The Secret Life of a Dream Girl (Creative HeArts) (16 page)

Chapter Nineteen

Keegan knew he was holding on to Dahlia’s hand too tightly. He tried to let up a little—she was so tiny, so fragile, that he was afraid of hurting her—but when he loosened his grip, she just squeezed tighter. Like she understood that her hand was the only thing keeping him grounded. The only thing giving him the strength to walk into the emergency room right now.

Once they were inside, he didn’t bother looking around for his mom. She’d be in the back with his dad. So he texted her instead, letting her know he was there. Then he got in line at the reception area so he could find out what room his dad was in.

Almost immediately, his mom opened the door to the back. “Keegan?” she asked, looking around.

“I’m here, Mom.”

He stepped out of line to meet her. Dahlia tried to tug her hand from his grip, but this time he held on as tightly as he could, He didn’t want to start a fight with his mother right then, but she needed to know that the power trip she pulled this morning didn’t work. He wasn’t giving Dahlia up, and he wasn’t letting Dahlia give up on them, either.

She cared about him or she wouldn’t be here, wouldn’t have written that song, and for now that was all he needed to know.

His mom’s eyes went from him to Dahlia and back again. He knew she wanted to say something about them being together, but in the end she just let the door close behind her and said, “Let’s go outside and talk for a minute.”

“I want to see Dad.”

“I know. But I want to talk to you about what’s going on first. And I don’t want to do it in front of him.”

Shit, that sounded bad. Really bad, considering it was usually the two of them talking and he who was left out of the discussion. For a second he wanted to turn around and walk out of here, wanted to get in Dahlia’s car and drive far, far away.

He wasn’t ready for this. He wasn’t ready for his dad to die. They were supposed to see the doctor tomorrow, to get an update on his progress and where togo from there. They weren’t supposed to be here yet, and he wasn’t ready.

Then again, it was happening whether he was ready or not.

“Yeah, okay.” He started toward the door, expecting Dahlia to walk with him, but she stopped moving, pulled her hand away. Nodded to his mom, then looked at him.

“Go talk to her. I’ll wait for you here.”

He dropped his forehead to hers. “Please don’t make me do this alone.”

“You’re not alone—she’s your mother, and she needs you as much as you need her right now. So go talk to her. I’ll be right here waiting. I promise.”

“Keegan.” His mother’s voice was strident, demanding, as she walked toward the sliding glass doors. But there was a weakness there, too, a vulnerability he wasn’t used to hearing from her.

It was that more than anything else that had him letting go of Dahlia and following his mom outside. He was still furious over what she’ pulled with Dahlia, but that wasn’t the most important thing right then. His dad was.

“What’s wrong?” he asked as soon as the doors closed behind them.

“Are you hungry?” She nodded to the vending machines that were a few steps from the entrance. “Do you want something to drink?”

“I want to know what’s wrong with Dad. Why is he bleeding?”

She sighed, then walked over to the nearest bench. Once she got there, she collapsed more than she sat. “Come sit with me.”

He’d rather stand, rather pace, but his mom looked like the wall was the only thing holding her up, so he wasn’t about to argue with her. He settled on the opposite side of the bench.

“Your dad has a couple of different things going on. He’s got some bleeding in his airways, which is what’s causing him to cough up blood. It’s pretty severe, so they’re giving him some medication to stop the inflammation and giving him a blood transfusion. After that, we’ll see where we stand and if they have to do anything else.”

“Like what?”

“The doctors say we’ll talk about that if we need to. For now, they’re working to stop the bleeding.”

“If they stop it, is he going to be okay?” A faint trickle of hope stirred inside him. Bleeding wasn’t good, obviously, but if they could control it…

“Well, that’s where things get tricky. He’s also got pleural effusion, which is a buildup of water in his lungs. Again, it’s treatable with medication. But he’s also got a rare kind of pneumonia that happens sometimes in lung cancer patients—it’s induced by the chemotherapy. There are some things they can do to help it, too.”

“Wait a minute. All this cropped up at once?”

“They think he’s had the pneumonia for a few days, which contributed to the pleural effusion. Which in turn—”

“Contributed to the bleeding,” he finished for her.

“Exactly. They’ve already started treatment for the first two and are hoping that once they get those under control, the bleeding will stop as well.”

“Okay.” He waited for the other shoe to drop. None of this sounded good, but they had had complications before, so it wasn’t totally unexpected, either—and at least everything she’d talked about was treatable. But his mom wasn’t a drama queen. She wouldn’t be this serious, this down, unless there was something else going on.

She doesn’t say anything else, though, and he couldn’t stand the wait any longer, so he finally asked, “What does all this mean? For Dad? When can he come home?”

“Oh, sweetie, that’s a complicated question.” She took a deep breath, pinched the bridge of her nose. “They’re trying to get a room for him now, and we need to plan that it’s going to be a few days. Probably a week, minimum.”

“And then he’ll come home?”

“Then we’ll see.”

“See what?” He pushed to his feet, start paced because he couldn’t sit still for one more second. “What aren’t you telling me?”

