Chapter 13
Thirteen
The surgery center waiting room was freezing.
Aspen huddled in her chair, one hand tightly clasping Linnea’s, and wondered how much longer it would be before they called her back.
She had nothing to distract her from the rampant anxiety.
Linnea had taken her phone again after she’d gone down the rabbit hole, reading more of the scathing articles calling her a shameless heartbreaker.
Despite her best friend’s presence, Aspen felt achingly alone and so very afraid.
Though her father was back from his honeymoon, she hadn’t told him about any of this.
Evidently, he’d remained in his blissful newlywed bubble and hadn’t heard a thing about her “engagement.” She didn’t want to ruin that unless absolutely necessary, so she’d wait until she had something confirmed to tell him.
Had her mother felt fear like this? Probably not. She’d gone in for a checkup and come out with cancer. Everything had happened so fast. She hadn’t had years of anticipatory fear building up. And maybe that was a kindness of a sort, because this level of worry was absolutely paralyzing.
Aspen wondered what her mom would say if she were here. She’d probably crack boob jokes and then tell Aspen what an idiot she was to let Brooks go.
I know what it is to be devastated, Mom. I just couldn’t ask that of him.
But she remembered some of the appointments with her mom’s oncologist, seeing her parents holding hands in the waiting room, her dad being a rock, even though he’d been absolutely breaking inside.
That was love of the highest form. And Aspen felt privileged to have witnessed it, even if it had been cut off too soon.
A part of her envied that love and wished she had it herself, because everyone deserved that level of dedication.
Not that she wasn’t grateful beyond words that Linnea was here with her. But it wasn’t quite the same.
Why the hell couldn’t things have been different? Why couldn’t she have just been a normal woman, meeting a great guy?
Well, because without all this terror, you never would have gotten out of your comfort zone to meet him in the first place.
The truth of that almost made her cringe. Cancer seemed a really high price to pay for that kind of kick in the ass. Despite all of Linnea’s talk about Schrodinger’s Boob, Aspen didn’t really think she’d be so lucky.
And that just brought her brain back around to the gut-churning fear. Damn it.
Some sort of commotion sounded from the lobby. A door got yanked open so hard it banged into the wall. Someone literally ran in, colliding with the front desk.
“Sir, you have to calm down.”
“Aspen Fairchild,” he gasped. “I’m looking for Aspen Fairchild.”
Her head jerked toward that voice, and she stared.
Impossible. It can’t be him.
Except she knew that blond hair, knew those shoulders and those long legs.
“Brooks?” She barely managed to choke the word out past the knot of emotion in her throat.
He swung toward her. His hair stood on end and his jaw was heavily stubbled, but his eyes—those beautiful blue eyes—lit at the sight of her.
He rushed toward her, and Aspen found herself coming to her feet.
Then his arms were around her, squeezing her so tight she could barely breathe.
She fisted her hands in his T-shirt, closing her eyes as he swayed her because he was warm and real and here.
The knowledge of that had tears burning her eyes.
“What…” Because her throat was constricted, she had to try again. “What are you doing here? I don’t understand… how are you here?”
He pulled back only far enough to look into her face, frowning when he spotted the tears.
One big hand reached up to brush away the handful of tears that dared to escape.
“I used the press to track you to Cooper’s Bend.
But the address was apparently your old one.
So then I ended up at the local coffeeshop, where some lady named Adojah threatened to kick my ass if I hurt you.
But she told me where you were. So I’m here, because you are not gonna fucking go through this alone. ”
“But I—”
Brooks cut her off. “I appreciate you trying to save me from losing somebody else I love, but it’s already too late. I don’t want to lose you. Not now. Not ever. And I don’t care if we have three weeks or three years or a lifetime. I’m not walking away.”
Aspen trembled. “That’s a really lovely, noble sentiment, but I can’t ask you to—”
“You’re not asking. I’m telling. I love you. And I would rather have this time with you, however much we have, than leave things where they were.”
There was no holding back the flood now. An ocean seemed to be pouring out of her eyes, and she hung on. What had she done to deserve this man? How had she found him in all the wide world?
For one crazy moment, she wondered if her mom and his had been in cahoots to matchmake from the afterlife. Aspen didn’t know and didn’t care. He was her own personal miracle because he was here, and he loved her and wanted to be here with her, no matter what.
“Um… Aspen Fairchild?”
She looked past Brooks’s shoulder to see a nurse waiting to take her back. Struggling to pull herself together, she let him go and wiped at her face. “Looks like it’s time.” She glanced back to find Linnea and Brooks exchanging a look.
“You go with her,” Linnea said. “I’m gonna wait out here.”
“Are you sure?” Aspen asked.
“One thousand percent.” She handed Aspen’s bag over to Brooks.
He held out a hand. “Ready?”
She curled her fingers in his. “Not even a little bit. But I’m really glad you’re here.”
They followed the nurse back to the prep area. “You’re going to want to change out of your clothes and into the hospital gown. Put your stuff in a bag here. Your…” she glanced at Brooks, clearly wondering how to refer to him.
“Fiancé,” he filled in.
“Right. Your fiancé can hang onto all that while you’re in surgery. He’ll get paged when you come back out for recovery and will be here when you wake up.” The nurse went over a few more details. “Doc is running on time today, so he should be back to get you in about half an hour.”
Then she was gone, and they were alone in the little partitioned room.
Aspen arched a brow. “Fiancé?”
“We’ll talk about it on the other side.”
