“Is it possible that he didn’t want to spend the last of his time with you talking about death and being sick, or defending his choice of treatment? That he just wanted to soak up every moment he could with you before you go?”
There was a tightness to his voice, but she shook her head. “He chose no treatment. None. Zero. Zilch.”
“Again, his choice.”
Fueled by panic and anxiety and fury, she whirled on him. “Are you actually trying to defend his decision to me? There are treatments available, Levi. There is no defense for what he’s doing.”
“I assume you’ve talked to him about this. Calmly. Rationally. No judgment.”
She tossed up her hands. “Of course I haven’t. I came straight here.” She felt her eyes fill. “I’m just so mad at him,” she whispered. “So mad.”
He nodded and came slowly toward her, making his way through the roadblocks without any trouble. “It’s understandable,” he said. “But it’s possible he made his choice before you were back in his life.”
She stared at him as his words hit her like a one-two punch to the solar plexus. “So it’s my fault for not reaching out to him sooner?”
“No, of course not. But I do think he might’ve made a different choice now—something you won’t know unless you talk to him.”
She pressed the heels of her hands to her temples. “You don’t get it. His decision was made months and months ago, and cancer doesn’t waste time. There’s no going back and fixing this in the here and now.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Oh, Mr. Fix-It, but I do know it. I accessed his records, Levi. All of them.”
He was toe-to-toe with her now, but not touching her, looking suddenly both incredulous and angry, and she’d like to know what he could possibly have to be angry about. She was the angry one, as was her right.
“Let me make sure I understand,” he said carefully. “You said he seemed off. Then he told you he had cancer, and you pressed for more information and he showed you his medical records. Yes?”
She looked away. “He did seem off. And I didn’t press him for answers because he wouldn’t have given them to me.”
“So you, what, accessed them without permission, meaning you risked your entire nursing career, not to mention your license, to avoid a difficult conversation with your grandpa?”
Shit. Well, when he put it like that . . . But her fuse had been lit, which meant rational thought and logic were backed up behind the huge ball of emotion in her throat. “Family matters more than any job,” she said. “Or at least it should. And you’re one to talk about avoiding a difficult conversation. You made up a pretend girlfriend!”
“Guilty. And for the record, I stopped pretending a long time ago. As I told you, this”—he paused to gesture between them—“is real for me, Jane. Very real.”
She sucked in a breath. She was never going to get used to that.
Levi gave her a small, tight smile. “But clearly you haven’t gotten there yet.”
“I haven’t let myself go there,” she corrected. Paused. “I do know you’re important to me, Levi. Very important.”
“As important as your job? As important as your love of going far and wide without any tether longer than the length of your next contract?”
“Work doesn’t factor into this.”
“The hell it doesn’t. Work gives you an excuse to leave.”
For a heart-stopping moment, she was eight years old again, too much trouble to keep, to fight for, to want. She’d fixed that, though, by always leaving first. “That’s not fair.”