Life officially sucked golf balls.
But hey, she’d been here before and had survived. All she had to do was keep one foot in front of the other and push through. So she swiped at her face and eyed her reflection in the rearview mirror. “Since when do you let anyone get close enough to hurt you? Because that’s just plain dumb. You know better.”
She did.
But she’d somehow come to believe that she’d been on a new trajectory, where the people she was slowly letting into her life could be trusted.
Turned out the joke was on her, because both the men she loved had just gutted her.
By the time she parked in front of her grandpa’s house, the tears were gone, but she had some things to say. She stormed up the walk and lifted her hand to knock, but the door opened before she could, taking some of the wind from her sails.
Her grandpa took one look at her and sighed. “You always were a nosy little thing.”
Fine. They were going straight to the thick of it then. Suited her perfectly. “How could you not tell me?”
“Easy.”
She gasped, actually gasped, and through the pain in her heart, stared at him.
Suddenly looking far older than his years, he seemed to cave in on himself. “Look, I knew if I told you, it’d be all you’d want to talk about. And I didn’t want to talk about it. Still don’t.”
“But—”
“Jane, do you know when I made my decision about treatment? A year ago, far before you came back into my life. And back then, all I could think of was getting to see your grandma again.” He looked at her with regret shining in his eyes. “I had messed things up with you and couldn’t even imagine a scenario in which you’d ever want to see me again. I honestly thought I was done here.”
She sat down before her knees could give out, right there on the top step of his porch. “I feel like I just found you,” she said through a thick throat. “I don’t think I can bear the thought of losing you again.”
He sat on the step next to her and took her hand. “I’ll still be with you. Just like I always have been.”
Her eyes filled. “But there are treatments that can make it so you can stay with me longer.”
He was already shaking his head. “What time I have left, I want to spend laughing with you, enjoying life with you, not you coming to visit me in a sterile hospital bed. Jane, I’d rather have three incredible months with you than three long, painful, terrifying years.” He looked her right in the eyes, letting her see everything he was feeling, which was enough to bowl her over. “Can you try and understand that?”
She had to force herself to really hear his words. To process what he was saying. She had to ask herself . . . if he hadn’t been her grandpa, if he’d been one of her patients, how would she feel?
If she was being brutally honest, she’d agree with him.
And something else. Levi had said no one was pushing her away this time, she’d done that all on her own. And he was right, painfully so. There would always be another job. There wouldn’t be another grandpa, not for her. “I’ll be here,” she said fiercely, clinging to her grandpa’s hand. “I’ll be here with you no matter what.”
The tension drained from his shoulders and he leaned in and kissed her cheek. “Thank you,” he said with such meaning, her heart squeezed.
And in that moment, she realized that Levi hadn’t been trying to be cruel or to underplay the seriousness of her grandpa’s situation or her reaction to it. He’d simply been attempting to help her understand what her grandpa wanted, from the point of view of a man who himself had never been fully understood by his own family.
This is real for me . . .