Shattered: An Extreme Risk Novel (34 page)

I don’t answer him, but then I don’t have to. We both know exactly what that scar is from.

“Yeah. That’s what I thought.” He picks his shoes up off the bed. “I need to go.”

“Just like that?” The words slip out and I want to call them back as soon as I say them. They color everything, make it sound like I think this thing between us is more than it is. “I mean—”

“I need to help Logan pack. He can’t do it all on his own.”

“Right. Of course.” I look down at my hands, pick at my dry cuticles. Try to ignore the fear tearing me in two. Not fear of the cancer—I’ve been here too many times for that.

But fear of what going home means.

Fear of leaving here with things like this between us.

Fear that this is it, this quiet, civilized, angry exchange of words is all that Ash and I are going to have.

Ash heads for the door, then stops and looks at me, his hand on the knob. “Are you going to be okay? Packing yourself up?”

“I’m not an invalid, Ash. I’m the same person I was yesterday and the day before that and the day before that. I haven’t changed just because—” My voice breaks, but I force myself to say the words. Force myself to make them real. “Just because the rhabdomyosarcoma might be back.”

“Rhabdomyosarcoma.” He says it like it’s a bad word, like it’s worse than the most vile curses I’ve heard him utter time and time again. “That’s what you’ve got?”

“It’s what I
had
.” I put emphasis on the last word because, goddamnit, it’s just a fever. It could be nothing. It could be everything, but it could be nothing just as easily. And even if no one else wants to believe that, I’m going to. Because it’s the only way I’m going to get through the next twenty hours without breaking down completely.

“Right.” He opens the door, steps into the hall. “Call me if you need anything. Otherwise, I’ll be back to help you carry your bags in about an hour.”

“I don’t need you to carry my bags. I got them up here on my own, I can get them back down, too.”

“Damn it, Tansy!” He whirls around then, and for a second I think his shoes are going to hit the wall again. Or maybe it’ll be his phone this time—he’s got that clutched tight in his right hand. “Let me help you.”

I close my eyes at the pain in his face, the agony in his voice. “I can’t.”

“Why the fuck not?”

“Because that’s not what I want from you.” It’s never what I wanted. To be another burden to him? To be something else he has to check off his to-do list? To be one more thing he has to take care of, one more thing that will slowly, inexorably break him? No, that’s not what I want to be to Ash. Not now. Not ever.

“Then what
do
you want from me?” he demands, wild-eyed and frustrated. “What the fuck do you want from me? Tell me and I’ll give it to you.”

“I want you to look at me like you did last night. Like you think I’m beautiful. Like you want to make love to me. I want you to look at me like I’m whole and healthy and normal.”

Again, he doesn’t say anything, and again, he doesn’t have to. Because I can see it in his eyes, in his face, in the way he’s being so careful not to look me in my eyes.

Suddenly, I’m exhausted. Just completely worn out and the last thing I want to do is stand here and listen to Ash tell me all the reasons he can’t give me what I want. What I need.

“Go help Logan,” I tell him with a sigh. “I’ll see you downstairs.”

“Your bags—”

“I can handle them. I’ll text you if I can’t. I promise.”

He looks like he’s going to protest, but in the end, he just nods. Slips outside. Closes the door behind him. I wait until I hear him walking away, until I hear a door down the hall open and close, before I sink to my knees. And sob.

I don’t know what to say here, don’t know what to do. Every move I make is the wrong one, every word I utter is just another wedge between Tansy and me. She’s sitting across from me on the plane and she’s never looked more fragile. More breakable.

Her eyes are fever bright, her skin flushed and stretched taut over bones that are far too close to the surface. For the first time, I understand why she’s so skinny. Why she’s so broken. Every scar on her body stands out in stark relief in my head, every sharp edge that I’ve ignored or downplayed is suddenly a nightmare inside me.

Cancer. Tansy has cancer. Rhabdomyosarcoma, to be exact.

Though I know it was the worst thing I could do, I looked it up on my phone while we were driving to the airport. What I found nearly made me sick, nearly stopped my heart in my chest. Because there’s almost no survival rate for people like Tansy, who have the disease when they’re teenagers. Little kids over the age of one survive it all the time. Adults do an okay job of it, too. But people who suffer from it between the ages of 10 and 19 … for whatever reason, the outcome isn’t very good for them.

