Page 54 of On Ice

“No,” Erik says, closing the gap between us but still only touching my hand. “No sweetheart, I’m not. I’ve been NED for over a decade now.”

“NED.” I’ve heard the term before, but my brain isn’t working at the moment. “Right.”

“No evidence of disease. Surgery took the whole tumor, and I finished more chemo as a preventative measure. All my scans and bloodwork have been free and clear.”

That sounds good, but it means very little to me when no one had known about my dad until he was open on a surgical table. The bloodwork, the ultrasounds, the whole battery of tests, and no one had noticed a gigantic tumor testing the limits of his bladder.

“What’s the reoccurrence rate?” Is that an appropriate question to ask? I should have waited and googled it later. “Sorry, we don’t have to talk about it.”

Erik shakes his head. “We do. I don’t talk about it nearly as much as I should, which means I’m not as okay about it as I want people to think.”

“Yeah, so we’ll talk about something else.” I take a deep breath. I will not make this about me. Not this time.

“Twenty to thirty percent of osteosarcoma patients relapse in the first few years after treatment.” Erik says, pulling me against his chest as he speaks. “I’m ten years past the standard five required for remission, Quinn. I still get yearly scans, but I’m as good as I can hope for.”

I take several deep breaths, trying to steady the racing thrum of my pulse. His arm around me is the only reason I don’t slip right off the bench and land in a heap at his feet. Disease, illness, neither were on my radar when I thought he was acting strange.

“I should have told you sooner,” Erik says into my hair. “I’m sorry.”

I shake my head, forehead brushing against his jaw. I’m being selfish. I’m being weird. He isn’t even mine. He doesn’t owe me this information, not now, not before, not ever, and yet I’m devastated by the news. Because he didn’t tell me.

Because what if he relapses?

Because… I don’t know if I can do this?

Once again, I’m making this all about me.

“When?” I force the question out, “In an ice rink surrounded by strangers? Naked in your hotel room? When I yelled at you at the hospital? When we thought we’d never see each other again?”

“I should have made time. Once I knew I—” Erik scrubs a hand down his face. He didn’t have time to shave this morning, and I can hear the rasp of his stubble under her palm. “Definitely before we had sex.”

“Why didn’t you?”

I know why. This piece of his past is still painful, still sharp. It changed him. That’s not something that just goes away. Now the distance between Erik and his mom, Erik and his brother, makes sense. Two weeks ago, I wouldn’t have understood, but two weeks ago Dad hadn’t looked me in the eye and asked me to see him as more than a cancer patient, to treat him as the same person he was pre-diagnosis. How many times had teenage Erik had to put other people’s thoughts and anxieties and hurts above his own? How many times had he looked at his family and seen their fears and worries blanketing everything else he knew? How lonely must that have felt?

“I don’t talk about it a lot,” Erik says, “And I didn’t want to worry you. You have enough going on with your dad.”

Guilt twists my guts until I feel like they’re going to pop. This isn’t and shouldn’t be about me. He should only share what he wants to. My reaction shouldn’t be something he needs to worry about. I tip my head back so I can press my lips to his scruffy cheek. His kind, darling, and deeply sensitive cheek.

“I love your willingness to put my feelings and my needs first, Erik Varg.” I stare into his hazel eyes. “But this time it’s not about me. You don’t need to shoulder the burden of my worry or my fear or my grief. The thought of anything happening to you scares me more than it probably should, but that’s not your responsibility.”

“If you think I wouldn’t care about the way you feel—” his fury is clear in his voice. It’s caustic, biting. I rub circles into the back of his hand.

“Of course you do,” I say because Erik has always held my thoughts and opinions in the highest regard and I didn’t mean to imply otherwise. “I understand why you didn’t say anything before, Erik. And I’m not upset with you. Fuck cancer. It scares me to think that—” that I could lose you too, that I could watch you go through painful surgeries, and pump literal poison into your veins, hoping it kills the tumors before it kills you. That it’s probably for the best that this thing between us isn’t going anywhere else, since I’m not sure I can handle the worry every time you get a cold. “I’m not upset with you.”

Erik slides a cool hand under my jaw and tips my chin up, his thumb brushing over the apple of my cheek. His mouth against mine is a sweet press of lips and tongues. He sips from me once, twice, a third time, and I lean into the contact. We could have been locked together for seconds or decades before Erik pulls back and his finger brushes across my bottom lip. I suck in a breath, ready to fall headlong back into him. Into the heat he fans inside of me and the bubbles he sets loose in my bloodstream.

“We should get going,” I whisper against his mouth as he kisses me again. Erik lets his lips follow the path of his thumb and I can feel the corners of his mouth tip up against mine. “Don’t smile at me like that.” I don’t need to dip my eyes down to the bulge at the front of his jeans to know what he thinks I meant. Erik shifts on the bench. “I meant I need to get home to feed Tessie, and I’m sure you have other things to do.”

“I don’t.” Erik says, but his mouth leaves my skin and he leans back against the bench, putting a few extra inches of space between us.

He wants me to invite him back to my house. Maybe for sex, probably for more than that. It would be easy to do. To lose myself under the weight of his muscles and the heat of his touch. And then what? We’re right back where we started. Unable to resist spending time together, but not in a position to make more of this than it is. If I invite him back right now, I’m going to do the unthinkable and fall head over heels for him. I won’t be able to help myself.

I can’t do that. I can handle being the friend he sees when he’s in town, but I’m not sure I can keep sleeping with him. Not without losing the rest of my heart. Next time he comes to visit his mom and brother, we can see each other in public. Maybe bring some friends along, chaperones. We can revert to middle-school dance rules and keep space between us.

It’s no longer just watching him leave that threatens to break me. I’d been terrified when he shared his diagnosis. Consumed with gut-wrenching fear that I was about to lose him, too. The same selfish need to turn inward and protect myself. To worry about what would happen to me if something happened to him.

It’s the same terror I’d felt the last time I’d learned that cancer was threatening someone I love, and it’s not fair, not at all, but I have to send Erik right back to Chicago and I have to do it now. I’m already halfway in love with him, and if he stays, I’ll slip and fall the rest of the way down. And then I’ll spend every spare moment worrying about his health and safety too.

---