How Much I Love by Marie Force
Chapter 8
WYATT
She’s got me so wound up, I can barely eat—and anyone who knows me would tell you that’s a rare thing. Now that I’ve permitted myself to take this leap with her, all I want is as much of her as I can get. I can’t believe this is happening or the way I said fuck it the minute she told me she didn’t care about my rules. I still have significant reservations, but damned if I can be bothered to think about them with her sitting right next to me, the heat of her body pressed against mine making me crazy for her.
And not just physically. Sure, that’s a big part of it, but it’s so much more than that. Dee makes me yearn for the intense connection I’ve never shared with anyone before. Yes, I’ve dated a lot, had a few women who might’ve been considered “girlfriends” by other people’s standards, but I’ve never once gone all-in with anyone, knowing that just wasn’t possible for me. I didn’t want to star in one of those real-life, movie-of-the-week stories where the hero dies and leaves the heroine devastated to pick up the pieces in the aftermath of my tragic and premature death.
No, thanks. Why would I do that to someone I love?
But Dee… Wow, well, all bets are off when it comes to her. I want to soak up every second we can have together. I want to move to her city and spend the rest of what remains of my life with her. And who knows? Maybe I will get lucky and have a long and healthy life. Yes, the odds are stacked against me right now, but who knows what’ll change as medical research marches forward with dizzying speed?
With her warm and soft and fragrant next to me in the vinyl booth, I’m not thinking about dying. Nope. I’m incredibly focused on living.
After I pay our check, we walk back to the car, arms around each other. While she ran to the restroom, I took the morning meds I brought with me in case I stayed out all night. She doesn’t need to see me popping the pills that keep me alive.
“What do you feel like doing?” she asks.
If I could do anything I wanted, I’d suggest we go back to her place and pick up where we left off earlier. “You tell me. This is your city.”
“You need to get some sleep, and then we’ll go play tourist.”
“I’m so wired, I don’t think I’d sleep anyway.” Feeling all the things is such a high that sleep is the last thing on my mind. But if we go back to her place, we’ll spend the rest of the weekend in her bed, and I don’t want her to think that’s the only thing I want. Even if I want that. Badly.
“Hmmm, well, let’s take a ride out to the beach, then.”
“That sounds good.”
We end up in a parking lot in Miami Beach that Dee assures me will provide a spectacular view of the sunrise in a few hours.
“Is this safe?”
“Probably not, but I don’t think anyone will hassle us here.”
I double-check to make sure the doors are locked, just in case.
We listen to music, sing along—her so badly, it’s cute—and we talk.
I cradle her hand between both of mine because I need to be touching her.
“You know all about my family, but what about yours?” she asks. “Do you have siblings?”
“One of each, both younger. My illness put my whole family through hell while we were growing up.”
“What’re their names?”
“Audrey and Liam. She’s a retail manager in Phoenix, and he’s a firefighter in Scottsdale.”
“Are they married?”
“Liam is, with his first child on the way.”
“That’s exciting.”
“It is. I’m looking forward to being an uncle.” I stroke the back of her hand, fascinated by how soft and silky her skin is. “I was almost an uncle a long time ago. My sister got pregnant in high school, but she had an abortion. My parents don’t know that. And my brother had drug issues for a while, but he’s been clean for more than ten years. Everything was about me back then, and they paid the price, too.”
“How old were you when you started having problems?”
“Eight. At first, the doctors thought I had the flu, but it quickly escalated from there. I went from being a perfectly normal kid on Friday to having a life-threatening condition by Tuesday. Nothing was ever the same for any of us after that.”
“Jeez, it’s kind of scary to think something like that can even happen.”
“It was a nightmare. My parents have never recovered. When I came here, my mother texted to make sure I’d brought my meds. I’m thirty-four and a doctor.”
Her smile does amazing things to her gorgeous face. “That’s sweet.”
