Breathe (His Command Book 5) Page 12

  The fact that, out of the blue, Marshall had asked him to marry him…

  Was all of it a lie? Was he Marshall’s last choice? His one shot at not dying alone?

  Oli couldn’t explain why else Marshall would have hidden the truth from him. According to David, he’d known about his condition for years.

  Years.

  Oli didn’t know if he should be angry with Marshall, or if he should pity him. Both emotions coiled tightly in his stomach, distinct, yet inextricable.

  That was why Marshall had been single and on the dating site they’d met on—it wasn’t that he was too old, or ugly, or married. He was dying. Oli choked back a sudden sob and blinked away tears. Anger and sympathy rode second to emotional anguish.

  The man he loved was dying, and he hadn’t even trusted Oli enough to tell him.

  “We’ve got to get going,” David announced brightly. He stepped into the elevator to stand beside Marshall. “Are you going up, Mr. Alcrest?”

  “No.” Marshall’s eyes never strayed from Oli, and Oli knew that he saw every tear. Right now, he couldn’t help but wear his emotions on his sleeve. How could he be strong when he’d just found out that he’d been lied to by the man he trusted more than any other? The one who owned his last thought every night, and whose memory woke Oli up in the morning?

  The man who was the father of Oli’s unborn maybe-baby.

  Marshall shook his head and stepped through the door, taking Oli by the wrist. “And I’m afraid that Mr. McKellar isn’t going to be going with you, either.”

  “But Mr. Alcrest!” David stressed. The elevator doors had begun to slide shut. “I still need to show him around the building!”

  “I’ll give him the tour.”

  “But—!”

  The doors shut, and David was gone.

  A syllable died in the back of Oli’s throat. He lifted a hand to object to Marshall’s touch, but couldn’t find the heart to follow the gesture through. Under stress, he cracked jokes or poked fun at his situation, but there was nothing funny about finding out that his maybe-fiancé and father to his maybe-baby was the terminally ill CEO of the company that had just hired him on.

  There was nothing funny about it at all.

  “It looks like we need to have an uncomfortable talk,” Marshall said in a quiet voice.

  Oli pressed his lips together and stared at his feet. Without his humor, he was without a part of himself he sorely needed in order to cope—like a pigeon with a broken wing standing on the edge of a roof, looking down longingly at the ground below. All he could manage was a small, “Okay.”

  “Just... come with me,” Marshall murmured. He hailed the elevator, then they stood together in silence as the doors of the elevator to the right opened. Marshall never relinquished his grip on Oli’s wrist, and Oli didn’t have the heart to fight him. He didn’t have the heart to do much of anything.

  They stepped into the open cabin, and Marshall pressed the button to the sixth floor.

  The sixth floor. Of course. Why not? Oli couldn’t find his humor, so life was stepping in for him by making a mockery of his happiness. No matter what, his life would always be a joke.

  20

  Marshall

  The door to the tiny conference room on the sixth floor closed. Marshall locked the door and shuttered the window, then squeezed his eyes shut and pulled himself together. His secret wasn’t supposed to have been discovered like this. He could only imagine the thoughts running through Oliver’s head, and the sense of betrayal that had to be accompanying them.

  If he was lucky, Oliver had no idea about what was wrong, and Marshall could break it to him casually… but if he wasn’t lucky?

  Marshall opened his eyes and turned around to face Oliver. No matter what, he had to make this better.

  “Marshall?” Oliver croaked. “What the hell is going on?”

  “I’m sorry you found out this way. It wasn’t my intention.”

  Oliver snorted, but the noise devolved into a series of small, hitched sobs that he never let manifest in full. He brushed his hand across his eyes, then stood a little taller, even though Marshall knew from his tone of voice that all he wanted to do was fall apart. “You asked me to marry you, and you didn’t think that telling me that you’re sick was important?” Oliver’s eyes brimmed with tears, but his eyebrows were knitted together, and his face was tight with negative emotion. “That’s a pretty fucking big issue to leave out of our discussion. Like, what? I come to you to tell you that I could be pregnant, and you don’t think it’s relevant to the whole, ‘should we keep the baby?’ conversation to tell me that you’re dying?”

