Page 106 of Remember Us This Way

I scoff, gaping at her. “You’re fucking kidding me, right? You tell me you’re not coming here next year and expect me to just forget I heard anything and go to a party? What the fuck, Zo? You’ve been a stranger for the past two weeks, and I’m trying to give you whatever space you need to figure yourself out, but the more you shut me out, the more it fucking kills me.”

“Okay,” she says, those big green eyes filled with tears. She steps right back into me, tilts her head down until her forehead is pressed firmly against my chest, and I wrap my arms around her, not knowing how to help her right now.

Zoey takes a few calming breaths before her soft tone fills the emptying parking lot. “I’ll tell you everything,” she promises me. “Just not here, okay? Somewhere private. It’s not something I can just blurt out.”

“Anything,” I tell her before nodding back to her Range Rover. “Come on. I’ll drive.”

She lets out a shaky breath, and I walk with her to the passenger side, opening the door and watching her with a sharp eye as she climbs in, her gaze locked on her hands. But the fear I see in her eyes scares the shit out of me.

After closing the door, I make my way around the car and get in beside her before starting the engine and backing out. The car is silent, apart from the soft whimpering of Zoey’s subtle cries, and I reach across the center console and take her hand. “I promise you, Zo,” I murmur as I pull out of the parking lot and onto the road. “Whatever this is, we’ll be okay.”

She gives me a small smile, but it doesn’t reach her eyes, and it’s clear from the way her gaze falls back to her lap, she doesn’t believe me. She doesn’t think we stand a chance of pulling through this.

Not knowing what to say or how to make the tension in the car fade away, I just drive, every possible worst-case scenario going through my mind. I don’t even know where I’m driving, just that my foot is on the gas, and I can’t seem to find anywhere to pull over because the second I do, she’s going to tell me something that I know is going to tear me to shreds, and I’m not ready. I don’t want to burst this perfect bubble we live in.

I drive and drive, gripping the steering wheel until my knuckles turn white. The tension in the car becomes so thick that I can barely breathe. Dark clouds form above us, and a soft sprinkle falls against the windshield before quickly morphing into a raging storm. Rumbles of deep thunder sound in the distance, and I can’t help but think how it matches so perfectly to the storm raging inside my chest.

The fear of the unknown becomes too much, and I find myself skidding to a stop in the middle of the deserted road, unable to take it a second longer. “Zoey,” I beg her, needing her to put me out of my misery. “Please. I can’t take this anymore. I need to know.”

She looks back at me, those thick tears streaming down her cheeks, each one of them tearing at my soul. “Noah, I—this isn’t how I wanted to tell you.”

“Tell me what?” I ask, the desperation clawing at me, but all I can do is watch as her face falls into her hands, the tears quickly turning into heaving sobs. “Fuck, Zo,” I mutter, reaching for her and dragging her across the center console until she’s in my arms. “What’s going on? Please, let me in. I can’t stand seeing you like this.”

Zoey swallows hard, her chest rapidly rising and falling as she takes gasping breaths to calm down. She adjusts herself on my lap, straddling me and leaning right in with her forehead pressed against mine, and it’s clear that whatever this is, whatever she needs to say, is the hardest thing she’s ever had to say in her life.

Her hand rests against my chest, and even through my shirt, I feel the way she shakes. Reaching up, I wrap my hand around hers, squeezing tight and hoping like fuck I’m somehow able to take her fear. Then as she closes her eyes, she lets out one final shaky breath. “Noah,” she murmurs, her voice flowing right through to my soul as she finally opens her eyes again, her broken gaze meeting mine. “Do you remember the day I forced you to propose to me, and I gave you a hard time because it had to be perfect? I think we were six and seven.”

I nod, the day permanently etched into my brain for so many different reasons. “Of course, I do.”

“That day,” she says, her voice so shaky. “Do you remember after that, my parents came into my room because they needed to talk to me?”

“They were crying,” I say, able to picture it so clearly. “That’s when they told you that you were sick. But what’s that got to do with anything?”

Zoey sits back a little, wiping her eyes on the back of her hands before her fingers fall to my shirt, playing in the fabric as she tries to find the strength to keep going. “Leading up to my diagnosis, I’d been really tired. I don’t really remember much of it, but it was enough to get Mom and Dad to take me in for tests.”

I search her face, shaking my head as I reach up and brush the backs of my knuckles across her tear-stained cheek. “Zo, I don’t understand why you’re telling me all of this.”

“Noah,” she whispers, a fresh tear rolling down her cheek, her voice barely audible over the sound of rain pelting the car. “I’m telling you this because . . . because it’s happening again.”

My brows furrow, and I shake my head a little harder. My fingers clutch her waist as my heart races. “What?” I whisper, my blood running cold as my world stops spinning. “What do you mean it’s happening again?”

Zoey forces a smile, trying to ease me into this and help me understand. “For the past few weeks,” she says, her bright eyes filled with the deepest kind of agony. “I’ve been really tired with no energy. At first, I thought maybe I was just emotionally exhausted, but it kept getting worse. I’ve been lethargic and heavy and falling asleep at the drop of a hat.” She looks down, not meeting my gaze. “Then that Friday night when you were at my place, and I hurt my hip—”

“You lied,” I supply, remembering the exact moment she told me she slipped and how it didn’t sit right with me, but I didn’t push her on it.

She swallows hard and nods, more tears appearing in her eyes. “I didn’t slip on water,” she admits. “I was lightheaded and collapsed. I just . . . I’m sorry. It wasn’t my intention to be dishonest with you, but I didn’t want to worry you. I knew that both you and Mom would have started fussing about me if I told you the truth, and I just wanted to enjoy my night with you. But then, I started really thinking about it, about why I was feeling so tired all the time and getting so dizzy to the point I was passing out, and it terrified me because that’s only ever happened once in my life.”

“When you had leukemia,” I finish for her, my words breaking as I put all the pieces together, fear closing around my chest and squeezing like a fucking vise.

I can’t fucking breathe.

Zoey nods, her lips wobbling as she tries to hold herself together. “I asked Mom and Dad to take me for testing with Dr. Sanchez,” she tells me in a small voice. “It could have been a number of things, but something in my gut . . . I don’t know. I was almost due for tests anyway, so we asked for them to be brought forward—”

Her out-of-control tears swallow her words again. “What are you saying, Zo?” I question, tears now welling in my eyes, already knowing what she’s about to tell me, but I need to hear it from her lips to confirm the worst.

“I relapsed, Noah,” she says, her voice breaking on a sob and crumbling into me as my world fades back to darkness. “I got my test results back on Wednesday night. My leukemia is back.”

“No,” I breathe, gripping her tightly with quivering hands. I can’t seem to wrap my head around the magnitude of this, the idea of Zoey being sick again, having to go through all that pain and suffering when she’s already had to fight this battle once before. “No. No. There has to be a mistake. You’re perfect, Zo. There has to be another reason for this. You can’t be sick again. I can’t fucking lose you.”

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