Page 81 of The Girlfriend Agreement (Conwick U #1)

Gina looks at me like she knows exactly what I’m thinking.

“I know, but the longer you go through something as grueling as chemo, the more fragile your body becomes. Your mom’s bone marrow is less resilient than it was when she first started treatment, so it’s possible her hemoglobin levels were already declining and just hadn’t reached a critically low point to cause such a severe reaction.

Monoclonal antibody treatments can also cause a decrease in white blood cell counts, further worsening that suppression. ”

I swallow hard, my eyes blurring. My aunt steps forward, pulling me into a crushing embrace that suffocates the breath from my lungs, but also offers the weight I need to keep my brain focused.

To keep me from falling apart. Ronnie releases her hold on my hand so I can hug my aunt back, and I hear her retreating footsteps as she returns to where Andie remains in one of the waiting room seats, the two of them giving us space.

“I know you, sweetheart,” Gina breathes into my hair once we’re alone. “I know you’re blaming yourself for not being there, but you can’t. Hell, I’ve been a nurse for over a decade, and even I didn’t see any cause for concern before I left for work this morning.”

I sniff as she pulls away and takes a step back.

“I know it was scary”—her cadence is soothing as she reaches out and brushes away the single traitorous tear that slides down my cheek—“but this can happen sometimes after an infusion, even if it never happened before. And in cases like your mom’s, delayed effects of anemia like this aren’t that unusual.

It’s just unfortunate that, when it does hit, it hits hard. ”

“Okay,” I say, drawing out the word as I try to wrap my head around her explanation, “so, what are they doing for her? What’s the plan?”

Gina exhales a heavy breath. “For now, we’re going to keep her overnight and see how she responds to fluids.

If her hemoglobin levels start to improve, and she’s feeling stronger tomorrow, the doctor will probably discharge her.

But if she’s still weak or her numbers don’t come up enough, they might keep her an extra night and consider a transfusion. ”

I can practically feel my face go pale as the same fear that overwhelmed me the day we got those fateful letters from the insurance company once again rises to the surface.

My mom’s health and well-being will always come first, but now that I know she’s going to be all right, I can’t help panicking about the cost of all this.

I had run the figures back in September, when I needed a ballpark estimate of how much money I’d need to keep my mom’s treatment going, and the numbers running through my head were scribbled plainly across the “worst case scenario” page of my notebook.

Those same figures build up before me again now in those taunting blocks of color that seem as physical and real as the chairs surrounding me.

The fee for the ambulance. The emergency room visit.

The IV fluids. The overnight stay. The potential need for a blood transfusion.

The numbers skyrocket into the five-figure range and keep climbing as my anxiety ratchets to an all-time high.

Sure, I have the money from Damian that we’ve been saving, and there should be more than enough to cover this in the event our insurance tries to fuck us again, or to pay the difference between what they will cover and what they won’t, but that money is supposed to pay our deductible and for Mom’s prescription when our policy changes in January.

At best, the total sum I’ll receive for the nine months of our agreement will only cover eight months of her pills.

If I start chipping away at it now, who knows how long it’ll last.

“How much—” My voice comes out as little more than a rasp.

I clear my throat and try again, clamping my hands into tight fists at my sides, resisting the urge to touch my glasses and to hopefully hide how badly they’re trembling.

My nails bite into my palms to the point I think I might have drawn blood. “How much will this cost?” I breathe.

Gina hesitates. “You don’t have to worry about that.”

I blink, then stare at her hard for a moment. Her word choice was oddly deliberate. Not “You don’t have to worry about that right now ,” but “You don’t have to worry about that,” period.

“What do you mean?” I counter. “Of course, I have to?—”

She interrupts me with a hand on my arm. “Lex.” She says my name slowly. Pointedly. “It’s already taken care of.”

Taken care of?

I narrow my eyes, and I’m about to ask her to clarify—to fucking insist on it—when her gaze drifts over my shoulder to something I can’t see behind me. She jerks her chin, gesturing for me to look.

