“How do I look?” I whisper.

He grimaces, rubs a thumb over my cheek like he’s trying to remove a smear. “Like I already fucked you.”

“Banner!” Mama says. “I know you are in here. I can hear you!”

Dios.

“I’m coming, Mama.”

“So I heard,” she says, accusation lacing the words.

I open the door to face my mirror image, thirty years older, several inches shorter, and forty pounds plumper. Fire and condemnation blaze in the dark eyes that flick from me to Jared.

“Who are you?” she demands.

Jared shoots me a quick glance. “I’m—”

“Not Alonzo,” she snaps. “That’s who you are. Banner, your fiancé needs you.”

“Mama, you know we are not engaged,” I say wearily. “Is he okay?”

“Oh, now you are concerned?” Her voice is a whip biting into my flesh. “Dios mío! What have I done? Where did I go wrong to raise a puta, when Alonzo deserves a queen?”

The insult stings, but I don’t let it sink all the way to my heart. I know she will regret it later. I inherited my temper from her. I’m intimately acquainted with the remorse that comes with cooler blood.

“What did she call you?” Jared asks, anger pulling his features tight. “What did you call her?”

“She is my daughter. I call her what I like.”

“Not when I’m standing right here you won’t,” Jared fires back, undeterred and unaware that my mother is a brush fire in a fight and will burn you to the ground.

“Stop it, both of you.” I press a hand to my forehead. “Zo, Mama. Is he okay?”

“He was feeling lightheaded and tired.”

Lightheaded. The memory of him unresponsive on the bedroom floor splatters across my mind, and all my fears, all the what ifs I hoped were behind us, at least for now, with the last chemo treatment, come rushing back.

“Oh, God.” I take off, jerking the hem of my dress up enough to shuffle-run from the bathroom.

I spot Zo standing a few feet away, surrounded by people who have no idea what is happening, but I know right away. The pallor of his skin. The sweat beading his brow.

“Bannini,” he mutters, eyes rolling to the back of his head. He sways like a giant redwood tree, reaching for me blindly before he falls and hits the ground.

“No!” It bellows from somewhere outside me. I can’t even place where that scream originated, even though my throat aches from the force of it. “Call 911! Now!”

I go down with him, cradling his head in my lap and counting each shallow breath. There’s usually medical emergency staff onsite at events like this. I pray I’m right.

“Zo, wake up.” I tap his cheek. “Come on. Please wake up.”

“Ma’am, we’ve got him.” A paramedic presses his way through the crowd. “What can you tell us?”

“It’s his blood pressure,” I say quickly, swiping the tears from my cheeks. “It’s dangerously low. He just finished a round of chemo. He has amyloidosis and he’s dehydrated. He needs to be flushed with fluids immediately or his organs will start shutting down. He follows a very specific protocol at Stanford’s Amyloid Center. Call ahead for his records.”

I give him the name of Zo’s hematologist, the lead doctor, and he nods as they heft Zo onto the stretcher.

“You’re his wife?”

I look up and catch Jared standing in the circle, watching with undisguised concern.

“No, his best friend.” I stand with them. “I’m coming with you.”

“Okay,” he says, the set of his mouth grim as he checks Zo’s vitals.

“I’m coming, too,” Mama says tearfully.

“Only room for one,” he tells her briskly. “We’re headed to Cedars-Sinai. You can meet us there.”

I look over my shoulder one last time at Jared. He grips the back of his neck, nodding that he understands.

“Go,” he mouths. “I love you.”

I let that sink in, soothe the ache in my heart as I prepare myself for the next few hours. But can you ever really prepare to walk through Hell?

38

Banner

The siren screams, clearing our way through LA traffic, but it still feels like we’re riding at a snail’s pace to the hospital. Anxiety wraps its fingers tightly around my throat. My breathing is as shallow as Zo’s. The words, spoken urgently between the EMS techs, garble around me.

Hypovolemic shock. IV resuscitation. Isotonic crystalloid.

None of it means anything, even though I’ve heard it all before.

“Banner,” Zo gasps. He opens his eyes briefly, but they roll like a wild horse’s. He waves a limp hand in the air, searching for something. Searching for me. “Bannini?”

I grab his hand. All my processes are delayed, shock and panic making the air thick and hot as soup.

“Sorry,” he gasps, lips tinged blue, veins bulging in his neck.

