All of You Read online

  All of You

  Gina Sorelle

  All of You

  Copyright © 2014 by Gina Sorelle

  Kindle Edition

  All rights reserved.

  Cover photography by Mats Bergström

  Cover design by Lola Famure

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Other Titles by Gina Sorelle:

  All of Me

  Please visit my blog at:

  http://ginasorelle.blogspot.com/

  You can also find me on Facebook at:

  https://www.facebook.com/gina.sorelle

  And Twitter at:

  https://twitter.com/GinaSorelle

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to my husband, who will never read this dedication, this book, or probably anything I write. Ever. And that’s okay. I forgive him for not being into romantic literature, just as he forgives me for not being into the ridiculous movies and TV shows he’s into. The important thing is that he is kind, supportive, and has been the best cheerleader a wife could ask for – with my writing and everything else in life.

  As always, C – “You Keep Me Safe, I’ll Keep You Wild.”

  I’ve loved you forever and will love you always.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Other Titles by Gina Sorelle

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Epilogue

  Bonus Scene

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One

  ‡

  “Can you believe this?” Stellan Ahlberg, lab research assistant extraordinaire and hunky Swedish émigré, asked as he shoved his iPhone under Kat Ciaramitaro’s nose. “Look at that!”

  Kat reared back, turning her head. “I would, if you’d get the damn thing within my nearsighted range.” Stellan pulled back and Kat slipped her glasses on, eyeing the screen. “Looks like a bunch of pictures and captions.”

  “Yes, Kat. It’s called Pinterest and it’s full of nerd power stuff. A ridiculous amount of fandom pins, too – you’d love the Doctor Who and Marvel ones – and a ton of science jokes.” Stellan glanced down at the screen and cracked up. “It says, ‘Come to the Nerd Side…We Have Pi.’” He looked up, grinning. “Where was this stuff when we were in school? Might have had a whole different experience.”

  “Yeah, well, I wouldn’t get too hyped up about that.” Kat sank onto her lab stool, stretching her left leg out before she slipped her goggles over her glasses and pulled on a pair of blue latex gloves. “You were still a flaming gay dude who spoke broken English and lived smack-dab in the middle of the good ole American Bible Belt.” Kat eyed him over the top of her glasses and goggles, lips curling. “Pretty sure no amount of ‘Nerd Power’ could have saved you, my friend. Sorry.”

  Stellan sighed. “Yes, I guess you’re right. But it would have been nice to know other people like me existed…nerds and gay dudes.” He grinned. “Or, better yet, both – like me.”

  “You actually make a valid point with that,” Kat said, reaching over to flip on the centrifuge. “People are always talking about how evil the Internet is, but think how comforting it must be for kids today – and adults, for that matter – to connect with other people they can relate to.” She shrugged. “Yeah, sure, there are tons of weirdo creepers out there, too, but that’s the price you have to pay for information, I guess.”

  Stellan handed her the rack of test tubes she was looking around for. “You ever search around on MS sites?”

  “I did when I was first diagnosed, but I didn’t find it particularly useful or comforting.” Kat carefully placed a test tube into each slot in the centrifuge and shrugged. “I trust my neurologist to keep me up-to-date on the latest treatments and options. No need to scare the crap out of myself reading about everyone else’s horror stories.”

  It had scared the crap out of her, not to mention depressed her to the point of contemplating throwing her laptop out the window and hiding under the bed to wait for imminent paralysis and death.

  As it turned out, she hadn’t broken a perfectly nice laptop or crawled under the bed. Really, what would have been the use? Her sisters would have found her and dragged her out, anyway. Kat had, however, gone through an emotionally difficult period following her diagnosis.

  In her defense, being told you have a debilitating disease that will very likely incapacitate you and lead to premature death could have that effect on a person.

  Kat watched the centrifuge spin around and around. “There is no status quo where MS is concerned and almost anything goes,” she said, more to herself than Stellan. “The disease varies so much from person to person that learning about other people’s experiences is moot. What happened to ‘Bev’ in Idaho isn’t necessarily – or even probably – what will happen to me, so why go there?”

  Thinking about those early days right after her diagnosis had old, familiar fears and uncertainties rearing their ugly heads, flashing across her mind and flooding her body. She rattled the facts off like the shrewd scientist she was:

  The odds of it remaining in a benign state are twenty percent. Therefore, there is an eighty percent chance of it progressing.

  Progression would mean loss of mobility, bladder dysfunction, bowel dysfunction, vision loss, pain, fatigue, and, ultimately, death.

  Pops would lose another loved one. He already lost Mom and nearly lost Stella…I don’t know how in the hell he would handle losing me, too.

