Chapter Twenty
Chapter
Twenty
“We apologize for the delay as we wait for your plane to arrive.”
A few people around me groan, but I merely sigh at the unfortunate but inevitable shit storm that is air travel. Hopefully, I can still catch my connecting flight once we make it to Dallas. Originally, I had a good three hours to meander my way through the Dallas airport to my gate. We’ll see how much of that remains. This travel hiccup convinces me I was right to insist on combining the next two states into one trip, driving between them. It’s the logical decision.
When we were comparing our schedules and researching the weather for the four remaining destinations, Dom and I realized the best time to meet again would be the spring. Next year.
Half a year without any new words from my brother. The only way I could stomach the wait was the idea of getting a double dose.
Dom signed on to my idea when I agreed we’d take one vehicle. Spending hours in a car with him doesn’t seem as horrible as it used to. During this stretch of time apart, I plan to fully immerse my mind in the idea of being Dom’s friend. If I successfully suppress my insecurities and resentment, the excursion might actually be pleasant.
As pleasant as spreading my dead brother’s remains can be anyway.
“How’s your connection looking?” I ask. We sit side by side in the terminal, both on this first flight from Phoenix. When Dom found out I’d booked myself a seat in coach, he immediately pushed me to upgrade to first class into the seat next to him and insisted I also upgrade for my next flight to Seattle. He pointed out Josh left us more than enough to cover the expense, but I still feel weird traveling in luxury on my brother’s dime. The larger seat makes sense for Dom, who would have to fold his tall body into a painful shape to fit into a cheaper seat. But I’m more compact than him.
These arguments held no sway, so now I possess a first-class seat.
“I’ll probably miss it,” he says. “But there’s two more to Philly later in the day. I’ll grab one of those.”
I nod and reach back to bundle the hood of my sweatshirt into a makeshift pillow. “Gonna nap. Wake me when our plane gets here.” A thunderstorm in Dallas pushed back a morning flight to Phoenix, which means the plane we were supposed to be boarding in five minutes hasn’t even landed in the airport yet. I expect a long wait, and I’d rather sleep through it. My body needs the rest after I spent half the night fidgeting and rolling around in my bed, trying to forget the way Dom’s heat soaked into my thighs when I wrapped my legs around him in the pool. Or how the phantom touch of his hip lingers like hot sparks in my fingertips…
“Maddie.” Someone says my name in a low, gentle voice, and a warm pressure brushes my cheek.
When I blink my eyes open, the world is a bright blur of colorful, unfamiliar shapes. I jerk upright, hands skittering over my face.
“I can’t see!”
“Maddie.” The same voice, though sterner this time, draws my attention to my side. Dom’s there, close enough to be visible in my nearsighted range, and he holds out my glasses. I slip them on, remembering I’m in an airport terminal and I don’t wear contacts when I’m traveling for exactly this reason—I tend to nap, and I don’t want them gluing to my eyeballs.
“How long was I out for?” I slip my glasses off again and hold them up to the light. They seem cleaner than they were this morning. Did Dom polish the lenses?
“An hour. I forgot how you can sleep anywhere.” He has his laptop open and looks to be sorting through an email inbox. “Our plane is here. They’re going to start boarding in a minute.” He glances at me and a hint of a smile tugs at his full lips.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit. Did you write on my forehead while I was out?” I scrub my hand across my skin and look for traces of ink on my fingers.
Dom snorts. “That’s Adam’s move. I can’t believe it took Josh an entire day to realize he had ‘butt’ on his face.”
I chuckle at the memory. “I have my suspicions that he figured it out much earlier and just went with it.”
Dom’s half smile turns into an almost full curve of his lips. “He would. But you don’t have an insult on your face. Just a crease on your cheek from my shirt.”
“Your shirt…” That’s when I realize my head was tilted to the side, not back, when I woke up. Unconscious Maddie decided to turn Dominic Perry into her personal pillow. I eye his cotton T-shirt, relieved there are no drool stains there.
Before I can decide if I want to apologize or fall back on my normal snark, an announcement comes over the intercom.
“Boarding will begin in five minutes, starting with Group A.”
“That’s us.” He shuts his computer. “I’m going to use a normal-sized bathroom before we board.”
Just the idea of Dom trying to tuck his wide shoulders into one of those closet-sized airplane bathrooms has me snorting.
“Can I check my email?” I gesture toward his laptop. “I don’t feel like getting mine out.”
“Lazy,” he murmurs with another twitch at the corner of his mouth as he settles his computer in my lap. Dom stands with a stretch and a groan, and I try hard—but not hard enough—to avert my eyes from the stretch of skin that peeks out between his T-shirt and the waistband of his sweatpants. He drops his arms, the strip of his lower belly that haunts me disappears, and the man strides toward the bathroom. It takes me entirely too long to realize I’m staring at Dom’s butt.
“Damn nice-fitting pants,” I grumble as I tap the touch pad to bring the laptop screen to life.
