Chapter 19 #3
“Both.”
I sniff a laugh. “Ask me nicely and I might say yes.”
“Lana Aurora Gomez,” Christian smiles, “may I have the great honor of taking you on a date to the summer carnival?”
“Hmm. No.” I shrug.
I Try to stand but he pulls me back down onto his lap. “No?”
“I don’t know,” I tease. “I’ll have to sleep on it.”
“You’re my date,” he says and his hand comes around my jaw, just before he kisses me.
“Okay,” I breathe on his lips.
“Eat dinner with me tonight,” Christian says. “As my date.”
“Another date?”
“Yeah.” He smiles. “Another date in our kitchen.”
“Our kitchen?” I arch a brow. I like that more than I’ll admit.
“Our kitchen,” Christian says. “Every night.”
“For how long?”
Christian’s cheeks go pink. “Ever?”
I arch a brow. “Is that a question or are you telling me?”
“I’m telling you,” he says and holds me more firmly. “We will always eat dinner together.”
“I agree to your terms, Mr. Calloway,” I say and kiss his pink cheek. “And yes, I’ll be your date to the carnival this weekend.”
Christian smiles up at me, his eyes sparkling and soft—filled with love and hope. “I love you.”
“I know,” I breathe.
Two weeks after his birthday. After the picnic in the gardens. That’s when it happens.
Christian walks in through the apartment door, eyes dark and heavy, bags colored like bruises. He tosses his keys toward the entry table with scattered mail, and he misses. The keys dropping onto the wooden floors.
I sit up, closing the book and setting it on the coffee table. And I know before he reaches me.
“Christian?”
“He’s dying,” he rasps hoarsely.
“What?” I breathe.
Christian staggers toward me until he plops down onto our couch and lies across my lap. His arms wrap around my body and he buries his face against my stomach. Then his body begins to tremble, his chest is heaving, and he is so broken.
It’s a terrible kind of pain to see the person you are so devastatingly in love with cry. To see them in pain. You don’t just see it though, you feel it as though it was yours too, and his pain is my own. What burns him, burns me. What hurts him, hurts me—kills me.
I gently brush his hair back, lingering to scratch at the back of his head, and I watch the way my lone tear splats on his face. “Christian,” I croak.
“They want me to give him half my liver, but I’m not even sad that he’s dying,” he cries. “I don’t care.”
“Then, baby…” I sniffle. “What’s wrong?”
Christian gasps for air, struggling to breathe through his sobs. His arms around me tighten.
“Lana, I hate myself,” he sobs.
“No,” I breathe, my heart shattering into unrepairable pieces. “No. No, don’t say that to me. Christian, I—I—” I hiccup on the sobs. “We—I…We can get you help. I’ll get you help.”
“I hate myself,” Christian wails, curling into himself. “And I don’t want you to hate me too.”
“I could never hate you, Christian,” I croak.
“I love you. I love you all the time. Even when I don’t like you, I love you.
And I’m pretty sure I’ll love you until we are nothing—even then.
” A sob gets caught in my throat and I swallow it down to say, “Christian, I love you. And I only wish you could love yourself the same way.”
“I don’t.”
“You will,” I rasp. “We’ll get you help, okay?”
He cries harder.
“Hey,” I whisper. “Baby, hey.”
I hold his face in my hands and his body shifts on my lap to look up at me. And my heart breaks further when I see the red in his eyes, the stains of salt on his wet cheeks, and his quivering chin.
“We’ll get you help,” I say. “Okay?”
Christian nods and rasps, “Okay.”
Then I smell it on his breath.
I blink and he must know that I know now because he murmurs, “I’m sorry.”
“Christian—”
The man I love breaks all over again into pieces that don’t fit in my two hands.
I don’t have enough glue and the pieces are slipping between my fingers and I can’t pick them all up right now.
I need to—I want to. I can’t see him like this.
I won’t survive this pain, and I’m afraid that he won’t either.
I’m afraid of coming home and finding him…
“I’m sorry,” he sobs, turning into my stomach again. “I’m sorry. I hate myself, Lana. I hate myself.”
“Stop,” I whisper. I bite my lip to keep from crying out, screaming at the universe.
“I’m sorry,” Christian cries. “I couldn’t do it. I’m not—” he gasps for air “—I’m not strong enough. I—I—”
“Shhh,” I coo and hold him close. “Later.”
I urge Christian up from my lap until he’s sitting up. I stand and take his hands so he stands too, and I lead him to our bedroom. I settle in the middle of our mattress, lying on my side. “Come, baby.”
Christian, with the sad pout on his face, climbs onto our bed and curls up beside me, facing me. I shake my head. “No, turn around.”
He sniffs, nods, and turns away from me.
I grab the blanket and throw it over our bodies.
I wrap my body around his, my arms holding him around his middle and my leg over his hip.
I hold him tightly, and whisper, “I love you. I love you enough for the two of us right now, and I’ll love you through this. ”
He nods and I kiss the curve of his neck.
“We’ll get you help.”