Chapter “I don’t know.”
I wait three days to get the results of my tests. Nolan drives me to the oncologist. I’m not sure why I was referred to a cancer specialist when I have no intention of having any treatment.
“What’s the doctor going to say?” I ask Nolan as he parks in the parking ramp.
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t tell me that. You’ve had a feeling all along. You told me months ago to see a doctor. Just say it.”
He sighs, angling his body toward mine after he parks the car.
“I’ve had five MRIs in the past two years.
I’ve seen four of the top neurologists in the world.
I don’t know why I can sense ailments in the human body.
It’s not a gift. It’s a curse and some days I want to end my own life because I feel the pain.
Do you understand? Can you imagine what it’s like to feel everything so vividly?
I’m a pathetic recluse most of the time because I don’t want to be around humans. Sick. Disease-ridden. Humans.”
I rest my hand on his. “I cause you pain.”
He shakes his head. “No … that’s just it. I don’t feel it anymore. And as much as I want that to mean something positive for you … there’s this selfish, sadistic part of me that wants to find out your cancer is everywhere because that means I’m no longer feeling the pain.”
I laugh and Nolan looks at me like I’ve lost the plot, but I can’t stop laughing.
“What’s so funny?” He tries to hide his own grin. “I know I’m really messed-up.”
I shake my head, trying to catch my breath.
“No … four weeks. I should be dead in four weeks.” I laugh some more.
“Oh, hell … I need to be dead in four weeks.” It’s pure exhilaration when hysteria takes over.
“I’m about out of money. I have no job. I left my fiancé.
My dad is in prison. And I’ll be homeless in four weeks.
” I hold up my hand. “Come on, Nolie,” I giggle out of control. “High-five for terminal cancer.”
His eyebrows pull together. I hate that.
Regret.
He has no reason to feel regretful. We shame ourselves way too much for our most raw and true feelings. I hop out when he refuses to give me a high five.
“Scarlet?”
I continue walking and laughing all the way to the entrance. Something snapped in my brain, and I can’t stop laughing.
Death I can accept. Life I can live. It’s the in between, the whiplash of emotions, that’s taking my last shred of sanity.
“Scarlet …” Nolan grabs my arm a second before I open the door.
In this very moment, I know he feels everything I’m feeling. I might not feel it like he does, but I see it in his eyes. My smile fades, and as if someone flipped a switch, I fall to pieces in his arms.
I don’t want this. Dying shouldn’t be this hard.
“Shh …” he whispers in my ear.
“I-I’m so scared.”
“I know.”
I’ve questioned Nolan’s extraordinary ability to sense things up until this point, but right now I believe he does know. He knows I’m not afraid of dying—I’m afraid of living.
*
Nolan drops me off at the house. I don’t say much because there really isn’t anything to say. The two oncologists didn’t have much to say either. Theo’s truck is in the drive. I’m not ready to face him, but life doesn’t seem to care about readiness.
I open the door and stop as soon as I look up. “Hey.”
Theo leans against the threshold to the kitchen, tatted arms crossed over his chest, hair pulled back. He doesn’t say anything, and that’s okay because all these emotions that have been denied, rejected, even passed off for another lifetime, are ready to explode.
“I have something to say.” My heart wants out of my chest. I can barely breathe as it tries to escape.
My voice shakes, even my hands won’t stop trembling as I fist them.
“I came here in search of peace. I came here to find something true about my existence. I came here to …” I blink and my emotions crumble. “I came here to die.”
Theo doesn’t even blink.
“I had terminal cancer, they gave me six months to live.”
He blinks. It’s something. His gaze moves from me to the floor between us. What is he thinking?
I can’t stop and wait. I have to say this.
“I saw the doctor today, and he said it was stage one. It’s crazy.
They think it had to be a misdiagnosis, but I had three different oncologists confirm my terminal cancer diagnosis.
It’s going away. I left my life—I ended my life in London.
I broke off my engagement. I said goodbye to my dad.
I sold everything and left it to Daniel.
In a few weeks, I’m going to be broke and homeless. ”
“You need money.” His eyes meet mine.
I flinch. “What? No … I mean, yes, but that’s not my point.”
He shakes his head. “Then it doesn’t matter. Go home.”
I step closer. He stiffens. I stop.
“Don’t tell me it doesn’t matter.” I grit my teeth as more tears spill down my cheeks. “We—”
“There is no we. Go home. Go get married. Go live happily ever after.”