Her heart began to thump from something other than fear. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
He lifted her hand to his lips for a kiss. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”
With that assurance ringing in her ears, she changed into the hospital gown and slipped onto the waiting bed.
Brooks held her hand, giving her all that love and support she’d seen between her parents.
So when the nurses showed back up, saying it was time, she wasn’t as afraid because he’d given her something to really live for.
Before they wheeled her away, he kissed her hand one more time. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”
“See you on the other side. And Brooks?”
“Yeah, baby?”
“I love you, too.”
The day after Aspen’s biopsy, Brooks sat with her in a patient room at her oncologist’s office, waiting for the doctor to come discuss the results.
Her hand gripped his like a vise, and he knew she was scared to death.
Of course she was. He was pretty damned terrified himself of what this was going to mean for her. For both of them.
They hadn’t talked about any of that last night when he’d driven her home after the procedure.
She’d been groggy from the anesthesia and had napped much of the evening.
While she’d rested, he’d been making plans.
For his career. For his life. Because he’d been coasting long enough.
Not that he’d told her any of it yet. He wanted to give her certainty, not more questions.
He wanted to give her everything.
“You don’t have to be here for this,” she murmured. “You don’t have to go through this.”
Covering their joined hands with his free one, Brooks squeezed tighter. “What can I do to make you understand I’m gonna stick?” He had some ideas, but he was saving those until they got to the other side of this.
“It’s not that I don’t believe you will. I know you will. And it’s not that I don’t want you here, or that I don’t love you. I just—”
“Aspen, I know.” He brushed a kiss to her brow. It meant so much that she wanted to save him pain. But it would hurt so much more to think of her going through all of this on her own. “Stop trying to give me an out. I won’t take it.”
The door opened, and the doctor came in. An older black man with gray at his temples, he nodded a greeting to them both as he drew up the stool and sat.
“I know that you’re very anxious about all of this, especially with your mother’s history, so I’m going to get straight to it.” He set her chart aside. “So, there’s good news and there’s bad news.”
“Bad news first.” Her body was ramrod straight.
“You have ductal carcinoma in situ.” He explained what the condition was in a lot of complicated medical jargon Brooks didn’t quite follow.
“Um… layman’s terms?” he asked.
“It is technically cancer, but it is effectively the pre-est form of pre-cancer that it can possibly be. We caught it very, very early. So that’s good.
” He shifted his focus back to Aspen. “We’ll go in and remove the duct, and you’ll do a round of radiation to take care of any lingering cancerous cells, and that should be it. Even with your mother’s history.”
“But… can it spread?” Her voice wavered, and Brooks could feel her trembling through their tightly linked hands.
“The chances of it spreading or recurring are incredibly small. I mean, nobody wants cancer, but if you’re gonna have cancer, this is the one to have, and this is the point to find it.”
She closed her eyes and pressed a hand to her mouth, clearly overcome.
Brooks couldn’t hold back any more. “So, she’s going to live?”
The doctor smiled. “I have absolutely no reason to believe that she’s not going to live a long and happy life.”
Aspen’s breath exploded out of her, and she bent to put her head between her knees.
Relief had his own head spinning, his limbs going weak. He’d only just found her, and he wasn’t going to lose her. He was going to have a chance for a life with her. And by damn, he intended to embrace all of those tomorrows.
By the time they’d made it outside, the sun seemed just a little brighter, the flowers more vibrant. Aspen had said little as the doctor went over the treatment plan and scheduled the removal of the problematic duct. She stopped at the edge of the parking lot and seemed to stare into space.
“Are you okay? How do you feel?”
She turned to face him. “I don’t even know.
I mean, relieved, clearly. I don’t think it’s real yet.
I’ve been convinced from the moment I found the thing that I was going to be just like my mother.
The possibility that it was something that’s, well, obviously not benign, but relatively benign under the circumstances, didn’t occur to me.
So this is incredible. And I don’t know what to do now. ”
Brooks took her hands. “I do. I think we should get married.”
Aspen blinked up at him and laughed. “What?”
“I think we should get married.”
The smile turned a little baffled. “Brooks, I know we were gonna talk about this whole fiancé thing, but—”
He shook his head. “No, I don’t want you to be my fiancée. I want you to be my wife. I think we should live. We’ve both waited long enough. We can grab a flight to Vegas or drive up to Tennessee. They don’t have any waiting laws there.”
“How do you even know that?”
“I googled it from my phone.”
“When? You haven’t had your phone out since we went in there. Not since we found out.”
He shrugged. “Yeah. I mean, it was my plan one way or the other. I told you. I want the time with you, whether it’s three weeks or fifty years.
I’d rather have the fifty years, if it’s all the same to you.
” Her cheek was warm and smooth beneath his fingers.
“I love you, Aspen. I know this is fast, and I know there’s been a lot of emotional upheaval around all of this.
But that hasn’t changed. That’s not going to change. So please, will you marry me?”
Tears welled in those gorgeous green eyes, but he understood instinctively that this time they were happy ones. “Yeah.”
Brooks whooped and scooped her up for a fast spin before setting her on her feet and taking her mouth in a dizzying, delicious kiss that was full of promises.
When at last he pulled away, he began tugging her toward the car. “The Tennessee state line isn’t that far. Let’s go.”
Laughing again, she dragged her feet. “What? Now?”
He looked down at her with love and a teasing smirk. “Well, you’ve already pulled a runner on me twice, so I’m motivated to lock this down.”
Color bloomed in her cheeks, but her eyes sparkled. “Fair enough. But we have some calls to make first.”