Until Fountain Bridge: (InterMix) (8 page)

“Why?” I asked softly, needing to know once and for all what was happening to us. “Why shouldn’t you have done it? Why can’t we . . . ?”

Those gorgeous dark eyes of his lifted to mine in surprise, as if he couldn’t believe I didn’t understand. “Because of Braden, Els. He’s my best friend. He’s family. I can’t take the risk that he won’t forgive me for . . . .” he gestured helplessly to me.

The warmth from the aftermath of the orgasm he’d given me was destroyed by the chill his words created in me. I stepped away from the wall and tried to control a burning lump in my throat. “But I’m willing to. I’m willing to because I’m in love with you. You know I’m in love with you.”

The lack of surprise on his face was confirmation.

I shook my head, laughing bitterly as I wiped at tears that had begun to fall. “All these years, even now, you’ve told me all you ever wanted to do was protect me from getting hurt. And yet you say things and do things to confuse me, to make me think you might feel the same way that I feel about you, and then in the next second, you’re cold and you flaunt other women in front of me.” The tears fell fast now and I could see Adam’s own eyes starting to shimmer with pain. I didn’t care. I had to get this over with. “The only person who’s ever really hurt me is you. And I keep letting you.”

“Ellie . . . ” he sounded wounded as he took a step toward me. “I do love you,” he admitted and instead of feeling joy at those words, the last piece of me holding onto hope crumbled.

I shook my head. “But not enough.”

“You know that’s not true. Els, you of all people have to understand. If you and me start something and it all goes south, I lose Braden too. I’ll lose the two people in the world who mean the most to me.”

I wanted to understand him. I tried to understand the reasons behind people’s actions because I wanted to believe the best in everyone. But all I knew was that I loved him enough to risk it all—to risk our history—for something more, and the fact that he wasn’t willing told me he couldn’t possibly feel the way I felt about him. I didn’t want to be in a relationship with someone I loved more than he’d ever love me.

“Go home, Adam,” I replied softly. “We’re done.”

His eyes widened in shock. “Ellie—”

“I’ll pretend for Braden. When we’re all together, I’ll pretend for Braden that nothing has changed between you and me.” I held his gaze, attempting to be strong as I ended us. “But whatever this is, it’s over. Everything. Don’t call me, don’t visit. Just don’t. I don’t want you near me when you don’t have to be. It hurts too much, and if you care about me even just a little bit, you’ll stay away from me.”

I didn’t let him reply. I couldn’t. I turned and strode down the hall into my bedroom, closed the door behind me, and leaned up against it as I tried to catch my breath.

There was silence in the hallway for what seemed like forever, and then finally I heard the front door open and close quietly.

The burn in my throat burst out into sobs, and I slid down the door trying to catch my breath through the pain . . .

Chapter 8

“Most miserable bloody weeks of my life after that.” Adam turned the pages, scanning my sparse entries after that night.

I slid my hand around the nape of his neck and gave it a squeeze. “Me, too, honey.”

He lifted my hand from his neck and brought it around to give my knuckles an absentminded kiss. “The night at Jenna and Ed’s wedding was fucking torture.”

I agreed with him completely. We’d both taken dates. I went with Nicholas, just to be particularly annoying, and Adam had taken some random girl with him. Although I’d flitted around the wedding, acting my cheery self and steadfastly refusing to look Adam’s way, it was one of the most painful experiences of my life.

Adam threaded my fingers through his and rested our hands on his lap. “Here it is.” He held the diary up.

“What?” I frowned, trying to read my writing.

“I’m fast-forwarding to my wake-up call.”

Monday, December 17th

I’m writing this as quickly as I can because I can see Adam is about to rip the pen from my hand and use whatever means at his disposal to bring my attention back to him. Since I like the means he will use, I need to get this down. It’s been an utterly exhausting weekend but today I woke up feeling stronger than I have in a while. This morning I woke up to something beautiful, and I swear after the last week I’ve had, I didn’t think that was possible . . .

Focusing on a crack in my ceiling I attempted to push the fear and desperation back. There was this buried part of me that kept trying to push up and grip my chest from the inside out to pull me to it to whisper desolately, “I’m not ready to die.”

Stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it, stop . . .

I couldn’t think like that.

But it was what I’d been hiding from for months. When my doctor told me I needed glasses, I’d ignored my own instincts and focused on that solution with utter relief.

Still, the headaches kept coming and the exhaustion worsened as the anxiety I kept hidden from everyone grew.

I’d had a seizure in my kitchen. I was terrified but also strangely relieved as I sat in the hospital and waited for an MRI. I was sick to my stomach with fear, but relieved that I was going to know once and for all what the hell was wrong with me.

A tumor; a brain tumor.

I tried to catch my breath. We’d waited ten days for the results. It was a brain tumor and they wouldn’t tell me anything else. I had twenty-four hours of waiting to find out if I had brain cancer or not.

I wanted to handle it graciously, not just for me but for Braden and Mum and Clark and Hannah and Declan. I wanted to handle it graciously for Joss, knowing it would be difficult for her.