The desktop background is a picture of the Perry family. The Perry family plus Josh and Rosaline. Adam and Carter wear graduation robes and huge grins, standing in the middle of the gathering.
I missed this.
Emilia had sent me the announcement, and I’d mailed the two graduates gift cards. But I could’ve been there. As awkward as I would have felt around Dom and Rosaline, everyone would have welcomed me.
The day could’ve been another memory with Josh.
My throat tightens, and I hurry to open the browser. Only, I pause again when one of the desktop files catches my attention. As if the computer knew who I was thinking about, the title blares up at me.
JOSH
Why does Dom have a file named after my brother?
Maybe these are photos of them together. More memories I missed.
The masochist in me double taps the folder.
But the files that pop up on the screen aren’t tiny previews of Josh’s grinning face. Instead, I find a collection of PDF files with academic-sounding names. As I scroll through, I realize they’re research articles. There’s over a hundred.
And all the titles mention a particular type of lung cancer.
The one that took Josh from me. From us.
It felt like a perverse cosmic joke that Josh’s lungs were what failed him. For years I was the one who couldn’t catch my breath.
My fingers scroll through the vast list until I come across a file with the title “Treatment Options.” I click to open it. The document is a simple format with clear headings.
In the same way that I hear my brother’s voice in my head when I read one of his letters, I could swear Dom is the one reading this to me. Every word clearly typed by his hand.
Josh’s Current Treatment
Promising Treatment Options
Experimental Treatment Options
Experts in the Field—
“Any work emergencies?”
I flinch at the question, jerking my chin up to find Dom looming over me. From his vantage point, he can’t see his screen, so I hurriedly close the documents and folder.
Would he be mad about my snooping?
“Nope.” I hand over his laptop, then busy myself pulling out my ticket and turning my phone to airplane mode.
Meanwhile, my mind tries to make sense of what I just found.
As I follow Dom onto the plane, my eyes locked on his broad back, I imagine him compiling all that information. Reading those dense articles and teaching himself all the medical jargon so he could understand what was happening to Josh.
He was trying to find a way to fix it.
“Window or aisle?” We’ve made it to our cushy first-class seats—cushy compared to coach anyway—and Dom claims my carry-on, depressing the handle and easily lifting it into the overhead bin.
“Uh, window, I guess.” My mind is still mostly on that file, but the corner I allot to his question reasons he can extend his legs into the aisle if he still needs more knee space. I shimmy past him and plop down into my seat, pushing my glasses back into place as they try to slip down my nose.
“Are you a nervous flier?” Dom sits down and turns to study me.
“No. Why?”
His eyes narrow, but after a pause he shakes his head. “No reason.”
But there was a reason. If I had said yes—that going up in the air terrified me—he would have done something to help. Distracted me, gotten me a drink or sleeping pills. Demanded to speak to the pilot so he could tell the person in charge of the plane that this better be the smoothest flight we’ve ever experienced. And if none of that worked, he’d probably escort me off the plane, rent us a car, and drive me home to Seattle himself.
Because that’s what Dom does. He takes control, and he fixes things.
That’s what that folder was. Dom trying to grab hold of the situation. As if all he needed to do was learn enough, and then he would have found the solution.
What must it have been like to watch his best friend die slowly and not be able to do a thing to stop it?
For the man who controls everything, to have none.
The truth smashes into me, more solid than I’ve allowed it to be up until this point.
Dom lost his best friend.
More like he lost his brother.
Whenever I think about Josh passing and leaving us all behind, my grief outweighs my concern for anyone else’s.
Josh was my brother. I loved him most. Therefore, surely, I hurt the most.
But with that folder in my mind, I’m finally able to untangle the idea of Dom’s grief from mine, until his pain sits on its own, a gaping wound the man beside me is probably trying to hold shut with the mere force of his will.
I can imagine Dom talking to himself, growling in an unrelenting voice. Stop hurting , he’d say, as if it were that simple. There may have even been a moment when he looked Josh straight in the face and demanded, Stop having cancer.
He would do that. The arrogant asshole.
The idea has me choking on a horrified bubble of laughter.
“Maddie?” I face the man filling my thoughts to find him eyeing me with a concerned crease between his brows.
Damn. I want to hug him.
But I can’t do that for a whole load of reasons, so I do the next best thing.
“Could you flag down a flight attendant when you see one? I want a gin and tonic.”
A strain of tension eases from his face and he nods, a stern, determined movement. “Of course.”
Stop it , I want to beg him. Stop before you make me fall again.
When he hands me my drink a minute later, I down half of it in a single gulp. But the dose of alcohol does nothing to ease the temptation to lean closer and ask him to take control of more arbitrary things if the responsibility soothes his pain.
To impose his stifling, infuriating, loving will upon me.
Don’t do it , I remind myself.
Dom might think he needs to be in charge, be in control. That he needs to take care of everything and everyone around him.
But I think what he really needs is someone who reminds him to take care of himself.