Always (Spiral of Bliss #5) by Nina Lane Page A

looking. We’re going to build Lego towers with Nicholas and paint pictures with Bella. We’re going to live exactly the way we always do because nothing…
nothing
… will ever change the fact that we’re a family with an incredibly blessed life to live. And that’s what
we
are going to keep doing.”
    Liv looks at me for a long minute. The tightness in my throat eases a little. I brush my thumb against her lips.
    “I love you,” she whispers.
    “I love you, beauty.” My voice cracks. “With everything I am. With so much more than I am.”
    Tears flood her eyes, a deluge she’s been fighting all day. A sob breaks from her throat—a strangled noise that scrapes me raw with pain. Liv grips my shirt, twisting the cotton in her fists. Her cheeks and neck dampen with an onslaught of tears that seems endless.
    I sink to the floor, pulling her against me. Rage trembles in my blood, the violent start of an earthquake. I smother it, focusing on my wife in my arms, the scent of her hair, the press of her cheek against my chest.
    I wrap myself around her, locking her against me with all my strength, as if I can stop this horror, protect her from it,
make it go away
. She’s shaking so hard. Tremors rack her body. Her anguished sobs twist inside me, cracking me apart.
    I don’t often ask for things. I know how much I’ve been given. I know how fortunate I am. I know I don’t deserve more.
    But
she
does.
    This is Liv. The woman whose heart is made of everything good. The woman who believes in the power of cupcakes and the importance of lists. The woman who has the purity of a snowflake and the strength of steel.
    Not her. Please not her. Not my beautiful, perfect Liv.
    Please.
    A sinister territory stretches in front of us. A land of monsters.
    How do I fight? What are my weapons? How do I protect her?
    I hold my wife tighter than I ever have before.

CHAPTER NINE

     
     
     
    OLIVIA
     
     
    November 28
     
    I DON’T SAY THE WORD ALOUD, not even to Dean. It festers in my brain like an infection, something slimy, stinking, rotten. It’s puke-green and an ugly, yellowish brown like a fetid swamp.
    I try to block it, not to let it slither into all the other thoughts running through my mind—
Should I make a peanut butter or turkey sandwich for Nicholas’s lunch? Should I put green or blue hair ties on Bella’s braids? I need to stop by the grocery store before work. Nicholas has soccer this afternoon.
    The mundane thoughts are soothing, welcome, but
it
still lingers in the background, watching me with cold, unblinking eyes. Waiting.
    I try to focus on practicality, the things that need to be done, both in our everyday lives and in this new, freakishly horrifying world in which we’ve found ourselves.
    I get through the next few days by reminding myself to breathe and telling myself everything I’m doing.
Now I need to pick out Bella’s clothes. Now I’m helping Nicholas brush his teeth. Now I’m taking orders for a Mad Hatter tea party. Now I’m boxing up a dozen chocolate cupcakes.
    Only once during my shift at the café do I have to lock myself in the office when an onslaught of tears hits me too fast to stop. At home, I’m able to keep my fear and pain suppressed until nighttime, when I fall against Dean and let myself cry until my throat is raw and I’m exhausted enough to sleep.
    I suspect mornings will continue to be especially awful, as I pull myself out of sleep with the vague sense that I’ve just had a dreadful nightmare… and then I remember the nightmare is real.
    The nightmare is inside my body.
    It’s such an insane thought. I don’t look sick. I certainly don’t feel sick. Just the opposite, in fact. Half the time, I think the diagnosis is some horrible mistake. The pathologist read the samples wrong. Any minute Dr. Nolan will call and tell me it’s really just a benign tumor, nothing to worry about, nothing at all.
    Except that she doesn’t.
    Instead she calls to tell me what my next