“Are they? I wasn’t looking at those.”
I half-laugh. “Sweet-talker.”
“Only for you,” he whispers. “Always for you.”
We watch the night sky for a few minutes.
“You need help, Em.”
It takes a moment for the words to filter through, and then I’m shaking my head. “I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not.” He kisses the top of my head. “None of this is fine. And you can’t do it on your own.”
“I can,” I insist. My throat feels thick. “I promised you I could do it. I meant it.”
I promised him I was strong enough.
I have to be strong enough.
“Youare,” he whispers raggedly. “Fucking hell, Emmy. You think I don’t see everything you’re doing? What it’s doing to you? You quit yourjob—,”
“They're on hold,” I correct him. My voice shakes as I say it. “It’s not forever.”
But going back means that he won’t be here.
“I don’t want this to destroy you too,” he says heavily. “That’s what it does, Em. This thing inside my head… it’s a poison. It spreads out to the people around me, and it hurts them. And that’s what I can’t cope with.”
I swallow. “I found a new trial.”
He tenses against me. “No.”
“Just listen,” I try. Beg. “It’s a new drug. They might be able to shrink it – to give you more time—,”
“I don’twantmore time.”
The words sink into the night.
I blink, still staring out across the water.
Ben buries his face in my hair. “Not like this. Not when every waking moment is a battle against my own body. When I first found out… Iwantedto fight it, Em. And then the days turned into weeks, and months. And nothing changed. I don’t want to go through that again. I’m getting tired, baby.”
“But it might be different this time.”
“No,” he says gently. And his arms tighten. “No, it won’t, Emmy. It’ll only steal the time I have left. I’m too far down this road now. And I want to spend that time with you.”
Tears on my cheeks. “It’s not fair. We deserve a life, Ben. You deserve a life.”
We should have had years. Years to learn each other. To love each other.
And all we get is weeks.
The fucking unfairness of it makes me want to scream out into the ocean.
“No,” he says roughly. “It’s not. The night we met… I knew, then. I would have married you, Emmy Marsters. In a heartbeat. And we would have traveled the world together, and eventually found a place to settle down.”
I can’t breathe. I can’t speak. So I listen, as Ben Bennett weaves the story of our life into the air around us. The life we should be looking forward to, instead of grieving over.
“I would have found a job.” Ben clears his throat as he runs his fingers through my hair and I lean against him, staring sightlessly out over the water. “Maybe carpentry. I always liked building stuff. And you would have your own flower shop. After a few years, maybe we’d have kids. A little girl that looks like you. Maybe a boy that looks like me. And we would have beenhappy, Em. So fucking happy. I would have spent my entire life waking up every morning with you beside me, and it would have been a life well spent.”