A tear slid down my cheek as I thought about Joss’s reaction. I’d watched the panic in her face and then she just shut down. She left me when I needed her the most.

Braden was furious and panicking about me and about her and trying not to. His anxiety was making me feel worse, so I told him to go and speak to Mum and Clark. Understanding I needed just a little time to myself, he gave me it.

I couldn’t think of the worst. I wouldn’t be like Joss. I mean, I wanted to be prepared, but I wasn’t a pessimist. And surely, I was too young. You never think something like this will happen to you. It feels like a dream; it’s so surreal, like you’re watching someone else’s life play out in a movie.

My phone rang and I turned my head on my pillow to eye it on my bedside table.

It was Adam.

I breathed through the tightness in my chest and reached for the phone. Since I landed in the hospital ten days prior, Adam had reneged on his unspoken promise to stay out of my life. He called me every day and came by to see me as much as he felt I’d let him get away with it. Too exhausted to fight him, I
did
let him get away with it.

“Hullo,” I answered and even I could tell I didn’t sound like myself.

There was a crackle down the line as he let out a heavy sigh. “Braden just called.”

I tensed, hearing the roughness in Adam’s voice, the brokenness in his tone. “Yeah.”

“God, Ellie,” he groaned as if in agony. “Sweetheart—”

“Don’t.” I shook my head and bit my lip to try and stem my emotions. As soon as I felt I could speak without crying, I continued, “We don’t know anything yet.”

“I know I need to come to you. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“No, don’t,” my voice was sharp as I sat up, my heart pounding at the thought of having him here to hold me through this. “I don’t want you to.”

“Fuck, Els.”

I winced at the hurt in his voice. “Please, Adam.”

“I need to. I need to be with you. I love you, Ellie. I’m fucking in love you.”

He was crying.

I’d never heard or seen him cry before. At his tears and outright confession, I started to cry harder and collapsed back on my pillow, squeezing the phone tight to my ear. Finally I whispered, “Just stay on the line with me, okay.”

Adam cleared his throat, his voice breaking as he replied, “Anything, baby.”

I sighed and snuggled deeper against my phone. “We don’t know anything,” I repeated.

“It could be nothing,” he added.

“Whatever it is, I’m going to fight it.”

“I’ll fight it with you.”

“Shh,” I hushed him softly. “No promises. Not like this.”

“I’m done wasting time, Els.”

I smiled sadly, too weary to go there. “Just waste a little more time for me. Please.”

He was a silent a while and then he replied quietly, “Only a little, baby. Only a little.”

***

Adam stayed on the phone with me for two hours and we hardly spoke at all. I just listened to him breathe as he listened to me breathe. We finally hung up when Braden returned, but Adam refused to let me say good-bye; it was the first time I heard undiluted fear in his voice when he begged me not to say that word.

It was a lot. It was huge. But it was one thing for him to admit to me again that he loved me, and an entirely different thing for him to admit that to Braden. I needed to get through this crisis before I could deal with me and Adam.

I watched television with Braden for a while, snuggled up into his side as he stroked my hair soothingly. Mum and Clark had gotten into a huge fight with him because they wanted to come to me, but Braden insisted there was nothing they could do right now and while I was stuck in limbo it would be best if I had peace and quiet and didn’t have to worry about how they were coping with this. I gave them a quick call so they could hear my voice and I could ask them to take me to my appointment the next day. They were okay at first but then suddenly Clark had to say a quick goodbye when Mum started to sob. Of course that set me off for a while, and then I calmed, and then as it got darker outside and the evening began to pass, the fear over what I might hear from the doctor the next day hit me.

Braden laid me back on my bed and curled my hand around a mug of hot water and whiskey. He sat on my bed as I drank it, and he watched me until my eyes finally fluttered closed.

They shot open at the sound of my bedroom floor creaking. I was curled up in a ball on my bed in the dark, and through the moonlight spilling in through the large window I saw Joss standing at the foot of my bed.

Surprised that she had come to me, but still gripped by hurt at her defection earlier, I gazed at her silently.

At a breathy gasp, my eyes grew wider as I realized Joss was crying.
Joss
. I knew she’d deserted me earlier because of the baggage she carried around about the deaths in her family. I’d known that on some level that fear had sent her running from me, but actually witnessing her tears, I realized it all meant that she cared about me. She was frightened of losing me.

The tears slipped down my cheeks and moved Joss to action. She crawled up onto my bed and as she settled in beside me, I turned on my back. Joss immediately rested her head on my shoulder and shifted closer to me. She took my hand and held it between both of hers.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“It’s okay,” I promised her and meant it. “You came back.”

“I love you, Ellie Carmichael. You’re going to get through this.”

I’d won the love and affection of someone as lost as Jocelyn Butler?
For me that was a whole lot of light in a whole lot of darkness and it overwhelmed me. I tried to swallow my sobs as I whispered the truth back to her, “I love you, too, Joss.”

***

Braden had woken us up that morning and he’d made us breakfast. Even with the appointment with the neurosurgeon looming over me, I could tell something had gone horribly wrong with Joss and Braden. I discovered they’d broken up and I attempted not to feel guilty.
I failed.