“It’s annoying! She’s going to lose her shit when I tell her I’m moving to Miami. If I get the job, that is. She’ll be calling me every day to remind me to take my meds. I wouldn’t be surprised if they moved here to live near me.”
“Aw, that’s adorable.”
“No, it isn’t. It’s smothering.”
“They love you.”
“They do,” I say on a sigh. “The only reason I’m alive today is because of everything my parents did for me. They sacrificed everything. So I can’t exactly tell my mom to F off and let me live my life.”
“You’d never do that anyway.”
“No, I wouldn’t, but sometimes I want to.”
“They must be so proud of what you’ve accomplished.”
“They are, although at first, my dad couldn’t understand why I’d want to work in the cardiac field after what I went through, but it was the only specialty I considered. It’s what I know. While I was in the hospital, tied to machines and hoping for a transplant, I started studying everything I could get my hands on about my condition. I wanted to know what was happening to me, you know?”
“That makes sense.”
“My deep dive led to an obsession of sorts that led to me finishing college in three years so I could go to medical school somewhere far from home. Three years after the transplant, I had to get out of there, away from the concern of my poor parents, who were so traumatized by it all. I needed to be with people who didn’t know my story. That’s when I started the pattern of not telling people. If no one knew, they wouldn’t treat me like a special snowflake. I was so sick of that by then. I just wanted to be normal.”
“So no one knew about the transplant?”
“My parents and the doctors insisted that one person in North Carolina needed to know in case I ever had a problem. After I was there a few weeks and got to know Jason, I decided to tell him, but no one else knew about it. It was such a freaking relief after years of everyone hovering over me.”
“You must’ve loved that.”
“I did. Med school was the first real freedom I ever had. Other than the constant studying, it was fantastic. Made some great friends, had all the fun.”
“Slept with all the girls.”
I sputter with laughter. “I didn’t say that!”
“I’m sure they were like flies on honey when the handsome med student came to town.”
“Are you jealous?”
“Of every single one of them.”
“You don’t need to be. I never felt all thethings for any of them.”
“Not one of them?”
“Nope. Not until I was in my buddy’s wedding and met the cousin of the bride, sexiest bridesmaid ever.” I lean in to kiss her neck. “I almost swallowed my tongue when Jay told me you were my bridesmaid.”
“When Carmen said, ‘That’s Jason’s friend Wyatt from medical school,’ I was like, oh, tell me more, please. And PS, please don’t swallow your tongue. That’d be a crying shame.”
She makes me laugh. She makes me want. She makes me feel.
“When did you get the tattoo?”
“Before med school.”
“Did your doctors freak?”
“I cleared it with them first. They said it wasn’t a good idea because of the risk of infection. Still, I was determined to hide the scar, so they put me on preventive antibiotics beforehand, which is something they probably wouldn’t do now that doctors don’t give out antibiotics like candy anymore. It worked out fine, but it’s the riskiest thing I’ve done since the transplant.”
“And it helped to keep your secrets.”
“Exactly.”
“Do you know where your heart came from?”
“A nineteen-year-old woman named Emma, who was killed in an accident. I still hear from her mother every year on her birthday.”
“That’s amazing. I’m sure it’s a big comfort for her to know her daughter’s heart lives on.”
“It is. She listened to it through a stethoscope once, about ten years ago. Cried her eyes out.”
“Wow. That’s so cool.”
“It was. You know what else is cool?”
“What?”
“That I can talk freely about this with you, and it’s not making you treat me differently.”
“If I do that, will you tell me?”
“Sure.” She’s turned in her seat, making it easier for me to stare at her gorgeous face. Thick lashes that other women pay for frame her dark eyes. Her skin is golden brown, her lips full and lush, and her smile dazzling. Being with her is the single greatest thing I’ve ever experienced, and the thought of leaving here on Monday without her, even if it’s temporary, is unbearable. That gives me an idea. “If I get the job, do you want to come to Phoenix with me to pack up my place and drive my car back to Miami?”