  Not to mention what my death would do to Gigi, Nina, Stella, Fi, Carla, Marco, Nathan, and the kids…

  By the time Kat realized she was participating in the non-productive, soul-destroying cycle of worry, she was already chest-deep.

  There was nothing insightful, enlightening, or new about the thoughts.
She’d had them all – and a million more – every day for the past six years and they never failed to shake her to her core.

  But she’d resolved a long time ago not to let them win. Not when she still possessed the cognition to fight them. Not when one day – in the not-so-distant future – she could very well lose that ability.

  Until then, Kat was determined to kick ass and take names.

  Even if it was her own ass and her own name.

  “Kat?”

  Stellan’s voice yanked her from the hamster wheel of obsessive worry and Kat glanced over her shoulder with a sheepish smile. “Sorry. Yeah. Zoned out on you for a minute there.”

  Stellan waved off her apology. “Before I forget, I wanted to tell you that Sloan-Kettering called about the disruptor study. Anything in particular you want to pass along?”

  “Nope, not yet,” Kat replied, turning back to the centrifuge. “Tell them I’ll be in contact as soon as I have some concrete data. Shouldn’t be more than a week. Two, at the most.”

  Kat and her team had been researching certain gene treatment therapies for neurofibromatosis, a genetic disorder of the nervous system, for over a year with limited success, but some new testing they’d recently completed showed promise.

  “I really hope something comes from that last round of tests,” Kat said. “Stands to reason we’ll catch a break one of these days, right?”

  “Yeah. Soon.”

  When Kat turned back to respond, Stellan was already halfway across the lab.

  Abruptly walking away mid-conversation?

  Just one of the many idiosyncrasies of the socially-awkward, scientific crowd. And the only reason Kat was slightly less awkward was thanks to the wild extroversion of her family.

  Growing up in an Italian-American household comprised of seven loud, opinionated people (six of them women) had forced Kat’s hand at a very early age. It had been get louder, more animated, and more talkative or get steam-rolled on an hourly basis.

  Thankfully, Kat had always been a very fast learner.

  But, regardless of conditioning, she was still the quiet one. The serious one. The logical one. The only logical one, other than her brother-in-law, Nathan.

  Kat thought about how much enjoyment she and Nathan got out of exchanging exasperated, wry WTF? looks during family get-togethers and smiled.

  Getting that guy as a brother-in-law had been like winning the stinkin’ lottery.

  The centrifuge finally came to a complete stop and Kat removed all five test tubes. She placed them into a rack and meticulously piped out particle samples from each tube, inserting them into sterile tubes she’d be working with tomorrow. Samples labeled and racked and her workstation cleared, Kat rinsed out the used tubes and stored the new ones in the lab refrigerator.

  After she’d washed her hands, hung up her lab coat, and grabbed her purse, Kat went in search of Stellan. She found him texting in a back break area.

  He glanced up, smiling. “Christopher said Stella just ran halfway around the hospital in the snow to hide from Nathan. He stopped by and she was outside smoking, so she took off.”

  “He catch her?”

  “Oh, yeah. Jumped out from some bushes and scared her half to death.”

  Kat scoffed. “Serves her right. I’m with Nathan on that particular issue. She’s a nurse, for God’s sake – she should know better. I’ve threatened to wallpaper her living room with necrotic lung tissue slides if she doesn’t knock it off. Pops,’ too.”

  “Pops and those Camels might be a lost cause,” Stellan replied. “But Christopher says Stella only does it sometimes. And we all have our bad habits. The other day I watched Christopher eat an entire baking dish of lasagna.” Stellan gestured wide with his hands. “And I mean the whole thing. Then there’s me with my bottles of wine on the weekends.” He shrugged. “Like I said, we all have our stuff. Everybody’s got their vices, right?”

  Kat racked her brain for a past, present, or possible future vice, but came up with nada.

  That was, of course, unless a voracious appetite for books, a gluttonous need for comfy yoga pants, and an insatiable appetite for take-out were vices.

  Tame and lame, as usual.

  Kat left Stellan to his texting conversation and made her way out of the lab and into the hallway. She got about halfway to the elevator when a door opened behind her. “I thought I saw you walk by,” a deep voice called out.

  Kat turned to find Ben Forster’s head poking out from behind his lab’s door.

  She lifted her hand in a wave. “Yes. Hi.” Kat cleared her throat and gestured toward the elevator. “Just leaving for the night.” She glanced down at her winter jacket and purse and then up at Ben. “Obviously.”

  “Another late night for us both,” Ben said, slipping out into the hallway. He held onto the door until it shut with a quiet snick behind him. “It seems like we’ve been making a habit of it lately.”

