Chapter Twenty-One Chicago, Illinois Present Day #2
Chrissie almost said yes. Just like that.
Just yes. As if the thing Scarlett was asking for was a simple favor, one of the thousands of give-and-take transactions that defined twenty-seven years of friendship.
But nothing with Scarlett was simple—especially not her favors.
When Scarlett asked for something, she didn’t want just a small piece of your soul.
She wanted the whole thing.
“Fuck you.” Chrissie got to her feet so fast that her head swam.
Some of the salt from her fingertips touched the open cut on her palm, but she barely felt the sting of it.
“I can’t believe you’d do this to me… Only, wait.
You know what? I can believe it. I should’ve known the moment you called me and dangled a free cross-country trip in my face.
Everything involving you comes with strings attached. ”
“Strings?” Scarlett was on her feet next to Chrissie. “You think me asking you to sit by my side so I don’t have to be alone when I kill myself is a string?”
Chrissie almost reached out to steady Scarlett as she swayed first left and then right before clutching the table to catch herself.
Every instinct she had urged her to follow the same path she always had where Scarlett was concerned: to protect and to serve, to go along for the ride because, let’s face it, who else was going to invite her anywhere?
Chrissie tucked her hands in her armpits instead—and, sure enough, Scarlett managed to catch herself just fine on her own.
That, more than anything else, fueled her next words.
“You tricked me. You knew that once this trip was underway, I’d have no choice but to agree to every single one of your plans—the visits to random roadside attractions, the hotels I could never afford on my own, the haircuts and flirtatious photos like we’re just two ordinary women enjoying a getaway.
” Chrissie’s eyes felt hot with emotion as she considered how wonderful all that had sounded a few days ago—how wonderful it still sounded, even now.
“Even the list you’re making me write to show all the ways my life is lacking is part of it, isn’t it?
You’re paving the way. You’re saying goodbye.
Only you didn’t have the guts to say it to my face, so I had to find out the truth from a stranger. ”
“You invited her, not me.”
“And you had plenty of opportunities to come clean before we stumbled across her. Our first night, you wore a swimsuit literally designed to throw the dust in my eyes. You were waiting until it was too late to turn back.”
“Or I was trying to hold onto my dignity while I still could.” Scarlett continued clutching the table as though it was the only thing keeping her upright—the only thing, short of Chrissie, standing between her and death.
“Cut me a little slack here. You forget that I’ve been down this road before.
Once cancer is added to the picture, it changes the shape and color of everything.
You’d have been worried about me every single second, making sure I took my medication and got plenty of rest, taking over all of the driving while I sat curled up in a useless heap next to you. ”
“I never treated you like that before. Not once.”
“Then say you won’t do it,” Scarlett ordered, her voice softer now and all the more dangerous because of it.
That silky, seductive purr had been the ruin of many a woman—and even more men.
“Tell me you won’t finish the road trip with me, that you won’t walk through the doors of Tranquility Estates and immediately demand to speak to the manager on my behalf. ”
Chrissie’s sharp, sudden laugh dislodged a lone tear, which she wiped away before it could snake a traitorous path down her cheek. “Don’t make me laugh. None of this is funny.”
“I know it’s not. Believe me. I know.”
It was, at once, everything and nothing that Chrissie needed to hear. “There’s really nothing more you can do? Medically speaking, I mean?”
Scarlett shook her head. The gold hoops in her ears swayed gently.
“If I went in for another round of chemo, I might buy myself a few more months, but they’d be the kind of months you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy.
” She paused, and the uncertain tremor that followed broke something inside Chrissie.
“I’m not that, right, Chrissie? After everything I’ve done to you, all the ways I’ve let you down, we’re still on the same side? ”
Chrissie didn’t answer. Not because she wanted her friend to suffer any more than she had to, and not because her anger had stopped simmering in the pit of her stomach, but because reality slammed into her with so much force that all the air left her lungs.
We’re on the same side. We’ve always been on the same side.
From the moment Scarlett called to her from that first hospital bed, a scrap of a girl in a wasted body that somehow—always—vibrated with vitality, Chrissie had come equally alive.
She hadn’t been able to save her brother or her parents.
She’d been on the cusp of being entombed in that house along with them.
But Scarlett had saved her. She’d held out a tiny hand and yanked Chrissie onto the lifeboat with her.
Only now the lifeboat was deflating around them, and Chrissie didn’t know what to do. Whether she sank or swam, the end result was going to be the same.
The waves were going to pull Scarlett under, and there was nothing she could do to stop them.