"How long have you know about this?"

Celeste shrugged and stared down at Luke's hand in hers. "A couple of weeks. They've started chemotherapy last week."

"But how have you been able to go in for treatment? As far as we know, you've still been going to work and picking up the girls—"

"I'm doing home chemotherapy right now. I'm taking leave off of work next week and then . . ."

Luke moved his head, forcing Celeste to look at him. "And then are you going to tell your kids?"

Celeste pulled her hand away and raised her eyebrows, shaking her head. "I don't know. Part of me thinks they shouldn't know."

"Celeste, how can they not know?" Luke cried. He looked over his shoulder and lowered his voice. "Sooner or later they're going to find out. And what about you? What's gonna happen when you start to lose your hair?"

Celeste stood from her chair and went to the stove where the kettle was boiling. "Not everyone on home chemo loses their hair." She took the kettle off the stove and put in on a hot pad. "I'll just . . .I can ride it out for a while."

Luke stood and moved over to her. "Celeste—"

"I'll be fine, it's in its early stages. Early enough, anyway—"

"Celeste you can't do this alone!" Luke put his hands on her trembling shoulders and turned her around to face him. She had tears in her eyes.

"I know," Celeste said. She lowered her eyes as a tear rolled down her cheek. "I know." Celeste let out a sob and crumpled like a heap of laundry into Luke's chest. He hugged her gently and stroked her head, kissing her hair as she had done to Sarah. Celeste cried in his chest, her body heaving and her fingers gripping his shirt as though she were hanging on for dear life. She pulled away and looked up at Luke, her face streaked with tears.

"You have to promise me you won't tell the girls. You have to promise me you won't tell them yet, not until I'm ready!"

Luke nodded. "Okay," he said. "I promise." He held her close again and rocked her gently in his embrace. He felt Celeste's tears bleed through his shirt and wanted to cry himself, wanted to absorb all of her sadness until she was no longer scared.

Celeste sniffled and pulled away from Luke with a laugh. "I'm sorry," she said, wiping away her tears. "Here I am, a huge mess, and you probably came over here for a different reason." She looked up at her neighbor. "What's up?"

Luke could practically his heart tear in half. He felt guilty for wanting to tell Celeste after everything she had just confessed to him, felt that all of his own problems were a breeze when Celeste was standing face-forward in a tsunami.

He shrugged and pursed his lips to keep the pain from escaping his mouth in a soft sigh. "Oh, it's nothing,"

"What is it?" Celeste said, her face twisted in concern.

Luke managed a laugh and squeezed her shoulders. "It's no big deal. Noah and I had a fight."

"Why? What happened?"

Luke smiled down at Celeste. He was touched by her concern even in her own turbulent state. He looked at his hand on Celeste's shoulder, the one with the gold band and felt his hopes rising ever-so-slowly. Suddenly, everything seemed easier.

"It's nothing we can't bounce back from," he said.

0000000

"Come on!"

Noah gasped as he felt another cinderblock, another semi truck plow into his stomach as Danny kicked him. He lay curled on the pavement on the parking lot, helpless and clutching his gut where everything felt like burning embers.

"Get him on his back!" one of Danny's friends yelled.

Danny kicked him again and Noah rolled over onto his back. The part of his brain that wasn't panicking was telling him that help would come soon, that someone would see the incident taking place and stop everything before Danny could land another blow to his face or a kick to his back or a deadly hit on the head with a hockey stick—

"Hey, man, put that down!" Danny's friend cried.

"Gimme back my fuckin' hockey stick, man!" another said.

Noah looked up with blurry vision to see Danny holding a long blue and red hockey stick in his hand. "Watch and learn, boys," he said. He raised the stick in the air as though he were about to slap an invisible puck away from an opponent.

In that moment, Noah truly felt he was going to die. He thought about Luke and the horrible things they had said to each other, he thought about his lover's face the second he saw Andrew kissing him in the trailer. He wondered how Celeste and the girl's were going to take the news, how their faces might look when Luke told them that he was—

"Aggh!" Noah cried. His head flew to the side as Danny hit him with the stick. Noah felt a searing, white pain spread throughout the back of his head, his entire body tingled for a moment and then buzzed with agony.

"Stop it, man!"

"You're gonna kill him!"

Danny's friends were but faceless sounds to Noah, a pack of blurry figures hovering above him like angels of death. This was it, he could feel it. A heavy darkness began to envelop his vision. Noah felt a faint thump across his mouth as Danny's cloudy face became the only thing in his line of sight. He felt the coppery, warm taste of blood in his mouth as the teenager lifted his pounding head from the pavement by his collar. For a split second, Noah thought he could see tears in Danny's eyes.

Danny raised his fist again and hit Noah square on his side temple. Noah's eyes fluttered closed and the blackness hovering around his eyes draped itself around him like a light switch going off. Now there were no thoughts of getting out, no convoluted dreams or even flashes of Luke's face smiling back at him, perfect and happy.

All Noah could see was black.

To be continued