For the next few minutes she unpacks everything the doctor told her and all that she’s learned on her own.

“So it’s not cancer?” I ask.

“There is some myeloma present,” she answers. “But it’s small compared to the big picture, the bigger problem. Amyloidosis often coexists with myeloma, but it’s the one you never get rid of.”

“So it’s incurable?” I ask, tucking a chunk of hair behind her ear.

“Incurable, yes,” she says. “But a lot of people are living with it for a long time. Stanford has this video on their site of a man, a doctor, whose condition was advanced, but he’s still alive five years after his diagnosis. Sky diving, performing surgery, living a full life.”

“Stanford? Is that where Zo will receive his treatments?”

She lowers her lashes and scoots off my lap, standing and facing me, hands shoved into her back pockets.

“Yeah, he has to live close to Stanford’s Amyloid Center.” She looks at me, shoulders tense and body held stiffly. “I already found a townhouse really close by. The chemo is slated for three months, so we’ll stay there while he receives treatment.”

She and I stare at each other, letting those words sink in. Words she knew would infuriate me.

“We?” I ask unnecessarily. “You’ll be living with him in Palo Alto for the next three months? Did I hear you right?”

“You did.” Defiance sparks in her eyes. “He has no one, Jared. His family, they’re all gone. He won’t be able to drive himself. Cook for himself. At some point, maybe even bathe himself.”

“Wrong thing to say.” I stand up to pace in front of the couch, driving impatient fingers through my hair. “You bathing Zo is not exactly winning me over to this idea.”

“I don’t have to win you over to it,” she says, gentle, firm. “It has to be this way. You know that.”

She touches my arm and waits for me to look down into the compassion filling her eyes.

“You know me, Jared. You know I would never let him do this alone.”

I cover her hand on my arm and nod my understanding. I mean, come on. The guy is dying. Even I can’t begrudge him that.

“Okay. So you’ll be at Stanford for three months.” I take her hand and pull her into me. “I get that. I don’t like it, but of course I get it. When will we see each other?”

She draws a deep breath, loosens her fingers, and steps back.

“At first Zo was angry with me.” She shakes her head and gnaws on her bottom lip. “Of course he was after what I did.”

“Banner, when will we see each other?” I repeat, ignoring her detour.

“And he didn’t want me there,” she continues. “I literally had to use his contract and force him to let me stay.”

I don’t respond but fold my arms and wait for something I know I won’t like.

“After we got the diagnosis and it was obvious how serious this is,” she says. “Things changed. He knew he needed my help, and he knows I’ll do everything I can to get him all that he needs. He said he would allow me to help him on one condition.”

“A condition?” I squeeze the bridge of my nose. “And what would that be?”

“I have to put things on hold,” she says, her voice soft but steely. “Things with you on hold. Well, he doesn’t know it’s you, but he—”

“The fuck?” The expletive explodes from me before I think to check it. “He can’t make you do that.”

“He’s not making me,” she says, her voice controlled but quaking. “Jared, please don’t make this any harder for me than it already is.”

“Why?” I demand harshly. “Why do you think he made that his one condition, Banner? Don’t you see he wants you back?”

“Yes.” She looks at me unblinkingly. “He told me that.”

“Oh, he did? What exactly did he say?”

“He said he wants to fight for me, but he has to fight for his life right now and he can’t do both.”

Motherfucker. What am I supposed to do with that?

“He said that he wants a fair fight.” She releases a heavy breath. “And an even playing field, and he can’t have that while he’s sick.”

She already knows this is some shit.

“And I’m supposed to sit by patiently and wait while you live with him for the next three months?” I ask, swallowing down my rage and frustration. Struggling to appear reasonable. “That’s how you see this happening?”

She runs a shaking hand over the hair I loosened when we kissed.

“I can’t ask you to wait for me, Jared,” she says wearily. “I know that. I understand it’s a long time and you have . . . needs. I get that and wouldn’t blame you for saying we’re done. For finding someone else.”

Finding someone else? The hell?

What she doesn’t seem to realize is there isn’t anyone else. I’ve tried all the “someone elses” and none of them simultaneously drive me wild and settle me inside the way Banner does.

