Fool for Love (20 page)

They shared a laugh, but Janey's smile
faded when David strolled into the yard.

"What's he doing here?" Big Mac
asked, scowling again.

"Good question." Janey squeezed
her father's arm and went to stop David from progressing into the party.

"What do you think you're doing?"

"I need to see you, Janey."

In the faint twilight, she could see that
his bruises had turned yellow overnight, and his face was even more swollen than
it had been the day before. And was that alcohol she smelled on him? "You
have no business here, David. This is my brother's home, and I'm asking you to
leave."

"Not until I talk to you."

"I'm not talking to you. Not now, not
ever." Even though her back was to the party, Janey sensed her father and
brother approaching them. "Please leave."

"You are so full of it, you know
that?" he hissed, staggering as he closed the distance between them.
"I saw you, too."

"What are you talking about?"
she asked, as a twinge of fear trickled down her spine.

"You and
Joe
. How long has he
been keeping you warm at night while I was in Boston?"

Janey heard her father and Mac gasp but
didn't take her eyes off David. "Joe is my
friend
. You know
that."

"Friend with
benefits
."

"Believe whatever you want. I'm
done." She started to walk away, but he grabbed her arm.

"You're making me feel like shit when
you're doing the same thing! No wonder why he hit me. He's always wanted you
for himself! I'm sure he was more than happy to pick up the pieces of Janey's
poor shattered heart."

Janey saw red, and somewhere deep inside,
a switch was flipped. "So what? You're the only one who's allowed to have
cheap, meaningless sex?" The instant the words were out of her mouth, she
regretted them.

More gasps sounded from behind her, but
one was different. One sounded an awful lot like… Janey broke free of David's
grasp and spun around to find Joe staring at her, shock all but reverberating
off him.

He turned and disappeared into the
darkness.

"Joe!" Janey cried, intending to
go after him.

As Mac followed his friend, David grabbed
her arm again. "Janey, wait!"

She all but growled at him. "Let me
go.
Now!
"

"I have cancer."

The world seemed to tilt on its axis as
she stared at him. Later she would be ashamed that her first thought was that
he would literally say anything to get her back.

Joe wanted to run as far away as he could get. Nothing in his life had ever
hurt more than hearing Janey refer to what they'd shared as cheap and
meaningless, even though he was fairly certain she didn't think of it that way.
David had pushed her buttons, and she'd pushed back. But damn if those words
hadn't hit Joe right where he lived.

"Joe! Wait!"

God, could this get any worse? Now he had
to face Mac, too?

"Joe!"

Hands on hips, jaw set with tension, Joe
turned, preparing himself for anything from a fist to the face to yet another
arrow to the heart. "What do you want, Mac?"

"Is it true?"

Joe stared at his oldest friend and
couldn't lie to him. He just couldn't. "Yes, but it was neither cheap nor
meaningless."

Mac raised his hands, and for a second,
Joe thought Mac was going to hit him. But instead Mac gripped his hair, as if
he was trying to occupy his hands so he wouldn't punch Joe.
"Since
when?"

"Since the night she caught David
with someone else."

"Are you
serious
? The
same
day
? You told me I could trust you. 'Who better than me?' That's what you
said!"

"It was entirely and completely
consensual, Mac."

"She was crushed! Devastated! How
could you take advantage of her like that?"

"I did
not
take advantage of
her. I love her. You know I do."

"God, Joe, I can't
believe
this! Why didn't you tell me?"

Joe snorted. "Right. So you could
accuse me of taking advantage of her? So you could freak out and run me out of
your life right before I'm supposed to be the best man in your wedding? None of
us thought that was a good idea."

"None of who?"

Oh, shit
. "Janey and me."

"And who else?"

"No one."

"Who else?"

Joe sighed. "Maddie."

Mac recoiled in shock. "No way she knew
this and kept it from me."

"Janey confided in her, but she
didn't want to upset you any more than we did. We all knew how you'd see this,
and it didn't happen the way you think."

"Great, so you all conspired to keep
me in the dark."

"It wasn't like that. We were going
to tell you after the wedding."

Shaking his head, Mac looked down at the
ground. "Three of the people I'm closest to in the world decided to keep
something this big from me. I have no idea how I'm supposed to take that."

"We were thinking about you."

"Were you? While you were screwing my
devastated baby sister, were you really thinking of me?"

"That's not fair. It wasn't like
that." Although after hearing Janey's description of what had transpired
between them, he had cause to wonder.

"I can't believe this."

"To be honest, it's really none of
your business."

"
None of my business?
She's my
sister!
It's absolutely my business! And you know that, which is why you
didn't tell me."

"She's also a full-grown adult, in
case you haven't noticed."

"She'll
always
be my baby
sister."

As Mac growled those words, the first of
the fireworks exploded overhead.

"I'm going," Joe said. "If
you're still interested, I'll see you at the bachelor party tomorrow
night." Without giving Mac a chance to reply, Joe turned and walked away,
hoping he could grab a cab back to town. Whatever it took to get the hell out
of there.

