He could feel her fast pulse thrilling through her fingertips, hear the tiny catch of her breath. “Griff-”
“Wait,” he interrupted. Steeling himself, he opened his eyes, although he didn’t release her hand. “There’s something you need to know, before you decide if you want to take this any further.”
“If I want to take this any further?” Hayley’s face was flushed with disbelief and astonishment and slowly rising joy. She let out a short, giddy laugh. “Why on earth wouldn’t I?”
He forced himself to meet her shining eyes. “Because I’m dying.”
CHAPTER SIX
Hayley
For a moment, Hayley was convinced that she had to have heard him wrong.
Griff, dying?
That can’t be right. Just look at him!
Surely sick people couldn’t possibly radiate strength and power like Griff did. He could have appeared on the cover of GQ, or in an ad for protein supplements. How could he be dying?
Sure, she’d noticed he limped a little, but she’d thought he must have just sprained his knee or something. Nobody died of a bad leg, after all.
Unless…
Hayley couldn’t help flinching a little, horrible images of her mother’s final weeks slicing through her mind. She knew that he’d noticed her reaction from the way he instantly released her, drawing his hand back.
“Aye, well.” Griff’s voice was rough, betraying the depth of feeling walled off behind his suddenly closed, impassive expression. He looked away from her. “So now you know.”
&
nbsp; “No, I don’t! I don’t understand—I mean, you can’t be-” The words burst out of her of their own accord, tearing themselves free from the depths of her heart. She drew in a deep, shaky breath. “I’m sorry, it’s just that this is a lot to take in. And you need to know, if, if what you’ve got is bone cancer…that’s what my mom had. It wasn’t treatable for her, either.”
Griff winced, his face softening back into its usual open, compassionate lines. “I’m sorry for bringing up bad memories. If it helps at all, I don’t have cancer.” He shook his head, looking rather rueful. “Is it terrible if I say that sometimes I wish I did? At least doctors believe in cancer.”
“But not in shifters, I’m guessing.” The pieces were falling into place in Hayley’s head. “What’s wrong with you…it’s to do with your two animals, isn’t it? You’re-” The word dying stuck on her tongue. Saying it would make it too real. She substituted, “sick because you can’t shift.”
“Exactly. We shifters are supposed to shift. We have to. If we don’t do it of our own volition, eventually our animal takes over and forces the issue.” Griff’s mouth tightened. “I’m better than most at controlling my inner animals. But I can’t keep them chained all the time. And when they get free…well. It isn’t pretty. So you see, I’m in no position to think about a mate. I don’t have anything to offer you. I don’t have a future.”
Something about his resigned tone made her irrationally angry. “But you said that you’ve never been able to shift,” she said, as if she could somehow argue him better. “And you’ve survived this long, haven’t you? Who’s to say you can’t survive just as long again? I mean, you seem fit, healthy…you climbed that tree as if you were just strolling down the sidewalk. For Heaven’s sake, you’re a firefighter!”
His head jerked upward, surprise flashing across his expression. Then he let out a brief bark of humorless laughter. “It really is my day for disappointing people, it seems. I was a firefighter, Hayley.” He gestured at his left leg. “Not anymore. About a year ago, I had one of my seizures, a bad one. I came back to human eventually, but not quite in the same shape I started. It ended my career.”
Hayley blinked at him, taken aback. “But I thought you said you worked for the fire service.”
“I do. As a dispatcher. That’s how I knew to come to you. I overheard your call.” He fell silent for a moment, head bowing. “Hayley, my condition…the episodes are getting more frequent. And worse. At some point, it’s going to be more than just a leg that goes wrong. Probably sooner rather than later.”
The weary slump to the set of his shoulders stabbed her to the heart. Hayley desperately wanted to touch him again, but he’d retreated back out of her reach. The few feet of space between them seemed like an impassable chasm, impossible to bridge.
Griff let out a long, slow sigh. “Maybe it would have been better for you if I’d sent someone else. If we’d never met. You’ve already been through this kind of thing once, with your mother. I can’t ask you to do that again. I won’t. But…”
He raised his head, meeting her gaze at last. Hayley’s breath caught. His eyes had gone that intense, feral yellow again…but this time they burned with something other than anger.
“I’m not sorry,” he growled, low and forceful. “I don’t regret coming myself. No matter what happens, I won’t ever regret meeting you.”
The naked desire in his gaze ignited an answering heat in her core. Hayley found that she was leaning forward, every part of her drawn towards him like a moth to a flame. If he touched her, if he moved toward her, even just a little…
But he didn’t.
Griff closed his eyes for a moment, and when he re-opened them they’d gone back to their usual deep, warm gold. “It’s enough,” he said, very softly. “Enough just to have known you. Thank you.”