“I didn’t mean that I would find someone else.” I hold her chin between two fingers and palm the curve of her waist. “I meant we’ll see how long you last without me.”

A slow smile dawns on her face with her realization, but it’s a sun that sets before it fully rises. She frowns up at me and shakes her head.

“I won’t lie to him,” she says. “And I won’t cheat. He specifically said we aren’t to sleep together.”

I don’t have enough curse words for some son of a bitch, cancer or no cancer, telling me when I can or cannot fuck my girl. I don’t care if I did steal her from him. Mine now. And I know how to keep her.

I hope.

“He specified that, did he?” I ask. “You know, I thought we were supposed to be the negotiators and the master strategists. Seems like Zo knows exactly how to get what he wants.”

I press my palms over the curve of her ass, pressing until her breasts are crushed against my chest and she moans, dropping her head to my shoulder. If this is going to be torment for me, it’s sure as hell going to be torment for her, too.

“The problem is,” I whisper in her ear, as if we aren’t the only ones here. As if we’re nurturing a secret between our bodies and souls. “He wants something he can’t have. And he can delay it for three months, but it won’t make any difference.”

“It won’t?” She pants the words as I grind my erection into her belly. I want her wet and horny for me flying with him to their new townhouse in fucking Palo Alto.

“No.” I squeeze each cheek, loving that my hands can’t hold all that ass. “Because this ass is mine.”

My beautiful, brilliant girl with her Julia Roberts lips and her lush ass. He thinks he can take her from me?

“I want you to do something for me, Ban.” I feather kisses down her neck, and she tilts her head, baring her throat to me.

“What?” She’s heavy-lidded, and if I slipped my fingers into her pants she’d be soaked. My mouth waters, remembering those sweet juices flooding my mouth when she comes.

“Tonight in your new bed across the hall from Zo, or wherever it is,” I say, my voice husky, needy. “I want you to touch yourself.”

Her breath catches and she leans into me, cupping my neck with her cool palm.

“Touch yourself and think about me,” I urge, taking her earlobe between my teeth. “I want you to slip your fingers in and think about how it’s not enough. How it’s not me.”

“Jared,” she gasps, her breath hitching.

“Think about how my mouth looked on your pussy. My head between your legs. Remember when you were on your knees under that table, choking on my dick.”

“God, Jared.” She shakes her head, her fingers trembling when she presses them to my chest. “This is already hard.”

“Did you say hard?” I grab her hand and press it to the crotch of my suit pants. “This is how I’ll be for the next three months.”

I pull back to look in her eyes and run my thumb over her full lips.

“Waiting for you.”

She tucks into my arms, her head on my chest, and I stroke her hair. We stay that way for the last few minutes we have together, before she has to go meet him, help him, be with him. Neither of us says that word, but if there’s another word for the way I feel when she’s close, for the way I miss her when she leaves, for the raging fear that someone would take her from me, then I don’t know what it is.

It’s only after she’s gone and I’m back in the conference room, like the most important person in my life didn’t just traipse off to be at another man’s side, that I realize what has happened. It’s an irony that tilts my mouth into a smile of grudging respect.

I have to reassess my opponent. Zo may be dying, and who knows, he may only have a year or two left to live, but he is not done yet. And he may be a good man, but he is not above leveraging even the worst circumstances in his life to get what he wants.

That I can respect. He did something very few men have gotten away with.

Son of a bitch blocked my shot.

Part III

i cannot love you gently,

it’s not in me

to love in part,

so I will love You

completely,

and a little madly . . .

– Matt Spencer, Poet

33

Banner

When you walk through hell with someone, you burn, too.

The flames don’t respect your privacy, your boundaries. They consume your time, torch your dignity, and turn your peace of mind to ashes. The last six weeks here in Palo Alto have been the most difficult of my life. I feel bad even saying that because compared to what Zo is enduring, I have nothing to complain about.

I cannot imagine him navigating this alone. It’s not that Zo doesn’t have friends. He does, many, but he’s such a private man. Such a proud man, and this disease has stolen so much from him already. He hates that I see him this weak, much less that anyone else would.