Janey had never been more torn in her life. As the fireworks lit up the night
sky, she dodged her concerned parents and loaded David, half drunk and sobbing,
into her car to drive him to his mother's house. All she could think about was
the look of utter shock on Joe's face when he'd heard her call what they'd
shared cheap and meaningless. He had to know she didn't really think that,
didn't he?

She wanted to go after to him, to tell him
she'd just been reacting to David, that she didn't mean it. But first she had
to deal with David and the bomb he'd dropped on her.

 "I'm sorry," he said as
they drove away from Mac's. "I should've told you sooner. I know that, but
it all happened so fast."

"How long have you known?"

"A month."

Janey gasped and looked over at him,
wondering if she'd ever really known him. "And you didn't think your
fiancée needed to know you have
cancer
?"

"There was never a good time to tell
you. I didn't want to just call you out of the blue and drop it on you."

"Instead, you kept it from me. Were
you hoping I wouldn't find out?"

"I was going to tell you, but I
wanted to see how I responded to the first round of chemo."

"You've had chemo."

"Yes."

"Jesus, David."

"It's Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Stage
two. After I had strep last year, I had a raised node in my neck that never
went away. I finally got around to getting it checked, and voila. Cancer. But
the prognosis is pretty good. The chemo seems to be working, but I feel like
total shit."

As Janey tried to process what he was
telling her, she felt strangely removed, as if none of this was happening to
her. Only a few weeks ago, this news would have devastated her. It was further
proof of just how separate their lives had become during the long years they'd
spent apart. That he could keep something of this magnitude from her while they
were engaged told her a lot about what kind of husband he might have been.

"I need you, Janey." He reached
for her hand and held it between both of his. "I can't go through this
without you."

She tugged her hand free. "That is so
incredibly unfair! You keep this from me for weeks, you sleep with someone else
and then you
still
expect me to support you?"

"I love you, Janey. That hasn't
changed."

Her eyes flooded with tears, making it
difficult to see, so she pulled the car off the road and turned to him.
"I'm not in love with you anymore. I'm sorry if that hurts you, but it's
the truth. I don't want you to be sick, and I hate that you have to go through
this, but it doesn't change how I feel."

"We can get through it together, like
we've gotten through everything."

She shook her head. "I can't. You
have your mother, your sisters, your friends. You won't be alone."

"Janey, please. I'm begging you.
You're
the one I need. You can't do this to me in the midst of everything else I'm
dealing with right now. I even had to take a leave from my internship while I'm
in treatment."

"You should've thought about how much
you needed me before you slept with someone else."

"She means nothing to me! She's an
oncology nurse who I met during my treatment. It was a one-time thing. I was
scared and freaked out. It was comfort. That's all."

Surely, Janey thought, her head would
explode any minute. "I need you to listen to me. Can you do that?"

His eyes bright with new tears, he nodded.

"I loved you so much. There was
absolutely nothing I wouldn't have done for you. I gave up my dreams of being a
vet to accommodate you. I waited for you. I was faithful to you—always."

"Until recently," he muttered.

"I never went near another man until
I saw you screwing a big-breasted blonde!"

"Janey—"

"Wait, I'm not finished. Anything and
everything I ever felt for you died the minute I saw you with her. And now I
find out that you've had this huge thing going on in your life and never saw
fit to tell me. I should've been your first phone call, David. I should've been
there when you got the diagnosis. I should've been there when you settled on a
treatment plan and when you decided to take a leave of absence. That's what
people in committed relationships do—they include each other in big decisions.
But I was denied all that because you chose to keep me in the dark—about this
and God knows what else."

"I didn't mean to."

"The minute you chose not to pick up
the phone and tell me you were being tested for cancer is the minute you made a
decision about our entire relationship. The minute you decided to bring that
woman home to
our
bed, you made another decision. I suspect you've
probably made a few others I don't know about. Either way, this isn't how I
want to live."

"I'll make it up to you. This is just
a bump in the road, honey. I've learned a valuable lesson, and it won't happen
again. I promise you that. You were right all along. You should've moved to
Boston to live with me while I was in school. If we'd done that, none of this
would be happening now."

"Or it might've happened a lot
sooner."

"I don't believe that."

"Here's what I think happened—we got
complacent. We went along for years on autopilot and began to take each other
for granted."

"That's not true!"

"If it wasn't true, David, you never
would've felt the need to sleep with someone else."

He shook his head. "I never took you
for granted."

"Yes, you did. And I did the same. We
assumed our relationship would be fine even if we never put any real effort
into it."

"How can you say we didn't put effort
into it when we were together for thirteen years?"

"Can I ask you something? And will
you tell me the swear-to-God truth?"

"Yeah."

"Swear to God?"

"Yes!"

"When you … had sex … with her, was
it better? Than it was with me?"

"You can't ask me that!"

"I just did, and you swore you'd tell
me the truth."

"I'm not going to talk to you about
that."

"You just answered my question,"
Janey said softly.

"How?"

"If it wasn't better, you would've
said so."

"Now you're just playing games with
me."

"No, I'm not," she said.
"It's over, David. We both know it, so let's not make a mockery of all we
shared in the past by hanging on to something that died a long time ago. It's
too bad we both refused to see that. We could've saved ourselves a lot of
trouble."