Chapter 13: Four Years

Sheridan turned and walked to her gray sedan without another word.

She drove out of the lot alone, and Dylan did not watch her go.

He watched me.

"Ten minutes," he said. "Please. Not out here."

Seth looked at me, and I said yes.

There was a family waiting room off the lobby with a glass door and a box of children's blocks in the corner.

Seth took the chair outside it where I could see him through the glass.

Dylan sat down across from me and put his hands between his knees.

The pale scar from the fence nail ran across his left palm, and I had kissed that scar a thousand times.

"I found out in the driveway," he said. "The doctor called with the second set of numbers while you were inside putting groceries away."

"You came in and said it was nothing to discuss."

"I know what I said."

"Why?"

He rubbed his face with both hands.

"I told myself I'd tell you after the first cycle," he said. "Then you came home from that appointment so happy, and I thought, one more month."

"You signed a form three days before my first injection."

His hands dropped.

"That isn't one more month," I said. "That's a plan."

He was quiet for a while.

"Yes," he said. "I signed it at the front desk with a pen from a cup."

"Why?"

"Because you looked at me like I was the whole world," he said. "And I couldn't stand to be less."

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