“I’d love to do that, but I might not be able to. I help take care of my mom. My brothers are on duty this weekend, but I’m usually there every day.”
“Ah, right. Well, it was just a thought.”
“If I have a little notice, I might be able to work it out.”
“I’d love that.” I tuck a strand of silky dark hair behind her ear. Her hair was straight the first time we met, but the humidity has it curling tonight, and I love the curls. “I can’t believe we’re making plans and diving into all this.”
“It’s fun.”
“Yes, it is, but what about…”
“What?”
“Marcus. He wants you back. Maybe you should at least talk to him.” Part of me still wants to talk her out of getting involved with me, but that part is getting smaller with every second I spend with her.
“I’m never going back to him. I don’t care what he says or does. That’s over. It was over the minute he married someone else.” Her brows furrow with displeasure that makes me sorry I mentioned his name.
“I’m very sorry he hurt you.”
“I am, too. He texted me earlier to say he didn’t try to take his life and that he’s sorry his sister made me feel guilty. None of this is my fault. Yada, yada. It’s all too little, too late for me.” Her eyes fill with tears, and she looks down, her hair forming a curtain that hides her face from me. “Right before I heard he got married… I found out I was pregnant.”
“Oh my God, Dee. Oh, God.” I reach for her and hold her as closely as I can with the center console between us. “I can’t imagine what that was like for you.”
“It was horrible, and I couldn’t share it with him or tell him or anything.”
“He never knew?”
“No,” she whispers. “I had a miscarriage at four weeks, right after I found out Marcus had gotten married. I tell myself it was for the best but at the time…”
“It was hell.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m so, so sorry, sweetheart. I hate him for breaking your heart that way.” And it makes me more concerned about doing the same thing—albeit for different reasons.
“No one knows that. I only told Maria earlier today—or I guess it was yesterday now.”
“Why didn’t you tell her when it happened?”
“I couldn’t bear to talk about any of it. I was so humiliated by what he’d done, and then when that happened, I just kind of shut down. I was a mess for a long time. My cousin Dom, my roommate in New York, threatened to tell my parents I wasn’t eating or working, using that to get me out of my room. It was bad.”
Hearing that, picturing her flattened by heartbreak, gives me pause. I’d never want to be the cause of that. “Dee, honey, I want you to think some more about this with me. If I ever did to you what he did, even if the circumstances were different… I just can’t bear the thought of you hurting like that over me.”
“It’d be different with you. It wouldn’t be because you betrayed me the way he did or disregarded me, or disrespected the love I had for you. If I lost you, it would be because of something you couldn’t help. At least I hope that’s the only way I’d lose you.”
“It is.” I’m so sure of this, of her, of how I feel about her, that I don’t hesitate to offer that assurance. “If I were lucky enough to be loved by you, I’d never let you go for any reason other than something I couldn’t help. And even then, I’d still love you.”
“See? Totally different.”
“Heartbreak is heartbreak, though. I don’t want that for you.”
“When someone you loved for years does what he did to me, that’s a kind of heartbreak that comes from a place of betrayal and disappointment. Losing someone you love to a death they couldn’t prevent would be brutal, but there’d be love to go with the grief. I’m not sure if that makes sense, but it wouldn’t be the same kind of pain. At least, I don’t think it would be. And besides, I don’t want to talk about you dying. I want to talk about you living a long and healthy life and continuing to defy the odds for decades to come. Just because it’s rarely happened doesn’t mean it can’t happen to you.”
I can’t help but smile at her conviction. “My heart is feeling very healthy since you texted me earlier. It feels better than it ever has.”
“Is that so?” she asks with a sexy little grin that has the organ in question beating faster.
“Mmm-hmmm.” I lean in to kiss her, and the second my lips connect with hers, every worry I have disappears under a tsunami of desire for this amazing woman who’s determined to make me fall in love with her. Falling for her is the easiest thing I’ve ever done.
