43. Noah
43
Noah
T he drive back to East View is agonizing. I thought nothing could ever be as bad as the day Linc died. Losing my brother broke me in a way I’ll never fully recover from, but knowing there’s a chance I may lose the love of my life feels like the cruelest turn my life could take.
What Zoey is up against . . . fuck. It’ll be slow and torturous. Some days she won’t be able to get out of bed, some days she’ll want to find a gun and put a bullet between her eyes just to make all the suffering stop. But she promised me she’ll fight, and I’m trusting her to stand by her word because a world without Zoey isn’t a world I want to live in. How could I? She’s the other half of my soul. We’re two halves of the same whole.
Without her, my life will no longer hold value to me.
She holds my hand, clutching it like it’s her only lifeline as I drive, barely able to focus on the road ahead. “So, you’ve been dealing with this for two weeks?” I ask her, needing to keep my mind occupied before the devastation eats me alive.
“Yeah,” she says in a small voice. “It’s mainly just been an anxious waiting game, hoping I was wrong or that it was something minor.”
“Two fucking weeks,” I mutter, not knowing if I’m talking to myself or to Zoey. “You’ve been a fucking ghost for two weeks, dealing with this, probably terrified, while I thought you were pulling away from me.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I didn’t want to worry you before I knew for sure. It could have been nothing, and that waiting game would have killed you. Having you not know and be the one person in my life not looking at me like I was about to drop dead is exactly what I needed.”
“I get that,” I tell her. “I understand why you didn’t want to tell me sooner, but how many nights did you cry yourself to sleep? Having me be normal with you might have been what you wanted , but it’s not what you needed . I could have been there, Zo. Every fucking night, I could have helped you.”
She swallows hard and nods. “I wanted to protect you from hurting the way I was,” she says. “But the second I found out, I was going to tell you. I don’t think I am capable of doing this without you, even if that makes me selfish.”
“It doesn’t make you selfish for needing me, Zo.”
“But your games, your life at college. You have so much going on right now, and I’m terrified that I’m going to be a distraction. I know you, Noah. You’re going to be at home every chance you get, being here with me through all of my treatments, even if it means risking everything you’ve got going on at college. I don’t want you to lose that, but I also can’t stand the thought of having you anywhere else.”
“College and football doesn’t fucking matter to me, Zoey. You do. If you need me here, then I’ll be here, every fucking second of every fucking day. I’m not going anywhere. Nothing is more important than this,” I tell her. “There will always be football, another time, another team, but there’s only one of you, and if being here to hold your hand makes you stronger and gives you what you need to fight this, then that’s my priority.”
Zoey wipes her face on the back of her hand, tears streaming down her face as we sit in the heat, both of us drenched from the raging storm outside. “I’m scared,” she finally says.
“I know, Zozo,” I say, swallowing over the lump in my throat. “I am too. I’m fucking terrified, but I’m not about to let you give up.”
“Dr. Sanchez says the chemo is going to be intense, worse than when I was a kid,” she says. “It’s aggressive, like it’s been lying dormant in my system for the last ten years, and now it’s come back with a vengeance.”
“Fucking hell,” I mutter, needing to pull off to the side of the road and stop the car again. My head falls into my hands, and I let out a shaky breath.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you,” she tells me, reaching for my hand again. “I just wanted to be honest with you. I don’t want to sugarcoat this, not with you.”
“I know,” I tell her, finally able to lift my head back up. I take a moment, trying to remember what she told me over a year ago when I first realized her sickness had been leukemia. “Is it the same as before? Three rounds of chemo over eighteen months and then you should be in the clear?”
“Best case scenario, yes. That’s what we’re hoping for, but when I was a kid, my leukemia wasn’t nearly as advanced. This is going to be more intense, and there’s a good chance that my body doesn’t respond to the chemo.”
“Then what?”
“Then we look into other treatments like radiation therapy or a stem cell transplant and hope like hell I’ll still be strong enough to fight it.”
“You will be,” I promise her. “I know you, Zo. You’re going to kick this thing’s ass.”
She gives me a sad smile and squeezes my hand. The determination in her eyes is enough to ease the fear inside my chest, if only a little, making it easier to breathe. Hitting the gas, I get back onto the highway, hating the thought of having to leave her alone in her bed tonight. “How are your parents taking it?”
“They’re not,” she admits. “They’re barely holding on. Every time Mom looks at me, she crumbles, and Dad . . . He thinks he’s being strong for all of us, but I hear him crying at night when he thinks everyone is asleep.”
