One Dirty Night

Forget him.

With my hands balled and skin puckered in goosebumps, I marched to my room and slammed to a halt.

Nick sat on my bed in black cotton trackpants, his chest bare and glittering from the shower. He’d closed my curtains, removed my throw pillows, and turned my sheets down.

My room glowed with soft light and in any other fantasy, I would drop my towel, climb onto his lap, and make him take me.

But this wasn’t a fantasy, and I was done with him hurting me.

“Get out, Nicholas.”

“Not until I tend to your wounds.” Holding up a tube of manuka honey and aloe vera cream, he shrugged. “They’re bad. I wish I had some arnica to stop the bruising, but at least this will heal the superficial cuts.”

Stalking toward him, I held out my hand. “Give me the cream. I can do it.”

Standing, he fisted the tube. “It’s my duty.”

“I don’t care about your duty.” I curled my upper lip. “Duty is what got us into this mess. Duty is what’s stopping you from giving in to this connection between us. Duty can bite my ass.”

He chewed a smile. “Pretty sure I bit your ass at some point this evening.”

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Try to change the subject.”

He stilled, his hazel eyes going unreadable. “I told you why I can’t be with you, Ella. It’s not because I don’t want to…I physically can’t.”

“Because you’re dying.”

He flinched. “Eventually. My brother was only thirty-six when he was diagnosed with what our dad had. Pancreatic cancer works fast. He was gone within two years, despite immunotherapy and trial drugs.”

“So you think you will be dead by thirty-eight.” I didn’t say it as a question, more like an incredulous statement.

“Seven years is nothing in the scheme of a life.” His gaze softened. “A life I very much want you to have.”

“What about what I want?”

Unscrewing the cap, he refused to meet my eyes. “I’m protecting you. I know you don’t see it that way right now, but you will. I refuse to make you live through what my mother did when my father died. I refuse to fall in love and play happy families when there are millions of families losing their loved ones to cancers that I could potentially cure if I could just figure out the right recipe.” Grabbing my arm, he swung me toward my bed. “I swore on my brother’s death bed that I would dedicate my life to preventing others from feeling the same pain we did. I can’t break that promise just because I—”

The inertia of his swing made me sit heavily on my mattress. I braced myself and asked, “Just because you what?”

He froze and bit his bottom lip.

“Because you love me?” I asked quietly. “Because if you do…isn’t that worth all the pain? Isn’t love worth—”

“Love isn’t worth living the rest of your life in misery when you lose the one person you can’t survive without.”

“You don’t believe that.”

His eyes snapped to mine. “I do. With every part of me.”

My heart palpitated, priming for a fight.

I wanted it.

Needed it.