Only Tyler (15 page)

It was no use.

The only thing she accomplished was developing a blinding stitch in her side.

Finally, incapable of running another step, she slowed to a painful hobble.

She couldn’t breathe so she gulped in great mouthfuls of air instead.

Grabbing her side, she doubled over and waited for the ache to subside.

She had to keep walking, had to outpace her guilt. Outwalk her desire. Onward she plowed, almost heedless of the stark beauty of the ragged cliffs that plummeted to the ocean. One foot in front of the other. One breath of air at a time.

Perhaps it was intentional, or perhaps her subconscious directed her there.

Whatever the case, Katie found herself heading towards her secret spot.

Before her, a well-trodden path led to a panoramic view of the sea.

She bypassed it, choosing instead to continue thirty meters on and then slip through a concealed track in the bushes. A minute later Katie stood at the edge of one of the cliffs, hidden from the busy trail, staring down at the waves crashing relentlessly against the rocks below.

On and on the waves moved. Forward and backward, hurtling with a furious strength towards the rock face, smashing over the base of the cliff and then ebbing back to sea. Over and over, never stopping.

Katie sat, wedged herself against a boulder and watched the waves from a safe distance.

“You think running from me is going to make you love him more?”

Her heart slammed into her chest.

“Katie, my sweet, you cannot escape from what happened between us.”

“What are you doing here?” she snapped.

“I told you earlier. We need to talk.”

“How did you find me?” What, was the guy intuitive? How did he know she’d be here when she hadn’t even known where she was headed?

“Calculated guess. I came to the one place I knew you’d come to find answers.”

Of course. He knew how much she loved it here. Knew how the wind soothed her and the view inspired her.

“Go away, Tyler. I need to be alone.”

“No, you don t,” he said with quiet conviction. “You need to be with me.”

“I was with you once. And you left.” The bitterness in her tone no longer stunned her.

“Hurting you in the process. I am more sorry for doing that than you will ever know.” His voice cracked. “I’m not leaving again. I’m home for good. For you.”

“And what about your best friend? Are you here for him as well, or are you just going to stab him in the back before you steal his fiancé?”

Tyler winced. “That’s not fair.”

“What is? You and I carrying on like sex-starved teenagers while he’s at work?”

Tyler stood stoic, staring out to sea. His jaw clenched, and a muscle worked in his cheek. “This isn’t about Steve,” he said finally, and turned to face her. “This is about you and me.”

“There is no you and me. You destroyed any chance of you and me the day you climbed onto that plane.” Her eyes filled with tears, and she swallowed hard against the massive lump in her throat.

He crouched before her. “I left because I didn’t think I had a choice. I had to go.”

She snorted. “Yeah, right. Someone was holding a gun to your head, making you board. Bull. You had a choice and you made it.” Her stomach twisted at the remembered pain, at the sheer hell she’d experienced as she’d hugged him goodbye.

“You think it was easy?” he growled. “You think that I waited five years for you to show some interest just so I could leave? Fuck, Katie, getting on that plane was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done.”

She stared at him, incredulous. Every ounce of torment she’d experienced at his departure was reflected in his face. “Yet you did it anyway.”

“I told you. I didn’t think I had a choice.”

She shook her head. “That’s pathetic. You’re a grown man. You can make whatever choice you want to.”

“At the time I believed I couldn’t,” he said quietly.

An unsettled sensation in the pit of her stomach had Katie sitting a little straighter. “Why not?”

He sat back, pulled his knees up and wrapped his arms around them.

“Because back then I didn’t know if I’d live long enough to carry through on the choices I wanted to make.”

Dread washed through her. “Wh-what are you talking about?”

“Katie…”

“Oh my God.” She leaned forward and grabbed his arm. Spots danced in front of her eyes. Blood rushed to her head. She took a deep breath, shoving the immobilizing fear aside. “What’s wrong with you?”

“It’s complicated.”

“You’re sick!” She dug her fingernails into his skin, held his arm in a grasp tight enough to cut off the flow of blood to his hand, but she didn’t care.

