Bittersweet Catastrophe (Second Chances #2.5) (8 page)

“Why don’t you go take a seat at the table, and I’ll bring you a plate over.” I kissed the tip of her nose and steered her away.

I grabbed a bottle of Sam Adams from the fridge and poured Liberty a glass of ginger ale. After loading up both of our plates, I brought everything over to the table and caught her admiring the fresh bouquet of sunflowers.

“You like them?”

She smiled and took my hand, pulling me down to plant a kiss on my lips. “I love them. You know they’re my favorite.” Her gaze traveled over to the dried sunflowers situated on the bookshelf in the other room, the same ones she carried down the aisle on our wedding day, and the smile on her face grew tenfold. “So what’s the occasion?”

I chuckled under my breath. “Can’t I buy flowers for my wife simply because I love her?”

“Shayne, you only buy me flowers when it’s a special occasion or when you royally fuck up. So which is it?” Her eyebrow slowly rose, questioning my motive. God, that woman could read me like a book. There was no fooling her.

“Sweetheart, I just wanted to do something nice for you since I couldn’t be there today.” I sat down and reached for her hand across the table, brushing my lips across her knuckles. “Plus, we have reason to celebrate, now that we can finally let everyone know you’re pregnant.”

The elation behind my words was palpable, and she smiled briefly before slipping her hand free from mine and settling it in her lap. After eating a few bites of the casserole that had quickly grown cold, she set her fork down, and the smile that had graced her face earlier was long gone. I could tell by the way she had dismissed my excitement that something was bothering her, but instead of bombarding her with questions, I waited in silence. I wanted to give her a chance to come out and tell me herself, but the wait was wearing my patience thin.

“What’s wrong? Don’t you like it?” I knew the food wasn’t the problem, but it was the only neutral way I could begin this conversation with her.

“It’s fine. I just…” She bowed her head for a moment, inhaling a deep breath and forcing it unsteadily past her lips. When her eyes reached mine, they were sparkling with unshed tears. “I have to tell you something, but I need you to know that I love you so very much, and I promise I wasn’t hiding this from you on purpose. I wasn’t even sure if it was anything at all, but I couldn’t let it go and…it was probably for the best that I didn’t.” It all rolled off her tongue in one swift breath, but as her voice softened and tapered off, I felt my heart begin to crack around the edges.

In a matter of seconds, all of my worst fears came barreling straight into me with the force of a thousand wrecking balls. I never had any reason to doubt my love for Liberty, nor her love for me. Not once. That woman held every ounce of my heart in the palms of her fucking hands, and I trusted her with ever fiber of my being, but knowing that she was purposely keeping something from me had my stomach in knots. I wasn’t sure if I could bear for her to continue on when I knew it was only going to break my heart even more.
God this is going to fucking hurt.

“Shayne–”

I held my hand up, cutting her off instantly.

“Please, just let me explain.” She reached across the table for my hand, but I pulled away before she could touch me. Feeling her skin against my skin, even the simple touch of her slender fingers against my own, would have me completely undone, and I couldn’t allow for that to happen.

I squeezed my eyes shut tight, unable to look her in the eyes. “Was it worth it?”

“What?” She gasped, though the word came out as more of a whisper.

“Don’t make me repeat myself. Just answer the goddamn question. I think I deserve at least that much.”

“Shayne, I don’t know what you think I’m keeping from you, but based on your reaction, I can tell you that you are so far off…”

“Am I?” My eyes flew open, the anger blazing inside of me threatening to erupt. “How long have you been keeping this from me?”

“Just this past month. But Shayne…”

“A month.” I repeated back, letting that sink in. She’d been keeping this from me for a month, and I was too blind to notice that anything was going on.
How could I have been so oblivious?
God, I was such a fool. Such a fucking fool.

I calmly pushed back my chair and took my plate and empty beer bottle to the kitchen without another word. I rinsed the dish off, watching the water swirl around the drain once…twice…three times before deciding the plate would look much better smashed into a million pieces. The sound echoed throughout the kitchen as it collided against the wall, scattering jagged fragments across the floor. Liberty’s scream was muffled, her hand flying up to mute her cries, and all I could do was stand there with my back to her and grip the edge of the counter, staring down at the broken pieces surrounding my bare feet.

Liberty swiftly ran to get the broom and dustpan from the closet and began sweeping up the mess I’d created. On her hands and knees, she appeared so small, so fragile, and yet even through her tears, just as beautiful as the day I’d met her. For a split second, I’d forgotten everything that had just happened between us, the lies, the pangs of jealousy and betrayal that had momentarily consumed me, and I crouched down beside her to help.

“Here, let me get that.”

“No!” She scrambled back across the floor. Her chin was trembling, and tears trickled down her splotchy, red cheeks. “You d-don’t have anything on your f-feet. I don’t want you to get h-hurt.”

My feet? Was she seriously worried about my fucking feet at a time like this?

“Liberty, sweetheart, my feet are the least of my worries right now. Why don’t you go sit down and rest? You’ve had a long day. I’ve got this.” I reached hesitantly to brush the hair out of her face and placed it behind her ear. She nodded slowly, and I took the broom and dustpan from her hands, but not before she buried her face in my lap and began sobbing.

“I’m s-so sorry.”

“Shhh. Baby, let’s not worry about that now.” I brushed my fingers through her hair, hoping to calm her down. I really didn’t want to get into the details of what she’d done or whom she’d done it with. My blood was still boiling just thinking about it, and if I didn’t calm down myself, we were going to have a lot fewer dishes than we did before. Cleaning up the mess I’d made seemed like the better option. “Let me clean this up, and we can talk later. All right?”

