PROLOGUE
“It’s better to buzz it than have it fall off.” Tara handed Aaron the scissors first and folded his fingers over the handle with her warm hands. Her green-eyed gaze melted his insides, almost as much as the emotion behind it tore at his heart. “Guys buzz their heads all the time,” she said. “You’ve done this before, haven’t you?”
“Well, yeah.” Aaron’s gaze ran over his wife’s full head of dark hair. Chunks of it had fallen out because of the chemo, but she’d hidden it well.
She implored him with a woeful expression. “I just feel like if I cut it then... I’m the one with the control, not the cancer. I don’t want to watch it fall out anymore, Aaron.”
He touched her pale cheek, giving in. “Okay, sit down.”
She did. Tara dragged a stool into the bathroom and she wound her long legs around the base of it. Those legs were the first thing that he’d noticed about her when he first saw her in the cafeteria at Rice University in Houston Texas five years earlier. His attention had traveled from her wrap-around sandals to her sassy little summer dress before he noticed the way her long slender fingers curved around her soda cup. Her happy eyes had twinkled over the brim.
Her face was lined with care now. He ran his fingers through the soft strands of her hair, trying to imagine what she’d look like without all those glorious locks. The breast cancer had taken so much from them—her hope, her vitality, and now her hair. The doctors had said that the cancer had moved to other parts of her body. They’d try to fight it with one last round of chemo, but it looked grim. Tara was told to get her affairs in order, to make sure Aaron would be okay, but no one understood—nothing mattered to Aaron if she was gone.
He took a chunk of her hair and ran the blade of the scissors against its softness and cut it. The dark hair floated to the ground. She blinked up at him, watching him with trust. He noticed his hands shaking. Stop. Be brave for her. He cut another piece. They joined the pile on the ground. He kept cutting, until she sported an adorable page boy haircut. His hand slid across her jaw and he kissed her soft lips, before pulling back and scrutinizing the rest of her hair. He went in with the scissors again, cutting closer to the scalp now, getting it as short as he could before he could buzz it.
“Don’t make me sorry I let you do this,” she whispered. “Don’t shave your initials into the back of my head.”
He choked back a reply, not wanting to joke. He didn’t want to do any of this. He nodded and picked up the hair clippers this time. Her gaze followed it. Tears pooled at the corners of her eyes, getting caught up against her lashes. His heart lurched. “You’re beautiful, with or without the hair,” he reassured her. “Nothing will ever take away from how gorgeous you are.”
And he meant it. She smiled against the tiredness of her face. The heavy bruises under her eyes were more pronounced. The chemo often did that to her. Other times, it made her forgetful, even irritable. It didn’t matter. He loved every last inch of her.
She adjusted herself on the stool, digging her fingers into the seat. “Do it,” she said.
He flipped the switch on the clippers and began the laborious process of shaving her head. The more he worked at it, the frailer, more delicate she looked, like a lion who had lost its mane, and yet who still watched him with a regal air. Tara was magnificent, her eyes huge, her neck long. He put down the clippers and kissed that neck. She reached up and ran her hand through his hair. “Your hair is longer than mine now.”
“We can’t have that,” he said. “I’ll shave mine too.”
“No, no!” she argued with a tired laugh. “I want to run my hand through it at night. Keep it. Keep it. One of us should have hair.”
For her, he’d do anything. He nodded and set the clippers down, studying her while she stared into the mirror. He thought it was going to be all right until her face crumpled and she buried her face in her hands. He wrapped his arms around her. His own tears fell with hers. He couldn’t hold them back any longer.