Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 112001 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 560(@200wpm)___ 448(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112001 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 560(@200wpm)___ 448(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
The Keytruda hadn’t worked. Just like the conventional chemo hadn’t.
This was the problem with smoking. Some people got away with it—and some did not. And you didn’t know which group you were in until it was too late. Meanwhile, Daniel’s terminal cancer was a bomb in her own life, blowing apart everything, laying ruin to her present and her future, but also taking her past, all those beautiful memories from the spring buried in a toxic swill of flashbacks featuring crash carts, and treatments that hadn’t worked, and scans that had spelled out more and more bad news.
“Here, let me get the—”
“I’ll get the door,” Daniel said firmly.
She stopped and waited for him to slowly move ahead of her, open things, and hold the panel wide. As she passed by him, his eyes stayed down on the tile, his dignity as a man ravaged by a cruel disease.
“Thank you,” she said quietly.
Emerging into the garage, the motion-activated lights came on and she glanced at Gus’s Tesla, thinking of the gas-guzzling Harley. How was it possible that they’d just been together in that apple orchard? The quiet moment they’d shared seemed like something that had happened months ago, and she missed that time like it was a friend she hadn’t seen for years. Then again, for a short shining moment, she’d felt as though they had stepped off to the side of their situation and been what they’d been before.
Two people without a disease.
But like all vacations, you had to return to your real life. Even if it was a nightmare.
“Can you make it to the SUV,” she asked as she looked past a set of rolling trash bins to the pedestrian door on the far side of the space.
“Yes,” he answered roughly. “I can.”
Lydia took his arm anyway.
I love you, she thought at him. Now and forever, you’re mine.
“We’re going to find Gus,” Daniel vowed as they shuffled along. “And if it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to make this right.”
She didn’t know how to respond to the vow.
No, wait. She did.
Reality was cruel, however, and reminding him of all he was limited by was mean. Besides, he knew the truth.
That was why he was drawing such a hard line.
This time, when they came up to a portal, she was the one who had to open it for them. Just the short distance from the kitchen had drained him of energy, and it was funny how you could miss arguing with your partner.
Not funny at all, actually.
THREE
I HAVE SOMETHING MORE for you. Do you remember what it is?”
As the question was put out there, it was a tough call what language the words were in. The syllables were from a Romance-based system of communication, sure, but other than that—
“I asked you a question, Dr. St. Claire. Can you guess what it is?”
No, the shit was English. Just with an accent.
Gus opened his eyes. Or tried to—unless, wait… no. His eyes were open, it was his vision that was fucked. And what do you know, he didn’t need his HMS diploma to know blindness, in a person who had been sighted, was bad news—
“What do you want, man,” he said through lips that were swollen from bruising.
When the hell had he been punched? Where the hell was he? As he sent the questions upstairs to his gray matter, his brain was sluggish, his memory patchy. Likewise, the sensations in his body were distilled through a filter of numbness, nothing but echoes of aches and pains registering. Which given how fucked he felt was probably a good thing—
“You gave me something,” he mumbled.
“Sodium pentothal,” said the male voice.
Truth serum? What the fuck.
From out of his sensory swamp, he babbled, “Is this a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie? And it’s sodium thiopental. So you really are European, huh.”
“My accent betrays me.”
“That and the fact that the compound was outlawed for production in the U.S. in January of 2011 and there can be no official importation from European sources, either.” He frowned—and promptly cut that out because it made his eye sockets throb even more. “Then again… you don’t worry about the law, do ya.”
There was a pause. “I’m afraid you’re rather strong-willed, Dr. St. Claire.”
“Been called worse.”
“Indeed. Well, we are going to have to provide you with a secondary dose.”
Gus laughed in a burst—and then grimaced as his ribs hurt. “Careful,” he grunted. “You might kill me.”
“I shall be of great care.”
When he felt fingers brush the inside of his forearm, he swung his face down.
“Wait, no rubbing alcohol? You managed to get truth serum, but can’t go to a Walgreens and buy some—ow!”
When he went to massage away the pinch at the crook of his elbow, he discovered that both arms were bent at a forty-five-degree angle and tied down at the wrist—and this brought into focus that he was sitting up in a high-backed, hard-seated chair. His legs were likewise restrained at his ankles.