How Much I Love by Marie Force

Chapter 20

DEE

The time in Phoenix is filled with joy in every possible way, except for one—the chilly reception I receive from Wyatt’s parents when we go there for dinner Wednesday night. While he wraps things up at work, I’ve been working during the day to pack up the clothes and personal items he wants to take to Miami.

We’re tired from staying up way too late every night and excited to start our life together in Miami, but minutes into the get-together with his parents, I feel deflated. His parents are polite, but it’s obvious they don’t approve of Wyatt’s plans or my influence on him.

It’s nothing they say or do. It’s more the vibe his parents put out.

They don’t ask about me or my life or make any attempt to get to know me. They mostly speak to him and act like I’m not even there. Wyatt keeps drawing me into the conversation, but it’s awkward and stilted.

As the four of us sit at the table to eat dinner, it’s all I can do to choke down a few bites around the massive lump in my throat. I’m so afraid his mother will be offended if I don’t eat that I force myself to chew and swallow.

It doesn’t help that the AC on deep freeze mode, which has me shivering. I’m a Floridian. AC doesn’t usually bother me, but their chilly reception has me so rattled that I’m cold to the bone.

After dinner, Wyatt takes me upstairs to show me his childhood bedroom. I’m so relieved to be away from his parents that my legs feel shaky. I’m not used to being disliked on sight before I even get to say a word in my defense.

When we’re in his room, he immediately puts his arms around me. “I’m so sorry. Please know that had nothing to do with you and everything to do with me.”

“It felt rather personal to me.”

“I know, babe, and I feel awful. I hate that they acted that way, but it’s not about you. They’re upset about me moving. I told you that.”

“Yes, you did, but can we please go soon?”

“Of course. I’m sorry they made you uncomfortable. They’re not like that. Once they get to know you, they’ll love you as much as I do.”

I’m sure he wants to believe that’s true, but since they made no effort whatsoever to get to know me, I’m not optimistic. For the first time since Wyatt and I hatched our wild plan, I have serious doubts. His parents dislike me simply because he’s moving away from them to live with me.

As Wyatt shows me the treasures from his childhood, I’m so upset, I can barely focus on him or what he’s saying.

“I love these Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots. I played them with everyone when I was in the hospital. An orderly named Oscar showed me how to win every time, and after that, no one could beat me.”

“What will happen to the stuff you still have here?”

“I guess I’ll put away things like the robots for my future nieces and nephews.”

“What about your kids?”

He puts the robots back on the shelf where they live and turns to me, looking stricken. “What kids?”

Suddenly, I’m cold all over once again, albeit for entirely different reasons. “The ones we’re going to have together.”

“I, um… I’m not having kids, Dee. How could I do that, knowing I may not live to see them grow up?”

I’m going to be sick. That’s the only thought in my head as the meager contents of my stomach come rushing up. I run for the bathroom in the hallway, managing to shut and lock the door before I bend over the toilet and vomit.

WYATT

Fuck.This night has been a goddamned disaster. Watching Dee sprint from the room and hearing her retching in the bathroom breaks my heart. Is this going to screw up everything? It can’t. I won’t let that happen. I go to the bathroom and knock softly on the door. “Let me in, sweetheart.”

“No.”

“Please?”

Several minutes later, the lock pops, and the door opens. I step into the scent of the air freshener Dee sprayed to hide the smell of vomit.

Her face is ghostly pale, and her eyes are big and full of tears that gut me.

“Dee, honey…”

She takes a step back from me, not that there’s far she can go in the small bathroom. “Don’t. Please. I’d like to go home, please.”

“To my place or Miami?” I can barely breathe as I wait for her to reply.

“To your place for now.”

For now.Have two words ever carried more weight?

I find a washcloth in the linen closet, wet it with cold water and wipe the tears from her face. “Please don’t cry. I can’t bear that.”

“I’m sorry.” She makes an effort to pull herself together, running her fingers through her hair and pinching some color into her cheeks. “Will you please tell them I’m not feeling well so we can go?”

“Yeah, sure, and don’t apologize for being upset.”

As we head downstairs, I’m full of fear that everything has changed with Dee in the matter of one disastrous evening. I’ve never been in a situation like this, in which someone else’s happiness means more to me than my own. I’m pissed with my parents, but apparently, they’re pissed with me, too, which makes everything awkward as we say our goodbyes.

“Will we see you before you leave?” Dad asks.

“I don’t think so. We’ve got a lot to do to get ready for the movers.”

“So, when will we see you again?”

“I’ll come back to visit in a couple of months, and you’re always welcome in Miami. Our house has a guest suite that’s all yours.” Although, after tonight, how can I subject Dee to having my parents staying in our house when they barely spoke to her? I’ll take that up with them on my own when she’s not there to be further hurt by them.

“Thank you for dinner, Mr. and Mrs. Blake,” she says in a stiff tone that’s so far removed from her usual warmth that it might as well be coming from a stranger. “It was very nice to meet you.”

“You, too,” Dad says.

Mom says nothing.

I want to scream at them. Don’t you realize this woman means everything to me? That she’s the love of my life, the same life they weren’t sure I was going to get to have for a very long time? I’ll say all that and more when I call them tomorrow. But for now, I have to get her out of here and deal with the other issue that arose upstairs.

I hug them both before I follow Dee out the door. “I’ll call you.”

Dee’s already in the car when I get in and look over at her, stunned to see tears rolling down her cheeks.

“I’m so sorry that was such a disaster in there.”

“It’s fine.”

I’ve never had a girlfriend before, but one thing I know for sure is if a woman is in tears and says everything is “fine,” it most definitely isn’t. I start the SUV and back out of the driveway, navigating the first streets I ever drove on, after the transplant when the whole world opened to me. Learning to drive and getting my license had been at the top of my list.