I try to ignore the fact that Tansy is nineteen. That she’s been suffering from this disease for what sounds like years, if the information Z gave me is correct. He didn’t know much, only what Ericka told him, but it was enough to chill my blood. Enough to make my head feel like it’s going to explode even now, hours later.

We’re an hour out of Salt Lake City and Tansy and I have barely spoken more than fifteen words during the whole trip. That’s my fault, but Jesus, I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to her. Don’t know how I’m supposed to feel.

She has cancer.

She has CANCER.

And Jesus Christ, I feel like a total asshole but I can’t do this. I just can’t do it. I can’t sit by and watch someone else that I love suffer. Can’t sit by and watch her die. If that happens, I’ll be shattered, broken into so many pieces that not even Z and Luc and Cam could put me together again.

And I can’t do that. I can’t break like that. Not when Logan needs me the way that he
does. Not when I’m barely holding things together as it is.

Cancer. Tansy has CANCER.

The words are a litany in my head, a mantra in my soul and they’re growing louder and louder and louder, until they’re all I can hear. All I can think about. Until they’re all that I am.

How much worse must it be for her? How much more terrible must she feel, knowing that her body is betraying her? That there’s something inside of her that is slowly, inexorably destroying her?

It makes me crazy to think about it, so I don’t. Instead, I sit here, staring at her and trying to find the words to make better what happened in that hotel room. The words that will make this entire situation better.

But there are no words, because there is nothing that will ever make this better. Nothing except Tansy being cured and healthy and happy. And judging from her glazed, feverish eyes, that isn’t going to happen anytime soon.

The pilot comes on to tell us that we’re starting our descent, and asks everyone to buckle their seat belts. I make sure Logan—who is asleep—is buckled in, then start to do up my own seat belt. But I realize Tansy hasn’t moved from where she’s sitting cross-legged on the couch. I don’t think she even heard the announcement.

I get out of my chair, kneel in front of her and reach for her seat belt. My knuckles brush against her while I’m fastening it and she’s so hot. So goddamned hot. It scares me almost as much as her rapid breathing, almost as much as the glazed look in her eyes.

“We’re almost home,” I tell her softly, running my hand over her hair because I can’t not do it.

She jolts a little at the contact, her gaze clearing as she stares up at me out of wide, pained eyes. “Ash?” she whispers, and there are so many things in that one syllable, so many emotions and hopes and fears in the sound of my name on her lips, that I’m nearly crushed under the weight of them all.

“It’s going to be okay,” I tell her, though I don’t believe it even as I say the words. Nothing is okay. Nothing is ever going to
be
okay. That’s not how my world works.

The momentary brightness in her gaze fades and she sinks back against the couch. Closes her eyes. And doesn’t move again until we land in Salt Lake City.

The flight attendant opens the door and we all clamber for the front of the plane. Logan still isn’t talking to me, so I ask Luc to get him—which he does, no problem—and I reach down and scoop Tansy into my arms.

“What are you doing?” she demands, struggling against me. “I can walk! I’m fine.”

“I know,” I murmur in her ear, trying to ignore how good she smells. How right she feels in my arms. “But indulge me. Let me get you to the limo safely.”

Except, when we get onto the tarmac, it’s not the limo she wants me to take her to. It’s the red SUV parked next to it.

“My parents are here,” she tells me as a woman who looks an awful lot like Tansy comes rushing forward, along with a tall man with wide shoulders and eyes the same color as my girl’s.

As Tansy’s, I correct myself viciously. She’s not my girl. She was never my girl. Never meant to be my girl. I need to remind myself of that.

“Tansy! Oh my God, is she all right?” The woman, who I assume is her mother, stops short as she gets to me.

“I’m fine, Mom!” Tansy struggles out of my arms. “Ash is just … being an ass.”

I’m not sure what that means, but Z comes up with her luggage a minute later and I don’t have time to ask. Not that I would anyway.

