Chapter 30
Thirty
NARDI
My blind date’s name is Mike and he seems like a very cheerful person. He compliments me genuinely, pulls out my chair for me and is interested in everything I have to say.
He’s Cullen’s opposite in every way.
And I’m not just talking about his rich, dark skin.
Where Cullen was introverted, quiet, and reticent, Mike loves to laugh and be around people. He knows several other patrons in the cafe and they constantly stop and greet him as we sit at the table.
Mike seems like a really nice guy and I feel a twitch of shame for using him as bait. However, I can’t show up today without a partner. If Cullen’s, indeed, following me, he’ll see that it’s a trap.
Poor Mike is the sacrifice on the altar of my love.
Or my delusion.
After today, I’ll find out.
I intentionally chose a booth by the window and, while Mike is talking, I keep my eyes peeled for Cullen. The street isn’t particularly busy. There’s a park across the way and there aren’t many buildings for someone to hide.
As the date wears on, my hope putters out.
Cullen doesn’t show.
After thirty minutes, I decide to stop wasting Mike’s time and make up an excuse to leave. Mike pays for the meal. I can tell that he wants to do this again, but I hold my hand out to him for a shake.
“It was nice meeting you,” I tell him, pulling back and rubbing the imprint of the wedding band beneath my shirt. I wore the necklace with Cullen’s ring to the date because it gave me strength. But now I just feel pathetic.
His smile turns polite. “Yeah, same.”
I hurry out of the cafe, wishing I was a better person than I am. That was a bust. Looks like I’ll have to schedule that psych evaluation with Darrel after all.
I hike my purse higher on my shoulder and, as I turn toward the parking lot, I see a tall, familiar form in the distance. A surge of wistful longing unfurls in my chest. My heart plucks like a vibrating guitar string, the echo of it reverberating through my entire body.
I’d know that towering build, broad shoulders and silver eyes anywhere.
It’s Cullen.
He whirls around as if caught and hurries in the opposite direction.
I strike out after him, but Fate conspires against me. People are pouring out of the nearby subway station, heading home after work. I push through the throng of bodies desperately. My heart tugs me forward and every inch of my skin buzzes.
“Cullen!” I yell.
A truck roars by, swallowing my voice.
I push forward, desperation lengthening my stride. If he turns the bend, I’ll lose him.
“Cullen!”
The man in the beanie stops.
I surge ahead just as a bunch of bicycles fill the lane next to the sidewalk. I bite down on my bottom lip in frustration as one almost knocks into me. The offending biker yells a harried apology.
I scowl at him and then twist around, looking in Cullen’s direction.
But Cullen’s gone.
My chest heaves. I run straight ahead, hoping that he’s just around the bend. The crowd thins out as they’re heading for the crosswalk instead of this abandoned alley.
Empty.
He’s not here.
I place my hand against the side of the brick building, leaning over slightly to catch my breath.
This makes no sense.
I scrub my forehead, more confused than ever. Why did he run away from me? Why didn’t he face me?
Fighting back the massive disappointment, I spin around and jolt in surprise.
A man stands before me.
My eyes slide up to the thin nasal tubes fitted in his nostrils and finally to the silver eyes I fell in love with.
“Cullen.” His name tumbles from my lips like shattered glass.
He steps closer, looking at me with such sweet longing that tears spring to my eyes.
“Hello, Nardi.”
CULLEN
Nardi’s anger is palpable, like a raging bonfire. The flames roar up as she stomps forward.
I hold steady, waiting for her to get to me. My eyes never leave her. She’s stunning. Beautiful. The white top and short, flirty skirt she’s wearing threatens to tear my heart out of my chest. I want to hold her so badly that my hands physically ache.
Yet this isn’t a sweet reunion.
The heat of her gaze threatens to singe straight through my flesh to my soul. If she glares any harder, lasers might come bursting out of her eyes.
Even so, being this close to her fills me with incredible relief.
“It was you,” Nardi accuses.
“I—”
She flings herself into my arms, sobbing uncontrollably. “Tell me I’m not dreaming. Tell me this is real. Tell me you’re real.”
My heart rearranges and I slide my hands over her back, tugging her close. “You’re not dreaming. I’m here, Nardi.”
Hot tears plop against my shoulder as Nardi buries her head in my neck. She’s squeezing so tight that I can’t suck in a single breath. But I don’t care. I press her into me, running my hand down her hair.