  The word struck Marshall like an open palm. So, Oliver knew the truth. He leaned back against the door for support and closed his eyes. All he could do now was explain himself. It was up to Oliver what he did after that. “When I met you, I wasn’t looking for a serious relationship—”

  “So that’s it?” Oliver squeaked. Marshall opened his eyes to find tears streaming down Oli’s cheeks. “Are you fucking serious right now? That’s what you’re going to give me? You didn’t tell me the truth because I don’t mean enough to you? Because I was a way for you to pass the time while you wait for death?”

  “That’s not true. You didn’t let me finish.”

  Oliver clenched a fist and took a hurried, aggressive step forward. “If your explanation is going to start off belittling our relationship, then I think I have every reason to jump in and not let you finish!” Oliver’s anger was so tightly wound inside of him that Marshall knew better than to touch it. Like a mousetrap set and ready to spring, attempting to poke at Oliver’s interruption would only get him hurt. Marshall would wait for him to disarm himself. “So if you’re going to start that way, then I’ll start that way, too. When I met you, I didn’t want something serious, either. But you know what? After I met you, things changed. We changed. We opened up to each other. I... I let you fuck me over the phone. I sent you pictures of my body. I told you about my struggles, and my feelings, and how fucked up I felt about being such a failure at my age. The whole point of a relationship is that it’s founded in trust, right? That you share things with the other person?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then maybe somewhere along the way, you should have opened up about your health!” The rage in Oliver’s eyes intensified. “You know, one of those nights where I messaged you with a, ‘Hey, what’s up?’ you could have replied with a, ‘Nothing much, just over here dying. You?’”

  Despite himself, Marshall laughed. He clapped a hand over his mouth to put a stop to it, but it was already too late. He prepared for whatever punishment he was about to suffer at the mercy of Oliver’s tongue, but to his surprise, no lashing came. Instead, Oliver took a small step back and loosened his shoulders. He shook his head, then barked out a desperate laugh and buried his face in his hands. He looked up, peeped at Marshall through his parted fingers, then dropped his hands again. When he spoke next, his tone was no longer laced with agitation.

  “I thought I was supposed to be the immature one in this relationship.” Oliver looked up at Marshall with his soft brown eyes, and Marshall’s heart skipped a beat. How had he missed the way the light struck them just right and turned them near amber, just like he’d always imagined? “I thought I was supposed to be the one who proposed after the first date, and who hid important-as-fuck information so you wouldn’t think differently of me... but all this time, I’ve been the most transparent, haven’t I? I don’t even know for sure if I’m pregnant yet, and you already know. You’re on fucking... what is that? Oxygen?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re on fucking oxygen and you’re still not coming clean to me. After everything.” Oliver frowned. He took a few steps back until the backs of his thighs hit the conference table, then he sat. He ran his hands down the front of his pants, then looked at Marshall again. “Why is this so fucked up? Why are we so fucked up?”

  “Because I mistakenly thought i
t would be best if I took care of the issue myself.” Marshall wasn’t proud. Oliver deserved his honesty and respect, and he’d gone ahead and treated him like a child. There was no one to blame but himself and his own fear-based decisions. “I’m doing my best to fix this. That’s why I told you when we met at Tempo that it was going to take some time before you could keep me.”

  “You’re going to fix having a terminal disease?” Oliver’s voice dripped with scathing sarcasm. Marshall deserved every second of it.

  “I’m going to try.”

  Oliver held out a hand, stopping him. His shoulders were tense again. “No more of this vaguebooking shit. No more keeping me in the dark. I need to know what’s wrong with you. Tell me in plain language what’s going on with you and how you’re going to fix this. I’m done with not knowing.”

  The steel in Oliver’s eyes promised he wouldn’t bend. If he didn’t tell Oliver the truth, then Oliver would leave. The man Marshall had fallen in love with—the man he was ready to spend the rest of his life with—would cut ties and walk out of his life. Marshall couldn’t let that happen. Oliver was his.

