Contemporary Gay Romances Read Online Free PDF Page A

body, and he cradled her and he invaded her, but he kept asking if it was okay what he was doing and he did everything, just as she’d wanted, and when they were done, she knew why Mike Strong had chosen her, and that it wasn’t a mistake after all ’cause he was so happy.
    “You are…you are…” he panted afterward, “great!”
    And she’d liked it okay and she thought she would come to like it even more.
    True love…True love.
    And so they got married.
     
    *
     
    She awakened in the middle of the night, suddenly freed of all pain.
    The digital clock read 3:30 a.m. Cara suddenly felt very light, very free. She didn’t understand why, perhaps it was the end coming sooner than anyone had predicted. But she felt she ought to enjoy the freedom while it lasted. She got out of bed, feeling light as a feather—she weighed so much less now than anytime since she was a teenager—put on her robe and slippers, and quietly left the room.
    Her daughter Amanda was asleep, clutching the pillow, having kicked off the blankets. Let them stay off. Poor thing must be warm.
    Downstairs was dark, and she kept it so until she reached the kitchen. It was amazing how light and free she felt. The refrigerator was well stocked. Shaun and Amanda would see to that: the two of them seemed to always be hungry, and she’d awaken and hear them coming in from the market after he’d picked her up from school, with cartons of groceries and produce.
    Mike was so impossibly helpless at things by himself that when her cancer returned and then got worse, Shaun had agreed to move in. He’d broken up with his second wife anyway and was living in some apartment near the business he and Mike owned together for the past ten years. Their son, Neil, hadn’t liked the idea of Shaun moving in, but then Neil didn’t like anything at age thirteen, except smoking marijuana and playing with small pistols. “They’re collector’s items,” he’d insisted, while she screamed, “Get these guns out of my house!” And so Mike sent their son off to military school, and Amanda, who was seven, loved Shaun, who was her godfather anyway, and so after Cara’s third recurrence, with the chemo and the radiation and the exhaustion and all, Shaun just moved in for good and pretty much took over the house.
    Thankfully. Because of Shaun being there, taking care of things, there were these cute little caramel puddings in plastic containers in the fridge: not too much for her like most things nowadays, just enough, so she sat at the kitchen in the dim bulbglow with more light from outdoors beaming in through the door window and she scooped a pudding into her mouth. It tasted sweetish, and rich, and she looked outside at the street light flickering and the Werners’ garage-hung night light, and she thought, I’m almost in another dimension now, aren’t I? I’m in the world of the very, very ill. I have different needs and responses. I’m awake at different times. I’m like one of those men who guard big office buildings all night long. I’ve become guardian of the neighborhood, protector of the house.
    The elation she felt continued even when the fatigue made its appearance, not long after she’d finished eating and washing the spoon. She continued to wander the house checking everything, guarding, protecting. Upstairs she used the loo though very little came out anymore, and her once-beautiful lower torso looked so thin, the hair down there so enormous now that she wasn’t taking the chemo—she would cut it back in the daytime, she decided, just like trimming a hedge.
    On the way to her bedroom, she stopped at the other bedroom door and pushed it open. This is where they’d placed the queen-sized master bed when her room was filled up with that metal hospital contraption. Mike would sleep there and Shaun would sleep in Neil’s bedroom or on the den couch. But Neil had complained bitterly about Shaun in his bed and the den couch was too short for Shaun’s