I realize vaguely that my phone has been vibrating on the bench next to my hip. Before I can move, I feel Cannon grab it. “Oh wait, no no no.” It’s too late. By the time I fight my way out of his crushing grip, Cannon is studying the screen with a crooked, smug smirk.
He raises his eyebrows at me and flips the phone around to show me what I’ve already seen a dozen times—the photo we took together set as my wallpaper, cropped in and edited with an aesthetic light bleed around the edges to make it look as romantic as possible.
What can I say? I had to distract myself with something while I waited for the worst news of my life.
“The nurse who took me back to the doctor’s office asked if this was my boyfriend,” I say as my face heats up, reaching out to brush my finger across the screen. I would never confess this normally, but the poor man deserves something after what I just put him through.
His grin widens, brightening with something between humor and hope. “And?”
“I told her yes,” I mumble.
“And?”
“Give me a break.”
“No,” he demands, his tired eyes sparkling.
“Okay, fine. She said we were cute together and the whole time she was taking my blood pressure I told her about how you made your grandma a stained glass window.” Laughing at myself, I trace my thumb along his jaw.
“I said you were going to start your own workshop soon, and she made me promise to send her the information as soon as you did.”
He rolls his eyes, but he can’t stop smiling. Then he hugs me again, quick and hard, before pulling me back to arm’s length. “Can we get out of here?”
Slowly I become aware of the yellowy walls and dusty fake flowers scattered around in plastic vases.
“Yes please. Could I—” I cut off in a wave of panicked uncertainty.
I’ve never put myself out there, because rejection would make the loneliness feel real, instead of something I told myself I chose.
Cannon hooks fingers under my jaw and turns my face back to his, gentle but demanding. “Say it, baby.” I think he knows, but he wants to hear it. It’s my turn to be strong.
“Could I come back to your place?”
“I have to take you home first.”
I blink at him in confusion, my heart sinking. “What?”
“You need clothes, right? A toothbrush? Whatever homework you have to grade?” His grip on my shoulder tightens meaningfully. “If you come back to mine, I’m not letting you out again until Monday morning.”
“Oh.” I sound like such a dork, not a suave bone in my body. “Really?”
He bursts out laughing, the warmth in his gaze flowing over my skin like sunlight. “I’m gonna do whatever I want with you, Reed. I’m greedy. I want that first date we didn’t have, and the second, and the third. Got it?”
All that hope, that illogical hope I thought I’d gotten rid of forever, comes exploding up and out, filling my whole body. “You really want to?”
Huffing impatiently, he flicks me between the eyes. “Stop asking me that. What do you teachers say? Put on your listening ears and shut up?”
I cough out a snotty giggle, rubbing away the last stickiness of tears on my face.
“Not quite, but sure. Look, I…I don't think I realized until I met you that even before this cancer scare, I’ve just been existing, passing time. I don’t want that anymore.
” I take his hand, toying gently with his warm, strong fingers.
“I want you, Cannon. Please blow up my boring-ass life as hard as you want.”
For all his bravado, I can see something soft and relieved open up in his face when I say it out loud.
The look in his eyes breaks my brain, the idea that I could ever make anyone feel this happy.
It makes me want to fight and learn and grow into my best self just to deserve it.
“You have no idea what you just asked for,” he snarks.
“You’re going to be begging me to stop.”
I want to kiss him again. I almost do. But the desire to feel him holding me and his body in my arms is so overpowering that I just hug him as hard as I possibly can.
If I had forgotten, sometime in the last terrifying hour, the feeling that convinced me this might be forever, it comes back to me now with more clarity than I’ve had in a very long time.
“Cannon?” I need him to understand, but I can’t figure out what to say.
“I know,” he rumbles happily, lacing fingers in my curls. “Let me take you home, gorgeous.”