Life's Too Short (The Friend Zone #3)(79)

When my alarm clock went off Monday morning for work, I was already up, reading ALS case studies and pouring over medical journals in my office. I’d been up for hours. There was a manic energy to it, a frantic need to educate myself, to be able to present every angle to her, counter every point.

I argued for a living. I convinced juries of twelve that guilty men were innocent. And I couldn’t convince one woman to take life-extending medications or agree to a clinical trial to save herself. There had never been anything more important, and I’d never felt so incompetent. I felt like I was riding the edge of a mental breakdown, like I was living in a nightmare that I couldn’t wake up from, running to exhaustion because if I stopped moving, it would knock me down so hard I’d never get up.

Nothing would ever be as good again…

From this point on, I’d always be living in the shattered afterward of this disease. Even if by some miracle this thing with her hand wasn’t ALS, she could still get sick at any time, and if she did, she wouldn’t fight then either. We would never be free of it. And if she wouldn’t agree to fight it, then we’d never even have hope.

I wanted to go back to being blissfully ignorant. I wanted to forget.

I dragged myself to the bathroom and took a shower to go to work and then stood next to the bed, knotting my tie, looking down on her sleeping like I’d done last week.

So much had happened in seven days.

Last week my whole life had been perfect. Our future was bright and endless and there was nothing but possibility. I had everything. I had her. And I thought I’d always have her.

And this week she might be dying.

She’d asked me if she was my girlfriend, and I’d said that word didn’t do her justice. It still didn’t.

I wanted her with me for the rest of my life, not just the rest of hers. I never wanted to wake up another day without her next to me. And looking at her lying there, knowing that in a year she might be in the ground…

My throat got tight and that wave of helplessness crashed over me again, that thick shallow breathing that came with a panic attack fluttered at the edges.

My happiest moments might be measured in months, not years. And I knew that I should be cherishing every second with her, but I couldn’t stop looking at the sun. I couldn’t. It was careening toward the Earth, and I was angry because she wouldn’t try to stop it.

I turned and sat on the edge of the bed and put my face in my hands.

I didn’t realize she was awake until she spoke from behind me. “Are you okay?” she whispered.

I dragged a hand down my beard and stared wearily ahead. I didn’t answer her.

“Adrian, you won’t have to take care of me, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’ll have nurses and aides and we can—”

I shook my head. “I don’t care if I have to take care of you, Vanessa. That’s not even the fucking…” I couldn’t finish.

It didn’t matter to me if I had to spend the rest of my life in service to her. I didn’t give a shit. I just wanted her here.

I put my face back into my hands.

“Do you regret me?” she said into the darkness.

I turned around and looked down at her deep brown eyes peering up at me. “What?”

“Do you wish you never met me?”

I shook my head at her, my voice thick. “How can you ask me that?”

“I didn’t mean to mislead you. I didn’t mean for you to have feelings for me under false pretenses and have the rug pulled out from underneath you. I thought you knew…”

Her voice cracked. She draped an arm over her face and then she started to cry.

I climbed into the bed in my suit and tie, and pulled her to me. I wrapped her in my body and held her like she might vanish.

She gasped through tears, and I kissed her.

It was desperate. Frantic. Like this kiss could somehow make her change her mind, give me more time or just make me fucking forget. And she must have wanted that too because she kissed me back.

I wanted to overwhelm my senses. I wanted to overwhelm hers. I wanted to scream that I loved her, beg her to give me something, some say in what was going to happen. I would make a deal with the devil, sell my soul, if it could save her. But nothing I could do would heal her broken genes. Nothing could undo it or turn back the clock. Time was the only thing that would give us the answers, and it was our enemy.

Her kisses got more urgent. She reached for my zipper and I tugged down her underwear. Her hands fumbled to undo my shirt, but her fingers couldn’t do it. I sat up and ripped it open, buttons raining over her and bouncing from the headboard. I whipped off my belt and she grabbed my tie and yanked me back on top of her, pushing my pants down, wrapping her legs around my waist.

The sex was frenzied. Raw. I felt tears squeeze from my eyes as I thrust inside her and she pulled me in like I couldn’t get deep enough.

She was everything. Everything. I’d found the one thing that was limitless. I’d found the love that poets wrote about.

Only it was a tragedy.

She gasped under me and her back arched and I was right behind her. Then we just lay there, panting at the ceiling, tangled in each other.

“Don’t you ever think I regret you,” I whispered. “I could never regret you. I would trade fates with you if I could. I’d give anything.”