Free Life Blood: Cora's Choice #1 by V. M. Black Page A

shivered.
    “Cold?” Geoff asked.
    “No, I’m fine,” I said.  We got to the front door of the campus apartments.  I stopped and turned to him.  “Thanks for walking me,” I said.
    “I’ll come up with you,” he said, reaching past me to open the door.  The offer was a little too casual.  “If I’m carrying your books, I might as well do a proper job of it and take them all the way to your room.”
    “Sure.”  I felt my face heat a little, and I ducked under his arm into the building.
    “You heard back from any grad schools yet?” I asked as we waited for the elevator.
    “Three,” he said.  “Two acceptances, one rejection, but no news yet on assistantships or fellowships.  You?”
    The elevator doors opened with a chime, and we stepped inside.
    “Honestly?” I said, pushing the button for the fourth floor.  “I didn’t apply until November.”
    “Ouch,” he said.
    “I know, stupid, right?  But I was distracted.  Hope all the slots aren’t filled before they look at my application.”
    The doors opened, and we walked to my door, marked by the huge collage of pet memes that Lisette had papered it with.  I grabbed the lanyard around my neck and unlocked it, pushing the door open.
    “Well, thanks again,” I said, extending an arm to take my backpack.
    Geoff stepped forward instead, dropping my bag just inside the door.  I stepped back automatically, but he caught up with me and pulled my body into his, one arm wrapped around my waist, the other hand tangled in my hair, puffy jackets bunched up between us.  I realized his intentions just as his mouth met mine, and instantly, instinctively, I opened to him. 
    I leaned into him, letting my sick and weary muscles surrender to his warm strength.  I gasped against his lips as his tongue touched my teeth, and I let him urge them apart. 
    Finally, after a time that was both far too long and far too short, he pulled away.  I staggered back a couple of steps and stared at him.  He was looking at me, his breath ragged and two spots of color high in his cheeks.
    “Well,” I said breathlessly.  “I did say next semester.”
    “I know,” he said.  “And I meant to wait.  But I had to say—”  He broke off.
    “Goodbye,” I finished.  “But it won’t be goodbye.  The therapy will work, and we’ll both be back in a month, and we’ll laugh about how sick and scared I was.”
    “I’ll never laugh at that,” he said.  His smile was rueful.  “But I really do have to cram for my history final.”
    I grinned back, still feeling the pull of him but more on my own balance again.  “And I do need my nap.  Go on, then,” I said.
    “See you in January,” he said.
    “See you,” I returned.
    He raised a hand in salute as he stepped backwards, out of the door, and I mirrored him.
    Then he was gone.
    I slumped onto the couch, staring at the empty doorway and the bright lights of the hallway beyond.  Geoff was part of what I’d wanted out of life:  the degree, the boyfriend, the job, the marriage, the house, the kids.  He slotted so neatly into that life trajectory, my modest version of “having it all.”  I’d never imagined any other future, though I wasn’t on any kind of rushed timetable to get there.  And it was everything that was threatened by my cancer, everything that I’d mourned as lost.
    I still wanted Geoff, along with the rest of that dream.  I felt my attraction t o him every time he was near, and he would still fit well into the rest of my life that was still laid out in its tidy map, if only the cancer would go away.  He might not be the one to end up filling the full boyfriend-husband-father sequence. But he could.  And that’s what I wanted.
    But now, when I tried to fix my mind on the bright image of that future, shadows of Mr. Thorne kept intruding on the edges.  He was a man who could never fit in my life plan, not in any capacity.  Even so, I still wanted him, too, in a way that I’d never