I want to tell her that, but I’m not sure I should say anything until we address the elephant sitting between us. I think back over every conversation we’ve had, and no, we never did talk about kids, which I can now see was a significant oversight on my part. I should’ve told her I don’t intend to have kids, but I sort of assumed she’d know that.

That was a huge mistake, one I’m not sure can be corrected at this point.

She says nothing to me on the twenty-minute ride to my place, which is a marked contrast to the usual nonstop chatter between us. We never run out of things to talk about, and the silence sits like a heavy weight on my chest.

I can’t fuck this up with her. After having been loved by her, I’d be devastated to lose her.

Back at my place, she goes straight upstairs to shower and change into pajama pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt of mine. It’s the first time she’s put on clothes for bed since she got here, and it makes me sad. I love sleeping naked with her.

I give her a half hour to herself before I go up to check on her. I bring her a glass of the iced tea she loves and put it on the bedside table on what’s become her side of my bed. I sit on the edge of the bed and reach for her hand, which is icy cold. “Can we talk about it?”

“Which part? The one about your parents taking an instant dislike to me or the part about you not wanting kids and waiting until now to tell me that?”

“It’s not that I don’t want kids, Dee. If everything were normal for me, I’d want a bunch of kids, especially if you were going to be their mother. But how do I do that to them or you, not knowing what the future holds for me? Do you want to wake up a single mother to however many kids we have when my heart suddenly gives out?”

“What I would’ve liked, about two weeks ago, was to know how you felt about this subject. I made the mistake of thinking when you said you were all in, that meant all in.”

“I’m all in with you. I love you. I want everything with you, but I don’t want to bring kids into this uncertain reality of mine.”

To my great dismay, she begins to cry so hard that sobs shake her body.

I reach for her, but she puts her hand up to stop me. “Dee, honey…”

“Don’t. Please don’t.”

I’ve never felt so helpless. “I can’t stand that you’re upset because of me.”

“It’s my fault.” She uses the tissue I hand her to wipe away tears and blow her nose. “I dove in without doing my due diligence. I should’ve asked you about kids before I agreed to go all in. I should’ve told you how I’ve waited my whole life to be a mother. When we talked about my miscarriage, I should’ve said how important it is to me to try again someday.”

The sinking feeling that overtakes me fills me with the kind of desperation I haven’t experienced since the days when I expected to die at any moment. “I never want you to be upset because of me, but can’t you see, even a little, why I feel this way? What would your life have been like if your dad had died when you were a little kid?”

“It would’ve been very different, but I would’ve known how much he loved me because my mom would’ve told me every day. I’d get to have a life because he gave that life to me.”

“But you’d be sad to have lost him, especially if you didn’t even remember him.”

“Yes, but that wouldn’t have stopped me from going on to live a very satisfying life.” She accepts a second tissue from me and wipes her face again. “When you said you wanted to experience every part of being in love, I thought that extended to kids.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t say otherwise.”

“So am I.”

I feel like I’m going to be sick myself. “What does this mean for us?” I’m terrified to ask that question.

“I don’t know. We were impulsive. We jumped in so quickly. Maybe we made a mistake.”

“This wasn’t a mistake.” I’ve never felt so desperate about anything as I do about fixing this with her. “I don’t want to lose you, Dee. I love you so much. You’ve been the best thing to ever happen to me.”

Her chin quivers and new tears spill from her gorgeous brown eyes. “I love you, too. I really do, but…”

I stop breathing, waiting for her to finish that thought.

“You’re asking me to sacrifice one dream for another, and I just don’t know if I can do that, Wyatt. Even for you.” She takes a deep breath and lets it out. “And your parents are so upset about you moving. Maybe you shouldn’t do that to them.”

“I’m not going to live what’s left of my life for them. I want to live for myself and you.”

“I want kids.”

Three little words have never packed a more significant punch than those do. “I don’t have life insurance, Dee. I can’t get it, which means I’d be leaving you without any kind of cushion other than the house and the money I’ve managed to save, a big chunk of which will go toward the house. My savings is decent, but it’s not enough to help you raise a family on your own in an expensive city like Miami.”

“I have a good job now. I can do it on my own if I have to. Maybe we won’t live in a fancy house, but they’ll have what they need. I’d make sure of it, and my family would be there to support me. I wouldn’t be alone.”

My guts have twisted into knots, but I feel a tiny spark of hope. “The thought of having children that might never know me is so… It’s overwhelming to me. Can you understand that at all?”

“Of course I can, but it goes back to what we talked about at the beginning of all this, about not living in fear of a future we can’t control anyway. You have no idea whether you’ll die young or live to be an old man, and I don’t know that for myself, either.”

“You’ll never be an old man.”

For the first time in more than an hour, she cracks a small smile. “I don’t know if I’ll live through tomorrow any more than you do.”

“Please don’t say that. You’re going to live a good long life.”

“And you might, too. That’s my point. We don’t know what’s going to happen, so why not live to the fullest while we can?”

“You make excellent points. Could I have some time to think about it?”

“How much time? You’re supposed to move to Miami in two days. If we’re at an impasse on this topic, maybe…” Her voice catches. “Maybe you shouldn’t move.”

I draw in a deep breath and release it on a long sigh. “This is why I had rules I never broke. I never wanted someone to look at me the way you are now as if I’ve disappointed you profoundly.”

“It’s not your fault. We both did this. We dove in headfirst without taking even a second to make sure we were doing the right thing.”

“Nothing in my entire life has felt more right to me than this has, than you have.” When I reach for her this time, she lets me.

When her arms encircle me, I’m full of relief to have her back in my arms, even if I know our problems are far from solved.