Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors (The Rajes #1)(18)

Right now, Emma was trying hard to look peaceful. But there was a difference between when she actually was serene, and when she had to make the effort to appear so. As her only living relative—or at least as her only living relative who knew her—DJ had no problem identifying which it was.

“Quit studying me like I’m a recipe you’re trying to reverse-engineer, Darcy!” she said, slamming the sketchbook shut. Again, it was an attempt at little-sisterly petulance, not the real deal.

She knew he hated his given name rather vehemently, and using it meant that she was pissed off and trying to needle him.

“What’s wrong?” he wanted to say. But asking your sister what was wrong when she’d been told she was going to have to lose her sight if she wanted to live was just . . . stupid. So, instead, he said, “It’s going to be fine, love.”

She shoved the sketchbook off her lap. Then picked it up again and hugged it to her chest. “No, it’s not going to be bloody fine!” Finally, she raised her voice.

Good, he wished she could scream. He wished he could take her to a mountain, into a forest, to the rooftop of the hospital and let her scream until she had no breath left. They could both use that. Some good full-chested lung-wringing yelling. Everything let out, nothing held in.

She had barely been able to whisper the words out this morning after she’d woken up. “The tumor is operable, but they’ll have to slice up both my optic nerves. I’m going to go completely blind.” Her voice had broken on that last word, but she hadn’t cried.

He hadn’t either. He’d wanted to. He’d also wanted to ask questions, respond in some way, but he had nothing. No questions to ask, no consolation to give. Nothing except an overwhelming wave of relief. In the end, all he’d been able to manage was to take her hand and hold it in silence for a long, long time. The Caine siblings had always been good at silence.

Then another flurry of tests had taken her away and he’d gone home to make her some chicken noodle soup, because some of the drugs made her nauseated. Then he’d made his daily trip to the farmers’ market for this evening’s job. One part of him looked forward to his work, to the soothing satisfaction of it. The other part of him was so soul sick, all he wanted was to not leave her side. Not that it mattered what he wanted. He needed every job he could get to pay for this surgery. He’d been praying for this—a cure, a solution, a way to save her life—from the moment she’d called him and used that word. Terminal.

The look she gave him left no doubt in his mind that she didn’t share his relief. Not only did she not share it, but she wanted to shake him for feeling it until his bones rattled. “In which world is it going to be fine that I won’t be able to see?”

“In a world where you’ll be alive.”

She locked gazes with him. When her eyes had started changing color, he had noticed. Six months ago when she had visited him in Paris, he’d seen it. The color difference had been much subtler then than it was now, but he’d caught it. Why hadn’t he pushed harder for her to see a doctor about it then? Why?

“I can’t do it, DJ.”

Everything in the room went quiet. The ceaseless buzzing and beeping of the machines, the murmur and grind of conversations and rolling carts from the corridor outside—it all stopped, swallowed up by her words.

What the hell was she talking about? But he couldn’t disturb the silence. He waited, staring down the answer in her eyes.

She put the sketchbook on the side table and reached for his hand. Her fingers were stained with thick oily color. Blue and yellow. Darkness and light. She squeezed his hand. “I can’t go blind. I can’t do it.” It was the calmness with which she said it that made him spring out of his chair.

Without letting her hand go, he sat down on the bed next to her, the springs jumping, his heartbeat rising fast. “Emma, love, I get that this is hard. Hell, it’s impossible. I understand. I do. But I’m here. I’ll be here. We’ll sort it out.”

“What will you be sorting out exactly? How to live your life in darkness? How to never see colors?” She yanked her hand out of his, leaving stains on his skin. “Colors are my life, DJ! I can’t live without them. When Dad died, when Mum died, when you left, they were all I had. I don’t need anything else. But I need them. I need to see. I need to paint to make sense of the world.” There were no tears in her eyes, her back stayed erect, but he felt her folding inward, dissolving in pain, and anger, and helplessness.

That’s what this was. It was shock. It was natural, her being in denial. He just needed to be patient while she worked it out. Because he couldn’t imagine how angry she was. He was furious too. He wanted to break things. Burn everything down. On his way to his flat yesterday, when he’d stopped at the railway crossing and watched the Caltrain race past, he’d imagined his car getting stuck on the tracks unable to get out of the way soon enough. That shattering slam of the train flattening the metal, crushing everything inside to pulp, that’s what this felt like.

“No, don’t try the silence thing with me,” she said too calmly. “This is not about letting me work through this. This is not a meltdown. I’ve made up my mind. I’m not going to have the surgery. Dr. Entoff said there were other treatments that would give me some time, the kind of time I want.”