Aiden tossed up his arms, but he finally sat back in the chair beside the one person that had stuck by him through everything while he was battling his cancer.
His papa was the one consistent person in his life, always had been. Aiden didn’t even know where his alpha father was, and he didn’t care. He had the only parent he needed.
He started to tap his foot, and Rafe’s eyes followed his son’s movement.
“I suppose that’s normal,” his papa said.
Aiden smirked. “For me it is.” He then heaved a sigh. “But why”—he glanced down at his watch—“thirty-five minutes?” He jumped to his feet and started to pace again.
Rafe shook his head, and Aiden ignored him. After a year of battling testicular cancer with both surgery and several treatments behind him, Aiden was ready to finally have some good news. He deserved that. Truth was, all he wanted was to be able to just relax.
The past year felt like there was a guillotine blade hanging over his head, and he was just waiting for it to drop. Granted, it had only been stage one, but he’d decided to go with the radical treatment of removing the affected area. Aiden grimaced thinking about it, but shook off the thought.
He heard a knock, and the room stood still. He stood frozen while he glanced at the door as the doctor entered.
“Good evening, Mr. Cross,” he said.
“Dr. Mayne,” Aiden greeted. He slowly sank down into his seat as the doctor came into the room with a tablet in his hand and closed the door behind him. “Just give it to me straight. No need to bullshit around.”
His papa reached out and grabbed his arm, gently squeezing it to calm Aiden down. It usually worked, but not in this case.
The doctor looked up from the screen and that’s when Aiden saw his smile. “You did it, Aiden. You are officially in remission.”
“Are you kidding me right now?” Aiden asked, and immediately felt sheepish for the lame words which fell from his mouth. Dr. Mayne wouldneversay something like that in jest. Here he had been worrying for so long, and hearing the doctor’s words left him completely paralyzed as he took in the news.
The salt-and-pepper-haired man that had gotten him through the past year and reassured him that it was all worth it in the end shook his head. “Nope. You are in remission and won’t need to go through any more chemotherapy.”
Aiden jumped up, and Rafe joined him. They hugged, and Aiden finally allowed himself to breathe. He even managed a small smile for the occasion.
“You did it, son,” Rafe whispered, his voice choked. “You did it.”
Aiden pulled back, and he shook his head. “I couldn’t have done it without you,” he said. “Thank you, Papa!” He hugged him again. When he pulled back, he turned to the doctor. “What now?” he asked.
The doctor shrugged. “You go out and try to lead the best life you possibly can,” he answered. “We’ll have regular monthly appointments to start so we can monitor the status of your remission and make sure that nothing else happens, then after five years, we can truthfully say that you’re cancer free. I want you to try and go back to your normal life.”
Aiden beamed. He was free. “Thank you, Dr. Mayne.”
His doctor got up from behind the desk and came around, arm outstretched. “You take care of yourself now. Make another appointment at the front desk and I’ll see you in a month.”
Aiden shook the man’s hand, then left the room. When they were outside the doctor’s office, he turned to Rafe, and his papa said, “Well now, you see, there was no reason to be nervous.”
Aiden snickered, but damn it, if he didn’t feel a hundred pounds lighter. “I wasn’t the only one nervous, and you know it.”
His papa smiled, the relief written all over him easy to read. “No, you weren’t. Come on, son. Let’s get out of here and go have a celebration dinner. My treat.”
Aiden was definitely up for that. He knew that he could have gone the less aggressive route for his treatment being only stage one, but he hadn’t wanted to take the risk. And now with that clean bill of health and lower risk of recurrence, it was worth what he lost.
They left the doctor’s office and drove to the Italian restaurant that was one of Aiden’s favorites in the city. It was slow, as it was a Thursday and just before everyone started to get off work. Aiden and Rafe went to a table and sat down. Neither one needed to look at the menu since they had eaten there hundreds of times and knew exactly what they wanted. The waiter arrived at their table, and they each placed their order. Then the waiter turned and walked off, leaving them a moment of silence.
Aiden heaved a sigh. “I’m so glad that nightmare is over.”
Once Aiden had the capital to build up his fashion tech business, he’d worked day and night to make it a success, and since his company had just hit the billion dollar mark, Aiden knew he’d finally made it. After just four years of running it, Aiden had gotten an offer he couldn’t refuse, and he’d sold forty-nine percent of his company.
With the day to day operation being done by someone else and Aiden having more money than he knew what to do with for the first time in his life, he decided to travel for a while, see the world.
Jetting off to countries all around the world hadn’t been everything he’d hoped for, and he’d gotten bored fast after working everyday for so long to achieve his goals. Having nothing to do was just not fun. Then, seven months in, he’d gotten malaria while on a safari in Africa and had flown back home for treatment. When the treatments were first started, they’d run every test possible to ensure he hadn’t contracted anything else, and some results came back abnormal. That was how they found the cancer.
His papa was already upset when he’d gotten malaria. Finding out about the cancer had caused Rafe to go into a panic, but he was there for Aiden every step of the way. And although he was now an adult alpha, he still needed his papa.