She was too terrified to let go.

“No,” he said at last. “I’m not.”

Her hand drained of any strength it possessed and dropped lamely to her lap.

She sank back against the rock, stupefied by the intensity of the fright he’d given her.

“But two years ago, I didn’t know that.”

Confusion swamped her. “I don’t understand.”

“You never knew my father,” Tyler said.

“He died before I met you.” She frowned, perplexed. “What does he have to do with all of this?”

“Know how he died?”

“No. You never talked about him.” The few times she’d asked about him he’d changed the subject. Fast.

“He plunged into a well of madness. Spent the last years of his life in a semi-psychotic haze.”

She gaped at him.

“My father died of a disease that rotted his brain.”

“Alzheimer’s?”

Tyler shook his head. “He had no control over his movement either.”

Instinctively she sought another possible diagnosis, but answers weren’t easy to find in her bewildered state. “Parkinson’s? Accompanied by dementia it might explain the symptoms.”

He took a deep breath. “No.”

Shit, she couldn’t think straight. “Schizophrenia? With tardive dyskinesia brought on by long-term use of antipsychotics? Mental illness?” she asked.

“Worse, Katie.” Tyler squeezed his eyes shut. “Much, much worse.”

“Christ, what was it? What could have been so terrible? Surely not…?” Her breath lodged in her throat. No. Diseases like that didn’t affect people she knew. They didn’t touch the lives of her loved ones.

They couldn’t.

“Tyler,” she whispered.

He looked at her.

“Did did he have Huntington Disease?”

He didn’t answer, just stared at her with big, sad eyes.

“No.” She shook her head. “Please say no. Please.”

“I can’t, Katie.”

“Dear God.” Shock hit her stomach in waves. “I… I never knew.”

“You couldn’t have. I never told you.” He grimaced. “I should have.

Right before I left, so you’d understand why I decided to go.”

Helplessness suffused her.

Huntington’s was one of the cruelest diseases possible. A degenerative disorder that slowly ate away at neurons, resulting in involuntary movements and loss of motor control. Personality changes, loss of memory and decreased mental capacity were just a few of the symptoms to which the ravaged brain surrendered. The ultimate consequence of the shocking illness: death.

She swallowed past the enormous lump in her throat as the worst aspect of Tyler’s admission swam in her head. Huntington’s was genetic.

Every child of a sufferer of Huntington’s had a fifty-fifty chance of inheriting the condition.

Henry Bonnard had two children. The day Tyler stepped on the plane bound for London, he was not alone. He was with his sister.

Katie slumped against the rock. Someone placed lead weights on her chest and the collective mass pushed down on her lungs. She feared her ribs might shatter as they constricted from the pressure.

Tyler and his sister each had a fifty percent chance of inheriting a disease that would dement them before killing them. Added to that burden, if they were carriers of the disease, they had a fifty percent chance of passing it on to any children they had.

“It’s the reason I chose to leave, Katie. The reason I believed there could never be a future for us.”

She gaped at him, speechless.

“I had a one-in-two chance of inheriting the gene. Of sinking into the same well of madness my father did.” He drew a shaking hand over his mouth. “It scared the shit out of me.”

Jesus, it scared the shit out of her and she wasn’t the one at risk.

“It must be utterly petrifying for him.”

“My future hung before me, bleak with the possibility of what might come.”

Her heart broke for him. “Tyler…”

“And then there was you, Katie. You. Giving me glimpses of a different future. A future I wanted so goddamn much.” Pain and longing haunted his voice. “A wife. A family.” His shoulders shuddered. “It’s all I wanted. A life with you.”

A family and a future with Tyler. Tyler’s children. Exactly what she’d dreamed about for seven long years. “I wanted it too,” she whispered.

“I know, my sweet. And it killed me, knowing that I might not have that future to offer you.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “That’s why I chose to leave. Rather than give you, and me, false hope, I decided to go to London. At least that way you could find another man, and get to have your future with a husband and children.”

