Full Tilt (Full Tilt #1)(46)

“How…?” Again, I had to swallow the hard lump lodged in my throat. “How long?”

“Four months, at this point. Maybe more. Maybe less.”

My own heart went into free-fall, and my skin went cold, head to toe as if I’d been doused in ice water. “Four months?”

Four months.

Sixteen weeks.

One hundred and twenty days.

Four months was nothing.

“Oh my God,” I whispered, the words squeezed out of my chest. I felt the tears wet on my face. Felt a drip slide under my jaw and start creeping down my neck. I was crying. I was breathing and pulsing and living.

And Jonah was dying.

He reached a hand as if he wanted to comfort me, but let it drop. “I’m so sorry,” he said.

A bark of laughter escaped me, echoing off the marble arches. “Why? Why are you apologizing to me? And why didn’t you tell me before?”

“If you could see your face right now, you’d know why.”

The tears were dripping off my chin then. I just stared at him, open-mouthed and tasting salt.

“Fuck,” he said, smashing a fist on the arm of the couch. “I f*cking hate doing this to people. I hate what it does to you, and what it does to me. It makes it so goddamn real, when I’m trying to keep my head down and get by. Get through. Make it to October with a finished installation and…” He gestured to the ceiling above. “This. A legacy. I just want to leave a part of me behind that means something.”

“Your schedule…” I said, using a bit of my sleeve to wipe my face. “Now I get it. But I don’t get why you pushed all your friends away. To spare them? Don’t you think they’d rather decide for themselves? Don’t you think they’d want to be with you…?”

“I know they do,” he said. “I had to tell my mother what I just told you. I have to watch my family and friends count down the minutes whenever they’re with me. The pain in their eyes, the careful words, the hugs goodbye that last a little too long. I take it from Oscar and Dena and Tania, I take it from Theo and my parents… I take it from them because I have to. Anyone else… I can’t stand it. I have my circle and that’s it. I don’t want to tell people outside the circle. I don’t want them to have to find out. I don’t let anyone in…”

“And yet,” I said, gulping air, getting a hold of myself. “Here I am.”

“Here you are…” Jonah said, his eyes roaming my face. “Believe me, I didn’t want to let you in. But it was almost as if…”

“What?” I whispered.

“As if I didn’t have a choice,” Jonah said. “I tried to keep the circle closed and my walls up, keep to my routine…But you got in anyway.” He gently swiped a tear from my chin. “You feel it too, right?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“Kace…” He shook his head, raked his hands through his hair, wrestling with himself. “I don’t want to put you through…what’s going to happen. That’s why I acted like such an * earlier tonight. I saw it unfold to the end, and I … I can’t do it to you.”

We sat in silence. People came and went, passing our couch, oblivious to what was happening.

“How do they know it’s four months?” I said. “How can they be that specific?”

“They can tell. Although…”

“Although what?” I said, grasping at the word like a drowning woman for a hunk of life raft.

“I’m supposed to have a biopsy every month. So they can be even more specific. But I stopped going.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s a f*cking awful procedure and it lays me up for forty-eight hours. I have too much work to do at the shop to lose that kind of time. Secondly, I don’t need a biopsy to know. The symptoms will kick in.”

“What symptoms?” I asked.

“Fatigue and shortness of breath, mostly.” Jonah toyed with the medic alert bracelet. “I have those now, a little. I can’t run anymore, or hit the gym like I used to. But when I start to get tired doing little things, or find it hard to catch my breath for no reason, I’ll know. I don’t need to count down the days in the meantime.”

A sliver of hope, a tiny flame in gale-force wind, came to life in my heart. “So… you don’t actually know. You have no idea how bad—or not bad—the cardio…the CAV thing is. Maybe it’s stopped. Maybe the drugs you take are working.”

“Don’t…” he said.

I barreled on. “You’re like Schr?dinger’s cat. So long as you never get another biopsy, the lid on the box is closed. You could live a long time. Years, even. Happily in the dark.”

He smiled a little. “Ignorance is bliss, right? But I don’t have false hope, and I don’t want you to either. I’m not in denial, but I’m not inviting in the cold hard light of day to torture myself. Can you see the difference?”

I nodded, and he took my hand then. His fingers curled around mine and held on tight. His hand…Strong and solid. A burn scar on the pad of his thumb, a few nicks…but otherwise healthy. He has to be healthy…

“I’ve tried to convince myself the doctors are wrong,” Jonah said. “But you can’t talk yourself out of the truth. I’m not without hope, but I’m realistic. They might be wrong. They probably aren’t. That’s my bottom line.”