She continued to shake her head back and forth in my lap, refusing to let the subject go. “Shayne…” she looked up at me, her eyes imploring me to hear her out.

“Please.”

“But Shayne, I h-have to tell you…”

I slipped free from her hold and slowly got to my feet, dropping the broom and dustpan with a loud clatter against the floor. With my hands planted on my hips and my head bowed down, I began to shake, unable to fathom how she could possibly do something like this to me. To us. To our babies.
Hell, if they even are my babies!
For all I knew, this could have been going on for much longer than a month, and suddenly, the entire foundation of our relationship came into question.

“Baby, I can’t do this right now. I have every worst-case scenario running through my mind, and thinking about you being with another man is tearing me up inside, literally killing me one agonizing second at a time.” I ran my hand down my face, struggling to rein in my emotions. “Just…tell me it wasn’t Brett. Fuck, anyone but him.”

“W-what?! Are you seriously suggesting–”

“Liberty, open your fucking eyes. It’s not that hard to see, he’s still pining after you. Since the day you two met, he’s been crazy about you. I’d even go as far as to say the bastard’s in love with you.” It hurt to say that, but I knew it was true. We all knew it. He’d made no attempt to hide his true feelings for Liberty, and if he had his chance, there was no denying the motherfucker would take it. “I know he’s been trying to get back at me for years for sleeping with his ex-girlfriend and for all of the shit that went down with Maddie. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’d stoop so low as to steal my own wife right out from under me.”

So help me God, if it was him…he was dead where he stood.

I waited for her to deny it. To shove it back in my face about how wrong I was and that Brett wasn’t the conniving asshole I made him out to be.

She couldn’t do it.

She couldn’t fucking do it.

And there was my answer, ripping another hole straight through my heart.

Liberty gradually got to her feet, the expression on her face completely void of any emotion as she shuffled across the floor toward me. It was as if time had slowed, and I was watching every second of this nightmare unravel before my very own eyes. She was just an arm’s length away now, and the anger stewing between us had grown thick and bitter. Before I could get another word out, she raised her arm up high and the palm of her hand came down hard across my cheek. I wasn’t expecting it, although I probably should have after the way I had spoken to her, and the crack of her hand colliding against my face continued to ripple through me as we stood there in deafening silence.

“How. Dare. You! How dare you suggest that I could do something like that to you!” Her voice shook, and she cradled her hand against her chest, clearly in pain. Knowing how hard she had struck me, her hand must’ve been in just as bad of shape. “God, you can be such an insensitive jerk. You want to know my secret so bad? You want to know what I’ve been keeping from you for the past month?”

I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to see the look in hers eyes when she delivered the final blow.

“I have cancer.”

Three simple words can change your life forever.

When Liberty let the words, “I love you” slip past her lips for the very first time, I thought that was it…the blinding moment that would change everything. The moment that my life had come full circle, and I’d finally be able to bury the mistakes of my past and move forward with the woman I love. To begin our life together.

I was wrong.

So. Fucking. Wrong.

Three words can also bring your world to a stuttering halt, crashing it down around you and burning it until there’s nothing left but painful memories of what could have been.

I have cancer.

“
No
.” I slumped down to the floor, ignoring the broken pieces of the plate still shattered around me. I didn’t care if they sliced through every inch of my body and caused me to bleed out right then and there. Nothing could possibly hurt worse than hearing her utter those three words. Three words I prayed I’d never have to hear again in this lifetime.

“And you thought I cheated on you? How could you possibly think I would do something like that? You’re my husband! I love you! Only you!”

“I…I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. I guess my mind raced to the one thing that could tear us apart, but clearly I was wrong.” I slowly turned to face her. “Cancer?”

“Well, the doctor doesn’t know for sure yet, but there’s a good chance that I do.”

“Wait.” I paused, trying collect my thoughts before the roller coaster of emotions I was riding threatened to jump the tracks. “You have my head fucking spinning right now, and I just want to make sure I heard you correctly. You’re saying you don’t know
for sure
? What…what would even make you think you have cancer in the first place? This is crazy, Liberty. You can’t just say you have cancer one minute and then the next you don’t. So which is it?”

Liberty sank down next to me and slipped her fingers through my hand lying limp beside me. “Do you remember that day in the shower, when I noticed a little dimple on the side of my breast?”

Looking back, I thought nothing of it. I was too caught up with having my gorgeous wife’s naked body in my arms and loving the way she came apart around me as she cried out my name. But now… God, I felt like such an asshole for ignoring the concern that was so blatantly evident in her voice that day. I nodded unhurriedly, my voice low and deep, “Yeah, sweetheart. I remember.”

“Well, I made an appointment to see the doctor the next day, and he didn’t seem too worried about it then, just said he would keep an eye on it. So I thought, maybe I was just overreacting like I always do. You know how I get. Once I let something stew in my mind, I can’t let it go.” Her grip on my hand tightened, and I found her big brown eyes looking up at me nervously. “But when I went back today, after my pre-natal checkup, they noticed that my skin on the side of my breast had become more puckered, so they decided to do an ultrasound.”

“Did they find anything?” I swallowed hard, waiting anxiously for her to answer.
Of course they found something, you idiot.
There was no other reason for her to be telling me all of this now, and the tears pooling along the edges of her lashes didn’t exactly scream that everything was fine.

“All they would tell me was that the cells appeared to be darker and denser than normal. The radiologist didn’t really go into much detail after that. Regardless, they went ahead and did a biopsy just to be sure, but I won’t have the results back until sometime next week.” She let out a heavy sigh. “So for now, we just play the waiting game.”