Bittersweet Catastrophe (Second Chances #2.5) (9 page)

She shrugged her shoulder against my side, and it was then I noticed her sudden discomfort. The strap of her tank top slid down, revealing her smooth tan skin, and the side of her breast closest to her armpit was covered with strips of medical tape; tape that was transparent enough to see blood trapped beneath, evidence of what she had gone through. All on her own. One sidelong glance, and the harsh reality of what she’d been put through had finally settled in.

This wasn’t just some sick joke.

My wife could have cancer.

“Fuck.” I threw my head back against the cabinets with an audible thud, and the pained, guttural sound that tore through my chest was enough to bring Liberty crawling into my lap. She placed a hand on either side of my face and swept her thumbs across my cheeks. The look in her eyes was one full of sorrow and understanding, but it didn’t make sense for her to feel empathetic toward me when she was the one whose health was currently in limbo.

“It’s okay, baby. It doesn’t hurt that bad. Really. They numbed it for the procedure and gave me some Tylenol before I left. I have more if it gets worse later.”

She remained in my lap and gingerly weaved her fingers through my hair, comforting me in such a soothing, loving way, but really it should have been the other way around. I had to rectify that right now. I carefully stood, still holding her in my arms, and carried her out of the kitchen, making sure to avoid the broken pieces scattered around us.

“What are you doing?” she whispered, burying her face in the crook of my neck.

I continued down the hall to our bedroom and gently placed her in the center of the bed. My gaze lowered to the strap still hanging at the side of her arm before coming back up to meet the questioning look in her eyes.

“Wait here.” I started off toward the door and heard her shuffling around in the blankets. “Liberty. Stay.
Please
.” I pleaded, watching her eyebrows draw together, but she nodded reluctantly and leaned back into the pillows.

I headed back into the kitchen and filled a Ziploc bag with ice before returning to her. She was waiting patiently with her hands clasped over her stomach and studying my every move. When I placed the bag of ice on the nightstand beside her and reached for the hem of her shirt, she grabbed my wrist and shook her head.

“Trust me.” The mattress dipped as I sat on the edge of the bed and leaned forward to press my forehead to hers. Our lips parted and her sweet breath mingled with mine, a taste I’d never forget and hoped I’d never have to go a day without. “I promised you once that I would never hurt you, and I meant every word. Just…please.
Trust me
. Let me help ease your pain.”

Her eyes fluttered closed, and after a few seconds, she released my arm. I warily peeled the shirt up along her torso, and she sat up for me to lift it over her head. Underneath, she was wearing a thin sports bra that shielded most of the tape covering her incision, but it was still enough to see that there was already some bruising. I traced over the bottom of her bra, brushing against the underside of her breasts, and slipped my fingers beneath the stretchy fabric. Liberty’s eyes shot open, and she quickly sat up before I could go any further.

“No! I…I can’t take it off yet.” She chewed the inside of her cheek nervously. “The doctor said I should sleep with it on. At least for tonight.”

I nodded and softly kissed her lips. “All right, baby. No worries. Now lie back for me and close your eyes.”

She resumed her position, her eyes falling shut shortly after, and I picked out a cube of ice from the bag that was just beginning to melt. Placing it between my lips, I languidly dragged it along her exposed skin and felt her shudder beneath me. I took my time and let her body acclimate to the contrast of the cold against her warm skin, starting at her ankles and working my way up to her neck. She seemed to enjoy my playful way of handling a not so pleasant situation, and even as goose bumps continued to spread along her gorgeous body, she kept a smile on her face through it all.

I slowly trailed it back down her neck, along her collarbone, and over the swell of her breast. By then, the ice cube had melted, and it was only my lips caressing her skin. She drew her bottom lip between her teeth, nibbling on it timidly as her brows drew together. She knew where I was going with this, and whether she’d like to admit it or not, she was in a lot more pain than she was letting on. I just wanted to ease some of her pain in the only way I knew how.

I took the bag of ice in my hand, carefully brought it next to her breast, and the second it covered the site of her incision, Liberty hissed in a sharp breath.

