Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors (The Rajes #1)(57)

“So about those test results . . .” he said, wishing he could just watch her eat in silence. But he had to breach the topic somehow.

She pointed her spoon at the glass. “Really? Are you going to ruin this for me with serious talk? Can we at least wait until I’m done rolling around in this for a bit?”

She grabbed a spoon from the spoon holder on the table and handed it to him. “I’ll even share.”

He wasn’t a terribly hopeful person by nature. Hope was a terrifying thing. Taking things as they came was more his style. But right now, try as he might, he couldn’t quite bring himself to believe that this girl who spread light, who saw things in ways that could change the world, had chosen to give up so easily.

It just wasn’t going to happen. He would not let it happen.

“Stop looking so serious. It makes me feel like all the things you want to talk about are waiting at the bottom of this glass.”

He let his pursed lips curve into a smile. “Then hurry up and get through the brownie . . . and the gelato . . . and the praline . . . and the sea salt caramel first,” he said, stretching his words out playfully.

“Oh, the things you demand of me, brother,” she responded, hamming it up.

It wasn’t easy but he let her eat in silence, taking a bite every now and again. “If only all the waiting in life were this easy,” she said finally.

“Listen, Emma.” There was only an inch of melting sundae to go, so he wasn’t exactly breaking his word. “How can you not fight this?”

She jabbed the brownie so hard the spoon sliced through it and hit the bottom of the glass with a clink. “Fight what? The tumors in my brain? Fight them how exactly? By yelling at them to get lost?”

“No. Your doctor is going to take care of that for you. You just have to let her.”

“Sod it all, Darcy! What she’s going to do isn’t taking care of things. Not for me.” She slammed her hand on the table and the glass jumped and tipped over. The few drops of syrupy chocolate left in the glass splattered on the stack of mail sitting nearby.

“Sorry.” She straightened the glass, then grabbed the envelope and wiped it with her thumb. Her eyes darkened when she noticed that it was a bill from the hospital.

Bugger him sideways! He should have put the damn thing away. Without another word she tore it open.

The color drained from her face. “What the bloody hell is wrong with this country? How can tests cost thirty thousand dollars?” Emma did have health insurance, but it most certainly didn’t cover treatment at Stanford. The places where treatment was covered had already deemed her tumor inoperable.

“I told you, I don’t want you to worry about that.”

“How can I not worry about it?” she hissed in frustration. “You’ve already dropped your entire bloody life for me. And I love you for it. But you’re not bankrupting yourself. You’re just not.”

Too late, baby girl. “This one bill is not going to bankrupt me.”

Wrong thing to say, because he knew exactly the thought that went through her head at that. “Paying for the surgery isn’t going to bankrupt me either,” he added quickly.

If it did, he had a solid enough career that he’d make it all back.

Emma met his eyes. The difference in color was particularly noticeable in the light streaming through the window; he kicked himself again, for not forcing her to see a doctor when he’d first noticed it. “I want to sell the bug.”

“We’re not selling your car.”

She got up and started searching the kitchen. “It’s not like I’m going to be able to drive it ever again, and it isn’t exactly your style.”

He opened a cabinet and handed her the box of pralines she was searching for. “We can afford the car for now and we need it. We’re okay with the bills.”

Both were lies.

The bug had belonged to Emma’s friend Sabah, a girl who had gone back to Dubai after finishing her master’s degree. Emma had never admitted as much, but DJ suspected there was more to that friendship than friendship. Who left a car behind for their roommate after knowing them for only two years?

“Sabah’s family is wealthy. She didn’t really care about selling it before she left.” That was all Emma had said to him. But DJ studied people all day long and just the way Emma said Sabah’s name said much.

He would not be letting anyone sell that car.

Emma popped a piece of praline into her mouth and turned weary eyes on DJ. “Maybe I should write that blog after all. Sell my story to get people to buy my art. Except I’m bollocks at writing. I think I single-handedly turned Mrs. Brendish’s hair silver when I took her composition class.”

DJ sat up.

Julia Wickham. The journalist had called him that morning and tried to convince him again to let her meet Emma. The woman had such a gentle way about her, speaking to her had actually made him feel better.

“What?” Emma said, studying him as she sucked on the candy in her mouth.

“Nothing.” Emma was in a strange mood and he wasn’t sure how she’d react.

She jabbed him in the arm. “Darcy James, that’s your trying-to-manage-me face. Tell me. I really need something to distract me right now.”

He had turned Julia Wickham down again, but this smacked of a window opening when doors had been slamming repeatedly in their faces. And more than the money, the idea that unburdening herself on camera might help Emma move forward kept nudging at him. “Funny you say that, because . . . because I met a journalist in the waiting room when I came to see you the other day. She wanted to talk to you.”