Josie wished she wouldn’t say it. I’m sorry. She knew first-hand why people said that, what it meant.
“Can I get you anything?” Helen asked.
“Water,” Josie croaked, not because she wanted it but because she wanted to be alone right now. Helen nodded and got to her feet. Josie watched her cross the waiting room, then looked back at the letter in her hand. But she didn’t open it. Because if she opened it, she knew, then that would make it real.
Three Days Earlier
Max stared down at the page, wondering whether to screw the paper up for the fifth time and try again. Nothing he’d written sounded right. Because how the fuck were you supposed to explain something like this in a letter?
He took a sip of his coffee, strong and black the way he liked it, and stared out at the Bristol street below from where he was perched at the windowsill in his sister’s tiny flat. His parents had chosen to stay in a hotel, thank God, after deciding to come to England for what would be, he was sure, his last Christmas. He took a breath, held it, then blew it out again. He’d come to terms with that, and he’d had longer than the doctors had initially thought to do so. Six months, they’d given him, when he’d found out just over a year ago. Right before he’d met the girl he’d fallen in love with, the girl who would make him wish, more than anything, that he had just a bit more time.
He looked over his shoulder to see Chloe shuffling into the room, her dark eyes bleary. She always looked like this in the morning—softer, somehow, when she first woke up, as if it took her a while to build up that front she so often hid behind. She glanced down at the crumpled papers on the floor.
“How’s the letter faring?” she croaked. His heart gave a painful tug. His baby sister. She was the one he was most worried about leaving, because he knew that she had tried the hardest to keep it together, to keep things normal, since he’d gotten his diagnosis. He was sure she’d go on like that until the end, because she knew it was what he needed, no matter what it cost her.
“I’m not sure. I’m not very good at letters.”
She grunted, shuffled to the adjoining kitchen to switch the kettle on. “Just write what’s in the heart or…something like that.”
He tried for a cocky smile, neither of them wanting to break in front of the other. “Thanks, o wise one.” He glanced toward her bedroom. “Liam still asleep?”
She yawned, nodded. “Nothing can wake that man, I tell you. This one time—”
Max held up a hand. “If this is something to do with sex, then I’m telling you now, Chlo, I don’t want to hear it.” She grinned, just the smell of coffee seeming to wake her up. Against all the odds, Chloe and Liam had actually hit it off, and had managed to make the long-distance thing work. Liam had proposed a few weeks ago, and Chloe was rushing to have the wedding in February. She said it was because she wanted to get on with it, claiming haughtily that she didn’t want to live in sin when their mum questioned her, but Max knew the real reason. He knew it was also why Liam had proposed so soon. After they’d been together a few months, Chloe had told Liam about the tumor. He knew that his friend and his sister wanted him to be there at the wedding, and they were hoping that February would cut it.
He was grateful when his phone beeped on the windowsill next to him. A text from Erin. She still messaged a lot, just to check in. She knew, just like his family did, that it was only a matter of months, but instead of stepping back and keeping her distance, she was making sure that he knew she was there, as a friend, whenever he wanted to talk.
When he’d gotten back to the UK, he’d stayed with her for a few weeks in Edinburgh, but just as friends. He hadn’t known, then, if the treatment he’d been getting in New York at the beginning of the year, the new clinical trial that his mum had insisted he at least try, would work, and Erin had been choosing to believe that it would, to believe that having a long-term relationship with him would be an option. But even before he’d found out the opposite, he’d known it wasn’t right to get back with her. And she’d actually accepted that. Had proven herself to be a total legend of a friend, trying to make him come out and do things. She’d invited him to the wedding, even though he hadn’t actually decided to go until he’d seen Josie’s photo of the castle on her Instagram account, and known she’d be there.
He stared down at the paper again. He should have told her then, in September. But seeing her had made him feel light again, and it had been easier to let her assume that Erin was the problem, not to put the weight on that weekend, at her friend’s wedding. He’d hoped that maybe it was one-sided—just because he hadn’t been able to shake her didn’t automatically mean that she felt the same. And if she wasn’t that attached to him, then there was only so much he could hurt her. But it was wrong, to hope for that, to think that he was protecting her by not telling her. That feisty little friend of hers had told him as much when she’d sent him an angry Facebook message after she’d caught them kissing. He’d thought it safer not to reply to her, but it had made him think.