“I think I’m finally done with all this craziness this time,” she said over a coffee and BLT.

“You counting backwards from a hundred, or using affirmations?” he said with a roll of his eyes.

She smirked. “I’m running. I run like my ass is on fire. I don’t wait until someone’s pissed me off. I just do it, every day. I do it until that broken part of my brain is too tired to wind me up.”

“And it works?”

“Ask the fish.”

So he took her advice and he ran. Sprinting around the block after work, and before heading to the hospital to see Kate, took the edge off. He ran like his ass was on fire, and in doing so, he quelled the flames that had been simmering just under the surface twenty-four hours a day.

Turning down Texas Drive, he spotted his house in the distance. His chest burned; his knees protested.

No chemo.

Andrew collapsed onto his back on his front lawn. Ambient light obliterated most of the stars. He lay with his hands on his chest, steadying his breath. The muscles in his legs quivered and clicked like a hot car engine after a long run on a dark highway.

Letting the endorphins rush through him, Andrew’s mind went blank and silent. Once his breathing and heartbeat settled down, he shakily got to his feet and went inside.

Kate was still asleep. Buttons looked up for a moment before settling again onto his front paws, ears splayed out at his sides.

Andrew wanted to touch her, to feel his skin on her skin, but he worried about waking her up. Wherever she was right now, she wasn’t in pain. Best to leave her there.

He stripped off his clothes and tossed them in the washer. Then he headed for the shower.

Time, he felt, was closing in, gaining weight, incorporating into something that would take up more and more space. Like a child throwing a temper tantrum, it refused to be ignored. Time was both coming for them and running out. It had become a living, breathing entity, daring Andrew to look in its depthless eyes.

It crowded the shower, so close he could feel its cold, indifferent breath on his bare back. Drying quickly, he grabbed a pillow and sat in the easy chair next to Kate.

Sleep came suddenly and mercifully, time no longer mattering, at least for one more night.

Chapter Four

Dr. K had been right. The pain from the treatment was beyond excruciating. It was like being injected with time-released acid, the poison sizzling away at her spine, turning her organs to balls of flame. With pain came rage.