I opened my mouth again but Emilia, recognizing that I was about to push the issue, interrupted. “Adam…”
I stepped back and took a deep breath. Emilia thanked the doctor and said goodbye. She then sat up in the bed and slowly slid off, walking to me.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “You’re exhausted.”
“I don’t like this,” I said, running a hand through my hair.
She slipped her arms around my waist and snuggled against me. “It will be okay. Can you take me home, please?”
So I waited while she changed into the clothes that my housekeeper had dropped off for her. Heath drove us back to the house and I tried to disguise how utterly terrified I was. As long as she was undergoing therapy, we were doing something. The cancer was actively being fought.
But now, we just had to wait and hope that it had been enough. The feeling of uncertainty was enough to gut me. But never, not in a million years, would I ever let Emilia see that.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Mia
“I can help you with one of those, you know,” Adam said the next morning after we’d awoken and were lying in bed, talking. At my request he’d come to sleep beside me again. It had taken no effort at all to coax him. I think he was determined to keep an eye on me after the scare of the night before.
But after we’d slept in, both exhausted from little to no sleep the night before, I’d found the open notebook on my nightstand and had been looking over the list he’d scrawled down. Adam’s writing was usually very even and neat, so the fact that I could barely read this spoke of the duress he’d been under when, apparently, I’d grabbed on to him and insisted he write down my bucket list.
“What did you have in mind to help me with? Sixty-nine or the sex in public?”
His mouth twisted. “Neither one of those. I was thinking the tango.”
I checked out the top of the list. Number one, as a matter of fact. I wanted to dance the tango? I guess I had thought about it before but it seemed an odd thing to put first.
“Don’t tell me you know how to dance the tango, too…”
“I was my cousin Britt’s practice partner by coercion. It wasn’t just for the foxtrot.”
“Mmm. Maybe you can help me knock out a few of these in the next little while.” I waggled my eyebrows suggestively at him.
“Find someone else for sixty-nine.”
I laughed at him. “Oh, so you’re okay with that?”
“No. Did I say ‘find someone else’? I meant ‘cross it the hell off your list.’”
“I could find someone else. Someone into bald chicks. There’s got to be someone out there who’s got a cranial fetish.”
He looked at me, reaching up to rub his thumb along my cheekbone. “All it would take is someone with a beautiful woman fetish and there are too many out there with that…” His eyes hardened. “I found mine. They can all go find their own.”
I rewarded his sweet remark with a tight hug around the neck and he coaxed me out of bed to eat a little something. For him, I managed to chew off a corner of toast though the thought of anything more was still too much for me.
For the next few days, he insisted I stay in bed and I humored him because he was so worried about me. The rest of the gang logged in during every spare moment of that time that they could to help me work on the secret quest. We’d spent time slowly gathering the Sergeant’s allies by doing quests for them: finding the lost wedding ring for a lieutenant, sobering up an old, broken captain, busting a roguish type out of jail, and much to our surprise, going back to the beginning, to the original quest-giver, General SylvenWood. He wouldn’t leave his spot at the city gate until we planted a garden of daffodils in honor of his lost love. Once the allies were gathered, we were ready to make progress on breaching the castle.
With the help of the allies, we safely entered the tunnel while they kept the goblins at bay. And we were fortunate to make our way into the castle. We were almost at our goal, but found ourselves stuck once more.
Three days later, when I was back to feeling close to my old self again—my old “post chemo” self, anyway—it was time to teach Mia to dance the tango. I figured what the hell, I’d go with it.
“So you remember that the foxtrot is slow-slow, quick-quick—”
I shot Adam a sardonic look. “Amsterdam was over ten months ago. I don’t remember that.”
“Well, the tango is a lot like the foxtrot. Except the tango goes: slow-slow, quick-quick-slow. And it’s kind of a slide. It’s not hard to learn.”