Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 84763 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 424(@200wpm)___ 339(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84763 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 424(@200wpm)___ 339(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
But fuck, to come inside her? What was I thinking? I wasn’t.
I push a hand into my hair and shake my head.
A sound breaks through the wind, familiar and persistent. It takes me a minute to realize it’s my phone. I look back at the car, the open door, the light. The ringing stops, but starts again immediately. If it was any other ringtone, I’d ignore it, but this one, I can’t.
I walk back to the car, feeling the freezing night air now. I may as well be naked out here the way I’m dressed. I find my phone on the driver’s seat. It must have slipped out of my pocket. I pick it up and answer.
“Hello,” I say, hearing how insane I sound.
“Cassian?” It’s Vivi.
I lean against the car and look up at the sky, watch the endless fall of snow coat the chaos of my life.
“How was he?” she asks, and I can hear the hope in her voice. Doesn’t she know there is no hope. No fucking hope. There will be no reversal. And if I hoped before, if I thought there might be anything to hold on to, the last three days erased that. Fucking obliterated anything as obscene as hope.
Which makes what I did so much more stupid.
So much more dangerous.
“Cassian?” she asks.
Does she hear my ragged intake of breath? I clear my throat. Get a fucking grip, I tell myself.
“Not good,” I say. There’s no way around it. Better to be out with it. I can’t shield her from this.
Her breath catches and I can almost see her covering her mouth as her lip trembles and tears pour.
“You need to get Gage tested,” I tell her again for the hundredth time.
“What’s the point?” she asks, her voice breaking. “What could I do if he has it?”
Nothing. That’s what. Nothing, but live in an alternate version of hell, but it’s hell either way.
“I think,” I start, pushing my hand through my hair. “The hardest thing is there’s that moment when he recognizes you. When you see it in his eyes. I think that’s the worst part of this. Maybe if you take Gage. Maybe if he sees his son—”
“No.” I can see her shaking her head vigorously, pulling herself together. That’s what sobers me, too. “No, Cassian.”
“No,” I say. “Of course not. That was…” Deep breath. “No, Vivi.” Because she and I both know well what the next years of Seth’s life will look like. The Seth we knew is gone. Sometimes I think he’d be better off dead because this disease, it’s cut his life short even if he’s still breathing, still alive. It’s taken him from us, but left a shell of the man we recognize behind. It is the cruelest thing. Huntington’s disease. Early onset dementia is just one of the ways it destroys a life, the lives of those around you. It’s hell. And it fucking terrifies me.
“I sometimes wish he’d died,” she says quietly. “Isn’t that terrible? That I would wish Seth died instead of this.”
I drop into the driver’s seat and close the door, turn up the heating. My feet are wet from the snow, and I recall Allegra’s ballet slippers. The combat boots she changed into as if readying for battle.
“No, it’s not terrible. It would be better for him, too.”
“Mommy,” I hear my nephew’s small, sleepy voice.
“I have to go,” Vivi says quickly, and I imagine her wiping her eyes, mustering up a smile.
“Okay. I’ll come by soon. We need to make a few decisions.”
“Cassian where are you?” she asks as I start the engine again. “Are you out? Tonight?”
“I’m almost back.” It’s sort of true.
“You shouldn’t be driving. The roads are slick.”
“I’ll be fine,” I tell her. “Give Gage a hug from me. And don’t worry. We’ll figure it out, okay?”
“Okay. Go home. And thank you.”
“Goodnight, Vivi.”
I disconnect the call and set my hands on the steering wheel, my mind shifting to Allegra again, conjuring the feel of her, the heat of her. The way she held on to me when I took her.
And then her face when I walked out. Her confusion. Her hurt. What she’d said about wanting to be free of me, about my forgetting, triggered me. Although I should be honest with myself. This is not her fault. It’s mine. I took. Me. I fucking took. It’s not as though she was offering.
I pull out onto the road and I’m more careful now as I drive into town to the twenty-four-hour pharmacy to get what I need. What she may need. Because I can’t risk passing on the gene that could cause this disease. I can’t ever risk having children. I decided that when my brother was diagnosed. I don’t have the mutation. I’ve been tested. But it’s in our family. My father started showing signs of dementia in his mid-fifties. That was bad enough. But Seth? He wasn’t even thirty-five. It’s why he ‘disappeared.’ Better that people think he’s dead than living like he is. Better even that they think I’m monster enough to kill my own brother.