Always (Spiral of Bliss #5) (24 page)

He shoves to his feet and grabs his towel.

“But you still throw a roundhouse kick like a pussy,” he remarks, tossing his towel around his neck as he strides toward the locker room.

I watch him go, the hard pain inside me dissolving. I’d once thought Archer’s and my relationship was irreparably broken. I’ve never before been so glad to be wrong about something.

I follow him to the locker room and toss my gloves into my duffel.

“Pizza and beer?” I ask. “On me.”

“Damn right it’s on you,” Archer mutters, pulling his T-shirt over his head. “Making me embarrass myself like that.”

He grabs a clean towel and starts toward the showers.

“Hey,” I call after him.

He stops and turns to look at me.

“Thanks,” I say.

Archer shrugs, ducking his head as he continues walking. I text Liv that I’m going out for pizza with him after we leave the gym. Her response comes in seconds:
Great! Have fun.

I turn to my locker, tension draining from my shoulders for the first time in weeks.

February 6

“Dean?”

I jerk my head up as the female voice filters past a haze of sleep.

I blink, realizing I’ve fallen asleep at my desk in my tower office, my head on my folded arms. Claire is standing beside me, her hand out as if she’s about to touch my shoulder.

“Oh, sorry.” She takes a step back and smiles. “I couldn’t find you downstairs, and Liv went out with your friend Kelsey. I was going to do some shopping and was wondering what you’d like for dinner.”

“Uh… anything’s fine.” I drag my hands over my face and rub my eyes. Exhaustion burns through me. I can’t sleep at night, but rather than risk keeping Liv up, I’ve been staying up long past midnight and then crashing on the sofa in my office.

“Come downstairs,” Claire says. “I’ll make you a snack.”

“Thanks, but I’m not hungry.”

“Come on, Dean.” She shakes her head in amusement. “I’m a nanny. No one knows better than I do the restorative powers of a
snack.
”

“I’m sure that’s true.”

“So come on. My snacks have a perfect balance of carbs and protein for optimal energy to get through both soccer practice and
Star Wars
battles.”

Figuring I might need to be involved in both of those activities before Nicholas goes to bed, I follow Claire down to the kitchen. I sit at the counter and leaf through the day’s mail as Claire bustles around, opening the refrigerator and cabinets.

I focus on opening a bill, trying not to be bothered by the fact that another woman is busy in our kitchen. A woman who isn’t my wife.

“Ta da.”

Claire sets a menagerie of snacks in front of me. There’s an owl made out of a large cracker, with raisin eyes and wings created with sliced almonds. Next to the owl is a fruit kabob caterpillar, and a ladybug made from half of a red apple.

I can’t help laughing. “This is great. No wonder the kids love you.”

She smiles, her cheeks flushing. “Thanks. They’re really awesome kids, though I’m not surprised considering who they have as a father.”

A twinge of discomfort goes through me. I make an effort to suppress it, even as I remember Archer’s remark about Claire back in December.

I’d been wary around college-aged women after a grad student started a false sexual harassment claim against me before I became a tenured professor, but nothing potentially dangerous or damaging has happened since. Just the opposite in fact, especially with Jessica, who has now become one of my most valued colleagues, and the number of intelligent young women who are involved with the World Heritage Center.

But that doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten. And it doesn’t mean I don’t still have to reject unwanted female attention and advances, no matter how much I talk about
“my wife Liv.”

But this? We hired Claire because Liv has cancer. Claire is the nanny to our two young children. Seeing anything different in that is flat-out wrong.

Then again, I’ve been around enough to know nothing is off-limits to some people. And Archer was right. The world can be a fucked-up place.

I take a few bites of the cracker and pick up the apple ladybug. “Thanks, but I’ve gotta get back to work.”

“Take the plate with you,” Claire says. “The milk too. After all, it does a body good.”

Without responding, I return to my office. I don’t care what Claire thinks of me, as long as she’s good with the kids and Liv likes her. And God willing we won’t need her help for much longer.

I pick up a loop of string resting on my desk. After idly making a few patterns, I take Liv’s wedding ring out of my pocket and slip it onto the string. I weave a circle around it right in the center. I spread the loop out between my fingers and look at the two patterns hugging Liv’s ring. After knotting the ends, I slip it onto my wrist. The ring slides under my wrist, right up against my pulse.

And that’s where it will stay.

I reach over to turn off my computer, shutting down the website open on the screen. My brain is so packed with facts and statistics about breast cancer that sometimes I have a hard time applying anything I read to Liv.

I still can’t believe this is happening to
her.
And despite all rational thoughts, I still hate that other people are touching my wife’s breasts, cutting into her, poisoning her. While I just stand there and watch. And burn.