“Shit, are you all right? Did I hurt you?”

“No. I-It’s fine. It’s just a bit more tender than I thought.” The corner of her mouth pulled up into what I could only describe as the saddest excuse for a smile that I’d ever seen.
My poor girl.
She wasn’t fooling me. I knew it had to hurt like hell, yet she continued to put on a brave face. So stubborn and yet so beautiful.

“Are you sure, sweetheart? I don’t want to make it worse.” I cupped her jaw, brushing my thumb along her soft, pink lips until her mouth finally spread into a genuine smile.

“Really, it’s fine. I’m supposed to ice it on and off tonight anyway.” She sucked in a deep breath and quickly forced it out before placing the bag of ice back in my hand. “Do your worst,
Dr. Thompson
,” she whispered, giving me a sly grin.

I leaned forward and chuckled against her lips, delicately placing the ice pack against her breast. She hissed again, eyes squeezed tight in pangs of discomfort, but this time around I was prepared, ready to swallow her cries and kiss away her pain.

Once the initial shock wore off, she parted her lips and leaned into the kiss, demanding more.
Always demanding more.
Her tongue traced over my bottom lip, greedily begging me to let her in, and as wrong as it felt to be doing this while she was hurting, I couldn’t deny her request. She looked fucking breathtaking with her hair splayed over the pillow in long auburn waves, her delicious vanilla scent awakening my senses, her fingers digging into my shoulders and nails scraping down across my chest. I loved when she marked me like that, physically claiming me. Nothing got me harder than feeling the woman I love possess me with such ferocity, and I still had the scars on my back to prove it.

It didn’t take long for the remaining ice to melt, and the bag slipped through my fingers as our kiss deepened, devouring one another. My hands slid down her ribs and ghosted over her stomach, feeling the barely-there bump that had begun to take shape over the last few weeks. It was amazing to finally see proof of the tiny lives we had created, not just on sonogram photos but beneath my very own hands. I still couldn’t believe that between the mere inches that separated us were our babies.
Our babies
. So fucking surreal…

Holy shit, how had I forgotten about the babies?!

I pulled back quickly, putting a stop to everything, and tried to catch my breath. My heart was racing a mile a minute, and Liberty lay beneath me, panting just as heavily with a look on her face that screamed she was going to murder me.

She sat up on her elbows, wincing as she adjusted herself. “Seriously, Shayne?! You can’t get me all worked up like that and then shut me down. You think blue balls are bad? Trying being pregnant with raging hormones. I’m about ready to explode!”

I sat back on my haunches and buried my hand in my hair. What the hell was I thinking? “I can’t…I can’t do this. Cancer…the babies… Jesus, Liberty, I didn’t even think about how it could affect the babies.”

My fingers skimmed over her belly where our children lay safely inside of her, or so I had thought, and the murderous glare quickly fell from her face as she nodded in understanding. “There are risks, but the doctor said he would discuss it further when they got my results back. He didn’t want to worry me if it wasn’t absolutely necessary and stress me out more than I already am.”

I nodded and answered weakly. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

She sat up and slipped her legs over my thigh and her arms around my neck, molding her body to me. All thoughts of being buried deep inside her had flown straight out the window, but I still needed to be as close to her as possible, to feel her pressed up against me, to know that she was still here and not a mere apparition of the beautiful woman I had fallen in love with. I think she sensed it, too…which frightened me even more.

My lips glided along her neck, drinking her in, memorizing the way she tasted. “I just hate knowing there’s the slightest possibility that I could wake up tomorrow and this could all be gone. You. The babies…” I closed my eyes and buried my face in her hair, trying to hold back the tears that threatened to spill free. “I can’t lose you, Liberty.
I can’t.
Living without you just isn’t an option.”

Her eyes glistened with fresh tears, and I lifted her hand up to my mouth, casually brushing my lips across her knuckles. “The day that fire inside you burns out, my flame will extinguish right along with you…because I can’t live in a world where you don’t exist.”