Having her in my arms again is more than I could have asked for. It’s more than I deserve. Even now, I still have doubts that revealing myself is the right thing to do. But I couldn’t walk away again.
Nardi eases back and looks up at me, heavy tears still trembling on her lashes. “Why… how…” She shakes her head. “I have so many questions.”
“I’ll tell you everything,” I whisper, brushing away a tear with my knuckle. “Let’s find somewhere to sit down.”
I draw back, but Nardi hugs me again fiercely. In that moment, without her saying a word, I can feel how difficult this was for her. It breaks me to think of what she’s been through.
I hug her back.
Just then, some workers step out of the back of a building. They glance at us, whispering among themselves as they light up cigarettes.
I tap Nardi’s shoulder. “Sweetheart.”
“Not letting go,” Nardi says, pasting herself to me.
I laugh when she nuzzles my chest with her cheek.
For months, I’d been conflicted about my decision to show up in front of her. But, now that she’s actually in my arms, a sense of rightness pumps through my heart.
“We should find somewhere private to talk,” I insist, not wanting to inhale second-hand smoke.
Nardi nods.
I interlock our fingers and lead her to the cross-walk. She presses tightly against me and it almost feels like we’re competing in a three-legged race with how hard it is to move while stuck together.
I don’t complain though. I wouldn’t want a single inch of distance between us.
At the park, I lead her to the bench farthest away from the crowds. I expect Nardi to sit beside me, but she falls into my lap instead and pulls her legs up, curling against me like a cat. I smile and trace a line down her back with my fingers.
The sun is beginning to fade, but it still streaks a brilliant orange-red across the sky. Already, a fingernail-sized sliver of the moon is peeking out.
“Don’t get too comfortable just because I’m clinging to you,” Nardi says, interrupting the silence. “I’m still pissed off about you pretending to be dead for six months.”
“I wasn’t pretending.”
“You didn’t call. You didn’t text. Do you know how many nights I cried myself to sleep? I literally got dehydrated and had to get an IV drip.” She lifts her hand, showing off her wrist as evidence.
Guilt lashes into me and I grip her tighter. “I’m sorry.”
“Why didn’t you come to me?”
“I didn’t know if I’d make it.”
“What do you mean?” Her expression softens. “Where were you?”
“I checked into the best treatment center in the country.”
Her eyes widen. “You mean… you left to get better?”
“I wasn’t sure if I could,” I admit, thinking back to those first few consultations. “I had the money to pay for the best treatment, but given my symptoms…”
Her gaze searches mine and she tugs her bottom lip into her mouth. “Dare told me about you coughing up blood.”
I nod slowly.
She smacks my shoulder. “How could you not tell me? You spent all night with me and you never mentioned you were in that much pain.”
I grasp her hand and slide our fingers together. In a deep, honest voice, I tell her, “I don’t regret anything we did that night.”
Her eyelashes flutter and she glances away shyly.
“The doctors told me that I had limited options and that the treatment was highly experimental. They strongly encouraged me to check myself into hospice.”
“How did you get them to proceed with treatment?”
I shrug. “If I didn’t have the money I did, I don’t think they would have. But I signed every document they put in front of me relieving them of responsibility. I had already made peace with my death, so I didn’t have high expectations to start with.”
“Did they do surgery again?” Nardi asks, putting her hand on my chest and dragging her finger above the scar.
I nod. “They put me on an extremely aggressive round of chemo.” I clear my throat. The memory of those first few months makes me shudder in horror.
Nardi lifts my hands and sees the bands of discoloration from where the twenty-one day cycle kept discoloring at intervals.
“Looks weird, right?” I say with a laugh.
“No.” She looks up at me, her eyes shining. “It’s beautiful.”
My heart catches in my throat. I shakily continue. “My body had every adverse reaction you can imagine, but I came out of it with a sexy new accessary.” I gesture to the tubes around my face that connect to my oxygen tank.
“I think it looks great.” She smiles and I instantly feel at ease about the change in my appearance. “But why aren’t you carrying an oxygen tank now?”
“I am.” I tap my chest. “I’m wearing an experimental valve. It basically does what a pacemaker does for the heart, but for the lungs.”
She bobs her head, squinting as if she doesn’t quite understand. “Does it hurt?”
I hesitate.
“Cullen, tell me the truth.”
