Total pages in book: 53
Estimated words: 52357 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 262(@200wpm)___ 209(@250wpm)___ 175(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 52357 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 262(@200wpm)___ 209(@250wpm)___ 175(@300wpm)
My mouth goes dry.
“Why?” I whisper.
He runs a hand down his face. “Gallbladder. Started acting up months ago. Stomach pains. I thought it was diet. Stress. Maybe an ulcer.” He pauses. My heart sinks.
“It’s not like you need your gallbladder.”
He finally meets my gaze. “Had it removed. Did some more tests.”
The long pause rattles me. It’s like I know he’s about to blow my world apart for the second time.
“It’s cancer.”
The room tilts. I step back a little, the words echoing in my ears like gunshots.
“No.”
“They caught it early,” he says quickly. “Treatable. I started chemo. First couple of rounds were pills, they weren’t too bad. That is why I know the baby is Clutch’s. The meds make me sterile. No one knows really, just Little Foot and Rex back in Catawba. For now, I’m trying to keep things quiet. The club as a whole doesn’t know yet.”
I blink, shaking my head. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want it to be a thing. I didn’t want you to carry it with everything else.”
I sit down hard on the arm of the couch. My hands shake. “Jesus, Justin.”
He walks toward me, slow. “I didn’t bring you to that house to distract you. I brought you because I want to be there for you, however long I’ve got. And I hope that is a long time, but you also gotta know it might not be.”
My head snaps up. “Don’t say it like that.”
“It’s the truth.”
I swallow hard, tears pricking behind my eyes. “Are you going to die?”
“Not planning on it,” he says, voice soft. “But I’ve seen enough of life to know not everything goes according to plan.”
I close the space between us, wrap my arms around him, and press my face into his chest. He holds me like he did that night after I called him to save me from the boy pushing for more than I wanted to give.
Tight.
Steady.
Like even now, even with this truth between us, he’s still trying to protect me.
“I just got used to the idea of losing someone,” I whisper. “I can’t do it again.”
“You’re not losing me. Not yet. Not if I can help it.”
I nod against him, even though I don’t believe it.
Not yet.
Not tonight.
Later, after he falls asleep on the couch, I sit at the kitchen table with a glass of water and stare out at the night.
The photo from the ultrasound is stuck to the fridge with a magnet that says “Home is where your people are.”
I don’t know what home means right now.
But I know this man, lying on my couch with his body fighting for time, is already part of it.
ELEVEN
TOON
"Like a bear emerging from hibernation, awaken to new possibilities." — Unknown
Most people don’t know what it’s like to feel your body working against you.
Not in a bruised-ribs, busted-knuckles kind of way. That is a kind of pain I can deal with. The kind of pain’s honest.
But this?
This creeping, invisible weight inside me?
It’s the kind of pain that turns your blood to static. That makes you wonder if today’s the day you stop looking like yourself in the mirror.
Every Tuesday morning, I sit in a beige room with a plastic recliner, an IV line in my arm, and a nurse named Marcy who talks too much about her cats. It’s not her fault. I haven’t engaged her in enough conversation that she knows what to talk about. I don’t mind her. She doesn’t ask questions about my scars or my patches. She occasionally comments on my tattoos and trying not to mess of the comic book style by poking me in a spot where she wouldn’t even leave a bruise to my ink. It’s kind of funny, the way each week she decides to pick out a different tattoo to talk about. Her favorite is my Garfield one, go figure. Outside of the casual comments on my tattoos, though, she just hooks me up, checks the machines, and lets me be.
The chemo burns going in. Not always, but enough times that I brace for it now. I distract myself with the same lies every time.
It’s temporary.
I’m strong enough.
This doesn’t change who I am.
But it does. Cancer changes people, even me.
The side effects of the chemo are harsh. They don’t hit all at once either. It’s like being on a rollercoaster blind. I can’t tell what is coming until boom, the drop hits. I feel it in my bones, in the way food tastes off and my skin itches for no reason. The weight I’ve lost is subtle but there. And every time I pull on my cut, I wonder how long I can keep this up before the club starts noticing. I know my skin has paled, and yellowed even a little. I gave up drinking to try to protect my liver as my body fights to both get rid of the cancer cells, but also combat the damage the chemo does inside me.