The Cabin - Jasinda Wilder Page 0,28

I’m sorry, Nadia.”

She sets her mug on the side table, roughly, the coffee sloshing over the rim and dribbling down the side, smearing in a ring around the base. Climbs onto me, stretching onto my body, curling her hands behind my head, breathing in my scent and clinging to me.

“Hold me,” she whispers.

I hold her.

i love you, for the millionth time

If I close my eyes and focus, some days I can almost pretend we’re just on an extension of our Paris vacation.

We sleep in late, stay up late watching movies and bingeing all the shows we used to talk about watching but never got around to. We just sit together in the living room and listen to entire movements of classical music. Sometimes just sit and breathe together. He cooks, when he can. Or we cook together. Or I cook. Some days, neither of us has the energy, so we just order a pizza.

My favorite, though, is reading together. It’s approaching winter in Atlanta, now, so the days are cooler. We turn on our gas fireplace and sit on the couch and Adrian reads to me. At first, it was just once in a while. But gradually, it becomes our Thing. We stopped watching TV. I’d buy books on Amazon, print or e-book, depending on the price, and he’d read to me. Sometimes when his voice got tired, I’d take over, but I’m not as good at it as he is.

He reads to me for hours. We read everything together. We go through the entire Little House on the Prairie series in a week. We read Nora Roberts, Stephanie Meyer, Harry Potter, we even start on the Game of Thrones series. Sometimes he reads from one book in the morning and a different one in the afternoons, after lunch.

But as the days crowd together, one after another, never leaving our house for much of anything, it becomes harder and harder to pretend that what’s happening isn’t real.

I want to keep pretending.

Pretend the days reading on the couch are just a magical interlude before our regular lives resume, me working in the ICU, him writing and researching.

But I can’t.

He needs more and more pills to keep the pain and nausea and everything else at bay, and then it gets to the point of diminishing returns, where the drugs take away his lucidity along with the pain. And he hates that, more than anything. Says he’d rather be present with me and in pain than lost in narcotic la-la-land.

I try to make him promise that when it’s bad enough, he’ll take what he needs to be comfortable, but he refuses.

“We’re doing this your way,” he says. “And I wouldn’t have it any other way. But I’m going to live out my remaining days on my terms. And I’m going to be here, with you.”

A month after his reveal, his doctor makes a house call. Wonder of wonders—but then, Adrian has always had a way with people. After a checkup, some poking and prodding and questioning, the doctor says there’s no point going in for MRIs and all that. Meaning, don’t waste your time learning what you already know. He prescribes what he calls the nuclear option, some kind of strongest-possible opiate.

If you just want to float away, he says. I’m sure I’d know what it is, but my eyes are too blurry with tears to read, and it doesn’t matter. He won’t take it.

Not yet, anyway.

I read to him, now.

Tess shows up. Adrian does his dead-level best to get me to go out with her, just for an hour, just to breathe. Begs me, pleads, tries ordering, demanding.

I won’t.

I can’t.

I fucking can’t.

So Tess brings a spread of food from our favorite restaurants in town. And every day after that, every single day, Tess brings us food. Carryout Chinese, Thai, Indian, Mexican, homemade casseroles and pots of Spaghetti bolognese and lasagna and platters of hot grilled PB&J and boats of tomato soup with triangles of grilled cheese.

One day, she brings over a bag of marijuana and a pipe, and we get Adrian stoned out of his head. Where she got it, hell if I know, but it helps him in some ways more than even the narcotics. So she keeps bringing it.

I’ve stopped drinking almost entirely. I want to be lucid, to remember.

The pain is too much to bear, and I know no amount of alcohol will help.

I smoke with him sometimes, but mostly just so he doesn’t feel alone in it. “I