“Oh, Tansy, sweetheart, you really are burning up.” Her mother presses a kiss into her forehead. “Get into the SUV before you catch a chill.”

Tansy rolls her eyes at her mother. “It’s eighty-five degrees out, Mom. I think I’m good.”

“Humor me,” her mother answers as Z loads her suitcase and overnight bag into the cargo space.

“Thank you for taking care of Tansy,” her father says to Z and me as Tansy’s mother walks her to the car, fussing over her the whole way.

“No problem. Is she …” I don’t want to ask if she’s going to be all right, because that seems ridiculous considering how sick she might be. But at the same time, I’m not okay just leaving things like this. Just watching her drive away into the sunset.

I hadn’t really given this part of things much thought, but I guess if I had to say what I imagined happening, it wouldn’t be this. I thought I’d go to the hospital with Tansy, make sure she was all right. But her parents are here and they obviously know what they’re doing and it’s just as obvious that she doesn’t need me with her. Doesn’t want me with her. Otherwise, she’d say something to me, right? She’d at least look at me as her mother gets her into the front seat of the SUV.

But she doesn’t. She doesn’t say anything to me, doesn’t smile at me, doesn’t so much as glance my way. Instead, she looks straight ahead as her mother tells her that a Dr. Gardner is already at the hospital waiting for her.

That doesn’t sound good—that a doctor is concerned enough to be waiting on her—and my stomach tightens painfully. I want to ask what that means, want to demand to know what this doctor is going to do to Tansy.

But that’s not my right, either. Not with the way I left her room this morning. Not with the ugly words hanging between us. And definitely not with the thoughts I was having on the plane, about not being able to do this with her. About not being able to handle this catastrophe on
top of all the others I’ve already been through.

And yet, it doesn’t seem right. Still I expect it to end differently than it does. Because once he thanks us, Tansy’s dad gets into the driver’s side of the SUV and then they’re gone, pulling away from the limo and driving across the tarmac to the airport exit, just like that.

It seems anticlimactic and yet awful, all at the same time. I don’t know what to say, what to think, how to feel, as I watch her speed away. There’s a part of me that thinks this is the worst mistake I’ve ever made … and another part that is whispering, Thank God.

Thank God, I found out before I fell for her any harder.

Thank God, we got her home where she can get help.

Thank God, I don’t have to watch her die.

My hands are shaking, badly, so I shove them into my pockets to keep anyone else from noticing. I don’t think it works, at least not judging from the look of disapproval on Z’s face as he stands next to me, watching Tansy drive straight out of my life.

“Why didn’t you go with her?” he demands.

“What would be the point? She has her parents.”

He looks at me like I’m an idiot. “You’re not her parents, man. She’ll want you there because you’re her—”

“But I’m not. This thing between us, it was never meant to be serious. It was just supposed to be fun.”

Z snorts. “Yeah, right.”

“I’m serious. We talked about it when we first slept together and we decided—”

“That you were an idiot,” he tells me. “That’s what you decided.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I tell him through gritted teeth.

“Oh yeah, that’s my problem. I’m the one standing here who doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” He nods in the direction the SUV just turned. “You’re so serious about that girl that it’s practically leaking out of your ears. We can all see it—”

“All?” I squawk, suddenly alarmed at the idea that I’m wearing my already broken heart on my sleeve for the whole fucking world to see.

“Not all,” he soothes. “But me and Luc and Cam. And probably Logan, too. It’s not like you’re exactly difficult to read.”

I think he’s going to say more, but before he can, Timmy’s mom and dad come up to thank us.

We accept their thanks as graciously as we can, but the fact of the matter is, we didn’t do anything. Not in the grand scheme of things. The kid is great, funny and sweet and adorable and I like him a lot. I liked spending time with him these last few days. Liked getting to know him. But the truth is, he’s dying and there’s nothing any of us can do about it. Nothing anyone can do
about it. A few days boarding in the Andes isn’t going to change any of that.

It’s not something I like to think about, but it’s the truth all the same.

The sooner I accept that, the better off I’ll be.

There’s a part of me that knows this is about more than Timmy. That it’s about Logan and Tansy and my parents, too, but I’m not going there. Not now. Maybe not ever.