Page 59 of Breathe Me (Breathe Duet 1)

Quaid shoots me a look, like he knows exactly what I'm doing, but I pointedly ignore it. Logan, the asshole, teases Valentina, effectively diverting her attention. I shrug off the waitress's hand, sending her huffing away, most likely to spit in my coffee. I pull on my collar, feeling like I'm missing something without Valentina's attention on me.

I pretend not to listen to Logan and Quaid flirt with her. They can't keep their hands off of her, and my eyes widen as I think about a possible reason for their easiness with her this morning.

Did they fuck her last night?

Just the thought has me seeing red. I grip the table, letting go abruptly when the aged wood cracks. Valentina looks at me in surprise when she hears the noise.

And again, Quaid gives me a look.

This is an exercise in surviving torture honestly.

Our food is brought out, the waitress avoiding me this time around. Valentina stares at her food for a long second, and there's this look on her face of abject longing. Like instead of a Parisian pastry lying on her plate, it's her worst nightmare instead. Or a particularly awful memory.

"Val?" Logan asks carefully after a moment.

She gives us all a shaky smile. "I can't believe I'm here," she whispers. "Why did I wait my whole life to come to Paris and visit this café?"

Quaid laughs. "Well, you're only twenty-eight," he snickers. "I'm not sure that most people have visited Paris by then. You're way ahead of the game."

She continues to stare at the pastry strangely before shaking her head. "Yeah, you're totally right. I'm way ahead."

Her comment doesn't sit well with me for some reason. She's not telling the truth.

The Valentina I knew didn't lie. She wore everything about her on the surface, visible for anyone to see. It had been a full-time job for the three of us to protect her from the vultures who wanted to take advantage of this.

But this Valentina sitting across the table from me is lying. She’s shrouded in secrets, and I hate it. It makes me want to uncover all of her layers one by one and strip her bare.

Our gazes lock and she quickly looks away, and I know she can tell that I’m seeing right through her.

Pasting a big grin on her face and pointedly ignoring my questioning gaze, she picks up her pastry and takes a big bite, making a loud moan of contentment that has the inane and unfortunate effect of making me hard under the table. At least the other two fools at the table are suffering from the same affect.

Logan brushes a crumb off her lip, and she gives him a grateful smile before continuing to eat her pastry.

"This is better than I imagined," she whispers, looking at me. My hand freezes as I stare at her, and I'm reminded once again that at one time, I was just a boy desperately in love with a girl and I would have done anything to have this moment.

That boy would have been disappointed in the man I am today.

This man is too.

Valentina

Carter sees too much.He always has. It comes with the territory of being a listener instead of a speaker—he sees everything. Even what you're trying desperately to hide.

After my mishap, my pastry doesn't taste nearly as good as it did when I first bit into it. I struggle down the last bite and wash it down with my drink. I'm supposed to go easy on the caffeine just like with the alcohol, but I could barely drag my body through a day as it is. If I only have three months, I would like to have some sort of energy, even if it’s the artificial kind.

Shit.

A tremor starts in my hand as I'm putting down my coffee, and I splatter coffee all over the pristine white tablecloth.

It's only Carter paying attention.

Always Carter. And he stares at me, a challenge in his gaze, as if he stares at me long enough, the truth will eventually pass through my lips.

"Just a secondary effect of my last treatment," I laugh breezily. "Another reason finishing my journey to become a surgeon would probably be impractical now. Can you imagine if my hand started shaking like that, and I accidentally sliced something important off?" I'm smiling as I say all of this, even if every word kills me. I wish it was the treatment and not the disease that causes the tremors. I could find a way to alleviate that.

But there wasn't a way to alleviate the tremors combined with the short-term memory loss, vomiting, and nausea caused by the brain tumor.

"What about general medicine?" asks Logan, ever the problem solver.

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