“Yes.” I rub the scar on my chest. “The surgery didn’t go well. My body rejected it at first and I went into shock. The doctors said my heart stopped twice.”
A tear spills down Nardi’s cheek.
I quietly brush it away.
Nardi sniffs. “It sounds like you endured absolute torture. It was the very thing you didn’t want.”
I remain silent because she’s right. I knew that fighting to stay alive would hurt and that success would only mean living for a year or two more.
“What made you decide to get treatment? You were so determined not to.”
“I’ve thought about that question a lot,” I admit.
She smiles tearfully. The wind tosses her straight hair and she holds it back with a steady hand. I mentally trace the curve of her full lips, the soft contour of her cheek and the delicate line of her jaw as she turns her head.
I turn her back to me. “I’ve been sick for a long time, and I wasn’t afraid to die. Then I met you and I suddenly had this intense fear of dying. It even gave me nightmares.” I pause as I recall the dream I had where I was buried alive. “At first, I ignored the change in me. I told myself that it was better to leave this world on my terms than to desperately fight with Life only to lose in the end.”
Nardi nods and I glance away, noticing the sun disappearing into the trees and dusk spreading across the horizon.
“But when you planned that ‘year in a day’ event…”
“Right. I remember that.”
“It hit me in a second. I’d rather live a day more if it meant spending that day with you.”
She nuzzles against my chest. “Did you ever regret not having me there while you were getting treatment?”
“I missed you every day, but I didn’t want you there,” I say firmly. “I wanted you to live your life outside of a hospital. I wanted you to pursue your dreams and make happy memories. That’s what I’ve always wanted for you.”
Nardi blinks, hurt spreading through her expression.
I rub her back, soothing her. “I love you more than death. I was willing to go to battle for you, but I didn’t want you on the battlefield with me.”
She chews on her bottom lip. Disagreement is etched into her frown. “I know you feel that way, Cullen. But I don’t want to be left behind because of your fears. Inside or outside of the hospital, I’m happy if I’m with you.” Her fingers slide into mine. “If we fight together, we have a better chance of winning than if you fight alone.”
“I know.” I kiss her forehead. She’s pretty even when she cries and it amazes me that a woman as stunning as Nardi Davis loves me.
“It hurt so much to lose you, Cullen.” Her eyes get teary.
“I’m sorry, baby. I’m sorry. I don’t like that I made you cry,” I whisper, my heart throbbing. “But I thought it was better this way. The doctors had terribly low projections. They were very clear that the surgery was risky. Things could go wrong at any stage. I didn’t want to give you hope only to wrench it away again.”
“But you’re here. You beat the odds.” There’s far too much hope in her voice.
I glance away because this is the hardest part of the conversation. “Sort of.”
“What does that mean?” She inhales shakily.
“I’m still not completely healthy. I’m… I’m still dying, Nardi.”
“H-how much time do you have?”
“Five years max. One year… objectively.”
She goes very still.
My chest heaves on a sigh. “I struggled a lot with whether I should come to you. At first, the treatments weren’t working. And then I had so much trouble with the valve.” I press a hand to my chest.
Nardi splays her hand on top of mine, staring through my T-shirt as if she can see the implanted mechanism.
“There were days I came really close to dying and I was terrified that it would be the end for me. I wasn’t planning on revealing myself to you because I didn’t want you to go through the cycle of loving me and losing me all over again. I intentionally cut off contact with anyone in your world, even old acquaintances of mine, because I didn’t want you to know I was alive.”
Her mouth tightens.
I brace myself for a scolding, but Nardi simply inhales deep, calming breaths. She closes her eyes, composes herself and then asks in a quiet voice, “Do you know what I kept thinking after I lost you, Cullen?”
I wait silently.
“ One more ,” Nardi breathes.
I squeeze my eyes shut, emotions overwhelming me.
Her sweet, fiercely determined voice rings through the dusk. “One more hug, one more kiss, one more conversation. It was all I could think about.” She twists around so she can look me right in the eyes. “You and I are a team. You were there for me. I want to be there for you, even if it means chasing you to the ends of the earth and walking barefoot to hell and back.”
There’s not a hint of hesitation in her voice or in her eyes. I fully believe her.
Guilt twists my heart. “You deserve a man who’s healthy. In a few years, I won’t be around to love you like you deserve. It’s not fair to you,” I whisper.
