Page 40 of All It Takes

He chuckled, his head falling to rest on the curve of my neck.

Somehow, we gathered ourselves and actually took care of the business of showering. At one point, I turned, leaning my head back to rinse my hair.

Wes’s hand slid down my spine smoothly because soap was still running down my back from the shampoo I’d been rinsing out of my hair when this all started.

When I lifted my head, Wes asked, “What’s the scar on your back?”

His thumb traced over the scar. For a moment, I stiffened. I took a breath, letting it out quickly. “I’m fine, but I had a tumor. It’s going to sound weird,” I warned as I turned to face him.

He leaned back, his gaze sobering as he waited.

Because I was me and whenever I was nervous, I could launch into way too much, I gave him this long explanation.

“I started having these pains in my back, not like a muscle. They would just happen randomly it seemed. They were awful, like lightning in my body.” His eyes went wide. “I know it sounds weird. Anyway, I went to the doctor, and they said I had a tumor. It was freaking terrifying because they sent me to an orthopedic oncology doctor. They assured me that maybe it was okay, but that an orthopedist surgeon needed to operate in case it was malignant. If it wasn’t malignant, then I would be fine. The biopsy was hell. The poor guy told me that he was going to numb the area, but that he needed me to know that if it was a peripheral nerve sheath tumor, that I would feel it anyway. Well, that’s exactly what it was, a nerve sheath tumor. It was benign.” I ran out of words and took a deep breath.

Wes studied me for a moment before shaking his head. “You could’ve said that part first.”

“I told you I was fine,” I protested.

“You did, but then you started with tumor and oncology and the whole thing.”

I pressed my lips together, shrugging lightly. “I guess I did.”

“Do you have to worry about it coming back?”

I shook my head and shrugged at the same time.

His brows hitched up slightly. “Is that a “no” or “maybe”?”

“Probably not, but there’s no guarantee,” I said, trying to ignore the sneaky sense of vulnerability that slithered through me.

I didn’t like how I felt when this whole thing happened. Just talking about it now reminded me that I still hadn’t spoken to my father and Chase about it. I felt stupid about it. Why was I hiding this from them? I’d simply panicked when they made the original referral to an orthopedic oncologist. After hiding it, now it felt even bigger even though I was fine.

Wes nodded slowly. “There’s no guarantee for anything, I suppose. You don’t want to keep talking about this,” he observed, the gentleness in his gaze causing my heart to twist sharply in my chest.

“No,” I said honestly. “Not really.”

“Do you mind that I asked?”

I shook my head quickly. “It’s just weird, you know. Everything turned out okay, but it was a little scary until I knew it was benign.”

“I bet.”

He dipped his head, brushing a kiss along the side of my neck, his touch gentle and intimate. He tugged me away from the wall and pulled me back under the water. We finished our shower, toweled off, and got dressed. It was all very mundane. I didn’t make a habit of spending the night or showering with anyone.

Until I had let my friends-with-benefits situation turn into something more, I hadn’t even spent the night with a man. Sex was just sex, or that was how I’d treated it. I wasn’t even sure I had loved Scott, but Ihadtrusted him. I had let my feelings begin to deepen into something more. I was breaking all of my rules with Wes. The potential complications were monumental.

A little while later, we were having coffee and pancakes. I finished chewing a bite, chasing it with a swallow of coffee. “These are really good.”

He waggled his eyebrows. “I’m decent in the kitchen.”

I grinned. “Between dinner and this, you’ve proven to be more than decent. Where do you get the blueberries?”

“My mom has a bunch that grows wild in her yard. She picks them every year and freezes them.”

“How’s her recovery going?”

“It’s going.” He sighed. “She’s pretty stubborn. She wants to doallthe things before she’s ready.”

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