Life Blood: Cora's Choice #1 by V. M. Black Read Free Book Online Page B

partner.”
    I sank deeper into the sofa and kicked off my shoes with a groan.  “Fine, I’ll take the hint, but I’m not moving from this couch.  If you want to go over the homework, you’ll have to bring my work to me.”
    “Deal,” Lisette said, disappearing into my bedroom.
    Left alone, I looked at my aching, blistered finger and thought about what I had said about being locked up in a torture chamber.  I had been joking at the time, but I realized that it was very possible with this man.  But with him, I would tie myself up and apply the instruments of torture to my own flesh...and be glad.
    I hugged myself, sick with horror at how very plausible that thought was, and even more sick at the thought that part of me, even now, would welcome such a fate.
    I came to the stark realization that I had lost my mind.  And what was worse, I didn’t care.

Chapter Nine
     
    I t was Tuesday of the next week when a call across McKeldin Mall stopped me in my tracks.
    “Hey, Shaw!”
    I turned around to see Geoff grinning at me in the slightly worried way I’d come to dread.
    Oh, damn.  Someone had told him that I was sick.  Now I was going to find out just how much he knew.
    “Hi, Geoff,” I said, pausing so that he could catch up more quickly.  Last month, I had reached such a level of exhaustion that I’d started taking the bus to travel between my south campus apartment and my classes.  But I was still feeling better off the alemtuzumab and wasn’t walking far enough to bother with waiting for the bus today.
    “Headed to lunch?” he asked.
    “Yeah,” I said.  “I’ve got some extra Terp Bucks to burn before finals are over, so I was going to The Dairy.”  The Dairy had a decent selection of sandwiches, pizza, and, of course, ice cream made on site, and with my dining money expiring at the end of the term, it was time to use it or lose it.
    “Me, too,” he said.  “Join you?”
    “Sure,” I said.
    We walked along in an awkward silence for a couple of minutes.  I watched Geoff out of the corner of my eye.  He was visibly struggling, trying to come up with a polite way to ask me about being sick.
    I sigh and stopped, turning toward him.  He took one more step forward before he realized that I was not beside him anymore.
    “So, what have you heard?” I ask.  “And who did you hear it from, because I want to know who I should kill?”
    Geoff looked uncomfortable.  “Cancer?” he said.  “For real?”
    I let out a puff of air and started walking again.  “Yeah.  For real,” I said.
    “I thought you’d gotten some kind of eating disorder or something,” he said.  “I mean, your hair—”
    “Yeah, thanks, you and half the world,” I said.  “It’s the wrong kind of cancer to be treated with chemo that causes all your hair to fall out.”
    “So, you mean like...”  He made a vague cupping motion at chest level.
    I punched him in the arm.  “Seriously, what is wrong with guys?  You find out I have cancer, and the first thing you think about are my tits?  Really?”
    “Well, what other kind of cancer do girls get?” he said, but he was grinning now.
    “That had better be a joke,” I said.  I knew it was.  And if Geoff could crack a joke, I might survive this conversation.  “And no, my boobs are fine.  It’s leukemia.  And the first treatment option didn’t work, so my doctor’s going to have me on something new soon.”
    “But you are going to be okay, right?”  Geoff’s face went serious.  “We were getting along so well at the end of last year, and then when this semester started, I thought we’d be able to pick up where we’d left off....”
    I felt a pang of guilt.  I’d gone on my first date with Geoff four days before I got my diagnosis.  “Yeah.  Sorry about that.  I guess I kinda shut down for a while.”
    “I thought our date went well, myself,” Geoff said.
    “Oh, it did,” I assured him.  “I’m still a terrible bowler.  But it