I’ve always been able to take action. To succeed. When I was a kid, my father made it clear that failure wasn’t an option, not for the son of Justice West, not when my brother had made it his life’s work to be a lost cause, not when I had to uphold the West family image.

So I didn’t fail. Some things came easily to me, others took work, but I did it. Always believed I’d get the scholarship, make the team, win the trophy. I didn’t often think
“I can’t”
because I knew I could. Even when I first met Liv, I knew I’d get past her defenses one day. That I’d make her mine. I knew I needed her.

But I didn’t realize until now I’d taken it for granted that Liv would always be there. I didn’t realize how badly I need to grow old with her. I need to see her dark hair turn silver, to watch the laugh lines deepen around her eyes.

I need to sit with her as we watch Nicholas and Bella play soccer and perform in music recitals, as they graduate from high school and go off to college. I need her to teach our children what goodness and perseverance are. I need my wife beside me through birthday parties, family vacations, movie nights, school activities, science fairs, weddings, grandchildren, anniversaries. I need her through life.

And for the first time ever, I know to my bones there is something I can’t do. I can’t live without Liv.

I can’t.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

DEAN

WHEN I WALK IN THE FRONT
door, the house has an unnatural stillness. I put my briefcase on the foyer table, take off my suit jacket, and go into the kitchen. A few unpacked shopping bags sit on the central island alongside Liv’s purse and keys.

“Liv?”

No answer. Faintly alarmed, I check the living room and sunroom. I loosen my necktie and try to think. It’s Thursday, which means it’s Claire’s day off, and Liv usually picks up Bella at lunchtime so they can spend a few hours together before going to get Nicholas from school.

“Liv?” I hurry upstairs.

Bella’s room is empty. I go into our bedroom, my alarm intensifying. The door to the master bathroom is open a crack, a light shining through. I rush to push it open, suddenly imagining my wife unconscious on the floor or…

My breath escapes in a rush. Liv is sitting on the closed toilet, her elbows on her knees and her head bowed, her features hidden behind the curtain of hair falling across the side of her face. She jerks upright at the sound of the door opening. Her eyes are bloodshot, her skin pale.

“Liv.” Relief weakens me. I sink to my knees in front of her. “Are you all right? What happened?”

She swipes at her damp cheeks and shakes her head.

“Sorry,” she whispers.

“No.” I put my hands on her thighs, my chest tightening. “What happened? Where’s Bella?”

“I asked Claire to pick her up. I wanted to…” She shakes her head again and gives a hoarse, humorless laugh. “It’s just silly.”

“Liv, what?”

Then I see it—the opened box on the counter alongside a pair of scissors and a brush.

I get to my feet slowly. A knot sticks in my throat as I look at the box and the packaging in the trash. It’s a “professional” hair clipper that promises to deliver as close a shave as you can get without a razor.

“I bought it an hour ago.” Liv straightens, looking from the box to me. “I wanted to… I don’t know. When I saw I was starting to lose my hair, I thought maybe it would be empowering or something to shave it off myself before it had a chance to fall out completely. You know, like taking control? But when it came down to actually doing it, I totally caved.”

She takes the clipper from the counter and pulls off the plastic wrapping. Her hands are shaking.

“It’s so stupid,” she whispers, staring down at the shiny blades. “I mean, it’s just hair, right? But I think I’m more scared of this than I was of starting chemo. It doesn’t make any sense at all.”

I reach out to brush a lock of her thick, dark hair away from her forehead. I’d wanted to touch her hair the minute I first saw her at the university registrar’s office all those years ago.

“It makes perfect sense,” I tell her gently.

She wipes away another tear and takes a shuddering breath as if she’s trying to gather her courage. I go into the bedroom and grab the chair from the dressing table, then return and set it in front of the bathroom sink and mirror.

“Okay,” I say. “I’ll go first.”

Liv looks up. “What?”

“You shave my head first. For practice.”

She blinks in surprise. “You… you want me to shave your head?”

“Yeah.” I drag a hand through my hair. “I need a cut anyway. And why should you get to be the only cool, bald person in this household?”

She smiles at that, and I feel like I won the lottery. I grab a towel and drape it around my shoulders before sitting down.

“Go ahead,” I say. “It’ll be easier if you get the hang of it first.”

Liv hesitates, but finally pushes to her feet and unwinds the cord of the clippers. She plugs it into the wall, sets it on the counter, and moves behind me. Our gazes meet in the reflection of the mirror as she puts her hands in my hair.

“I love your hair, Dean,” she says. “When I saw you that day at the university, I first noticed
you
, then I noticed what gorgeous, dark hair you had and how shiny it looked, even under the fluorescent lights.”

She strokes my hair away from my forehead, then down the sides. She rubs her fingers over the outer edges of my ears.

“Remember when I used to give you ear massages?” she asks.

“Mmm. Turned me to putty in your hands.”

