“You sure, Jackie?” he asked me quietly as he moved his hips back slightly, slipping from my body. He pushed forward again and rested against me. “This is what you want?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I can’t….” He stopped.

  I kissed him lightly. “What?”

  “I can’t promise you it’ll be easy,” he said, averting his gaze. “I can’t promise you that we won’t fight again. I’m a right bastard, Jackie, you know that. I have a temper that I don’t know if I can control sometimes. It scares me.”

  “I know,” I told him. And I did. But he didn’t scare me. “You ever try to raise your fist to me, John Kemp, and you know I’ll be fighting back.”

  A smile quirked his lips before he frowned. “People may hate us if they find out.”

  “They won’t. Not unless we tell them.”

  “Your parents will expect you to get married.”

  “I won’t. I don’t care. I’m eighteen, same as you. It’s my life now. It’s our life.”

  “They might say—”

  “John!” I’d had enough. No more doubts. I grabbed his face and forced him to look at me. We were so close our noses touched. “Do you want me?”

  “With my whole heart, Jackie,” he whispered. “There’s never been anyone I’ve wanted as much as you.”

  He tried to look away but I wouldn’t let him, because I knew there was more he wasn’t saying. “But?” I asked him, dreading what his next words would be.

  “But is that going to be enough for you?” he asked. A single tear dripped from his face onto mine. “Couldn’t stand it if it wasn’t. Don’t want you to hate me somewhere down the road. What if I ain’t enough?”

  Somehow, I laughed. “You miserable bastard,” I said as his eyes narrowed again. “Don’t you see? You will always be enough.” And I knew that now. I hated that it was a lesson I’d had to learn, but I knew it now. There was no question.

  “But what about—”

  “John.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Tonight and always.”

  “You mean it, Jackie?” He looked heartbreakingly hopeful, like all he wanted was right in front of him and he could take it if only he reached for it. “You sure?”

  I’d never been surer of anything in my life and I told him so.

  And there, by the lake, under the stars in the sky, John Kemp kissed me deeply, a promise made, one that I intended to keep for the rest of my days.

  Nine

  Please Don’t Leave

  “And you did,” he whispers to me now. “Every day you did.”

  “I tried,” I say, reaching up to brush my fingers along his brow. He closes his eyes and hums a little sound from the back of his throat as he presses into my touch. “Lord knows I did.”

  “I know, Jackie.”

  “John?”

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s still there? With your whole heart?”

  “Yeah. My whole heart.”

  “Me too.”

  He looks happy.

  I start to pull my hand away, but I freeze when I see it’s covered in fading sunlight. I look up the wall and see the sun has stretched up high, as it always does when dusk approaches. I start to shake, wondering if I can somehow block him from seeing it, shield him from seeing how close it is, that it’s almost time.

  I’m not ready. It can’t be now.

  I still have days and weeks and months and years of things I need to say to him. It’s too soon. There’s not enough time. There will never be enough time. It’s not fair. I don’t deserve this. He doesn’t deserve this. How can it end this way and—

  “Jackie,” he sighs. “I know.”

  And he does, because he’s watching me with those shrewd eyes. One thing I’ve learned about my life with John is that there’s nothing I’ve been able to hide from him. It’s one of those secrets of long-term couples, able to read each other’s little tics, their tells, their every move. And their thoughts. Even if it wasn’t splayed across my face, he’d know what I was thinking because he knows me.

  I shake my head wildly, starting to lose control. I told myself I wouldn’t, but I can’t stop it. “Maybe we can try more radiation therapy. Or surgery again! We don’t know what could happen tomorrow! They could come up with some procedure that we haven’t thought of yet. It’ll be—”

  “It won’t help,” he says. “You know that, Jackie. It’s too late.”

  “It can’t be,” I say weakly, tears in my eyes. “It can’t be too late. I’m not done with you yet. I’ll never be done with you. Can’t you see I need you?”

  He grips my hand tightly. “Right now,” he says, “I need you more.”

  I hang my head. I hang my head because I can’t hold it up anymore, because my best friend for the last seventy-one years is right. Maybe I’m allowed to be selfish. Maybe I’m allowed to break, but I can’t. It’s not about me. It’s about this man, my John, and what I’ve promised him. My suffering is nothing compared to his, and I promised if I could do anything to ease it, I would.

  And I will. All John ever wanted was me, and he needs me now.

  I nod tightly and stand slowly, carefully, starting to pull away. I don’t get far as he doesn’t let my hand go. His grasp is stronger than it’s been in months. It’s all bone and tendon, but it’s still familiar, his touch second nature to me. So why does it feel like so much more?

  “Jackie,” he says.

  I don’t look at him.

  “Stop,” he chides me gently.

  I sniff and rub my free hand over my eyes.

  “I wish…,” he says.

  “What?” I say quickly, wondering what he wishes for now, and if it’s something I can make come true. I’ll do anything.

  “I wish you’d look at me.”

  Oh. That.

