Page 20 of While I’m Still Here

Fuck knows.

My eyes close. “I don't want to waste whatever time I have,” she whispers.

The sentence fucking guts me. So I turn my head until my nose brushes hers. “Then don't.”

“What if I only have a year?”

“Then we'll make it a fucking good year.”

“Five?”

“Even better.”

“Fifty?”

I smile. “I'm going to be absolutely knackered.”

She laughs, and this close I feel it against my mouth.

Then I kiss her.

Because I've spent seven years waiting for the right time, and today she discovered that time isn't something any of us get to count on. And because if Beatrice James wants to live every inch of whatever life she has ahead of her, I want that for her too.

Even the parts that might not belong to me.

I don't know that yet, of course.

I only know that I love her.

She tastes like cheap wine and soy sauce, and I don't care.

Seven years of wanting this. Seven years of cataloguing every eye roll, every sarcastic comment, every time she touched my arm in a way that lingered a second too long. And now her lips are on mine, and her fingers are twisted in my shirt, and she makes this small sound against my mouth that I feel in my sternum.

I break away first. Only because I need oxygen. Only because I need to remember where I am.

Her eyes are still closed. Her lips are parted. And for a second, she looks like she's waiting for something else. Something more. Like she's afraid that if she opens her eyes, this will have been a dream or a mistake or just another thing cancer has stolen.

I press my forehead to hers. "Still here."

She exhales. It trembles. "Good."

My hand is still on her face, my thumb tracing the edge of her jaw. She turns into the touch like she's starved for it, and that simple movement unravels something in my chest that I didn't know was knotted.

"Bea."

She opens her eyes then. Green and glassy and so close I can see the tiny gold flecks near her pupils. I want to tell her things. Huge, impossible things. But the words get stuck somewhere between my heart and my throat, and all that comes out is her name again.

"Colin." She says it like an answer. Like I've asked her something.

Her hand finds the back of my neck. Not pulling. Just holding. Just anchoring herself to me while her other hand rests against my chest, fingers spread over the place where my heart is doing its best to break through my ribs.

"Are you scared?" she whispers.

"Terrified."

"Good. Me too."

Somehow, that’s the most honest thing either of us has said since I showed up at my door with a bottle of wine and got the kind of news that rearranges every future you've ever imagined.