Liberty trembled in my arms with her head hung low, and she cried unabashedly. I slipped my finger beneath her chin as tiny droplets continued to rain down between us, tilting her head back so I could look deep into her eyes and find something, anything at all, to let me know that I wasn’t crazy for feeling this way; that this fear of losing her wasn’t unwarranted. But I didn’t have to look very long, because it was plain to see that she was just as scared and lost as I was. She’d done a pretty good job of keeping her emotions under wraps up until then, but once she realized that it had finally hit me that I could lose all three of them, her emotions let loose, and the walls that had so safely built up around her came crumbling down.

“Shhh, it’s okay, baby. I got you.” I rocked her in my lap, running my hand down her hair. “I won’t let anything happen to you. I promise. It’s going to take a lot more than cancer to tear us apart, all right?”

“But y-your mother… She…” Her words trailed off.

“I know, baby, I know, but when she was diagnosed, it was already too late. It had spread to her lymph nodes, lungs, liver…” I kissed her tear-stained lips and leaned my forehead against her. “Let’s not talk about that now. Like the doctor said, we’ll worry about it when we know for sure what we’re dealing with. For all we know, it could be nothing at all. It could be, I dunno…a bad bout of gas.”

Finally, a hint of a smile.

“Shayne, why is it every time there’s something wrong with me, you blame it on gas?” She laughed softly as I swept my thumbs beneath her eyes. Even through the tears and blood-shot eyes, she was still so fucking beautiful.

“Babe, you have to admit, nine times out of ten, it’s gas. Remember the other night when you weren’t feeling well because you devoured a pint of ice cream before bed, and I almost ended up sleeping on the couch because you stunk up the room so bad?”

She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, biting back her laughter. “Which night?”

I tugged it free, kissed her swollen red lips, and whispered, “My point exactly.”

She chuckled softly and leaned her head against mine. “Thank you, baby. I know you’re only trying to distract me and take my mind off of everything, so thank you. I don’t want everyone else to see me fall apart over this, and I need my head to be clear for Iris’s birthday party tomorrow.”

“Damn, that’s tomorrow?”

“Yes, and we promised we would go, so no trying to weasel your way out of this one.”

“Are you sure I can’t change your mind?” I waggled my eyebrows. “I can be quite persuasive, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“Shayne…”

“All right, all right.” I held my hands up in surrender. “I’ll keep my persuasion to a minimum…at least until we get home tomorrow.”

“I have faith in you.” She leaned in to kiss me, and I slipped my hand behind her neck, beckoning her closer. Her lips tasted so sweet….
so damn sweet
…and mixed with the saltiness of tears left behind, my mind was reeling with raw emotion. When we finally broke apart, she licked her lips and smiled. “If you’re still having trouble keeping Shayne Jr. under control, just do what you always do…picture your grandma naked.”

I shuddered as the image popped into my head.
Well played.

“You play dirty, woman.” I shook my head, reaching behind me as I slipped my shirt off over my head, and then waved my hand in front of me. “Now you’re not getting any of this tomorrow.”

“We’ll see about that.” She giggled softly before cuddling up against my bare chest and traced over the portrait tattoo of my mother. My heart pounded rampantly beneath her fingers, and I prayed that God would spare her life, spare her a fate that claimed the life of my mother far too soon. “I love you, Shayne,” she whispered drowsily as she yawned.

“Love you more, sweetheart.” I pressed my lips against her temple and settled down against the pillows, pulling the blanket up over us. “Always will.”

I couldn’t help but hold her a little closer that night, with her warm body sculpted around mine and her chest rising and falling as life continued to flow through her veins. Soon, her breathing evened out, and the tiny wisps of air that tickled my chest let me know she was fast asleep. But I knew there would be no rest for me tonight. I looked down at my beautiful wife, brushing a few stray hairs out of her face, and my heart ached, knowing that the future we had planned together could disappear in a heartbeat. ‘Whens’ quickly became ‘ifs’, and visions of us holding our children in our arms, dropping them off for their first day of school, watching them graduate, get married, have children of their own…suddenly disappeared.

Three simple words could take that all away from me.

I only hoped we weren’t too late.