“Stop!” I swallow hard as months of anger erupt. “Don’t you understand, you stubborn arse, I don’t want to go—”
“Scarlet?” A man’s voice stops my words—my heart—like a fatal dagger.
“Daniel,” I whisper, turning slowing toward my ex-fiancé emerging from the small bathroom with all kinds of pain etched into his face that’s covered in several days of stubble, bags sagging heavily beneath his eyes like he hasn’t slept in months.
“You’re alive.”
I nod. Right now, with every cell in my body, I wish I weren’t. I’m beating the most impossible odds. I’ve been given a second chance, but I no longer want it. He heard everything I said to Theo. I’ve been in that bathroom enough to know there is nothing soundproof about it.
“I came for you. I came to tell you how sorry I am for letting you push me away. I came here in hope of finding you alive, holding you until you took your last breath, whispering I love you over and over until all you feel is my love—not the pain. But …” He clears his throat and blinks back the tears filling his red eyes as he clenches his jaw.
There is no explanation that I can give him that will ever make him understand. “I love you, Daniel.”
He shakes his head. “Finish.”
My eyes narrow a bit. “Finish what?”
“Finish what you were going to say to him.” He jabs his finger in Theo’s direction. “You don’t want to go … where? London? With me? With Oscar?”
My gaze shifts back to Theo, but his eyes hold as much contempt as Daniel’s. Apparently, I’m the worst human alive. Alive … I internally laugh.
“It’s—”
“Don’t you dare say it’s not what I think!” Daniel yells.
I jump. I wasn’t going to say that. My trembling lips fold between my teeth as more tears spring free with every blink.
My name is Scarlet Stone, and I was with my best friend when she died. Her parting words to me were: “The only thing worse than living with regret, is dying with regret.”
“It’s exactly what you think,” I say each word slow and evenly, but I say it looking at Theo. “I came here to die and fell in love with another man. I didn’t count on finding him anymore than I counted on living.”
Theo glares at me, like he has some superpower stare that can break me and everything we shared.
I tip my chin up, owning my feelings for him.
Owning them in front of Daniel, knowing that I’m completely shattering him for a second time.
Love is indiscriminate in its path—healing some people while destroying others.
Theo pushes off the wall and closes the space between us. I love this man and I know he loves me, even if it pisses him off that he loves me.
I know how he feels.
It pisses him off that his heart let me in.
I know how he feels.
It pisses him off that he needs my touch.
I know how he feels.
“Go home. I don’t love you.” He brushes past me and slams the back door behind him.
I turn and chase him, led only by my heart. My brain registers the look of utter devastation on Daniel’s face, but my heart leads the way, and for the first time in my life, I let it.
“Theo!” I run to his truck and bang on his window as he backs out of the drive.
He ignores me. I keep banging my fists against the glass.
“Stop it. He’s going to run you over, Scarlet.” Daniel wraps his arms around my waist and pulls me away from the truck.
“No. No. No …” I try to wriggle free.
“Come on. Let’s go home.”
My eyes leave the taillights fading into the distance and land on Daniel’s face. I’m stunned into complete silence, tears still clinging to my eyelashes. London? He can’t be serious.
“Eventually, I’ll forgive you. What we had can’t be destroyed in a day,” he mutters in defeat as he pulls me back into the house.
I wasn’t cheating on Daniel. We were over. I was supposed to be dead to him. But now I feel like a cheater—a cheater who needs forgiveness.
“Where is your stuff?” He looks around, anywhere but directly at me.
My tears have stopped. My jaw is slack. My vocabulary—nonexistent.
“Here it is.” He heads toward my suitcase in the corner of the room. I’ve been living out of it since we moved our stuff to the main level. I do nothing. He does everything, including grabbing all of my personal items from the bathroom. “Anything else?”
Blink. Blink. Blink.
“Scarlet? Is this everything?”
I nod.
*
I matter.
I love myself.
The world is a better place with me in it.
Who has to think those words? Me. That’s who. I’m not sure how many more times I can get jerked around, knocked down, and kicked in the stomach before I tap out.
Daniel drives us to his hotel in Savannah. I remind myself that the hole in my soul the size of Theodore Reed will not remain forever. This is my journey. No matter who I meet on the way, it’s mine and only mine.
I found out I was going to die and I wanted to live.
I found out I was going to live and now I want to die.
It’s time to count breaths and give thanks for every single one. Eventually, I won’t have to remind myself to take them.
“How did you find me?” I whisper as we enter the hotel room.
We haven’t said a word since we left the house.