CHAPTER NINE
Justin woke the next morning alone in Taylor’s bed. He’d much rather have had her in his arms, but she had a job to do, one that included feeding her guests.
He put on his jeans and T-shirt, then went looking for her. He found her in the kitchen with little Sophia and Addison sitting on stools stuffing fresh blueberry muffins into their mouths. Grinning like a fool, he went to say good morning and give her a kiss, but she sidestepped him at the last second. And she barely smiled back.
“I just pulled the muffins out of the oven if you want one.”
Trying to convince himself that her voice didn’t sound stilted—and that even if it did, it was only natural for things to be a little awkward between them this morning, at least until they had a chance to talk—he grabbed a muffin. But he wasn’t hungry anymore…and wouldn’t be until he made absolutely sure that last night had been just as good for Taylor as it had been for him. Especially now that in the light of day, he couldn’t help but rewind back to that moment in the tub when it seemed as though she hadn’t wanted the two of them to talk about anything more than sex. He’d chalked it up to her being as physically hungry for him as he was for her.
Had he been wrong?
He’d been so sure that last night had solidified their connection on every level, from friendship to love and everything in between. But he’d made that mistake once before, after their kiss in college—the kiss that had torn their friendship to shreds.
No, he thought with a firm shake of his head. Things were different now. They hadn’t been drunk last night. She didn’t have a boyfriend. And they weren’t kids anymore. They were adults who knew their own minds and hearts. She wouldn’t have slept with him, wouldn’t have given herself to him so openly, so fully, if she hadn’t wanted to love him the way he wanted to love her.
No amount of reasoning with himself could stop him from wanting to pull her out of the kitchen and make sure everything was okay. But he knew better than to take her away from her job, of course.
Frustration rode him as Sophia and Addison’s parents walked in. “We can get the little ones out of here if they’re disturbing you,” Katie Belmont said to Taylor, giving Justin a smile that he only barely managed to return.
“I love the kids keeping me company while I make breakfast,” Taylor replied with a smile. One that was a million times bigger than the one she’d given him a few minutes ago. “You’ve been really helpful, haven’t you?” she said to the children.
“We have!” Sophia pointed to a couple of messy piles of chocolate chips, which were slightly smeared, as though someone had licked them before putting them down. “Taylor needed us to measure the chocolate chips for cookies,” she told her mother in a voice full of proud importance.
Justin made a mental note not to eat that batch of cookies, even as he appreciated Taylor’s willingness to let her young guests help. His mother had been the same way when Justin and his siblings were little. She’d never been upset by dropped bags of flour or broken eggs. On the contrary, she made them all laugh even more whenever they made messy mistakes. And she never, ever called them mistakes.
Now, he refused to call his night with Taylor a mistake. No matter what was going on inside her head today, he knew with utter certainty that making love had been right. For both of them.
Last night, he’d finally let loose his desire for her. This morning, he would do the same with words of love. Words that he hoped would wipe away any regret she might be feeling.
“How was your night?” Taylor asked her guests.
“Really great,” Brent Belmont replied. “Your restaurant suggestions have been spot-on.”
“And we loved walking through town after dinner,” his wife added.
“And the ice cream was awesome!” Addison rubbed his tummy. “Can we go back today?”
“You bet,” said his mother with a grin before turning back to Taylor. “What about you? How was your evening? I hope you didn’t work too hard.”
Taylor’s cheeks immediately flushed a deep rose. Just the way they had when Justin had been stroking her skin, pressing kisses along the swell of her breasts, and driving her to climax with his body inside of hers.
“I didn’t work at all,” she said with a little shake of her head. She licked her lips, then added, “My night was good.”
Good?
“I had the best night of my life,” he interjected. No one had asked him, but Justin had no intention of holding in the truth.
The Belmonts’ eyebrows went up. “What did you do?” Brent asked. “Sounds like we should follow your example tonight.”
“Actually, we both just stayed right here,” Taylor replied with a laugh—one that he knew for a fact was forced—before he could say anything else. “Pizza delivery under the stars in Napa Valley,” she added with a smile. “Nothing better, right?”
Katie nodded. “Honestly, I’m not sure there is. Brent and I can’t stop looking at real estate flyers. It would be such a dream to live here.”
“It would be so lovely if you moved to St. Helena!” Taylor said, clearly excited about the idea. “We could talk more about what it’s like to live here, as opposed to being a tourist, over breakfast if you’d like. Food should be ready in about ten minutes.”
“I’m going to head out for a run,” Justin said. “Don’t wait on breakfast for me.”
