Slow Burn

Epilogue

BECKS

1 year later

It’s the same dream I’ve had on and off over the past year. I know it’s a dream, but I can never seem to shake it or the harsh reality it throws in my face like a bucket of ice water.

The cemetery is quiet despite the sound of her calling to me, pleading to be found. I search endlessly, trying to find her, but know I’m not going to. Unless you count my warm fingertips against her name etched in cold granite, just like the love she scored into my heart.

It’s an odd place, so peaceful yet so very cruel to rip away the ones you love. For her to be here this young after suffering so horribly is something I can’t think about much. She fought the fight no doubt, but that right hook of hers just wasn’t strong enough in the end.

I’m starting to run now, knowing she needs me to find her before it’s too late. Just one more touch, one more glance, one last kiss, before she disappears forever. This is my favorite and most hated part of the dream because I want her to be there and I don’t want her to. Such a no-win situation.

Fuck the person who said to love and lose is better than to not love at all.

How cruel is it to still love and know you’ll never see them again except for in dreams.

I see her blond hair blowing in the breeze on the other side of the tree where she always sits to wait for me. Our one last rendezvous, touch, kiss … memory. I reach out to touch that golden hair of hers and—

Rex’s bark pulls me from the dream just at the best part when I get to touch her. I groan out a curse, my body physically shaking from the realness of the reverie. No matter how many times I have it, the dream still rocks me to the core and causes me to think about what-ifs and what-could-have-beens.

My heart’s pounding still as I squeeze my eyes shut to guard them from the blinding sun and my damn mother and her no-blinds-at-the-farmhouse policy. I reach out to the space beside me, and when I find it empty, I sit up immediately.

It’s one thing to have the dream and believe the whole time I’m in its confines that it’s real, but it’s another to wake up and the immediate reminder how it’s not real isn’t in her spot. When I can’t physically reach out and touch her to reaffirm that she’s here and whole, the riot of emotions the dream causes doesn’t fade as quickly.

I scrub my hands over my face, trying to scrape the dream from my memory. The constant reminder of how goddamn lucky I am. I shove up out of the bed, my mind wondering if my plans for later today are what’s dredged the dream back up when I haven’t had it for several weeks.

On my way to the hallway, I slide open the top dresser drawer and feel in there to make sure it’s safe and sound. My hand connects with the sharp edges of the square container, and I breathe a bit easier, all the while my nerves hum.

I make my way into the bathroom, take care of business, and brush my teeth before shuffling down the hallway toward the first indulgence I plan on having this morning, coffee.

There will be many more indulgences today but of the noncaffeine variety.

I turn the corner into the kitchen and déjà vu of our first time here hits me. So many things have changed over the past year, but at the same time, so much has stayed the same.

She still steals my breath with her courage, her fiery spirit, her unyielding love, her beauty inside and out.

Haddie stands at the window, her athletic body, thinner now as she tries to gain back the muscle she’s lost with treatment, haloed by the morning sunlight. Her hair is short, the regrowth finally long enough to be cut and styled for the first time last week. She was so excited by the fact, but I watch as her fingers play absently with it at the nape of her neck and know she’s still unsure, regardless of how sexy she is, rocking the pixie cut.

I remember her laughter as I told her that, lucky me, I get to take a new woman to bed with me every couple months as the hairstyles change. I’ll say anything to ease the lines of worry from her face.

The thought makes me smile as I watch her. We’ve been to hell and back in this past year—gone through more things than any new relationship should ever be tested with—but look at us…. We’re stronger than ever.

She finally stopped pushing.

And started accepting I was in it for the long haul.

“Good morning,” I murmur, my voice catching in my throat as the dream comes flooding back to me. She turns slowly to face me, tears streaming down her face in silence, cell phone clutched in her hand.

My heart drops through my stomach as my eyes flicker back and forth, hoping against hope what I fear isn’t true. I brought her out here so that she’d be occupied instead of sitting at home and fretting endlessly about the results of the latest scans and tests. The typical four-to five-day wait being the hardest thing to endure in this whole process.

For her and me.

It’s brutal, watching the one you love hope and try to remain positive after enduring rounds of chemo and now radiation to get their hopes dashed and spirit crushed when they’re told the cancer is still there, still eating away at them bit by bit, day by day. It may have shrunk or not advanced, but it’s still there.

It’s hard to fight the uphill battle with renewed vigor each time you have to start it over.

I move to her, tears burning the back of my throat and my chest physically hurting as I watch her sob, so overwhelmed by emotion that she can’t speak. I pull her smaller frame into my arms, careful not to squeeze her too hard against my chest since she’s still sore from the first procedure she had last week to prepare her for possible reconstructive surgery.

“Becks.” She says my name, but I just keep shushing her, trying to soothe her and accept the resignation that we’re going to have to start the cycle all over again. Lose the hair she’s just grown back.

“Becks!” The way she says my name this time pulls me from my thoughts and I look down as she leans back.

I take in the tears streaming down her face, but then I notice the smile spreading over those lips of hers. I force a swallow down my throat, afraid to hope that smile means what I think it means. My heart pounds and my head shakes back and forth as she nods her head up and down, answering the question in my eyes.

“Are you serious?”

Her smile is so wide now, the laughter bubbles up and the sound consumes me, overrides all of the fear and worry—her shadow I’ve carried on my shoulders over the past year—and tells them they have no place here anymore.

“It’s gone,” she says, her body vibrating with excitement, with life, with a future. “The scans are clear.”

I hear a whoop and don’t even realize it’s my own voice as I lift her up gently and whirl her around in excitement. Then I try to process everything as I press my lips to hers over and over and find that I can’t.

I can only focus on one thing right now, and that is how much I love and admire this woman in front of me. How I can’t live without her.

We just went a full twelve rounds and finally got the knockout.

She starts giggling as I proceed to kiss her over and over, the only way I can speak right now after the heart attack I almost had, thinking the results were the opposite.

She pushes me away, trying to speak. “I just got the call before you came out…. I was processing it all. I couldn’t speak. I’m sorry for scaring you.”

“Oh, baby,” I tell her, framing her face and lacing it with kisses, the taste of salt on my tongue from our tears of joy a welcome change.

And then my mind clicks.

“Hold on. I’ll be right back!” I tell her as I bolt from the kitchen.