Fighting For Love

Chapter | 19

• L I N D S A Y •

"Lindsay, I have cancer."

All it took were those 4 words. Those 4 words and all of a sudden my world felt like it was crumbling down around me. They left me speechless and stuttering for answers at the same time.

It's funny, I'd only know Nolan for a month, yet somehow he had become my everything, my world. I know it may sound crazy, but every time I saw him I felt like I couldn't breath. It's like all the air had been sucked out of the room, like all of a sudden my body rejected to let air into my lungs.

Because when I looked at him I just got so lost in those deep blue orbs that everything else seemed insignificant. When he looked at me I felt my stomach erupt into butterflies, and fire dance on my skin.

It sounds stupid, I know. Like how can you like someone so much when you've only know them for a month? 4 weeks. 28 days. It doesn't even seem possible, but I'm telling you it is. Because what I felt for Nolan was unlike anything I had ever felt before.

Of course in my 16 years on this earth I had had crushes, and even a boyfriend or 2, but in comparison to Nolan they all just felt like pawn pieces in a game of chess. Each one making their move just to led me to him.

But now it felt like we had all been knocked off the playing board. Like a giant hand had come swooping in, destroying our past, present, and future moves. Leaving us with nothing but empty space as we struggled to figure out where to go or what to do next.

I just started at him, I looked directly into those beautiful blue eyes, except this time I was too lost in my own head to even think about getting lost in his eyes.

Nolan had cancer.

I knew that something seemed off, that he was keeping something from me, but I never thought in a million years that this would be it.

I opened and closed my mouth a few times, trying, and failing to form a response. Closing my eyes for a moment, I
tried to process everything, almost hoping that when I opened them back up I would be lying in my room, and this would all just be some horrible nightmare.

Unfortunately, when I reopened them a few seconds later, I was still sitting there, in Starbucks, a very nervous looking Nolan sitting in front of me.

So this was really happening? How could this be happening?

A few more minutes of silence passed between us before finally Nolan broke it, surprising the both of us.

"I'm- I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner." He said, the guilt clearly illustrated on his face. "I should have told you sooner, I just- I just couldn't."

"Why?" I asked suddenly, my mouth seeming to have a mind of its own.

He swallowed visibly, wetting his lips, and adverting his gaze to our hands, which were still intertwined, before responding, "It's just, once I tell people they start treating me differently." He said, a small sigh escaping his lips. "You know, they start worrying about me more, asking me if I'm okay all the time, pitying me." The disdain was evident in his tone as he voiced the last part. "I guess I just wasn't ready for you to start looking at me like that."

I swallowed hard, trying to understand his words. He didn't tell me because he was worried I'd feel bad for him, he was worried I would look at him differently. I guess in a way it made sense, but it wasn't an excuse.