“Well, life isn’t fair, Cullen. Maybe you didn’t learn that as a kid, but I did. People die. They separate. They divorce. Sometimes, kids have crappy dads who tell them they’ll die a failure.”
I chuckle wryly.
“Sometimes, women who desperately want to be mothers… can’t be.”
My eyes go serious and I sigh heavily. “Nardi…”
“No one has a right to be happy. We just choose to be despite the cards we’ve been dealt. I choose to be happy with you, Cullen. I choose you.”
Those words strike me somewhere deep and, for the first time, I can see where Nardi is coming from. Just as I chose to love her more than death, her choice is to love me while I’m dying.
“I understand now,” I whisper.
“Good.” Her hands frame my cheeks and she speaks through tears. “You make me happy, Cullen. I’m a happier, healthier, better version of myself when I’m with you. Promise me this time will be different. I want to be right there with you when you take your last breath.”
I notice the chain glittering around her neck and tug it out, stroking the wedding ring I gave her. “‘Till death do us part.”
She leans in. “‘Till death do us part.”
“I love you, Nardi.”
Nardi sweeps her arms around my neck. “I love you . So much.”
Our lips meet for a tender, sweet kiss and it feels like coming home.
After a moment, Nardi eases back, a mischievous smile on her face. “I just want to clarify something. You were stalking me.”
“Stalking is,” I wince, “that’s a harsh word.”
“How long were you following me?”
I sheepishly run a hand over my beanie. All my hair is gone. Every last strand. Now I have a new appreciation for the spiky, uneven haircut I used to have.
“Cullen,” Nardi prods.
“A few weeks.”
She blinks in surprise.
“I missed you. Sometimes, the pain was so unbearable, I had to find you and remind myself of why I was doing this.”
She looks touched. “So the umbrella?”
“I couldn’t watch you standing in the rain when I had a perfectly good umbrella.”
Her eyes glitter. “And that night outside the house… wait, why didn’t you show up on the security feed?”
My stare remains blank. “I programmed the security system.”
She nods and then she laughs happily. “Speaking of programming, you totally gave yourself away to Josiah. He found you in the PLP mainframe.”
I cringe.
Nardi slams her hands on her hips. “Were you working while you were getting treatment?”
“I didn’t have the energy to do too much, but I did check in.”
“That’s so like you, Cullen.” Nardi offers an exasperated grin. “And just to confirm, you were getting my voicemails, weren’t you?”
I clear my throat and pull away.
“Ah-ah.” She grips my chin as I often did to her, forcing me to meet her gaze. “For someone who says he wants me to live happily with a ‘healthy’ man, you were creeping around at the first hint that I was moving on.”
“I wanted to make sure he was a decent guy.”
“Yeah, right.” She rolls her eyes.
I arch a brow. “You were hoping I’d be jealous and show today. Isn’t that why you told me?”
“Did you know I was setting a trap?”
“Not at first.”
“What tipped you off?”
“You kept looking out the window. If you had a pair of binoculars, you probably would have been scanning the street through it. It didn’t take much to realize you were waiting for someone.”
She huffs. “Yeah, I can see how that would give it away.”
I laugh softly and rest my forehead against hers.
But Nardi’s still in a playful mood and teases me. “How are you so sure that you were the one I was waiting for? Maybe I was just nervous and shy because I liked him.”
My grip tightens on her. “The guy couldn’t take his eyes off you, but you weren’t paying any attention to him. Besides, you were calling me every week, telling me how much you still love me. There’s no way he would have taken you away from me.”
She barrels back, aghast. “Don’t get too cocky. I love you, Cullen, but ‘pretending to be dead’ is crappy boyfriend behavior. You’re in the doghouse for the foreseeable future.”
I laugh at her annoyed expression. “I didn’t pretend.”
Nardi snorts, unimpressed by that excuse.
“I heard everything.” I touch her cheek, feeling immensely grateful for this moment. “The new building you rented with the commercial kitchen equipment. The day you decided you were returning to filming. The frustration you had with the low views. The day you figured out what meals the people online liked to watch. The day you laughed so hard you cried because of your new video editor.”
Her lips inch up. “You remember everything.”
“I do.” I wrap her in a hug. “I’m so, so proud of you, Nardi.”
She closes her eyes and sighs happily. “Thank you for coming back to me, Cullen. Even if it’s just for one day, I’ll treasure every moment I have with you.”
I kiss her and, in my heart, I solemnly vow to do the same.