Page 76 of Love Beyond Repair
“What’s for breakfast?” Ben and I chuckle.
I swing my legs out of bed and slide my feet into cozy slippers. Then I head to the kitchen to prepare a breakfast meal for my finally complete family.
Chapter thirty-eight
June 2016
Bex
The water laps on the golden sand, the summer wind warm against my ankles. As the sun sinks behind the horizon, it paints the sky in a soft orange light.
Liam squeals as his brother dunks him under again. The two boys burst back to the surface, laughing, hurling fists at one another playfully.
“Brothers,” I mutter under my breath, and Savannah snorts beside me.
“Sistersaren’t any better.”
We both watch as Rose sneaks up behind her younger brothers, grabs each one from behind by their neck, and throws them face first into the water. The boys flail around as if attacked by a sea monster, as their older sister cackles like a witch.
“Maybe you’re right,” I tell Savannah, who readjusts her sunglasses and puts her nose back in the book she’s reading. But I don’t miss the smile that graces her lips with my praise.
Now, mid-teens, she’s growing up fast and has big plans to follow in her father’s footsteps of becoming an oncologist. She’s determined, clever, and knows she’s more than capable of achieving anything she sets her mind to.
I wish I’d had half her courage as a teenager.
Ben reappears with a tray of brightly colored drinks. He places them down on the small table attached to my lounger and passes one to his oldest daughter, who practically snatches it from his hands.
“Don’t get too excited,” he mutters. “There’s no alcohol. You’re fifteen.”
She rolls her eyes to the sky, and I snicker. Every day, she and her father knock heads about something. And quite often, she has a logical reason as to why she’s right. It makes me chuckle when he backs down.
He passes me a blue concoction. Mine won’t have any alcohol either. The medication I’m on now means those days are long gone. It had been hard enough to get mydoctor to agree to this trip when Ben surprised us all with a family vacation to Spain. Back to where I fell in love with him two decades ago.
It was only a month ago that we were told there was little they can do for me. After all the operations, treatments, and medication that’s been pumped into my body these past few years, the cancer is still spreading. I suspect Ben already knew, though he never told me.
I suspected it myself.
When we sat down in the doctor’s office, and he broke the news. It was almost a relief. My fate was sealed. Life shifted from attempting to outrun death to living life until it finds me. We’ve been doing what we want since, and I’ve never been happier.
“Savannah.” Ben’s voice cuts through my thoughts as I take a sip of my drink. “Go play with your brothers and sister.” She groans, and pops her earbuds in, trying to ignore him. He steps forward, leans down, and pulls one back out. “Please. I need a few minutes with Bex.”
Father and daughter stare at one another for a moment, then her face softens, and an understanding flutters between them. Without another word, she places her phone and earbuds on the lounger, stands, then runs toward her siblings. Ben and I watch as she splashes each of them, throwing herself into the water.
“I love it when she still acts like a kid,” Ben says, sitting down beside me. I sit up and swing my legs around so we’re shoulder to shoulder. “Time passes so fast.”
He glances at me, then his focus returns to his fingers twisting together on his lap.
“We can’t control nature,” I whisper. “We need to learn to live with it.”
He doesn’t respond, merely clears his throat as if trying to hold back a sound I don’t want to hear. I touch his arm, and his hand lifts, squeezing my fingers.
“I’ve got something for you,” he says, changing the subject away from my unspoken mortality. “Two things actually.”
He reaches into his beach bag, and stowed at the bottom is a clear plastic folder. Inside is a blue book, the word memories scrolled in gold across the front. He hands it to me, and I stare at him for a beat.
“What is it?” I ask, snapping the button locking the flap.
“Open it and you’ll see.”
