“Everything.Your love.”
“Oh, Summer.”
“No.Listen, dammit.I’m telling you that I don’tunderstandthis, Declan!”
“All right,” he says.“What don’t you understand?”
“I’m a hard worker, right?I came to Yosemite to bust my hump and build some security for myself.You know how I never had that before the ranch.”
“I know.”
“So that’s how I’ve always seen life.I work my ass off, and in exchange I get a paycheck, benefits, money to buy a little place and a truck and be independent.It’s pretty simple.Butthis?”I gesture to him and then to myself.“I can’t wrap my head around it.Why would you do this for me?”
I see pain in Declan’s expression, and I absolutely hate myself for being the cause.This was stupid.
“You know what?”I say.“I’m being ridiculous.I’m just feeling nervous and wonky because of the MRI and the hospital and everything.You can just forget—”
He leans in and kisses me.It’s an unbearably sweet and tender touch of his mouth on mine, and it soothes me.Then without a word, he stands, picks me up, and then sits where I’ve just been.Declan pulls me into his lap and gathers me in his arms.He gently presses my head into the crook of his neck.And he just holds me like that in silence for a minute or two.
I breathe him in.Feel his warmth.Come back to earth.
“Love isn’t a job, Summer,” he says.I feel his deep voice rumble in his throat.“You don’t have to work for my love.Nothing about the two of us is transactional.I love you for the incredible woman you are, and you love my dumb ass in return.”
I smile into the side of his neck.“I’m trying to accept that this is real.Like I said, I’m struggling to understand.”
“Take your time.”
He holds me like this for what must be fifteen minutes, until I can’t stand it anymore.
“I’m starving,” I say.
“Thank you!I was just about ready to gnaw off my own hand.”
We dig into the feast he had flown in from Austin.There’s melt-in-your-mouth brisket, juicy spareribs, baked beans, mac and cheese, and scalloped potatoes.At one point, Declan looks over at me and grins.
“What?”I ask.
“You remember the bacon barbecue burgers in Las Vegas?When I reached over the table and wiped sauce from your cheek?”
“Of course, I remember.I guess you’re going to tell me that I’ve got some on me again.”
“Absolutely you do.But things are different now between us.I bet you’d let me kiss it off.Maybe you’d even let me smear it all over your body and lick you from head to toe and dip a French fry in your belly button.”
I stare at him.“I worry about you sometimes, Declan.”
He knows I’d let him, though.And then I’d do the same for him.
We eat and chat and laugh, and the whole time I’m doing my absolute best to not think about how, at this very moment and only a short drive away, a big-shot doctor is reviewing my MRI results and deciding my fate.
This might be the last dinner I eat with a sliver of hope in my heart.Up until now, I could comfort myself with the thought that there’s no diagnosis yet, that nothing’s definitive, that I’m in a kind of wait-and-see limbo.
But that’s about to be over.
“My last supper,” I mumble under my breath.
“What?”
I reach over and wipe a smear of barbecue sauce from Declan’s chin.“Nothing,” I tell him.
