Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 84829 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 424(@200wpm)___ 339(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84829 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 424(@200wpm)___ 339(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Tears began to stream down my face. I came around the desk and threw my arms around him, planted my face between his pecs. His arms hung limply at his sides at first. But as the numbness wore off, they slowly began to lift and wrap around me, squeezing so tightly I thought I felt a rib snap.
“How?” I had to ask. Even though I’d known what was inevitably coming, I hadn’t imagined it would happen this quickly. Well under the twelve-month time frame Frank had been given to live.
“My mother said he collapsed at home and hit his head.”
It was time to come clean and the knowledge sat as heavy in my gut as a bag of rocks. It had to be done, though. Was I terrified of Scott’s reaction? Yeah, I was. I loved him. I didn’t want to lose him and there was a very good chance that I would.
“Pack a bag. We’re leaving for New York in an hour,” he said and placed a kiss on my forehead before pulling away.
“Wait…”
Almost at the door, he turned to face me. I paused to drink him in––to commit to memory the soft, sweet, vulnerable look on his face. Like he cared. Maybe the last time I’d ever see him look at me that way again.
“Did your mother mention anything else? Why he collapsed?” I pushed the words out despite my tongue feeling swollen and useless, and my lips tingling.
He gave me a quizzical look. “No,” he said. “I’m assuming a heart attack or stroke.”
Preparing for the worst, I took a few steps back, shifting uncomfortably on my feet, my knees shaking. A lifetime’s worth of habits, every trick I’d used in the past to keep an iron grip on my reactions flew out the window, taken from me when I needed them most.
“He had cancer, Scott.”
Scott blinked, no sign in his expression that he understood. In his eyes, I could see his mind searching for answers that weren’t there, explanations––anything to make sense of what I’d said.
“Cancer?”
“Yeah.”
“Where’d you get that idea?”
“He told me.” His brow wrinkled and I curled my shaking hands into fists.
“He told you? My father told you he had cancer?” His voice began rising and any hope I had of him understanding the position I was placed in evaporated. It was starting to sink in and I knew what was coming next. It was going to be brutal. Like standing tall on a shoreline in the face of an approaching tidal wave. I knew when it finally hit it could very well kill me, but there was no escaping it. Frank, God rest his soul, had robbed me of any chance of resolving this peacefully.
“He told me…he told me back in December.”
“In December…” he echoed softly, his expression constantly shifting with a turnstile of emotions appearing on his beautiful face. He went from being mystified, to being angry, to disbelieving…all the stages of grief.
Meanwhile, I felt only one thing: rock-bottom horrible.
“You’ve known since December that my old man had cancer?” As the dots began to connect, his anger started to overcome all the rest.
“Yes. He told me not to tell anyone and as his lawyer––”
“Don’t!” His face twisted in disgust. “Don’t say it, don’t fucking make excuses.”
His head tipped all the way back, eyes fixed on the ceiling. His hands went to his hips and he sucked in a lungful of air, his chest rising and falling. For a moment, I worried he was going to hyperventilate.
When he finally faced me, it was with a look of undiluted hate. “Start from the beginning. He told you in December that he had cancer. What kind of cancer and why didn’t he seek immediate medical attention?”
I was shaking from head to toe at this point. Even my voice. There was no pretending I wasn’t petrified. He’d peeled away my armor, the callouses I’d developed over the years to guard against such things with his gentle persistence, and this is what remained––a mess.
“Melanoma. He said it was terminal. I begged him to fight it, to fly to MD Anderson, but he wouldn’t listen.”
With each word I spoke Scott’s scorn for me deepened, seeped under his skin and took root in his bones. I could see it on his face. In his posture. It was a worst-case scenario.
“And you didn’t feel the need, the responsibility, to share this news with anybody––like…maybe me!”
I flinched. “Your mother knew.” It was a Hail Mary, a pathetic attempt to deflect all the attention on me, but I would’ve tried anything to stem the flow of resentment coming from him.
He nodded, ominously, slowly. “December…when this entire fucked-up arrangement happened––”
I didn’t think I could feel any worse.
“When he decided to hand the entire company over to you. And you took it willingly, didn’t you? You kept his secret because that meant you got the promotion you wanted.”