Page 183 of Fighting Chance

Cocking my head to the side, my heart aches a little.

You’d expect his face to be free of worry in sleep but even now his brows are slightly furrowed. I swear they’ve been permanently stuck like that sincethatnight.

The god-awful night my heart dropped when he walked out of that room, and it hasn’t returned to its rightful place since. I think it’s still trying to chase after him, beckoning and pleading my mind to go to him.

Kieran doesn’t even know how close I’ve come to giving in.

How many times I’ve parted my lips to say we can try and date. But every time, as if my body wants to remind me just how ruined it is, I would get obliterated by a wave of tiredness, or like three days ago, a burst of dizziness, black spots dancing across my vision.

My body has been punishing me, reminding me of the very real reason why bringing another person so intimately into my life will destroy theirs.

My parents are still working when they should be looking at retirement. My mom can’t have her phone on silent without borderline having a panic attack. My dad freaks out when I get cramps from my period because he thinks I’m relapsing.

Even Bella has my specialist’s number on speed dial, the closest hospital route mapped out, and I swear the girl has an emergency hospital bag packed for me in her car. It wouldn’t surprise me—my best friend is as type A as they come—but to know she thinks about all this when we go out crushes me.

That’s not normal. The people around me shouldn’t have to carry my burdens like this.

Then there’s my boss.

Kieran, who thinks he can handle it but deserves a life that’s full of happiness and not hospitals and colorless waiting rooms. Because the more that time goes on, the more my life is slowly bleeding back into what it used to be.

And I seem to be the only one aware of it.

It’s utterly terrifying me what my body is doing at themoment. No one can figure out why my medication has stopped working. My tests are coming back as if I’m okay but my symptoms say otherwise.

I’m not well.

I won’t ever be one hundred percent healthy but I was hoping the medication would last longer thanthis.

I was blessed to experience it for a short while but the universe seems to have other plans for me. Maybe my body got used to the medication?

With so many unanswered questions circulating, I’m keeping it a secret, hiding the lack of sleep. Hiding the way my ears ring and my vision blurs when I stand. Hiding…everything.

The body aches.

The arthritis-like symptoms.

The lethargy.

The nightmares.

The panic.

The nausea.

I’m hiding everything from everyone around me and that is why I never take that step toward Kieran.

Even if it kills me, even if all I want to do is lean forward and smooth the furrow of his brow and kiss him, even as my fingers physically ache from the desire to want to run through his hair…I remain at a distance.

The thing Kieran hasn’t realized yet is that as much pain as I can see him suffering, it’s killing me more.

Gently shaking him awake, with my heart still lost somewhere in the depths of my stomach, I breathe deeply through my nose to steady myself as those long black lashes flutter, his ocean depths sucking me in.

No amount can steady me though.

“Layla,” he whispers, as if I’m a prayer answered.

“What are you doing back early?”