My heart plummets into my feet as I turn in place, following my aunt’s line of sight, and that’s when I see him: Damian at the opposite side of the room holding a ridiculously large bouquet of flowers.

I blink the sudden onslaught of tears from my eyes, and my knees knock together as the ground threatens to rush up to meet them.

Damian begins to cross the room, navigating the maze of chairs, and the only thing I can think beside the incessant, repeated beating of he’s here in my ears is that, if what Gina just implied is true, then he was the one who covered my mom’s hospital bill. Which can only mean…

He knows.

I stand rooted to the spot as he closes the remaining distance between us.

“Hey,” he murmurs. The corners of his lips twitch into the barest ghost of a smile.

“Hi,” I whisper, unsure what else to say. I feel completely gobsmacked, like someone just told me that two plus two really does equal five.

My eyes dip to the obnoxiously-sized (and obviously expensive) flowers held close to his chest.

“For your mom,” he says in response to my unasked question, not even bothering to dance around the subject. “How is she?”

I try to answer him—to apologize for lying for so long—but my confusion wins out over logic, and what actually comes out is a very ungrateful sounding, “What are you doing here? How did you…” My throat closes around the rest of my words as that panic I felt yesterday when I saw him at my house once again claws at my insides.

Now, instead of hearing that persistent he’s here in my head, all I hear is an unending string of he knows .

“Ronnie,” Damian answers point-blank. “She texted me and told me what happened.”

An unexpected and absolutely ludicrous jealousy twists my stomach in knots. “I… How did she get your number?”

Damian shrugs. “Guadalajara? From the eight times she made you check in with her, I presume. She must have still had it saved in her phone.”

My lips twitch. “As I recall, it was three max.”

He snorts. “Per day, maybe.”

That fleeting pang of insecurity fades, and I release a shaky breath.

Ronnie would never go after Damian—or anyone I was sleeping with or remotely interested in, for that matter—and I have to believe, after everything we’ve been through, Damian wouldn’t go after her.

Unless I’ve read this entire thing between us wrong, and in that case, I?—

My brain screeches to a halt mid-thought as my eyes catch on Damian’s right hand. His knuckles are mottled with blackish-purple bruises, like he hit it against something hard. Like a wall.

Or someone’s jaw.

“What happened to your hand?” I gasp, reaching out and carefully prying his hand away from the bouquet so I can get a better look at it. He relents to my touch without a fight, though I notice him wince in my peripheral vision when I brush a thumb over his swollen skin.

“Oh, this?” he asks with a dismissive pfft . “It’s nothing, just the result of a really intense game of rock-paper-scissors. Spoiler alert: paper won.” When I give him a flat look, he responds with that annoyingly charming grin of his.

“Sounds like a totally real thing that happened,” I deadpan.

Damian nods. “Absolutely. You should’ve seen it.”

My only response is a scoff, and then we fall into a silence so thick and all-encompassing it seems to engulf the entire waiting room. In it, I hear all the unspoken words between us.

I stare down at Damian’s hand to avoid his gaze, my thumbs still mindlessly tracing soothing circles across his bruised skin. I don’t even realize he’s leaned in toward me until I feel the warm brush of his breath on my face.

“How are you holding up?”

My thumb stills. “I…don’t know how to answer that,” I admit.

“Or what to say to you about…” That swell of familiar panic expands in my chest, and instinctively, I drop his hand.

I’m about to take a step back, to put some space between us, when he stops me, reaching out with his injured hand and fervently grasping my fingers, even though the movement must be excruciating for him.

“Hey.” His voice is a contradiction—hard but soft. A warning wrapped in the warm embrace of a consolation. “You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to.”

I risk a glance up at him through my lashes, and the look he gives me makes my chest tighten.

I’ve never had anyone look at me like that—with such affection and understanding, as if, having felt my pain himself, he would do anything in the world to take it away so I don’t have to.