Zak could hear the “when it’s convenient” behind the words. That’s the way Crystal had done everything. Whatever was easy and convenient. “But Brandon and Jake have Tank’s last name—Rogers. He insisted.”
Zak nodded, so relieved he thought he’d slither off the couch. “Good.”
“Bella has yours.”
An electric shock went through him. “What?”
She shrugged again and smiled, a glimmer of the charming-as-sin young woman she’d been coming through. “I had to put something.”
“What about her father?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t sure. He wasn’t around. I wanted her to have someone good—”
Zak grabbed his head with both hands to keep it from exploding. “Whoa, Crystal, this is insane.”
“I didn’t think it mattered. You wouldn’t know.”
“You didn’t think it mattered?” This woman was a nut job. And he was married to her!
“I wouldn’t have come to you now if I hadn’t been desperate.”
He’d heard that before. The day she’d showed up at his apartment with bruises on her cheek crying that Tank had left her for good. He’d fallen for it then, but he was older and wiser now.
“Okay,” he said, heart leaping around like one of Jilly’s terriers. “Let’s deal with this and get it over with. I’ll pay for a divorce.” He wrestled with that for a moment but won. As a man of faith, he didn’t believe in divorce but this was different. Wasn’t it? “An annulment would be better. We weren’t married that long. What, a few weeks? A month?”
“Nearly ten years now.”
“Stop it, Crystal. We’re not married, never were. We had a piece of paper, and I gave you a place to stay and a sympathetic shoulder. We weren’t in love. I filled a need until Tank wanted you back.” He felt like a jerk for saying these things to her, but they’d been in the back of his head since the day he’d come in from class and found a note propped with a banana against his pillow.
“I never meant to hurt you, Zaky.” The old, juvenile endearment grated on him. He’d fallen for it back when he was a boy, but he was a man now.
This was the way with Crystal. Charming and manipulative in an innocent way, she never intended any of the foolish things she did.
Zak studied her ravaged body, a shell of the vibrant, self-seeking kewpie doll that had crooked her finger and had him running. Zak searched his heart, his conscience, and prayed. Had he loved her? He’d been eighteen. He didn’t know. He’d been in…well, not in love. Playing the knight in shining armor had made him feel like an adult, a man.
“Why are you telling me this now?”
“I told you. I’m dying.”
That tiny niggling in the back of his brain started up again. Something buzzed around like a gnat, pestering, warning. “And you wanted to clear your conscience?”
“That’s not why I’m here, Zak. I don’t have time.”
“What if I’d gotten married to someone else, Crystal? Do you realize what that would have made me?”
“No one would have ever known.” She frowned, clueless. “I guess. I don’t know. I didn’t think about it.”
She never had.
“Why didn’t you contact me a long time ago? I would have dealt with this.”
“Maybe it was fate.”
Even for a guy who remained laid-back and calm when fighting a raging fire, he wasn’t particularly surprised when sweat rolled down his back. “It wasn’t fate, Crystal. There is no fate. There are only people making dumb decisions.”
Crystal sagged back again, expression wounded. “I’m sorry. This is not going the way I’d hoped. I’m so tired. Sometimes I say things wrong.”
Instantly contrite, Zak wanted to kick himself. She had cancer. She’d told him she was dying. What kind of jerk berated a dying woman?
Crystal’s three children trailed in from his kitchen, munching on his Chips Ahoy! He looked at the little girl, dismayed and bewildered to know she bore his surname. His name was on her birth certificate. Was that even legal?
Crystal closed her eyes, a hand to her forehead. He hoped she didn’t pass out again. But whether she did or not, he had a responsibility—not because they were still legally married, if that was even true, but because he wasn’t the kind of man who could live with himself if he didn’t offer aid to a dying soul.
“Let’s start again,” he heard himself saying. “Tell me what you need, Crystal. Is there some way I can help?”
Her eyes opened, still as blue as summer but without the spark of energy that had melted him years ago. She looked old and haggard. “That’s why I’m here. I knew you’d help me.”
“Help you what? I know a good doctor. Some nurses. I have some money put back. What do you need?”
“My kids.” The three settled around her on the couch, painfully alert to the serious adult conversation. Weakly, she stretched an arm to each side like wings and covered them, a hen sheltering her chicks.
“When I die,” she said, “I want you to take my kids.”
Chapter Three
Zak wanted to say she was crazy. He wanted to yell, “No way!” He wanted to rewind to that blissfully ignorant time when he’d been admiring Jilly’s jaunty lawn mower grit and Tim Lincecum’s earned run average. If he could pitch like that he’d be in the majors.
Instead, he closed his eyes and tried to get himself under control while praying for a quick and easy resolution. None was forthcoming.
“This is sudden,” Crystal said.
“Sudden” was a major understatement that left him gaping. Sudden was when the runner on first took off for second. Sudden was when he’d pitched a no-hitter and his teammates dumped the ice bucket over his head. This wasn’t sudden. This was catastrophic.
“I wish I didn’t have to spring it on you this way, but…” The remainder trailed away, lost in the facts. Crystal was running out of time. He wasn’t cynical enough or cruel enough to question that part of her story. All he had to do was look at her ashen color, the black circles under her eyes and her emaciated body.
He tried to get a grip, tried to ignore the rampaging elephants in his chest and the shock ricocheting through his head to focus on the most important portion of this bizarre conversation. Crystal was dying. “The doctors can’t do anything?”
“They’ve done a lot. More than two years’ worth. Nothing worked. I waited too long.” She lifted one very thin shoulder, puckering the dragon logo on her pink pullover.