  “Three years ago, I was diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis after I noticed I was getting winded from simple, everyday tasks.” Marshall kept his voice as even as he could, clamping down on the instability that threatened to tear him apart. “To put it simply, my lungs are in the continuous process of scarring, and no one can tell me why. The more tissue I lose to it, the harder it becomes to breathe. The disease is progressive—it will continue to worsen until it kills me.”

  Oliver’s eyes shone with tears, but he held himself proudly, and he listened without interrupting. When Marshall was sure he’d keep his silence, he continued.

  “I’m on medication that will slow the process, but there is nothing I can take that will stop it. A balanced diet and modest amounts of exercise help, but at this point, the only hope I have is for a bilateral lung transplant—treatment I refused.”

  “Why?” The word was sharp, and it caught Marshall off guard. He didn’t have time to think of the perfect response, so he spoke from the heart and hoped that Oliver would understand.

  “Because when the only joy in waking up is the thought that soon, you’ll get to sleep again, it makes you think that maybe your body is failing you for a reason.” Marshall had done his best to keep his tone even and his expression flat, but a tremble worked its way into the corner of his lip, and let out some of the despair that had been weighing heavily on his soul. “I’ve worked hard my whole life, but for what? I’ve attained success. I’ve made more money than I can spend. I have everything I want, but at the same time, I have nothing. Weekends at The Shepherd were an escape that let me believe that I was fine as I was, but when that final curtain was pulled back to reveal that I was on my own, facing my own mortality to find I had nothing to live for other than selfish motivations?” Marshall shook his head. “I didn’t want to live in a future that lonely. Why would I want to save myself when I have nothing to live for?”

  “Don’t say that,” Oliver whispered, his voice choked with sorrow. “Don’t ever say that. That’s not true.”

  “It was true until I met you,” Marshall admitted with a sad smile. “Until I fell in love.”

  Oliver darted forward, and Marshall braced himself for what was coming. The choice he’d been so sure of wasn’t right anymore, and he knew that it might be too late to take it back. Oliver didn’t deserve that, and he had every right to strike him. Marshall wouldn’t try to hold him back.

  But all Oliver did was sweep him into his arms. He pressed himself ferociously against Marshall’s chest, and when at last Marshall found the wits to hold him back, Oliver’s body had already started to heave with silent sobs. “You moron.”

  “I know.”

  “I hate you.”

  “I know.”

  Oliver looked up at him, his tear-glossed eyes narrowed in anger. “I hate you because I love you. Why would you do something like this to me?”

  “I didn’t think I’d meet someone I connected with,” Marshall admitted in a small voice. “That’s what I was getting at before. My heart has been starved all its life, but unwilling to eat. I never thought it would find someone it wanted to devour. But now that it has, it can’t get enough of you. You, and only you. And now I’m trying everything I can to make this right.”

  With a deflating sigh, Oliver settled back against Marshall’s chest. Marshall slid a hand around the back of his head and stroked his hair gently, and for a while, they stood in silence, wrapped up in each other. Marshall was the next to speak, and when he did, he did so in a low voice meant for just the two of them. “I put myself on the transplant list.”

  “How long do you have left?” Oliver asked, voice equally as intimate. “Is it long enough that you’ll make it to the surgery?”

  “I don’t know.” Marshall pressed a kiss to the top of Oliver’s head. “Life expectancy for IPF is three to five years.”

  “And you’re three years in,” Oli murmured. “How… how long of a wait will it be for the transplant?”

  “Three to six months, on average.”

  “Then there’s still hope.” Oli pushed back from his chest suddenly, tears replaced with fierce determination. “We can see this through.”

  Marshall risked a smile. Oli’s hope was contagious. “There you go again.”

  “There I go what? I’m being serious, I swear.”

