I can't speak.
I'm the one falling apart when he is the one who is going to die.
"Are you alright?" he asks, coming around his desk toward me. I shake my head, my hand at my chest, unbuttoning the top button of my blouse as I try to fan myself. Cool myself. I'm suddenly so hot. So overwhelmed.
I'm faint.
And I'm not being fair.
This shouldn't be about me.
This needs to be about Dane.
I look in his eyes and in an instant, I'm back at that Miami cabana. Coconut and sunscreen and margaritas. Salty lips and salty air and sun-streaked hair.
His arms on me. His body against mine.
A moment of reckless abandon.
A moment of worlds colliding.
We made a child.
Asher.
And now Dane is dying.
"You need some water." He flings open his office door. "Carla, I need some water. Now."
"Yes, sir." Carla rushes in and brings me a bottle of water. Dane thanks her, tells her to clear his schedule, and then shuts the door.
Locks it.
I guzzle the water.
I can't breathe. I look at him and feel a million emotions. Heartbreak. Desire. Lust. Love.
No. Not love.
I can’t love a stranger.
Can I?
But what I feel for him is something deep and true and spans beyond life and death.
It’s not just because he is Asher’s father. That is part of it… but it is also that when he looks at me, he sees me.
"You heard, then?" he asks as I finish the bottle of water, trying to ground myself in the moment.
"When I saw the story last night, I finally figured out who you were... Your name..."
I want to tell him about Asher.
But he touches my cheek while sighing the deepest, most agonizing sigh I've ever heard in my life, then runs his hands through his hair.
The kind of sigh that is laced with regret. I just don't know what sort of regret right now.
Is it regret about ever being with me? Regret over what his life could have been? Regret over walking away?
"I'm so fucking glad you saw it." Dane shakes his head. "I've been yelling at my publicist all night and day, but if the press meant you found me... then it was worth it." He runs his hand over his chiseled jaw. A jaw I kissed, a jaw I want to kiss again.
"Bittersweet, though, isn't it?"
He laughs sharply. Too sharp. A sharpness that was probably embedded in his heart the moment he found out about his diagnosis. A sharpness he shouldn't apologize for.
He has weeks left to live.
"Life is a fucking trip, isn't it?" he asks.
I can't help but smile. And then he is smiling too. I don't know why, why we would smile in the middle of this mess—I still haven't told him why I came—but when he looks at me I can't help but see the world through a different lens.
And he is looking straight at my heart. He gives me a look so full of desperate longing that all I want to do right now is make his pain go away.
"I'm a fucking mess. I mean, when you met me I was a mess, but a different kind. Back then I was out of my head most the time, partying way too hard, but I met you, and everything changed."
"What do you mean, everything changed?" I have to ask. Because what he doesn't realize is that everything changed for me too.
The day we met is the day I became a mother.
"After I met you, I realized if I ever wanted to be a man who was good enough for a woman like you, I needed to be a better man. I needed to stop the bullshit, the games. I wanted to be the kind of man my parents would be proud of. A man you would be proud of. So, I started giving money to places that matter, started learning about ways to give back. In short, I stopped living for myself. And I only did that because I met you."
His words are so surprising, so unexpected, my eyes fill with tears.
"It's hard to believe that one hour with me caused you to change your entire life." Even as I say it, I know it's not so hard to believe at all. Because one hour with him changed my entire world.
"Meeting you was the best thing that ever happened to me."
I bite my bottom lip, savoring his words and knowing how true they are.
"I wish we had time to fall in love, to grow old together," he says sincerely. "It's cruel to meet again, like this, but even though I'm dying, meeting you made the last year of my life so much better. You, Dottie, gave my life meaning."
Dane presses his palms against his face, this strong, confident man is coming undone.
The news story reported that he had no family, no living relatives.