They’d clearly broken up because of me—because of Joss’s reaction to what was happening to me. Hearing Braden’s deadly cool voice with her and seeing the pain in Joss’s face, I wanted to intervene, I wanted to fix what I had inadvertently helped break, but they wouldn’t have it and I was ushered out of the room and into the shower.

At one point I heard their intense voices over the sound of the running water, and then a plate crashing followed by more shouting. Worried, I switched off the shower and clambered out, but the voices had quieted to a murmur. I pulled on a bathrobe, ready to put myself between them if need be.

Instead as I walked quietly down the hall I heard Braden confessing that he loved Joss and that he wasn’t going to stop fighting for her. He promised her that he would be relentless. The romantic in me almost passed out on the spot.

“You’re insane,” Joss said to him.

“No,” I disagreed, coming to a stop in the kitchen doorway, giving them a smile. “He’s fighting for what he wants.”

“He’s not the only one.”

I turned my head in shock at the sound of the familiar voice, and watched with a pounding heart as Adam strode toward me. He looked like hell with dark circles under his bloodshot eyes.

Tired and unshaven, he was still absolutely beautiful, and the way he was gazing at me, like I was something precious just dancing out of his arm’s reach, was absolutely beautiful.

When he stopped before me he took my hand and raised it to his mouth, squeezing his eyes closed as he pressed a kiss against it. My breath caught as he opened his eyes and I saw the tears from yesterday were back again, shimmering in their depths. I also knew from the determined fire blazing in his expression that he had really meant it when he said he’d only waste a little more time for me. As in, less than twenty-four hours.

That’s why when he tugged me by the hand and drew me into the kitchen as he faced up to Braden, I let him. I knew that in a few hours I’d discover whether or not I had the biggest fight of my life on my hands, and even after everything, the only person I wanted fighting by my side was Adam Gerard Sutherland. We had a history, and I wanted to keep adding years to that history.

“I need to tell you something,” Adam faced Braden and I could feel the tension vibrating from his body.

He was doing it. He was really willing to risk it for me.

I squeezed his hand tighter.

Braden crossed his arms over his chest, his eyes moving from Adam to me and then back to Adam again and I knew he knew but he wasn’t going to make it easy. “Go on.”

“You’re like a brother to me. I would never do anything to hurt you. And I know I haven’t been what a brother would consider good material for his wee sister, but I love Ellie, Braden. I have for a long time now, and I can’t
not
be with her. I’ve wasted too much time as it is.”

I don’t think either of us breathed at all as we waited for Braden’s response. After a minute’s contemplation, he finally turned to me, his gaze softening. “Do you love him?”

Adam looked back at me and I was surprised to find a glint of insecurity in his eyes. Silly man. I gripped his arm tighter to reassure him and then smiled at my brother. “Yes.”

And then quite casually, as if Adam and I weren’t tied up in knots over his possible reaction, Braden just shrugged and leaned over to switch on the kettle. “About bloody time. You two were giving
me
a headache.”

My muscles tensed in reaction.
He’d known all this time?
Adam and I had put ourselves through pain and heartbreak these last few months and Braden had known all along how we felt about one another . . .

“You really are a know-it-all pain-in-the-ass,” Joss said for the three of us. She pushed past Braden and stopped to say more softly, “I’m happy for you,” to me and Adam before she flounced down the hall to the bathroom.

Braden laughed softly. “She loves me, really.”

The bathroom door slammed at that and Braden laughed again. Adam narrowed his eyes on him. “I hope she puts you through hell, you cocky bastard.”

Braden smirked and shifted his gaze to me. “I had to make sure you were willing to fight for her. She’s worth the fight.”

Adam sighed and put his arm around my shoulder, drawing me into his side so he could kiss the top of my head. “I know that better than anyone.”

I closed my eyes and inhaled, thanking whatever divine being out there that had added another glimmer of light into my darkness.

***

For a moment I just lay there, my smile pressed into my pillow. Not only had I awoken to the heat of Adam curled into my back, his forehead pressed against my nape in sleep, his heavy arm draped across my waist, and his right leg caught in between mine, but I’d awoken to the lightness of relief. I’d awoken feeling stronger than I had done in what had felt like a very long time.

Although I knew from the look on his face he wanted to come with me, Adam remained at my flat—along with Braden, Joss, Hannah, and Dec—while Mum and Clark accompanied me to my appointment with the neurosurgeon.

Dr. Dunham was a pleasant man in his early forties who shunted the fear of God out of me and my parents with five words: “There’s nothing to worry about.” He assured us that the cause of the physical symptoms was actually a large cyst attached to two very small tumors, and the cyst was causing pressure. He told us it had to be removed and because of its placement—on the surface of my brain—there was very little risk to the surgery. He’d also told us that there was little chance of the tumors proving to be cancerous, but that they’d be sent off for biopsies to be sure. He’d scheduled me in for surgery in two weeks’ time. While I was scared as all hell about going under the knife, the relief of knowing that there was a massive chance I was fighting a small fight and not one for my life was still overwhelming and draining.