Page 36 of Love Undercover
After a couple of minutes, her tension eased a little, though the rigidity in her body didn’t fully loosen. “My mom got sick about a decade ago.”
She stopped again, though he didn’t think it had anything to do with him and his reaction—or lack thereof. It was more like she was giving that time in her life a moment of silence for the difficulty it must have brought.
“Cancer,” she finally continued. “Things like chemo, radiation. . . that was the treatment path. We saw what those things had done to my grandmother. How it extended her life just enough for her to be absolutely miserable. She suffered, and then she died anyway.” She swallowed. “My mom wanted something different.”
Her fingers dug in just below his clavicle, the intensity of her emotions evident as it vibrated through their connected bodies.
“We researched everything you could imagine. Diet, environmental toxins, hormone-stuffed foods, pesticides. There are poisons in so many everyday things that make our bodies fight so hard just to function.
“We switched out all of our conventional products, cleaned up the house, what we ate. Her doctors thought we were crazy torefuse the chemo and radiation.” She scoffed. “It was so stupid, though. I remember when we had a consult and discussed the scans. They specifically mentioned the fact that sugar fed the cancer. They could see it in real time when doing scans on cancer patients. And in the same meeting, they were telling her to eat cake to gain the weight the sickness made her lose.”
He tipped his head to the side, amazed. None of her requests seemed ridiculous now. She had a very valid reason that twanged his heart.
“Did it help?” he asked softly.
The silence stretched again, and he got the impression she maybe forgotten herself, forgotten he was even there, though her arms and legs were still wrapped around him, and he was still moving through the trees. She had fully relaxed against him.
“Yes. She got better,” Sadie finally said, subdued. “She felt well, thrived even, for a long time. Her scans looked good; the tumors shrank. It was pretty amazing. So my parents went on the trips they’d often talked about, took those dancing classes she’d always wanted to take, and enjoyed some focused time with us.”
That weighty silence hit them again, hemmed in by the grief he could already feel. It was so at odds with the brightness of sunlight that shoved between the trees ahead of them, which meant they were almost back to the house. Part of him was sad that this physical connection would soon end.
“It was an aggressive form of cancer though.” Sadie’s voice was just a breath along his neck. “We lost her a couple of years ago when it came back. We were all much more at peace with it by then. She’d outlived her prognosis and with more joy and dignity than she would’ve had otherwise.”
Neither spoke for a few minutes, the only sound permeating the heavy air in the depths of those trees was his breathing. She wasn’t hard to carry, but adding that much weight to hisback had his heart pumping harder, his oxygen needs more demanding.
But it might have been what her story pulled out of him, memories of what he’d witnessed, so very different than her experience. He thought back to his dad’s illness, the way he’d wasted away, become a shell of the man he’d once been.
“My father died of cancer too.”
Her hands flexed against his chest, and he felt distinctly like she wanted to hug him, to offer comfort or a sense of understanding.
And as they emerged into the late afternoon sunshine with the house before them, he felt even that waning light was too harsh against his eyes, its heat biting at his skin.
13
Forest by the Sea
Asense of desolation stole through Sadie when Chase deposited her on the couch, like the disconnection from his body was a physical ache. Even as he arranged her leg up on a stack of pillows and went to retrieve some ice packs, there was this nagging sense of abandonment.
Which was absurd. She’d just tried to escape not a few hours ago.
And it really had been hours. It had taken them more than an hour to get back to the house, which meant she’d trekked for at least that long into the woods. And considering her rest after injuring herself, the day was half gone already.
With a stirring embarrassment bubbling through her, she watched Chase move around the kitchen, retrieving a sandwich bag to put ice cubes in. Then he drifted back over to her, draping a towel over her foot before arranging the ice on top of it.
Her face was hot with humiliation. Not only had she sent him on the errand to get all of those things—which had made her sound demanding and persnickety. But then she’d taken off and hurt herself in the process, rendering the whole thing utterly pointless.
He went back to the kitchen to put away the items he’d haphazardly tossed onto the counter before taking off after her, organizing them on shelves with labels facing out. For easy readability, probably.
Nothing changed in his expression, but there was something in the air, a tension that wasn’t obvious unless she was paying close attention. His shoulder muscles were tight, his movements less fluid than they should be. If she hadn’t seen him move through the trees so quietly and swiftly, she never would’ve thought twice.
“You probably think I’m an idiot for taking off the way I did,” she said, desperate to get it to release.
He glanced at her from the corner of his eye. “Honestly, I’m just glad it wasn’t one of Zimmerman’s guys forcing you out there against your will.”
“Nope. Just me, looking to break a bone,” she muttered darkly.
He eyed the sandals sitting by the front door. “Yeah, those aren’t exactly hiking boots.”
