Page 75 of Always, in December

Max held up a hand. ‘If this is something to do with sex, then I’m telling you now, Chlo, I don’t want to hear it.’ She grinned, just the smell of coffee seeming to wake her up. Against all the odds, Chloe and Liam had actually hit it off, and had managed to make the long-distance thing work. Liam had proposed a few weeks ago, and Chloe was rushing to have the wedding in February. She said it was because she wanted to just get on with it, claiming haughtily that she didn’t want to live in sin when their mum questioned her, but Max knew the real reason. He knew it was also why Liam had proposed so soon. After they’d been together a few months, Chloe had told Liam about the tumour. He knew that his friend and his sister wanted him to be there at the wedding, and they were hoping that February would cut it.

He was grateful when his phone beeped on the windowsill next to him. A text from Erin. She still did a lot, just to check in. She knew, just like his family did, that it was only a matter of months, but instead of stepping back and keeping her distance, she was making sure that he knew she was there, as a friend, whenever he wanted to talk.

When he’d got back to the UK, he’d stayed with her for a few weeks in Edinburgh, but just as friends. He hadn’t known, then, if the treatment he’d been getting in New York at the beginning of the year, the new clinical trial that his mum had insisted he at least try, would work, and Erin had been choosing to believe that it would, to believe that having a long-term relationship with him would be an option. But even before he’d found out the opposite, he’d known it wasn’t right to get back with her. And she’d actually accepted that. Had proven herself to be a total legend of a friend, trying to make him come out and do things. She’d invited him to the wedding, even though he hadn’t actually decided to go until he’d seen Josie’s photo of the castle on her Instagram account, and known she’d be there.

He stared down at the paper again. He should have told her then, in September. But seeing her had made him feel light again, and it had been easier to let her assume that Erin was the problem, not to put the weight on that weekend, at her friend’s wedding. He’d hoped that maybe it was one-sided – just because he hadn’t been able to shake her, didn’t automatically mean that she felt the same. And if she wasn’t that attached to him, then there was only so much he could hurt her. But it was wrong, to hope for that, to think that he was protecting her by not telling her. That feisty little friend of hers had told him as much when she’d sent him an angry Facebook message after she’d caught them kissing. He’d thought it safer not to reply to her, but it had made him think.

He read the letter one more time, grunting his thanks when Chloe put a second coffee down in front of him. Deciding it would have to do, he picked up his phone and dialled.

The voice that answered was somehow bouncy. ‘Hello?’

‘Hi, is that Bia?’

‘It is.’ The voice turned suspicious. ‘Who is this?’

‘Max Carter. Look, I know this is—’

‘Max? As in Josie’s Max?’ Josie’s Max. Not right, and wouldn’t ever be true.

‘Yes,’ he said, knowing what she meant. ‘Look—’

‘How did you get this number?’

He huffed out an impatient breath, glanced up to where Chloe was watching him, eyebrows raised. ‘From John, who got it off Laura. Now will you just let me finish? I have a favour to ask you.’

‘Well, I won’t be doing you any favours,’ she said primly.

Sometimes, blunt was best. ‘Bia,’ he said flatly, ‘I’m dying.’ He couldn’t, or wouldn’t, look at Chloe when he said it.

There was a pause at the other end of the phone. Then, ‘What? What do you mean?’

‘I mean what I said,’ Max said evenly. He was more used to saying it now – what did it mean, when you came to accept those two words, I’m dying, as just a natural part of conversation?

‘No,’ she said. ‘I mean, God. I’m sorry. What . . . For how long . . . Does Josie know?’

‘No, and that’s where I need the help,’ Max said. ‘I need to get a letter to her.’

‘A letter? You want to tell her that you’re dying in a letter? You can’t do that, it’ll kill her.’ Jesus.

‘There’s nothing else I can do now,’ he said quietly, noting the slight pleading edge that had come into his voice. ‘I know I shouldn’t have got into it with her.’

There was the sound of chattering in the background at Bia’s end of the phone, followed by Bia swearing. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You shouldn’t have.’ She sighed. ‘No, look, I’m sorry, ok? It’s just . . .’ And then Bia told him, about Josie’s grandmother, about the fact that she was there alone. Two minutes later, he’d convinced Bia to give him the address, along with Josie’s aunt Helen’s number – he didn’t want to risk getting there only to not get past that barrier. As soon as they hung up, he grabbed the letter from the windowsill and strode to the spare room where he’d been staying for the last few months. Chloe stumbled after him.

‘What are you doing?’ she demanded.

He didn’t even glance back at her. ‘I have to go, Chlo. I have to see her again.’ He shook his head at himself. ‘I have to at least try to explain it – I owe her that, I owe her more than a letter.’

He shoved a few things in a bag, then turned to see her standing in the doorway, hugging her arms around her and looking impossibly young in that moment. Her lips were trembling. He crossed the room, put his arms around her and felt his own throat tighten. ‘I’ll be back,’ he whispered into her hair, even knowing that there was only so long he could keep telling her that. ‘But I have to see her before I . . .’

Chloe pulled back, dashed a tear away under her eye. She nodded. ‘Go.’ She took a shaky breath. ‘Tell her – if she doesn’t kick you out before you explain, that is – that if she ever wants to look me up, now or in the future, then she’s welcome to.’ She tilted her head and a small smile played around her lips. ‘I’d like to get to know that girl of yours.’

He walked to the front door of the flat, Chloe following him. Girl of yours. And she was, Max knew, even if she had no idea just how much she’d captured his heart. Captured it when it was already too late, when he had no right to take her heart the way she’d taken his. He’d tried to stop it, but it was too late now, too late to stop the fall, so all that was left was to make the best possible decision in this moment, and not be a coward about it.

He turned back to Chloe. ‘Fill Mum and Dad in, will you?’ They’d only worry and try to stop him going if he told them himself. Chloe nodded. He brought her in for one last hug and felt her chest sob against him. He kissed the top of her head. ‘I love you, you know.’

‘I know that,’ she whispered. ‘I always will.’ She pulled back, blinked up at him. ‘Now, go get the girl before it’s too late.’

Chapter Twenty-Nine