Page 71 of Forgive You

She hums in agreement, the vibration aching in my heart because she’s way too casual about this. This is not normal. This is not how I left her in North Carolina a couple of months ago. Before she moved to LA, I never heard her talk about panic attacks. Or didn’t she tell me?

Does she not trust me enough?

“That was my gynecologist.” Her sweet voice pulls me out of my own head.

Gynecologist? She’s not pregnant, is she?

Panic claws up my throat, sitting on my chest like a cargo container of bricks.

Fuck.

Is she pregnant with Jacob’s kid?

“Okay,” I drawl, trying to hide the fact that it feels like I’m getting an open-heart surgery.

“They want me to have a colposcopy.”

“A what?” She might as well start talking in Chinese.

Her voice grows thicker, and I tighten my grip on her, burying my nose in her vanilla scented hair.

“It’s where they take a snap of the tissue in my cervix.”

Yeah, this doesn’t calm me down one bit. “Why?”

She inhales a shaky breath, and I gently grab her chin, desperate to look into that whiskey brown gaze.

“What’s wrong, baby?”

The deep brown circles of her eyes are laced with fear, and fuck me, why does it cut through my skin so deeply?

Her lashes fall to her cheeks, a tear escaping from the curve of her lid.

“They— Because they have found some disturbed cells that could grow into…into—” Her sharp intake of breath sucks her words away.

Into what? But before I voice the words, it clicks.Oh, shit.

“Cancer?”

She nods.

Fuck.

Not pregnant. Okay. That’s good, right?

But the real reason doesn’t put my mind at ease either.

“I keep thinking about Liz,” she confesses, referring to Charlotte’s mother.

I still remember vividly how Hunter drove Charlotte and her mama to the hospital for chemo. She was the kindest woman, and it was awful to see her so fragile over the years.

“I don’t want to go through chemo after chemo,” Julie sniffles, and I kiss one of her tears on her cheeks. “What if I need a hysterectomy? I still want kids! Oh my god.”

She might not be able to have kids?

What? No.

I refuse to believe that, and a huff of disbelief tells me that’s not going to happen.

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