Page 31 of The Cowboy's Home
He couldn’t stop thinking about Skyler or hoping that somehow, against all reason, Skyler would reach out to him again. But it never happened, even as the months passed and the year drew to an end.
Craig had even had thoughts about re-enlisting. Why not? It wasn’t like he had come to any conclusions about what he should do here. He had been leaving the house to go to the gym for hours at a time, but that was about it. At least when he’d been working, he’d had something to do with his life.
Besides, he was getting sick of seeing Skyler all the time and knowing that he couldn’t really have him. They just weren’t meant to be together. Even as much as something in him rebelled against the idea of that, he felt like it must be true. He was just bad at giving up on people.
Going overseas should take care of that nicely. And then he wouldn’t have to live off of his father. Honestly, he probably would have left already, if not for the fact that his father was getting weaker again.
It seemed like his dad had been sick for ages. And they had all known, from the very beginning, that the odds were against him going into remission. And yet, he had stabilized enough that Craig had almost begun to hope, and he knew that his brothers were, too.
A miracle could still happen, but that was what it would take—a miracle. And that was slowly becoming obvious to all of them, even those as stubborn as Craig knew himself to be.
He spent the most time with his father because he wasn’t more than lightly involved in the day to day running of the ranch. He was usually the one who took his father to his medical appointments, and often, it was just himself and his father, waiting in silence for test results.
One day, when winter was just fading into the spring of a new year, and Craig was feeling the stirring of wanderlust coursing through his veins again, he was called aside to speak to the doctor privately. She was a very nice woman, very sympathetic, but she didn’t sugar coat things at all as she laid out the situation for him.
“His tumor is growing again, and there are two new smaller ones that have formed. The chemotherapy isn’t working.”
It was almost better that she lay it all out like that. At least there was no false, foolish hope. But Craig still had to swallow around a lump in his throat and blink a few times rapidly. It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t. So many people got cancer in the world and so many who managed to go into remission. For many, cancer wasn’t the death sentence that it had once been. Why not his father?
“How long?” Craig managed a whisper, but she wasn’t going to mock him for it. Of course, she wasn’t. She was an oncologist. She probably had to deal with people getting emotional on a fairly regular basis, and her manner was comforting. Not offering false hope, but even that was a good thing, in its own way.
They had all been living in false hope for too long.
“It’s hard to say. It could be a month, maybe two.”
Craig staggered back, having to put a hand on the wall to steady himself.
“So soon,” he said. Even with all of his internal dialogue about hope and not having any, he had still hung on to some. But she dumped cold water all over that, and he closed his eyes, sure that he was going to humiliate himself by crying like a baby in front of this doctor. It might not bother her, but it definitely bothered him.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Hart,” she said while giving the impression that she really was sorry. She patted him on the shoulder and then, with extraordinary tact, she withdrew and left him to face his father. Just before she closed the door behind her, though, she stopped and turned back.
“Do you want to tell him? I can if you think it would be easier. Whatever you think would be best for him.”
Craig shook his head. He knew his father, and knew, too, that he wouldn’t want to be told by a doctor.
“It’s going to be a hard thing for him to hear,” Craig murmured, his voice lower and huskier than usual with emotion. “But he would want to hear it from a family member, not a doctor.”
She nodded and left, likely relieved that she didn’t have to do such an unpleasant thing. He couldn’t blame her for that. He went to collect his father, who, thankfully, dozed the whole time that Craig drove him home.
He was very aware, suddenly, of his brothers, of Malcolm and Derrick and, yes, even Wyatt, as obnoxious as the man was. They were all John Hart’s boys, too, and they deserved to know what was going on. The burden had been laid on Craig, but it wasn’t one that he had to, or should, take on by himself.
They would want to know.
* * *
It was pretty rare that Craig called a family meeting. Actually, this was the very first time, and as his brothers filed in, Derrick with Logan and Malcolm with Kyle, Craig knew that they were all looking at him, knowing very well where he had been earlier that day. Misgiving and nerves filled the air, almost tangible, and more than anything, Craig wished that he didn’t have to give them the message that he was going to have to.
Just when Craig had given up on Wyatt coming, he slouched into the room. Much to Craig’s irritation, Skyler was walking alongside him, and Mary Anne, too. The teenager, he had no problem with, she was a sweet kid, and honestly, she needed to know what was going on, too. It affected her, maybe even as much as it did any of them.
But Skyler being there, that bugged him, although that wasn’t exactly accurate. Truthfully, part of him would have loved to have Skyler there with him, but those were the keywords. With him. Not with Wyatt. Why was Skyler spending so much time with Wyatt, anyway?
“Okay, we’re all here,” Malcolm, the oldest brother, took over automatically, and Craig was absolutely happy to have him do it. He wasn’t the leader type, although he could do it in a pinch, and Malcolm was, so it really worked out better this way. “Why don’t we get started?”
Craig looked around at his brothers, and other people close to the family. Everyone in this room had a reason to care about their father. Except maybe Wyatt, who had the reason but not really, as far as Craig could tell, the inclination. But what his brothers had that Craig didn’t was emotional support.
He tried hard not to be too jealous of that. He really did. And sometimes, he even came close to succeeding. The truth was, though, he would still give anything for the sort of connection that he saw between Malcolm and Kyle, who were opposites who never should have worked out, the cowboy and the lawyer. And they weren’t even as strange a couple as Derrick and Logan should have been, at least on paper. Derrick, the brilliant student, the genius, and Logan who had barely finished high school.
But they all loved each other. And they were all working together, better than he and Skyler ever had.
