Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 97364 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 487(@200wpm)___ 389(@250wpm)___ 325(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97364 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 487(@200wpm)___ 389(@250wpm)___ 325(@300wpm)
For a brief moment, which feels like an out-of-body experience, I think I could make it disappear if I don’t say the words. With one blink my tears fall, and I say the words anyway. “I have cancer.”
“Sorry? No …” Daniel shakes his head, brow pinched tight. “What are you talking about?”
My tears taste salty on my lips as I rub them together, drawing in a deep breath. “The off and on pain in my abdomen? The bloating? The weight I’ve lost without trying over the past six months?”
“You went to the doctors and they said it was stress or the endometriosis.”
“They missed it.”
“Sorry? They missed it?” Daniel’s head jerks back. “What the bloody hell is that supposed to mean?”
I shake my head. “They’re human. It happens.”
“What kind of cancer? They … they caught it early. Correct? You’ll go through treatment, and you’ll be fine.” His voice cracks. “Answer me.” My man who defines tall and ruggedly handsome, looks utterly broken and defeated with his eyes reddening behind his own tears, shoulders curled inward.
“It’s ovarian cancer.” I grab his hands and squeeze them. The lines along his brow deepen. “It’s terminal.”
He jerks his hands from mine, spinning around with his back to me; his hands fist his hair as he releases a growl. “FUCKING HELL!”
A numbness blankets my body. I don’t even jump when he yells. All I can feel is the soft trickle of more tears sliding down my face. I know no pain will ever compare to this moment. The victims of cancer reach far beyond those with the disease.
“Okay …” He turns back to me, his eyes wet with emotion. “We’ll fix this. Chemo, radiation, whatever it takes. Cancer is not a death sentence anymore. They’re coming out with new treatments every day.”
“Daniel—”
“Or surgery. Can’t they just remove your ovaries?”
“Daniel—”
“There has to be something, there’s always—”
“DANIEL!”
He snaps out of his incessant rambling, his pointless grasping for something that isn’t there.
“It’s terminal. I talked to an oncologist. She gave me a year tops with treatment, six months without.”
His Adam’s apple bobs, like he’s finally swallowing what I said. “A year,” he whispers, his eyes affixed to me with a blank stare.
I shake my head. “Six months.”
“Scar—”
“I’m not doing the treatment.”
His head juts forward. “Sorry? Please tell me I didn’t hear you right.”
“You heard me.”
“No.” Daniel shakes his head. “I didn’t hear you right. I didn’t hear the woman I’m going to marry imply that she has no intention of fighting this. Because that woman’s mother died of cancer. That woman watched my father die of cancer. That woman held her best friend’s hand while she battled breast cancer for three years. And you never once told my father or Sylvie that they shouldn’t have the treatment. Hell, you even took Sylvie to the hospital for her surgery. You took her to her chemo and radiation appointments. You cried over her grave, saying there should have been more we could have done for her!”
“I don’t believe in cut, poison, burn,” I whisper.
“Cut. Poison. Burn?”
I nod.
Daniel laughs—the painful, condescending kind of laugh. “You don’t believe in modern cancer treatment?”
My name is Scarlet Stone. I have 70,000 thoughts a day and they are mine. My human right. I will not be ashamed of having an opinion.
I shake my head.
His jaw drops. We’ve discussed almost everything over the years but never this. The look in his eyes is one of complete confusion, like he doesn’t recognize me.
“You have to make me understand, Scarlet, because I don’t.”
I wince, feeling ripped apart by his endless head shaking. I feel like his nightmare, one that he can bring himself out of if he shakes his head enough.
“It’s just my opinion.”
“Well, it’s wrong—completely fucked-up!”
Drawing in a deep breath, I fight for control. He’s hurt and the devastation he’s feeling is what’s coming out in his angry words. It’s not his fault.
“I would never tell you what to believe, Daniel, so please don’t tell me that my opinion is wrong. We should be allowed a few basic human rights in life: the right to decide what goes into our bodies and the right to have an opinion without feeling shamed for it.”
“Where was this ‘opinion’ when my father battled cancer or when Sylvie was dying before your eyes?”
“It was their lives, their opinions, their decisions. Not mine. They never asked my opinion.”
His sinister laugh cuts through the air again and gouges my heart. I never wanted to have this discussion with him or anyone. I wanted to take my very unpopular opinion to the grave with me.
“If you don’t do this, you’re going to die.” He grips my shoulders, his face a breath away from mine.
His reaction is fueled by pain and fear. My brain knows this but it still triggers something defensive inside of me. I yank myself out of his hold. My skin heats with anger, and I don’t want to say something I will regret, but I can’t stop the words. I feel pinned to the ground and my instinct to free myself overtakes every other emotion.