His tone was brusque enough that everyone had to be wondering what his problem was. But he wouldn’t be able to sit at the table and keep a pleasant conversation going while his insides twisted up with every second that Taylor wouldn’t look him in the eye. Going for a punishing run would be the only way to keep from force-feeding the Belmont family so they’d leave him and Taylor alone to talk.
* * *
An hour later, he came back to find the breakfast table cleared and no sign of the family of four. His T-shirt was soaked—he hadn’t run that fast since he raced the mile on the track team in high school—but he headed straight for the kitchen, where he hoped to find Taylor. Alone, this time.
“Hey.” He saw her standing at the kitchen sink, still not looking at him. “Is everything okay?”
It was a tip-of-the-iceberg question. One that barely scratched the surface of what he really wanted to ask. But he didn’t want to make the mistake of freaking out completely on the morning after if it turned out that there was nothing to freak out about.
“I don’t know if it is,” she replied in a soft voice.
He’d always appreciated her honesty. She never answered a question unless she was certain about it. This morning, though, her honesty was a punch straight to his gut.
“Talk to me.” He shut off the faucet and grabbed her wet hands, turning her to face him. “Last night seemed perfect. But if it was just that way for me, and not for you, you need to tell me.”
“It was perfect,” she said, her words spoken in such an intense voice that he knew she meant it. Only, instead of looking overjoyed about it, she pressed her lips together. “But—”
“You don’t have to worry,” he said. “I know I was a player in college, but that was only because I couldn’t have you. Now that we’re together, I don’t want anyone else. I’ve never wanted anyone but you.”
“You can’t want me.” She looked utterly panicked as she yanked her hands from his. “We can’t be together.”
Again, he was ready to counter her worries. “I know we’ll have to deal with the long-distance stuff for a while, but I won’t be in Germany forever. I was thinking it probably won’t be too hard to open a lab here and find scientists who would be more than happy to live in the wine country.”
“That’s not it.” She looked pale again, the same shade she’d been when she collapsed on the stairs.
“Are you feeling sick?” He practically carried her over to the stools the kids had been sitting on earlier. Was she coming down with the flu? He hated seeing her unwell, but at least that would explain why she was acting so strangely this morning.
Instead of answering him, she said, “I can’t give you what you need.”
He grabbed her hands again. “You always have, Taylor. Right from the first moment we met, I knew.” Her eyes were glassy with tears about to fall. “Talk to me. Tell me what’s wrong. You don’t have to hide anything from me. You never have. Whatever it is, I can take it.” Even if she told him that making love last night had been a mistake, that she didn’t love him, he’d somehow listen, somehow deal with the enormous blow without screwing up their friendship again.
She stared into his eyes, unspeaking, for a long moment. He saw love, he swore it. So if that wasn’t the problem, then what was?
Finally, she spoke. “I have a rare, fast-moving type of polycystic kidney disease.”
* * *
“How the hell can you have PKD when neither of your parents have it?” Justin’s voice boomed through the kitchen, so loudly that it might have shaken the windows had Taylor not recently replaced them with double panes.
Taylor wasn’t surprised by his response. It was the same one she’d had—straight-up, hard-headed, science-based denial. She’d even tried to argue with the doctor. Which was when he’d given her a comprehensive tour of autosomal recessive polycystic kidney disease and then walked her through every detail of her lab results to show her how she fit all the markers. He’d encouraged her to get a second opinion, and by the time the second set of lab results came in, she’d had to accept the truth.
“With autosomal recessive PKD,” she said, “both parents can be carriers and pass it on to their children without ever having it themselves.” Knowing Justin was one of the few people who would understand what she was talking about, she further explained, “It’s associated with a group of congenital fibrocystic syndromes. Mutations in the PKHD1 cause ARPKD. Normally, it’s diagnosed during infancy or early childhood. But in some rare cases, it isn’t detected until much later in life. We read about it in our Human Anatomy and Physiology textbook.”
“I don’t give a damn about what it said in our textbook!”
Her heart felt like it would break into a million pieces from the utter devastation on his face.
“All I care about is you,” he said. “How many doctors have you seen?”
“Too many.” With many, many more on the horizon, unfortunately.
“There’s still a chance they’re wrong.”
“No, there isn’t.” She couldn’t allow him any false hope. “I’ve been through my lab results a million times. My doctors are right. And actually,” she forced herself to say, “I’m lucky they found it before things got really bad.”
“Lucky?” He swore, a vicious rip of words. Oddly, it actually helped her to hear them. They were all the same words that she wanted to scream herself, but hadn’t because she’d been so busy trying to hold it together for her parents. And she’d had to keep a clear head as she’d made plans to open her B&B.
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me? And don’t say it’s because I was too busy with my lab research. I should have been here right after you got the diagnosis to help you deal with it, any way I could.”
