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Chapter Seven

Hannah

I knew it would come. It just took three days. Shock. I had entered shock. I was half-prepared for it to come. By yesterday I thought I had passed it altogether. That was till tonight. When I was in our living room and I saw a picture of my grandmother with Mum and Aunty Kim.

Reality of what I was facing hit me hard. She had faced it. She hadn’t won. It was in my DNA. I was going to lose this fight. But it didn’t mean that I wouldn’t fight it.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

My head snapped up. What was Brad doing up? It was after three in the morning. The club wasn’t having a party tonight so there was no reason for him to be outside right now.

“Nothing.” I swallowed sharply.

“Not fucking true.” He stomped toward me, ripping the cigarette from my hand and dropping it on the ground. “You don’t smoke!”

Yeah. I used to not smoke. That was before I got cancer. “Everyone smokes. I don’t see the big deal.”

“Okay. What’s with the tone?” He crossed his arms, standing in front of me. “And what’s with the smoking?”

I didn’t need to be hassled. I had come out here to avoid that. Dad and Mum were asleep. So were Eve and Tyson. Tyson, for some reason, was staying at the house tonight instead of his dorm room.

I’d snuck out of the house and went to the lot to do something I never did. Smoke. Dad relied on it when he was stressed. I wasn’t stressed though. I was in shock. I felt empty. Scared. Actually, I was terrified. I should call Layla.

“Hannah, what’s wrong?”

I glanced back at him, forgetting he was even standing there. Right. He thought something was wrong. Well, I was going to have to lie daily now. Guess now was a good time to start.

“I’m fine.”

He scoffed. “I just caught you smoking. You aren’t fine. Tell me what’s wrong.” He was frustrated; annoyed I wasn’t opening up to him.

I found myself wondering something I had been thinking earlier. “Do you ever see your life ending? Like you can’t see yourself past a certain age?” I stared down at the concrete lot. I wondered if it was just me.

He sat next to me on the picnic table. “I never saw myself getting this old. But why are you thinking like that?”

I turned to look at him. “I can’t see myself older than twenty.” It was a cold hard fact. I couldn’t see myself getting older. “I don’t see myself getting married or having kids.” I shrugged, thinking about it more. “I can’t see me getting into my twenties.” Grandma lasted two years with her cancer. I was seventeen at the end of the month. Two years would put me at nineteen and I was pushing for three years to make it to twenty.

The more I thought about it, the more I knew it wouldn’t happen. I wouldn’t see twenty.

His hand went to my knee. “You’ll get married and you will have kids.” His words were gentle and he was saying that like he was making it law. “And you’ll see all your birthdays.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I’ll make sure of it,” he said firmly. He said that as if he had thought about me getting married and having kids. I smiled. That was Brad. Always thinking ahead.

“Some things are out of your control.” I knew he wouldn’t admit that. He liked control. In his world, I’m sure he did see me getting married and having children. But in my world, that wasn’t going to happen. I was going to die young. Without a family or a husband.

There would be no mark on the world from me.

“You should be in bed.” He tucked my hair behind my ear, his fingers brushing my ear. “Not out here in the dark.”

“Not like anyone will hurt me.”

“You’re right, no one would dare.”

“No, I meant I wouldn’t get that lucky.” I said it before I realized it came out. I knew I shouldn’t have said that by his reaction.

“What the fuck is wrong with you tonight?” he demanded rudely. Like I would tell him. Heck, I wouldn’t have told him if he asked nicely. “In fact, what’s been wrong with you all month?”