Daniel wiggles his eyebrows then turns back to the hob. “I have a job announcement too.”
“Oh?” I take a sip of my wine. “What is this wine?” I swirl it around in my glass.
“It’s on the table.”
I turn and narrow my eyes at the bottle, moving closer to read the label. “Bugger! This bottle of wine costs over six hundred quid!”
“As I was saying… I have job news too. I’ve been asked to film that documentary. It’s going to be huge. A serious once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. But I’ll be gone for five months, and…” He slides the pan off the burner and turns toward me. I leave on Monday.” His nose scrunches but it fails to hide the excitement in his eyes.
Our ambitious and career-oriented personalities brought us together. Kids? A doctor told me, several years ago, I would never get pregnant thanks to endometriosis. Daniel doesn’t want them anyway. The fake grimace is theatrical; he knows I won’t blink before jumping for joy to celebrate his professional accomplishment. That’s us. Two independent people who happen to be in love. At least that’s who we were until today. This very moment.
“Say something.” He grunts a laugh of disbelief. “I bought this bottle of wine for six hundred quid to celebrateourday, but you look like you’re ready to cry.” His hands cradle my face.“Scarlet Stone, I’ve seen you cry once.Oncein the ten years I’ve known you. What is this all about, love?”
For a brief moment, which feels like an out-of-body experience, I think I could make it disappear if I don’t say the words. With one blink my tears fall, and I say the words anyway. “I have cancer.”
“Sorry? No…” Daniel shakes his head, brow pinched tight. “What are you talking about?”
My tears taste salty on my lips as I rub them together, drawing in a deep breath. “The off and on pain in my abdomen? The bloating? The weight I’ve lost without trying over the past six months?”
“You went to the doctors and they said it was stress or the endometriosis.”
“They missed it.”
“Sorry? Theymissedit?” Daniel’s head jerks back. “What the bloody hell is that supposed to mean?”
I shake my head. “They’re human. It happens.”
“What kind of cancer? They… they caught it early. Correct? You’ll go through treatment, and you’ll be fine.” His voice cracks. “Answer me.” My man who defines tall and ruggedly handsome, looks utterly broken and defeated with his eyes reddening behind his own tears, shoulders curled inward.
“It’s ovarian cancer.” I grab his hands and squeeze them. The lines along his brow deepen. “It’s terminal.”
He jerks his hands from mine, spinning around with his back to me; his hands fist his hair as he releases a growl. “FUCKING HELL!”
A numbness blankets my body. I don’t even jump when he yells. All I can feel is the soft trickle of more tears sliding down my face. I know no pain will ever compare to this moment. The victims of cancer reach far beyond those with the disease.
“Okay…” He turns back to me, his eyes wet with emotion. “We’ll fix this. Chemo, radiation, whatever it takes. Cancer is not a death sentence anymore. They’re coming out with new treatments every day.”
“Daniel—”
“Or surgery. Can’t they just remove your ovaries?”
“Daniel—”
“There has to be something, there’s always—”
“DANIEL!”
He snaps out of his incessant rambling, his pointless grasping for something that isn’t there.
“It’sterminal. I talked to an oncologist. She gave me a year topswithtreatment, six months without.”
His Adam’s apple bobs, like he’s finally swallowing what I said. “A year,” he whispers, his eyes affixed to me with a blank stare.
I shake my head. “Six months.”
“Scar—”
“I’m not doing the treatment.”
