Felix’s expression had softened until this last comment. It went hard again, so she nodded quickly. “I told him if it was bad news”—she glanced away for a moment, unable to continue looking into Felix’s suddenly desperate eyes—“I’d likely be too caught up to be calling or texting but that I’d have Memo update him.” She looked Felix in the eyes again, this time with all the conviction she could muster. “I’m gonna beat this. Do you hear me? But I need you to be strong, and the last thing I need is any outside negativity added to all this. I should’ve never said what I did to Grayson. I panicked and I’m sorry, but you have to know Grayson is not and will never be an issue for us, okay? Just like the stupid tabloids haven’t been and will never be.”

Ella was about to keep going. She could go on and on assuring him that what she’d said to Grayson was a complete lie. She really hadn’t and wouldn’t let anything in the media get to her, not as long as Felix continued to show her so unequivocally how devoted he was to her. He’d been doing just that from the very beginning. Felix opened the door and got out of the car. Instinctively, so did she and met him just outside the passenger side.

Felix wrapped his arms around her cautiously but firmly. His hug was so full of emotion she knew right then she had nothing to worry about, not about this anyway. And apparently he felt the same way.

~~~

The hardest thing about the weeks that followed her diagnosis—harder than the draining chemo sessions and harder than hearing Felix say he was postponing his fight if not cancelling it indefinitely—was having to see her dad go through this all over again. Ella believed her father’s collapse and his hoarding were caused by having to endure watching the woman who’d been such a rock to all of them slip away so helplessly. It had done something to him that she didn’t think he’d ever recover from. And now he had to live through it again.

She’d been able to come to a compromise with Felix. He wanted to take care of her at his home. Since she knew having her dad watch her get home from her sessions so completely spent and often times very sick to her stomach took such a toll on him, she agreed but on one condition. She promised Felix she was going to fight this thing with every fiber of her being. She had her mom in her corner. Ella knew she needed to stick around for her father, her brother, and even Felix because, as much as he was trying to be strong, this was destroying him. Ella wasn’t going down without a fight, but neither was Felix. If she agreed to move into his place to be cared for by round-the-clock nurses, then Felix was going through with his fight.

The last thing she needed on her conscience was to know he’d cancelled one of the biggest fights of his career just to take care of her.

“What are you gonna do, babe?” She reasoned with him. “You’re not a doctor or a nurse. You’ll be hiring the very best to take care of me. I’ll be exhausted, grumpy, and sleeping most of the time. You don’t need to be sitting by my side all day. I don’t want you there all day. There’s no need for you to suffer through every minute of this with me. You need the distraction, and training for this fight will do just that.”

It was the only way she’d agree to move into his home and burden him like that, and it was the only thing that would get him to go through with the fight. So the fight was still set to happen.

Even though Ella had told Felix moving a cat from one home to another was different from moving a dog—that it was traumatizing and she didn’t want to put Larry through it—Felix insisted. He said he’d read somewhere pets had the power to heal or at the very least make you feel better during an illness. Ella had never even bought a cat carrier since she never took Larry anywhere but the vet when he was just a kitten to get his vaccinations.

Of course, Felix went out and bought an expensive carrier with all these toys and a cat bed to make Larry as comfortable as possible during the move. It took Larry a while to adjust, but after a few days he’d made himself at home in Felix’s beautiful home.

Ella did her best to keep what the doctors told her about her prognosis to a minimum or at the least very vague. She’d known it from the beginning. It was another thing her mother had told her years ago about men.

“When they truly love you, they love hard. You’ll feel it, and there will be no question about it. True love at its purest is something that cannot be faked, not even by the best cons out there.”

What Felix said he was feeling for her from the very beginning was anything but fake. It had only grown with each passing day, and he couldn’t get enough of telling her so. It was why it’d been so easy to ignore the tabloid stories and rumors of him cheating. Having the women of 5th Street and his own mother and sister confirm this again and again, it would’ve been completely unfair for her to question his sincerity.

Because of this she was as scared about this newest challenge in her life for herself as she was for him. So whenever he asked what the doctors had said, she kept it vague. “We’re making progress” or “everything is as it should be.”

She knew she really wasn’t telling him much, but he didn’t need to hear all the heavy-duty stuff. She also hated that, since she’d been diagnosed, they’d only made love a handful of times in the very beginning before the chemo had really done a number on her and Felix refused to exert her further. “It’ll be our reward,” he’d whispered as he held her in bed, “when we both get through this. For now, just having you in my arms all night every night is more than enough.”