Time for Love , The McCarthys of Gansett Island, Book 9 by Marie Force Page B

fatigue unlike anything I’d ever experienced. But I was a resident. We were all tired, so I blew it off for months. When I finally couldn’t ignore it anymore, I went to the doctor and was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Do you know what that is?”
    “Cancer?” she asked, her voice little more than a whisper.
    He nodded. “It was the most shocking thing I’d ever heard. Here I was in my late twenties, healthy as a horse—or so I thought—and the doctor is telling me I have cancer. The news sent me straight off the cliff, to say the least.”
    “What did Janey say?”
    “I didn’t tell her.”
    “You didn’t tell your fiancée that you had cancer ?”
    “Janey and I had been living apart for a really long time by then. After everything blew up, we were able to see with hindsight that our relationship had been over for a while, but neither of us had acknowledged it.”
    “Is that why you cheated on her?”
    “God, no. I never would’ve hurt her like that intentionally. No matter what, I still loved her. All I can say in my own defense is that I wasn’t at my best during the weeks that followed the diagnosis. I just kept thinking over and over and over again that I’d spent all these years in school and for what? I was going to die before I was thirty, and I hadn’t even lived yet. I did stupid, stupid things. I got drunk, I blew off work, I didn’t tell Janey about the diagnosis, which I absolutely should have, and I slept with one of my chemo nurses—in the bed Janey helped me buy for my apartment. I screwed up everything. By the time I emerged from the fog of shock, my engagement was over, my residency was in serious jeopardy and my nose was broken.”
    “How did that happen?”
    “After Janey caught me with the nurse, I guess she went running to Joe because he was on the mainland when everyone else was here. I didn’t know she’d come to Boston or that she’d seen me with someone else. I never even knew she was in the apartment that night.” The thought of what she’d witnessed still had the power to sicken him even after all this time. “I tried to call her for days, and she didn’t answer. I couldn’t figure out what was going on. When I finally came here to track her down, everyone else already knew what’d happened. I got off the ferry and made the mistake of saying hello to Joe. He punched me in the face.” David ran a finger over the bump in the bridge of his nose. “Busted my nose.”
    “I can’t believe he just hit you like that!”
    “It was the least of what I had coming, Daisy. Please don’t turn this around on him. He was looking out for her, which I’d had my chance to do and blew it big-time. I don’t blame him. It took me a long, long time to be able to say those words. I made everything worse by blaming everyone but myself for the mess my life had become for many months after it happened.”
    “The lymphoma… You had chemo?”
    “Yes, and I’m in remission. That’s why I was in Boston this week. I get checked every six months. Everything’s fine.” He stretched out his arm to display the bruises in the crook of his elbow from the endless rounds of blood work he’d been subjected to the last couple of days.
    Daisy ran her fingers gently over the bruises on his arm. “That’s a relief.”
    “Very much so.”
    “You didn’t tell me why you went to Boston.”
    “I didn’t want you to worry.”
    “I would’ve liked to have known.”
    “All of this, between us, it’s so new. I wasn’t sure we were ready for the lymphoma conversation.”
    “That’s fair enough, I suppose.”
    “I’ve given you a lot to think about. I’ll understand if it’s too much for you and you decide you’d rather not see me anymore.”
    She didn’t say anything for the longest time, during which David had no idea what she was thinking. “My father cheated on my mother when I was in high school,” she finally said, sounding like she was a million miles away rather