“Shit,” I grunt, blowing my cheeks out as I try to hold myself together, reminding myself to check in on Mom. “And Hazel?”
Another tear rolls down her cheek, and she looks away, needing a second to compose herself. “We told her last night,” she murmurs. “She’s terrified. She thinks this is Linc trying to take me away from her. She thinks she’s being punished.”
My jaw clenches as every last part of me shatters, but I do what I can to hold myself together, knowing the second I break, Zoey will too. But I need her to know that she can lean on me when this gets hard.
“I have to go in on Monday morning to get my subcutaneous port implanted in my chest,” she tells me. “It’s only a small procedure and doesn’t take long, but for some reason, it’s terrifying me more than everything else.”
“Subcutaneous port?”
“It’s like a permanent catheter. It’ll deliver the chemo directly into my veins. Saves me from having to get poked and prodded each time I go in. It’ll come out once my treatments are done.”
“Will it hurt being in there?”
Zoey scrunches her face and shrugs her shoulders. “I don’t actually remember,” she says. “I’m assuming it will be uncomfortable for a while, and probably hurt like a bitch if I accidentally bump it, but in the grand scheme of things, I think it’s the least of what I need to worry about.”
I’ve never heard a truer statement in my life.
“It’s going to be alright, Zo. You don’t need to be scared. I’m going to be right there holding your hand the whole time. I’m not going to let you fall.”
“I know,” she whispers, squeezing my hand.
The rest of the drive home, she tells me about the past two days, how she’s been at Dr. Sanchez’s office getting every test under the sun to determine just how far her cancer has spread. She tells me about her fear of losing Hope when she tells her about her diagnosis and about her concern for Hazel and me in all of this.
When we finally make it back to her place, it’s after midnight and she’s exhausted.
I get out of the car and make my way around to her side, opening the door for her, and as she climbs out and takes my hand, I see her exhaustion. I can’t help but wonder if this is normal because it’s so late or if this is an effect of the leukemia coursing through her veins.
Taking her inside, I expect to find the house asleep, only there’s a single lamp on in the living room. Zoey’s mom sits alone with a glass of wine, tears staining her cheeks, and hearing us walk in, she turns our way. From the looks of it, she’s more than made her way through a whole bottle, but who can blame her? I wouldn’t mind a stiff drink right about now.
“Oh, honey. I didn’t realize you were coming home tonight,” Erica says, giving me a tight smile as she gets up from the couch. “I thought you’d be staying.”
Zoey glances down, not able to handle the overwhelming sadness in her mother’s eyes. “Yeah, I was,” she admits. “But then Noah and I . . . talked, and we just sort of ended up back here.”
Erica’s gaze shifts to me, and realizing that I know, her tears flow harder. She reaches out and places her hand on my shoulder, giving a gentle squeeze. “That couldn’t have been an easy conversation,” she says.
“It wasn’t,” I agree. “But if you don’t mind, Zo is exhausted. She needs to get to bed.”
“Of course,” she says with a nod.
Zoey and I turn toward the stairs when I stop and glance back at Erica. “With all due respect,” I tell her. “I know how you feel about me sleeping over now that we’re . . . grown, but I can’t leave her. Not tonight.”
Erica nods, and I breathe out a sigh of relief. “I thought that might be the case,” she tells me. “Head on up to bed, and in the morning, you can give me some ideas on how I can break the news to your mom.”
“Shit.”
“My thoughts exactly,” she says.
Zoey squeezes my hand as we make our way up the stairs, and I press my hand to her lower back, not liking the way she sways on the stairs. Pushing through her door, Zoey heads straight for her bed, not even having the energy to stop by the bathroom to wash off her makeup.
She kicks her shoes off and drops down onto her bed as I shrug out of my shirt and let my jeans fall to the ground. I climb in beside her, knowing I won’t be getting even a single wink of sleep tonight, but that doesn’t matter to me. She scooches in right beside me, and I pull her into me, her head resting against my chest as her legs become tangled with mine.
“I’m sorry,” she murmurs into the darkness as we listen to the softening rain hitting the roof. “This wasn’t the plan I had for us.”
I feel her tears against my chest, and I hold her tighter, every second of this breaking my heart. “Plans change all the time, Zoey, but that doesn’t mean we have to go through this blindly. It just means that we have a chance to make an even better plan. But for now, my only plan is to see you smile every day of the rest of our lives.”
“I think I can manage that,” she tells me.
“Damn straight, you can, Zozo. You’re a fighter, and I’m not nearly done with you yet.”