“Pardon? You made that decision by by yourself? With without asking me what I wanted?” What was he thinking, keeping something this big from her? “How could you not have told me any of this?”

He pursed his lips in distress. “I should have told you, but I couldn’t see that at the time. When I left I hadn’t come to terms with the disease. Twenty years after watching my father slowly die, it still scared me shitless. I honestly believed shielding you from the truth was the kinder option. If I couldn’t accept what my future might hold for me, how could I expect you to?”

She had to force herself not to smack him out of pure frustration.

“Because I was your friend,” she told him. “And I’m a doctor. And…” Oh God. He hadn’t said anything to her. hadn’t shared the most horrifying aspect of his life with her. He’d left her out in the cold, and in doing so, isolated himself and destroyed their relationship. “And because I loved you.”

He should have told her. The idiot definitely should have told her.

“I love you too, Katie.” Their words hung between them for an endless minute.

“But but there was this vile future hanging over my head. I never wanted to subject you to it. Never wanted you to go through what my mother went through. The look he gave her was pleading. I was too proud to let you see me rot.”

She shook her head in disbelief. This was not about pride. This was about him throwing away what they had together because he couldn’t face telling her the truth. “There was also the possibility of a disease-free future together,” she said, reminding him of the fifty percent chance that he might not develop the disease.

“At the time I thought it was too much of a gamble. The stakes seemed to be too high. If I’d stayed with you and become symptomatic, we’d both end up losing.”

“And if you’d stayed with me and remained symptom-free, we both would have won,” she pointed out, trying not to show her bitterness.

“I didn’t want to take the chance.”

“What chance do you have without me?” Katie asked, attempting to be practical but failing dismally. How the hell could she remain rational about such an emotive subject? “If you don’t have the disease then you get to live a long life alone. If if you do have it, you have to suffer through it alone. But if you’d stayed with me, and told me from the beginning, we would have had each other. We could have helped each other through through your future. Whatever it might be. You you wouldn’t be alone now.”

Her throat was all clogged up. Tears pricked the back of her eyelids.

“I didn’t want to burden you with my problems. I never wanted your future to be brought down because of mine.”

“So you left?” She gawked at him. “You just upped and left without saying anything? Without explaining? What did you think? I would break because you had a problem?”

“I thought you’d be happier not knowing.”

“Happier?” she gasped. “Without you? I haven’t been happy since you left, you moron.” The leaden weights on her chest were back. She couldn’t fight them.

Couldn’t push them off. Instead she gave in to them, and felt their mass overwhelm her. “For fuck’s sake, Tyler. How dare you not tell me?

You took away two years of us. I could have been with you all this time, but no, you were too damn scared to say anything. Too much of a coward.” She was suddenly, unutterably furious. “How the hell do you think I could have been happier without you? I loved you.”

His face turned white.

“Didn’t you know, you idiot? Didn’t you realize you weren’t alone?

Goddamn it, I was there for you. I would have stood by you. No matter what your future held, I would have been there to share it with you. I wasn’t just there for the good times. I wanted everything from you.

Everything with you. I could have helped. I could have shared your fears and comforted you.” She swore viciously. “I would have done anything for you.”

“You’d have given up having children?”

His question stopped her cold.

“Because, Katie, I would not bring a child into the world with the same risks I lived with.”

Okay. She relented. So parts of it would have sucked. Big-time.

“But there are alternatives. We could have dealt with it. Together. You just never gave me a chance.”

“It wasn’t fair to you. I couldn’t take away your future as well.”

“You could have given me the choice,” she barked. “It wasn’t your decision to make.”

“I didn’t want it to be your decision. The idea of putting you under that kind of pressure killed me. You’d have had to make a choice you’d regret in the future: either staying with me out of pity or living with the guilt of leaving me.”

Fuck. How screwed-up was his thinking? “You forgot to factor in my other option. The obvious option. What if I’d chosen to stay with you because I loved you? Because I wanted to share your life no matter how it turned out.”

He sat very still. “You… you loved me that much?” he asked hoarsely.