  “Jackie,” he says, his voice deeper, stronger. If I close my eyes, I can pretend everything is back to the way it used to be. That his voice doesn’t crack with age because we’re young men again. That we’ve got our whole lives spread out in front of us and even with that time, we’d never take it for granted. We’d live every moment like it was our last. We’d kiss each other like we’d never do it again. And when we saw each other at the end of the day, we’d pretend we hadn’t seen each other in years.

  But I can’t close my eyes. I can’t pretend. My husband has wished for something, and I’ll give it to him.

  I look at him, though he’s blurry through my tears.

  “Kiss me?” he says hopefully. “Please?”

  Oh, John. My heart.

  I shuffle back to him, my hand still in his, and I push the oxygen mask out of the way gently and lean down and press my lips to his. The kiss is medicinal, sharp. The kiss tastes like illness, like disease is eating him from the inside out. But underneath that horror, underneath the starkness of it all, there’s John.

  There’s him, tasting as he always has, since that first time I pressed my lips against his on the banks of the lake so many, many years ago. I take my fill of my—our—lips pressed together, rubbing our cheeks together. But I have to stop once he starts to struggle for breath.

  I pull away, but only just, and slide the oxygen mask back into place. But I don’t leave him. Not yet. I press my forehead to his, and we watch each other. I memorize all I can. Every defect. Every wrinkle. Every spot. The face I adore, shrunken and gaunt. Those eyes I love, bright and aware. I think he’s doing the same, because he doesn’t look away.

  “You and me,” he whispers. “Forever.”

  “Forever,” I choke out. Because we are, me and him.

  “Outside?”

  “The porch?”

  “Yeah.”

  I pull away, tucking the blankets around him so he won’t get cold. I pat my coat pocket to make sure I have what I need. I move to the front of the cabin and open the door. The cool air is crisp and clean. The sun is slowly approaching the horizon. I think about running through the door and never looking back, but I don’t.

  I turn back to my husband and his gaze follows me with every step I take, like he’s trying to burn into his memory every single moment. I know this, because I’m doing the same to him. I touch him as I reach the bed, a fleeting thing, my fingers against his arm. I lower the IV stand attached to the bed so we’ll fit through the doorway. I unlock the wheels on his bed and stand behind it and begin to push, rolling him toward the open door.

  Every step is like climbing a mountain. Every step is hell. Every step is pain, torture, and grief, all rolled into one. I bite back a sob that threatens to spill over as I take another step. I grip the edges of the bed as I take another step. I almost cry out when we reach the doorway. I want to scream as we push through outside into the fading light.

  The forest stretches out before us, surrounding our cabin in the woods where the sun shines in summer and the snow falls in winter. There’s a garden off to the side, with carrots and cabbage. An apple tree that grows Granny Smiths. There are fragrant flowers. Green trees. The nearest town is miles away, and it’s just me and him here, in this place, just like he’d imagined it that day by the lake. He’d built this place for me, as a home away from home, until it eventually became our home in the later years.

  I lock the wheels on the bed and walk around to his side again. His eyes are wide as he surveys the expanse of forest stretched out before him, the sun setting near the peaks of the mountains in the distance. Somewhere, a bird calls out, a long, mournful sound that reminds me of aching. He hears it and his eyelids flutter closed. He reaches up and removes the oxygen mask and lets it drop to his side. He takes in a deep breath of this place, our home. And then he sighs.

  “Jackie.”

  “Yeah?” I can’t help it when my voice breaks.

  “My ring?”

  I nod.

  “Can I wear it?”

  “Yeah, John.”

  I reach into my coat pocket and my hand skitters across the sheathed hypodermic needle before my fingers find the gold circle at the bottom of the pocket. I pull it out and reach for his hand, and it’s like it was years ago, when we stood in this place and I pushed the ring onto his finger for the first time. It’s loose now, very loose, given how much weight he’s lost over the past year. But I slide it onto his finger anyway and then grip his hand, his ring pressed against my own.

  “I do,” he says, and I realize he’s made a joke as soon as the shocked bark of laughter comes out of me. It quickly turns into something more, and before I know it, I’m sobbing against his hand, clutching at him, begging him not to go, pleading with him to stay with me, to just stay with me forever. I don’t know what I’ll do without you, I tell him. I don’t know how I’ll go on. I don’t know how to live when half of me isn’t there anymore. So, please. Please don’t leave. Please don’t let me go.

  Eventually, I calm. He rubs my head with his other hand as he murmurs quietly to me, words meant to relax, to soothe. The storm is passing, and it’s left in its wake a path of destruction so wide all I can do is stare at it in wonder.

  “Lay with me, Jackie?” he asks me. “Need to feel you next to me.”

  I sniff once and nod, rubbing my forehead against his hand. “Just got to get your bed situated,” I tell him, even though he knows what I really mean. The sunset is here.

  “Sure, Jackie. I can wait.” He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly.

  I stand up, let go of his hand, and move to the rear of the bed. I think I’ll hesitate. I think there’s even a chance I’ll refuse, but I reach into my coat pocket again and pull out the hypodermic. I take off the cap. I detach the IV line. Here. This moment. Here’s where I’ll hesitate. Here’s where I’ll beg. Here’s where this whole thing will fall apart and I’ll tell him he can’t ever leave, that I won’t allow it, that he’ll just have to suffer and suffer because I’m a selfish bastard who can’t ever let him leave.