“You used to especially like it when I did this.” She gently trails the tips of her forefingers around the crevices of my ears.

“I still love that,” I remark, as warmth trails down my spine. “But you’d better be careful, lady. Only you could turn head shaving into foreplay.”

Liv laughs. A real laugh this time, one that makes me smile in return. She takes her hands away from my ears and reaches for the clippers. When she turns them on, an unpleasant buzz fills the air.

“Are you ready?” she asks.

“Yeah. Give me a Mohawk before you shave it all off.”

Liv bites down on her lower lip as she positions the clippers at my hairline and draws them back. My hair falls to either side, leaving a path of smooth scalp. She concentrates on shaving the sides of my head. Tufts of hair rain down onto the towel and floor.

After she’s finished shaving both sides, we both look at the sheer weirdness of me with a stripe of hair running right down the middle of my scalp.

“Maybe you should leave it like that,” Liv suggests, her eyes lighting with amusement. “Shock your students and the other professors. Can you imagine?”

I turn my head from side to side to examine the effect. “They’d never take me seriously. Go on, get rid of it.”

Liv places one hand on my forehead and moves the clippers over my head again, shearing away the last of my hair. The reflection staring back at me looks alien with his shorn head and ears that stick out too far, but whoever that guy is, I think he’s doing the right thing.

After Liv finishes shaving off any remaining patches of hair, she puts the clippers on the counter and studies her handiwork.

“You have a very nicely shaped skull, professor,” she remarks. “I never would have known that.”

I rub a hand over my bald head. “We’re going to save a fortune on shampoo.”

I take the towel from around my neck and shake the hair clippings into the trash. “I’ll vacuum later.”

Liv drapes the towel around her shoulders before sitting down. She takes a deep breath and reaches for the clippers.

“Okay?” I ask.

“Okay.”

She turns the clippers back on. This time, the buzz sounds like a chainsaw. A bolt of rage fires through me so fast that I have to step behind Liv and away from the mirror so she won’t notice. My fists clench as anger and grief claw up my throat.

Keep it together, West.

I shut my eyes and force the helpless rage back down. The sound of Liv’s voice over the noise of the clippers dilutes some of the pain. I open my eyes and step toward her. She’s holding the clippers out to me.

“What?” I say.

“Will you do it?” she asks.

Oh, God in heaven, don’t make me do this. Don’t make me shave off my wife’s beautiful hair.

I take the clippers from her. My hand is shaking. I clench my teeth and move behind her, unable to bring myself to meet her gaze in the mirror. I can’t even ask her if she’s ready because if she hesitates for an instant, I’ll never be able to do this.

It’s just hair. She’s the same. She’s always yours. Always will be.

I put the clippers back on the counter and pick up the brush. I don’t know if this will torture me or comfort me, but I do it anyway. I brush Liv’s hair, gently tugging out the tangles, watching the bristles move through the thick strands like water. Ignoring the excess of strands that cling to the brush. When her hair is a shiny curtain against her neck, I pick up the clippers again.

I take a breath and put my hand on the side of her neck, feeling the warmth of her skin. Liv is very still, her gaze on the mirror.

“I could just do a buzz cut,” I tell her. “Short but not gone.”

“No. It will all come out soon. I need to get used to it.”

I look at the blades of the clippers and focus my concentration.

This is a job
. I know how to get a job done. I do it all the time.

But something shrivels inside me when the blades saw through the first strands of Liv’s hair. I pull the clippers back over her head, not looking anywhere except at the pale stripe of skin that appears as her hair falls away. One swathe. Another.

My wife’s scalp, which I love because it protects her—because it’s part of her. Her skin, her blood, her bones. I drag the clippers back again. More hair rains to the floor. A few freckles appear in the place where Liv parts her hair. I pull a few strands stuck to the blades and keep going.

Her pretty ears, each with a tiny, hurtful hole piercing the lobe. The oval birthmark right at the top of her nape. The arch of her hairline. The slope of her collarbone. The ridge where her neck meets her spine.

Mine. My wife. Always my perfect, beautiful Liv.

The last strands of her hair fall to the floor. I run the clippers over her scalp again. Not a trace of hair remains.

I know how to get a job done.

I brush my hand over her head, finding some solace in the warm, smooth feeling of her scalp. Then I dig for courage and look at her in the mirror.

She’s gazing at her reflection, dry-eyed and somber. Without the softening tumble of hair, her features are sharper, more enhanced. Her lips look fuller, her cheekbones more prominent, her brown eyes bigger. She’s like an exotic forest creature, an elf or a fairy. Ethereal. Transcendent.

She turns toward me, finally lifting her eyes to meet mine. I rub my hand over her head again and swallow hard.

“Hey, beauty,” I whisper.

Liv manages to smile before she presses her face against my torso and cries.