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  “I hope there’s a good explanation for that.” Remi wasn’t the jealous type, but she was quickly getting used to the idea of being the only woman who got to see Julien naked.

  “There is. And it has everything to do with why, I’m, you know...”

  “Undefiled?”

  “That’s a diplomatic word for a guy who’s never gotten laid.”

  “I’m trying to be diplomatic. It’s better than ripping your clothes off,” Remi said, and sat on her hands to remind herself to let him talk before the clothes-ripping began.

  “I’d rather you just rip my clothes off.”

  “Talk,” she ordered.

  “Okay, I’m talking. It’s just... It sort of changes everything when I bring it up.”

  “Bring what up? What is it?”

  “The reason I’m a virgin and the reason Salena lives with me and the reason I have a housekeeper who keeps everything spotless and disinfected and the reason I lived with my parents until last year when I finally couldn’t stand it anymore and the reason I didn’t send you all the letters I wrote you...”

  “What’s the reason?”

  Julien took a deep breath. He seemed to be steeling himself. “Salena’s not my assistant, but she does work for us.”

  “What does she do?”

  “She’s my doctor. Dr. Salena Kar—oncologist.”

  Remi’s mouth fell open. She quickly closed it. Her desire for Julien turned instantly to pity, compassion and fear.

  “You have a live-in oncologist?” she whispered.

  “I do.”

  “What do you have?”

  Julien sighed again. “It’s not what I have. It’s what I had.”

  “Which was?”

  “Leukemia, Remi. Two weeks after you and I almost had sex, I was diagnosed with leukemia.”

  Chapter Four

  No Last Names

  “Leukemia,” Remi repeated. Her mouth formed the word but her tongue wanted to spit it back out, reject the word, the truth, the suffering, Julien had experienced.

  “Acute myeloid leukemia, if you want to be specific.”

  “That sounds...bad.”

  Julien laughed a little. “There’s no good leukemia.”

  “No,” Remi breathed, her hands shaking from shock. “I wouldn’t think so. What happened?”

  Julien shrugged and sighed. She knew he didn’t want to tell the story but she had to hear it. Every word.

  “The night of the Christmas party, you thought I was older than I was. Why?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “You were almost six feet tall and had a glass of wine in your hand.”

  “I thought it was probably the wine that made you think I was older.”

  “That and how intelligent and funny you were. I’m surprised your parents let you drink wine.”

  “They usually didn’t. But I had a headache that day. It got worse at the party. Dad said I could have one glass of wine and if that didn’t help I should just go lie down in one of the guest bedrooms. They’d find me when it was time to go. That’s why Mom was looking for me.”

  “You didn’t tell me you had a headache that night.”

  “I’d had a headache off and on for a week. When I saw you and we started talking, it disappeared. But it came back the next day. A week after Christmas, I started getting bruises that wouldn’t heal. I finally told Mom I thought something was wrong with me, and I showed her the bruises on my stomach. Next day I’m in the doctor’s office getting blood drawn and my mom’s crying and the doctor’s looking at my blood in the tube and scowling.”

  “Scowling is not good,” Remi said, her hands shaking as if it had been her in that room next to Julien watching a doctor stick a needle in his arm.

  “The doctor said he was going to run some tests, and I should pray I got an A on the tests.”

  “An A?”

  “A for is for Anemia, which is easy to treat and would have explained the bruises and the headaches. I got a C on my test instead. Cancer. They admitted me into the hospital immediately. Then home for a few days. Then I was back in the hospital again. After the bone marrow transplant, I pretty much lived in the hospital.”

  “How bad was it?”

  “Bad,” he said simply. “But it’s always bad. With cancer it’s either bad or worse. Mine was bad, so it could have been worse. That’s what you tell yourself to make it through the night. Mine was treatable, even curable. Not all of the big Cs are.”

  Her heart ground against the gears of her chest. Julien spoke of his years at death’s doorway so casually, too casually.

  “So you’re better? Completely?”

  “See that?” Julien pointed to a chart on the wall. “That’s a five-year calendar. Declared in total remission one year and eleven months ago. That’s when the countdown starts. At five years if I’m still clear, then I’m cured. But the likelihood of relapse is extremely low at this point.”

  “Good,” she said and exhaled a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding.

  “But you should know, there are some lingering issues. I’d get Salena in here to tell you all the dirty details, but I think she’s a little busy right now.”

  Remi stood up and walked over to his bed. She touched the side of his face. “I want you to tell me, no one else.”

  He shrugged and rolled onto his back. Not able to stay away from him any longer, she stretched out on her side next to him. Julien stared up at the ceiling. She stared at Julien.

  “Okay, dirty details. Leukemia sucks. I lived in the hospital for months at a time. Radiation makes you skeletal. No teenage guy wants to weigh ninety pounds. Then you get chemo and steroids and you blow up like a balloon. Skeletal. Fat. Skeletal. Fat. I banned cameras. There are literally zero pictures of me from age seventeen to nineteen in existence.”

  “I was wondering why I never found any pictures of you. Your family’s in the news all the time.”

  “Even when I was having good days, feeling okay, Mom wouldn’t let me out of the house. All the treatments kill the immune system.”

  “House arrest?”

  “Basically,” Julien said. “Not her fault. Mom and Dad never talked about me being sick to anyone because I asked them not to, and they respected that.”

  “You were sick. That’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”

  “I know that now. Harder to accept when you’re seventeen and bald and there are days you can’t even go to the bathroom without help. I didn’t want visitors. I didn’t want people all over me. I just wanted to get through it and get on with my life.”

  “I can see that, but still...God, if I’d known you were sick, I would never have let my family say a word about your family even around our kitchen table. This stupid feud would have been over even if I had to tie up, gag and chain every last relative and throw them in the basement.”

  “Kinky,” Julien said. Remi flicked him in the arm. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” Remi said. “Just keep talking. I want to know everything.”

  “This next part is embarrassing.”

  “Tell me, Julien. Please tell me everything.”

  “I’m sterile,” Julien said. He glanced her way before staring assiduously at the ceiling again.

  “You mean, sterile sterile? Permanently?”

  “Chemotherapy plus bone marrow transplant means goodbye to your fertility forever. It’s possible I could have kids someday. They froze some of my sperm.”

  “That was smart.” She was saying things she knew she should say, keeping calm, being rational even as her stomach roiled with unspoken emotion—grief, sadness, relief...so much relief that he had lived to tell his tale.

  “Smart and horrible. Talk about humiliating, sitting in front of your doctor with your mom next to you and discussing your sperm.”

  “Oh God, you poor thing.” Remi could have cried at the thought of what Julien had endured. She felt an ache, almost physical, to go back in time and somehow be there for him and wit