  “No.” Marshall chuckled. The concentrated oxygen helped replenish the air lost and kept him from coughing. “There you go again, making me regret that I wasn’t strong enough to keep fighting… that I gave up on myself so soon. If you ever do invent that time machine, you need to find me, too, Oliver. You need to go back and convince me that no matter how bleak the future looks, and no matter how lonely the past, that one day soon, something like you will happen to me.”

  Oliver buried a halfhearted laugh against his chest. “This is supposed to be a comedy, Marshall. Why did you have to go and make it all serious and heartfelt?”

  “All comedies have their serious moments,” Marshall murmured in reply. His fingertips traced patterns through Oliver’s thick hair. “Without sorrow, you don’t have joy.”

  “Only existence,” Oliver whispered. “I know.”

  “I’m done only existing.” Marshall’s fingertips found their way to the nape of Oliver’s neck. He stroked the shorter hair there slowly, savoring the skin-to-skin contact. “All I need to know is that I haven’t ruined what we have. I don’t want to do this without you.”

  Oliver let his gaze lock with Marshall. There was fearful joy in his eyes. “That’s good, because I don’t plan on doing this without you, either. You don’t get to probably knock me up, offer to marry me, then go and die all in one fell swoop. That’s not how this works. You have to get sick of living with me first. It’s the law.”

  “Oh, is that so?” Marshall smiled. His hand resumed its passage, following Oliver’s neck to his shoulders, then back up again. “What if I never get sick of you?”

  “Then I guess you never get to die.” Oliver’s smile grew and turned playful, so much more like the young man Marshall had come to know. “Sucks to be you.”

  There was a pause, during which warmth radiated in Marshall’s chest. It spread through his shoulders and into his stomach. By now, he knew it well—love.

  “But, not to change the topic or anything... are you responsible for me landing this job?” Oliver looked up at him again, his eyes narrowing suspiciously. “Because you never told me that you were some big executive hotshot, and I never told you exactly where I was interviewing, so on one hand, I think that it’s a happy coincidence. On the other, you are the big boss, and I wouldn’t put it past you to meddle...”

  “I am in no way responsible for your hiring,” Marshall said. “That’s HR’s job. I’m mostly locked in my corporate tower, entertaining board members and sitting in on meetings I would rather skip.”

&
nbsp; “I had no idea I was sexting the CEO during a meeting, by the way.” Oliver nuzzled against his shoulder, then broke their contact completely. “You kept saying you weren’t in danger of being fired and I was like, “Oh, okay, maybe he’s the IT guy or something,” but I had no idea you weren’t in danger of being fired because you are the boss.”

  “I didn’t want that to influence your opinion of me, either.”

  “What else are you hiding?” Oliver’s eyes narrowed again. “Are you one of those heathens who likes pineapples on pizza? Or maybe someone who eats warm tuna?”

  “No.” Marshall chuckled. He took Oliver’s hands in his own and watched as Oliver melted for him. The playful suspicion was wiped from his eyes, and his shoulders slumped just a little. He was smitten, but Marshall was, too. “I am sometimes guilty of leaving a few seconds on the microwave. I thought it was important to disclose that before we pursued our relationship any further.”

  “Oh, that’s it.” Oliver snatched his hand back dramatically and turned his back on Marshall. “That’s one omitted truth too far. I could deal with the whole terminally-ill thing, and I could deal with the secretly-being-a-CEO-of-a-mega-successful-company thing, but not clearing the time on the microwave? That’s it. I’m out.”

  “Does this mean our sitcom series is canceled?” Marshall held back a laugh.

  “Nah. I’m just kidding. We’re going for season two, baby.” Oliver’s eyes shone with hope, and his smile was every bit as radiant as Marshall had hoped it would be. “This was one hell of a season finale, but it’s not our swan song. Not by a long shot. I haven’t given up on you just yet.”

  21

  Oli

  Thirteen minutes after five on a Tuesday morning two weeks after Oli’s interview, two parallel pink lines appeared in the display window of his pregnancy test. Oli yawned, activated the camera on his phone, then brought the lens close to the display window. He snapped a picture and sent it, and a message, to Marshall through text.