She sighed. “Your dad is weakening, Keegan. The chemotherapy, the sickness… Any of these conditions on its own is treatable and not that big a deal. But when you see all three of them together…”

“What? When you see all three of them together, what?”

“They have to run more tests, but they think the cancer has metastasized. They think we’re dealing with the beginning symptoms of organ failure.”

His chest hurt, and for a second it felt like he’d forgotten how to breathe. He stood up and swiped his hands down his jeans—his palms were as wet as his mouth was dry. Maybe he should have taken his mom up on that drink after all.

“What does this mean?” he finally asked, trying to figure out just how bad it was. Because it sounded really fucking grim to him.

“Right now, it didn’t mean anything. They have to run a lot more tests—”

“What does it mean if those tests come back the way they think they will?”

“It means we’ll up the chemotherapy, see what happens. But—”

“He’s going to die.”

“We don’t know that, honey.”

“No, but we’ve got a pretty good idea, right? Dad’s going to die.”

“We’re all going to die, Keegan.”

He whirled on her. “You know what I mean.”

She sighed. “Yes, I do. And I can’t go there yet. I just can’t. So let’s get through these infections and the tests—”

Her voice broke.

It made him feel like total shit. His parents had been together since they were seniors in high school. And no matter how big a pain she was, I’d never doubted that she loved him. That she loved both of us.

He sat back down next to her and pulled her in for a hug. She resisted at first, but then she put her face down on his shoulder and cried for one minute, two. He patted her back because he didn’t know what else to do.

She got control of herself pretty quick—his mom had always been a fighter—and then pushed to her feet. “I need to go wash my face. I don’t want your father to see me like this. I need to be strong for him.”

“You are strong, Mom.”

“Yeah, well, some days I’m stronger than others.” She wiped her eyes. “And don’t think we won’t be talking about the fact that you ditched school today. Because I guarantee we will be.”

“Yeah, well, if you hadn’t started in on Dahlia this morning, I wouldn’t have had to ditch.”

“She told you.”

“She did. And Mom, it’s not okay for you to do that.”

“You don’t know anything about her—”

“I know what I need to know—including that she’s Cherry. That doesn’t matter to me.”

“Of course it doesn’t matter to you! You’re an eighteen-year-old kid. You probably think that it’s cool. But she’s a mess—”

“She’s not a mess. She has problems. Well, guess what? We all have problems. People looking at our life right now would probably say you and I are a mess, too.”

“We are a mess,” she agreed readily. “Which is why I don’t think you should be starting a relationship with anyone right now, let alone someone like Cherry.”

“Someone like Cherry? She’s a person, Mom. She’s just a person. And a really good person, at that.”

My mom sighed, checked her watch. “Can we talk about this later? I’d really like to get you in to see your father.”

“I’ll go see Dad now, but we’re not going to talk about this later. We’re not going to talk about this at all. Because Dahlia is my choice and you don’t get a vote. Not on this.” He glanced through the doors at her, saw her pacing back and forth much the same as he had just been doing. “I’m crazy about her, Mom.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.” He threaded his arm through hers, propelled her toward the perennially open doors. “Now come on. I think Dad would like to meet her.”

“Considering he sings her songs at the top of his lungs while he’s mowing the grass?” His mom rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I’d say so.”

“Are you okay?” Dahlia asked him as soon as they walked through the door.

He thought about his dad—and the uncertainty that lay ahead for all of them. “No.” Then he wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her close. “But I’m better with you here.”

She cuddled even closer. “Then I guess I should probably stick around for a while, huh?”

“Yeah, probably.” He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “I mean if you want to.”

“Oh, I definitely want to.” She wrapped her arms around his waist and squeezed as tightly as she could. He squeezed back just as tightly.

His life was a mess right now; hers was in total flux.

He was a high school student while she was a million dollar pop star.

He knew exactly who he was while she was just figuring it all out.

There were a million reasons for them not to be together. A million reasons for them not to let this go any further. And only one reason for them to hold on.

He loved her.

He had fallen in love with her and was pretty sure she felt the same way about him. And yeah, he knew it wasn’t going to be easy for them to be together, especially if she went back to her old life as Cherry. But he didn’t care, because the best things didn’t come easy. And Dahlia was worth doing anything—doing everything—for.

She was his Dream Girl and now that he’d found her, he was going to hold on as tightly as he could. The fact that she was holding on just as tightly…well that just made everything he was going to have to deal with in the next few months seem a little easier, a little better, a little brighter.

And for now, that was more than good enough for him.

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About the Author

Award-winning author Tracy Deebs collects old vinyl, new books and bold lipsticks and has been known to forget where—and sometimes who—she is when immersed in a great novel. At six she wrote her first short story—something with a rainbow and a prince—and at seven she forayed into the wonderful world of girls lit with her first Judy Blume novel. And from the first page of that first book, Tracy knew she’d found her life-long love. Now a successful author with 41 published novels to her various names, she loves spending her days writing in her pajamas, drinking too much tea and exploring fun and funky new places in her current hometown of Austin, Texas.

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