“It was in remission.” The inside of my mouth tastes bitter. I hate talking about my disease. My old adversary. So many battles lost and won. “I wanted to forget I was ever an invalid. I didn’t want to live like that.”
It’s more than that, too, though I’m not even sure if I can explain it. I take another long sip of water before trying again. He deserves an explanation. “And it’s like, when I’m healthy, I can forget this part of me even exists. Maybe it’s a coping mechanism or maybe I really believed in my heart I was done with it.”
Logan’s face is still pained, though. “But everything that we did...everything I did...I hurt you, Daphne. The games we played...”
“No,” I say fiercely. Is that what he’s thinking? “I don’t want you to ever regret our time together. I don’t.”
It doesn’t take away the agony in his dark eyes. “What have I done to you?” he whispers.
“Not you. I was born this way.” This was always my destiny. Doesn’t he get that? The course of my life was written in my DNA before my heart’s first beat.
Battleman’s. The disease that took my mother’s life. It lives in me now, waging war in a million of my cells. My body is a battlefield. It always was. And now I’ve gone and dragged the person I love most into the trenches with me.
I drop my head back to the pillow and close my eyes.
A male nurse comes in to fuss over me, and Logan retreats to the corner. I’ve had a thousand visits from nurses over my almost thirty years, but never with a dark presence brooding in the shadows. My skin prickles with awareness as the nurse checks my vitals, asks me questions, and prompts me to eat.
“She’ll eat,” Logan interjects, making the man jump. The nurse must have forgotten Logan, but I didn’t. I feel Logan’s gaze like a touch. “I’ll make sure of it.”
The nurse still has his hand on my bare back. Logan glares at it until the man snatches it away.
“The doctor will be in soon,” the nurse assures me, and scuttles away.
“Did you have to scare the poor man?”
“He liked touching you.” Logan prowls back to his seat by my bed. He carefully replaces my gown and plumps my pillows—all the little chores the nurse forgot in his rush to get away.
I laugh softly. As if anyone would want me like this, a frail bag of bones. “He’s just doing his job.” I sigh as I relax back onto the pillows.
Logan grunts but doesn’t argue. He spends an inordinate amount of time smoothing my hair from my brow. His touch is featherlight on my forehead, brushing my hair back from my face, applying salve to my chapped lips.
The look on his face makes my breath catch. Concern mixed with tenderness mixed with heat. At least there’s still one man who finds me attractive, even like this.
But when he leans down to press a soft kiss to my forehead, his lips are careful. Chaste.
“The hospital should hire you,” I try to joke.
“Daphne.” Logan looks more serious when he takes a seat. “I want to take over your treatment.”
I blow out a breath. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”
“Please, I’m close to a breakthrough. You’ve studied Battleman’s, you know—”
“All my life. And I’ve gotten nowhere.”
“You’re close. I can take your research—”
“My father’s research. The patents you stole—”
“It was my research from the start.” He forces himself to lower his voice, visibly reining in his temper. “Look, I don’t want to fight. I just want to get you well.”
“It’s like my mother and father all over again.” Tears spill from my eyes.
“No. I’m not going to let you...fuck, please. You’re not going to—” But he can’t finish the sentence.
I look away from him and out the window, the grayscape hallowed in anemic light. “It was always going to be this way.” And now I’m just supposed to accept that Logan is going to be a casualty with me?
“Don’t say that—”
“Logan.” Just a whisper is enough to make him fall silent. “This has always been my life. Every time I walked into the lab, I knew I was fighting for my right to live. For my next breath. Battleman’s has been a part of me since I was a baby. If it wasn’t for the disease, I wouldn’t have even been born.”
“What?” he asks, but he’s smart enough to piece it together from what I’m saying. Stunned horror spreads across his face.
“It was my father’s plan all along,” I rasp. “He knew if they had a child, there was a good chance that child would carry the disease. My mother didn’t want to have kids because of it.”
Logan shifts in his seat and the chair groans like it’s dying. Hospital furniture is way too rickety for a man of Logan’s size—he could look at it the wrong way and it’d fall apart.
I want to make a joke to lighten the mood, but Logan’s calling my name. “Daphne. Are you saying—”
“My father wanted a second chance to fight the disease. To harvest stem cells, run tests. To try new treatments.” I push my cheeks up into a hollow smile. “He didn’t want a child. He wanted a tissue donor.”
Logan’s broad chest rises and falls rapidly, his lungs like bellows. His left hand holds mine gently while his right fist presses against his mouth. “That fucking fuck,” he growls, probably hoping his hand muffles the insult.
Now my smile is real. “That’s my dad you’re talking about,” I say lightly. “Don't speak ill of the dead.”
He lowers his fist. “If he wasn’t dead, I’d kill him.”
“It’s done. It’s past.”
“Did he tell you? That you were only born as a guinea pig he could experiment on to save your mother?”
“Not in so many words. That would’ve made it easier.”
Instead, my father’s actions told me the truth. Every time he led me to his lab. Every time he threaded a needle in my vein to draw blood. Every time he injected me with a treatment that had a chance to heal me and my mother—or make me worse.
I learned my father loved me less than the results on a lab print out. Results he excitedly shared with my mother.
“Don’t feel sorry for me, Logan. I had a better life than most. And my mother loved me. She was furious with my father for what he was doing. But most years, she was just too weak to stop it. And he hid the worst from her.”
“I’m so sorry.” Logan kneels next to the bed, gripping both my hands in his huge ones. His anger is still there, but he’s pushed it to the back burner. “You have to know...you’re not just a lab rat. You’re more than what your father tried to make you. You’re smart and perfect and beyond beautiful. You…” his voice chokes. “You are loved. So loved.”
“I know I am.” I stroke the raven-black hair from his forehead, wanting so badly to kiss him. “As soon as I was old enough to realize what my father had done, I had you.”
“What?”
“You were his student, so on fire. You said you were going to cure Battleman’s.” My voice softens. “And you were always kind to me. I was your teacher’s skinny daughter. But you were still so nice.”