“Do something,” I scream, rivulets of hot, wet pain staining my cheeks and neck and chest. “You have to do something. He’s . . . oh, God, just . . . do . . .”

My words break on a sob

“Ma’am, we’re giving him fluids,” one of the techs says. “We’re limited in what we can or should do until we have a better assessment of what’s actually going on. Especially considering the complexity of his condition, we might do more harm than good.”

“Banner, listen,” Zo says, his voice a wisp.

“Stop trying to talk.” I press my fingers over his lips and lay my forehead to his. “Just . . . just breathe, Zo. We’re almost there.”

“So sorry,” he says again, barely audible. Tears trickle from his eyes and into his ears. “About Foster.”

I pull in a startled breath to hear Jared’s name on his lips. I don’t know if the tears are for how he used his illness to keep Jared and me apart or because he hurts that I want Jared. Both possibilities drive a stake through my heart.

“No, no, no.” I press my face to his chest, still frail beneath his tuxedo. “Don’t be sorry. En las buenas.”

Through thick.

His eyes flicker open just long enough to catch and hold mine, a small smile playing on his wide mouth.

“En las malas,” he whispers.

Through thin.

His eyelids drop, like they’re too weary for even one more second, and he’s gone again.

“Zo!” I squeeze his hand and tap his face gently. “Don’t you dare die, you selfish bastard. Don’t you dare . . .”

Sobs consume my words, my eyes so blurred and burned with tears, I can’t see in front of me. I wail like the siren overhead and shake with frustration and fear.

“We’re here,” one of them says.

Before, everything seemed slowed, time and motion gooped and dragging. Now it’s greased and rapid. A flurry of activity with every word quick and staccato. Every motion is a blur. They wheel Zo away within seconds of our arrival, and I’m left standing in the middle of the waiting room alone, incongruous in my dress and heels.

“Banner!” Mama comes into the waiting room, followed by my father, Anna, my niece, and my sister Camilla. “Where is he?”

“They just took him.” My throat closes, and I can’t say anything more. My fears feel like boulders on my shoulders and pebbles in my belly.

Mama doesn’t say anything, but the look she gives me repeats her insult from earlier.

Puta.

She and I stare at one another, knowing that the man fighting for his life is not the man I love. At least not the way Mama wants me to, but I don’t live any part of my life to satisfy other people, and I’m damn tired of conducting my love life by the dictates of others.

“Mi niña,” Papa says, gathering me close.

I fall into his arms, into his familiar scent. If sawdust has a smell, my father carries it, from always being on his construction work sites. It reminds me of how hard he worked to provide the best life for us that he could. His arms remind me of how he has constantly supported my dreams, even when he couldn’t see that high, couldn’t imagine Ivy League colleges or living this fast-paced life surrounded by obscenely wealthy people talented beyond what the average person can comprehend. He supported me through everything. He supports me now.

I’m still buried in Papa’s chest when my mother’s voice cuts into the small slice of peace I’ve managed to find in the last hour’s chaos.

“You have some nerve coming here,” she snaps.

I lift and turn my head, shocked to see Jared standing in the waiting room, changed into jeans and a Wharton School of Business sweatshirt.

With studied patience, he holds my mother’s stare and absorbs her harsh words without replying—a feat for him, I know.

“I, uh. . .” he clears his throat and extends a small bag to me “. . . thought you might like to change in case you’re here for a while. Iris sent some things she thought might work.”

My father triangulates a look between Jared, me, and finally the angry flush of my mother’s face.

“Jared, hey. Thank you.” I walk over and take the bag with a grateful smile. My body hums being this close to him. Not for sex. Just to be held and cared for by him. That’ll have to wait.

“Papa, this is my friend Jared.” I ignore Mama’s scoff at the word friend. “Jared, my father, Marco, sister Camilla, and niece Anna.”

“Hi.” Jared offers a slight smile and inclination of his head to each family member.

It’s like we’re inside a drum the air is so tight, charged with tension and questions. And from my sister, curiosity and appreciation. Her gaze, filled with interest, drags over Jared’s tall, athletic frame and the chiseled lines of his face, the rumpled fairness of his hair. There was a time when I would have deferred, assumed that any man my sister expressed interest in would prefer her, but not with this one. And even though I have a lot to explain, I want her to know from the beginning that this one is off limits. More than anything, I just need him to hold me, and that we can’t do in the open just yet.