“Shit!” I tried to jolt up then remembered that I’d already met with Nixon, and because Andi had been out with the girls, he’d agreed to drop me off at my house so I could sleep in my own bed. “I’m so sorry.”
She frowned. “For sleeping? Right… you should be.”
Six. Six meant the hospital had to have called. I frantically searched my pockets for my phone.
“Whoa. You okay?” Andi sat on the bed and tucked her feet under her body.
“Yeah.” I finally located my phone on my nightstand. One missed call. “I just… was expecting someone.”
“Oh, your other lover.” She winked.
“She’s a redhead.” I nodded solemnly. “Hates Russians. Loves cats though.”
“Ah, so she has that going for her.”
I smiled and held up my phone to my ear. “Mr. Smith, this is Nurse Holingway. While I’d much rather have this conversation in person, I understand you need the test results as soon as possible. It appears we won’t have the final results for another twenty-four hours. If you are somehow a match, we will need to start the process sooner rather than later, as your wife’s condition has, as you know, worsened. Expect to hear from us soon.”
I dropped the phone onto the bed.
The room was silent.
Andi cleared her throat and reached for my hand. “Everything okay?”
I jerked my hand away. “What happened at your appointment?”
“Well…” She bit down on her lower lip. “…I tried to convince my doctor to try the entertainment industry again.”
“Andi…”
“And…” She sighed. “…the girls came and rescued me.”
“Andi…”
Her face fell. I reached for her hand, this time squeezing it tight.
“It’s not good, Sergio. I kind of have the black lung and all that.”
“This isn’t Zoolander.”
“Wow!” She tilted her head in appreciation. “Points for the movie reference. See? You’re not that old!”
“Andi!” I yelled her name, not because I was angry, but because I knew her, backward and forward. She was trying to let me down lightly, trying to make light of a very serious situation. “What did he say?”
Her brown eyes filled with tears. “It’s in my lymph nodes… and they found a few spots in my lungs. I can’t do chemo. The chances are pretty rare that it would help in the first place. Once you’ve done it, your body doesn’t respond as well the second or third time.”
“And a donor?”
She shrugged.
“Andi, I have something to tell you.”
“Can we not?” She wiped away a few stray tears. “At least for the next hour, can we just lie here? Can you just hold me? I don’t want to talk about it, not yet… please?”
I sighed heavily. “Yeah.” No use in upsetting her more. But we would have that conversation. And it would be soon. If there was a chance at saving her, I was going to take it, even if I died trying.
“Kiss me.” She pressed her hands against my shoulders and pushed me against the bed, straddling my body with her legs.
I was finding it extremely hard to stick to my promise, to not shed any tears. I had to be strong for her, for us. “Kiss you, huh?”
“Yes.” I would never get tired of her smile, of the way it lit up her entire face. Shit, the way it lit up my entire world.
I brought her head down and met her mouth with mine in a tender, desperate kiss. Every touch inflicted a slow-burning fever of need — not to just kiss her, to make her mine again and again — but to mark her, to possibly mark her so hard that she stayed with me.
Logic, numbers… hell, even reality told me that it was an impossibility. That no matter how hard I kissed her she wouldn’t stay, but I had to try, right? I would be foolish not to.
So I kissed her harder.
I dove deeper into the madness of our feelings — the desperation of the love I felt for her.
When the kissing wasn’t enough, I pulled her shirt over her head, my fingers making a slow trail down her stomach, memorizing that feeling right there and holding onto it, just in case.
She didn’t fight me. She didn’t even flinch when I started slowly pulling down her yoga pants.
“Andi,” I whispered against her lips, “I have to tell you something.”
“What?” Her hands cupped my face.
I was lost in that look, the very look that said she loved me, would die for me, knew she was but wanted to take that risk anyway — the risk that before death her heart would be broken, and she wouldn’t get a second chance to fix it or to allow me to put the pieces back together again.
Had there ever been a love like ours before?
I doubted it.
And if there had been, I pitied those people, because every touch felt like the last… when it should have been the first of many.
Every kiss that should have been hello was goodbye.
Once her pants were dangling by her ankle, I reached for her bra and removed it. “You’re too beautiful for me.”
“For an Italian like you?” she countered, then slid off her underwear and crawled on top of me, her breasts pressing against my chest. Andi kissed up my neck, her hands drawing my T-shirt over my head and tossing it aside.
I closed my eyes and ran my hands slowly down her hips, my fingers pressing into her soft skin. With a sigh, I took her mouth in a slow, agonizing kiss, a kiss that I had a hard time stopping — because stopping meant ending, and ending just reminded me of the time that kept slipping through our fingers.