Chapter One
“Let me get this straight.” Dana Hamill stopped stirring her coffee. “You’re breaking up with me? In a hospital cafeteria?”
Her fiancé Tommy Parker picked at his muffin. “I just think, given the circumstances, we should maybe take a break.”
Given the circumstances. “A break. So you’re not suggesting we book a vacation to Jamaica. You mean we should take a break from each other.”
“Just to, well, re-evaluate our priorities.”
Dana laughed. She couldn’t help it. This situation was ridiculous.
“You’re taking it better than I thought you would.”
“I’m not. I’m really not. If I’m laughing, Tommy, I guess it’s because of the way you decided to end our one-year engagement. Instead of breaking it to me gently in a private location, you decided to do it in a chintzy hospital café, over cold coffee and a stale bran muffin.”
“I only ordered the muffin because I missed lunch.”
“Fuck the muffin, Tommy. Justfuck the muffin.”
The other customers in the café turned to look at Dana. Had she raised her voice? She didn’t care. Her world was crumbling, just as surely as the bits of dry muffin in Tommy’s hand.
“Let’s take a breath and talk this through.”
“Oh, you want to talk? Sure thing. We can talk. How about we talk about your tragic sense of timing?”
“Dana, please try to understand.”
She lay her hands flat on the table, in an attempt to stay grounded. “We just got out of the doctor’s office. She gave me a life-changing diagnosis. Five whole minutes later, you’re calling it a day.”
Tommy seemed to wither under her gaze, shrinking lower in his seat. Good. She hoped he’d grow so small he’d disappear completely.
Maybe he was acting on impulse, blindsided by what Doctor Batra had said. After all, this changed everything.
In truth, for one crazy moment in the doctor’s office, Dana had seen this coming. She’d felt Tommy start to pull back the moment the doctor uttered the words she never thought she would hear.
Premature ovarian failure.
Three little words. Before today, she never would have even strung them together. Taken on their own, each word seemed innocent enough, but used in the same sentence, in the description that would forever define her, they were cataclysmic.
Tommy’s retreat wouldn’t have been obvious to anyone other than her. It was just a shift in the atmosphere, a gradual movement. A sliver of rejection irritating her skin, even though she couldn’t see the point of entry. His posture had angled ever so slightly away.
From her.
As if she was now a thing to be avoided.
She’d known in that moment but had hoped she was wrong. She’d definitely never expected him to act so quickly.
He was clearly trying to dodge a bullet.
No. She gripped the edge of the table.You are no man’s bullet. You are better than he is. This is Tommy’s loss.
“I’m sorry.”
“Are you?”
They were quiet for another couple of minutes. She could tell he didn’t know what to say. Hell, she barely knew what to feel. A year ago, she’d just been a woman suffering from missed periods, night sweats, and the odd hot flash. Strange for her age, but she’d attributed her symptoms to work stress. Tommy had been the one to urge her to call her doctor.
“Dana.” Tommy reached for her hand. “You know me, probably better than I know myself. I can’t lie to you and tell you this…situationisn’t a deal breaker for me.”