  By regular guy standards, Ben would have been considered really good-looking, but, by biomechanical engineer standards, Ben was – as her sisters would have said – smokin’ hot. He was over six feet tall, with dark brown hair, nice hazel eyes, and a great smile.

  During a tour in Afghanistan ten years ago, an Improvised Explosive Device had eviscerated his left leg below the knee, which was why he now had a prosthetic beneath his khaki pants and shoved into his brown leather boot. After his recovery and discharge from the Marines, Ben put himself through engineering school at Ohio State University and now designed and implemented limb prosthetics for other veterans.

  Kat and Ben had been making small talk in the research facility hallway several times a week for about a year now.

  Well, Ben attempted small talk while Kat stood there awkwardly. Outside of her male colleagues and the guys in her family, Ben was one of the few men Kat ever interacted with and she wasn’t very good at it.

  At all.

  They stood there silently for a few long moments before Ben finally spoke.

  “I’ve, uh, noticed you haven’t been using your cane for the past few weeks,” he said. “Probably safe to assume the neurologist made some headway with your meds?”

  Kat nodded. “Yes, actually. We’re trying a different combination of medications and they seem to be working relatively well. Either that, or I’ve slipped into another dormancy.” She shifted her weight to her left leg, as if to prove it to him.

  Ugh.

  Why. Are. You. So. Awkward?

  It was 70 degrees in the building, Kat was wearing the stylish plum-colored coat Fi had bought her for Christmas last year, and she was trapped in the 7th level of small-talk Hell.

  Cue the deluge of sweat.

  “That’s great. I’m glad to hear that.” Ben cleared his throat. Again. “Listen, I’ve been meaning to ask you…well, if you’d like to, I don’t know…maybe go out to dinner together sometime? Or maybe catch a play or…” Ben angled his head back toward the lab. “I was just reading that La Traviata is playing at the Bohemian National Hall next weekend. I thought maybe we could go…that is, if you like opera. Which I thought maybe you might.” When Kat didn’t reply, he exhaled a nervous laugh. “Or not.”

  Ben was a very nice, very smart guy. They shared a background in science and an obvious affinity for the medical profession. Kat had a wide-open social calendar, loved eating, and could tolerate opera.

  But there was no way in hell she was going on a date with this dude. For a bunch of different reasons.

  Kat shifted her weight again, but still didn’t speak.

  Ben’s smile faded. “No big deal.” He nodded slowly. “Okay, so…”

  “It’s not you…” Kat swallowed hard, searching for a way to get out of this awful situation without looking like a heartless, rude bitch. “I just have a lot going on right now, Ben, but maybe some other time. Thank you, though.”

  Ben searched her face thoughtfully. “You know, I get it, Kat. I know what it’s like, the things that go through your head when you’re�
��well, I hate the word ‘disabled,’ so let’s go with ‘medically different.’”

  Ben shifted his weight, unconsciously reminding Kat that he did get it. That he knew what it was like to wake up one day totally different than you’d been the day before.

  Ben was missing a limb and Kat had limbs she couldn’t control.

  Now that Kat thought about it, they were like two peas in a frickin’ pod.

  “This doesn’t have anything to do with you going out with me or not, by the way,” he continued. “I just wanted you know that I understand what it feels like to have that guard up and that I respect your feelings completely. But I would like to get to know you better, if possible.”

  Ben shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans, shifting his weight again. When Kat still didn’t speak, a flush crept up his neck.

  He exhaled a hard laugh. “Or did I completely misinterpret that and succeed only in making an even bigger ass of myself?”

  Kat shook her head, a small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “No, you pretty much got it spot-on, I’m embarrassed to admit. I had no idea I was so transparent.”

  Ben laughed and Kat’s muscles loosened up. A little.

  “We don’t have to call it a date. Hell, it doesn’t have to be a date. Maybe we could just go do something fun together,” Ben said. “Because I don’t know about you, but my social life could use a real boost.”

  A boost? Kat’s would need a rocket launching to get anywhere near acceptable societal standards.

  Before her multiple sclerosis diagnosis, Kat’s social circle had consisted of immediate family, work colleagues, school associates, and a small circle of friends she’d made in college. But since her diagnosis six years ago, Kat had pulled that circle even tighter.

  It hadn’t been a conscious decision at the time, but, looking back, Kat could see the direct correlation between her diagnosis and people she’d allowed in. She’d slowly distanced herself from her small group of friends, with no plans to change that or replace them. Kat couldn’t eliminate work associates from her life, but she could keep those relationships strictly professional (aside from Stellan, who was now like family since he was dating a childhood friend).