“I know you would have jumped on the next plane and been here.” She would have done the same for him, and the truth was that she felt ashamed for keeping it from him this long. But she didn’t want to make excuses, not to the one person who mattered most. Which meant she needed to admit the truth instead. “Telling people makes it real.” All of the light that their lovemaking had filled her with the night before—bright, wonderful warmth that she’d need to cling to in the future—felt as though it was draining away, letting the darkness back in. “So much more real than I want it to be. I know that sounds weak—”
“Not weak. Human.” He stopped his furious pacing and moved to her side, putting his arms around her. “I understand why you didn’t tell me before, but I’m going to be really upset if you keep anything else from me. And I won’t let you use your diagnosis to push me away either.”
She shook her head against his chest. “That’s not what I’m doing.”
“Like hell it isn’t.”
He was clearly furious and had every right to his feelings. But so did she.
“You’ve lost enough already.” She wanted to take the comfort he offered and wrap herself up in it. But she loved him too much to take anything more from him than he’d already given when his mother was sick. She’d do whatever it took to protect him from more pain. Even if it meant giving up his love. “I can’t stand the thought of being one more thing you lose.”
“You won’t be.”
She’d seen the way he’d reacted when she said, You’ve lost enough already. He’d been unable to hold back his grief at losing his mother, the lingering pain that he’d told her felt like a two-by-four across his chest.
His father had been destroyed by his mother’s death. Justin had always said he wouldn’t wish that kind of pain on his worst enemy. Neither would she.
“Of course, I hope I have a really long, full life,” she said in a soft voice. “But neither of us can get away with trying to ignore the scientific facts. And the fact is that without a transplant—or even with one—I can’t guarantee anything.”
“Love doesn’t come with guarantees,” he insisted. “I love you, and I know you love me too.”
“I do.” More than anything else, she realized she needed him to know that, even if it didn’t mean they could be together. “I love you, Justin. I’ve always loved you.”
“Then let me be with you. As more than a friend. Let me help you figure this out, as a team, as your partner.”
“No.” She forced herself out of his arms. “I already told you—I won’t let you go down this road again. Because if the worst happens—”
“Goddammit, Taylor! I won’t let that happen.”
She knew he would move heaven and earth for her if he could. But it had taken him six long years to even begin to climb out of his grief over losing his mother.
“Please.” She didn’t want to cry, but she couldn’t stop the tears from coming. “I don’t want to fight. Not with you. Not with my best friend, especially when I haven’t gotten to be with you for so long.”
He tugged her tightly into his arms, and she buried her face in his neck, breathing him in. “I don’t want to fight either,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean I’m giving up.”
She knew he wouldn’t back down easily. It was one of the things she loved most about him—that he always fought for what he believed in. No matter how hard, no matter how long the fight.
If only they weren’t fighting on opposite sides.
There was a knock on the kitchen door. “Taylor, it’s Angie,” her friend called from the other side. “I hope I’m not interrupting. I just wanted to bring by the new goat’s milk and cheddar cheeses you asked for. Do you want me to leave them in the dining room for you?”
Taylor quickly wiped the wetness from her cheeks and made herself move out of Justin’s arms. “Come on in, Angie. This is my friend Justin. He’s visiting for a few days.”
For a moment, she was certain that he would correct her. She wasn’t sure which part he’d jump on first—that she’d called him her friend rather than boyfriend, or that he was going to be around for only a few days.
Fortunately, he simply shook Angie’s hand. “Sorry to say hello and run, but I should get into the shower. Taylor and I have a big day ahead of us, and I don’t want to waste any of it.”
She already knew exactly the form their big day was going to take. He was going to keep trying to convince her that they should be together, her disease be damned, and she was going to have to keep resisting the one thing she wanted most in the world.
The worst part of it all, though? That even going around and around on such a difficult subject with him would be better than anything she could do with anyone else. Even when things were bad with Justin, they were good.
That’s what a goner she was, and had always been, when it came to her best friend.
“He’s cute,” Angie said after he left the kitchen. “Just friends, you say?”
Taylor met Angie at a local business owners’ networking event last month and was thrilled to have made a friend so quickly. But the last thing she was up to this morning was dishing about her endless crush on Justin.
“It’s complicated.”
“Good complicated or bad complicated?”
“Both.”
“If you need to talk, you know where I am.”
“Thanks, Angie. I may need to do just that in a few days.” After Justin went back to Germany, something Taylor couldn’t even think about without feeling as though her heart would break.
But she refused to let herself get weepy. The sun was shining. The flowers were blooming. And she’d just had a night of unforgettably great sex with her best friend. For now, that was enough to keep a smile on her face.
It had to be.