  It’s these thoughts I have as I inject the concentrated solution of pentobarbital into the IV line that flows into his wrist—which will shortly instigate complete respiratory collapse. It’s supposed to be peaceful. It’s supposed to be kind. It’s supposed to be—

  It’s done before I realize what I’m doing.

  It’s finished.

  The moment has passed.

  I can’t take it back.

  I cap the needle. Put it back in my pocket.

  I round the bed and collapse the rails along the side. Hooking a foot onto the lowered rail, I climb up beside him. Immediately, he wraps his arms around me as I curl into him, against his sunken chest. He’s warm, but bony. Too thin. Too reduced. Too small.

  But there’s a strength to his hold on me, and even with how much he’s lost, there’s still that boy in there, the one capable of such a mischievous spark in his eye. There’s still that man in there, the one who could hold me as my body shook with the force of his passion. So many memories try to flood their way in, and it’s almost hard to focus, so I push them all away and wait. There’s still some time. I press my ear against his chest and listen to the sound of his heart.

  “Jackie,” he says, as I knew he would. “You ’member when we came here the first time?”

  I do. I try to speak, but I can’t. I nod.

  “I was so scared,” he says. “Did you know I was scared?” His words are starting to slur.

  I find my voice. “Yeah. Because I was too.” And I was. Deathly afraid.

  “Of me?”

  “No. Never you. Of what you would say.”

  “Tell me,” he says quietly, like he’s fading.

  And here, as the sun lowers and the light dims, I do.

  For him, I do.

  Ten

  All I Ever Wanted Was You

  My mouth was dry as I asked him again, “Where are we going?”

  He gave me that small smile and glanced at me out of the corner of his eye, trying to pay attention while he drove. We’d been driving for a while, and the road was now all uphill, deeper into the forest, the trees growing taller and blocking out the bright summer sun. Shadows crossed the two-lane highway in front of us, but instead of being ominous, it was almost welcoming. It felt like a homecoming of sorts, even though we were far away from the little town where we’d grown up. Oregon was a much different place than where we’d come from. It was hard to believe it’d been twelve years since we’d left, twelve years since we graduated high school and packed up my old car and never looked back.

  John had come with me when I’d gone to the University of Oregon. We’d holed up in a crappy apartment in Eugene, me going to school during the day and working as a short-order cook in a diner at night. John had gotten hired on at a garage working as a mechanic and had a natural aptitude for all things car-related.

  We were together, and we were happy, but those first four years were rough, regardless. We were always tired, always broke. We fought often over little things that carried no consequence. But I never had a fear of John leaving me or of me leaving him. Every night, regardless of how angry either of us was, we left our arguments at the door when we went to bed and curled up into each other, making love more often than not. I never questioned his devotion to me, and I made sure I did my damnedest that he would never have any doubts about me.

  Somehow, we survived and things began to fall into place. I graduated with my MBA. Artie, the owner of the garage where John worked, began not-so-subtly hinting at his wanting to retire over dinner at our little house one night, which ended up with all of us drinking too much wine. John and I woke up with a hangover and a plan to purchase the garage from Artie and make it our own. John would oversee the mechanical and repair aspect of it. I would handle the finances and books. It was scary, that decision, but we made it work. Somehow, we made it work.

  Which was why I was surprised when John told me we were taking the day off. That he had something to show me. We were close to opening up a third garage, and there was still much to be done. I didn’t know what he wanted me to see. Our thirtieth birthdays had recently passed, so I didn’t think it had to do with any gifts. It was possible he wanted to scout a location for another garage, but usually he was a little more blatant about that.

  It probably didn’t help that I was already a bundle of nerves, as I was still trying to work my way up to giving him the real birthday present I’d bought for him, not the one I’d actually given him. I carried the little box with me everywhere, sure that at some point, the moment was going to feel right and even though it wouldn’t be legal, we’d know what it meant.

  If only I could get the words to come out.

  “We’re almost there,” he said as he reached over and squeezed my thigh. I captured his hand in mine and intertwined our fingers, an action so unconscious it was like breathing for me. He smiled again and said nothing more.

  We’d driven an hour and a half from home, passing through the little town of Roseland before we’d gone deeper into the woods off the Old Forest Highway. It was another twenty minutes before he turned onto an old dirt road that wound its way up farther into the forest until the road came to an end in a clearing of sorts, trees all around. He turned off the car as I gazed out the windshield.

  “What is this place?” I asked curiously.

  “Come on. I’ll show you.”

  He met me around the front of the car, and in that sweet summer sunlight, he stood behind me, molding himself to my back, wrapping his arms around my neck, brushing his fingers against my chest. I looked back at him and he kissed my forehead. His eyes were sparkling, but I could see the nervous tilt of his head, the little lines on his forehead. His arms were tense around me.

  “Okay,” I said. “Spill it, Kemp. What’s going on?”

  He turned me around in his arms and brought up his hands to cup my face. “You know I love you, right?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Pretty sure by now. You’re stuck with me.” The little box in my pocket felt like it was on fire.