Me-Before-You-by-Jojo-Moyes

So although I looked childish – although I seemed to the cabin staff (as I
declined to talk to Will, to look at him, to feed him) as if I were the most
heartless of women – I knew that pretending he was not there was about the only
way I could cope with these hours of enforced proximity. If I had believed
Nathan capable of coping alone I would honestly have changed my flight,
perhaps even disappeared until I could make sure that there was between us a
whole continent, not just a few impossible inches.
The two men slept, and it came as something of a relief – a brief respite from
the tension. I stared at the television screen and, with every mile that we headed
towards home, I felt my heart grow heavier, my anxiety greater. It began to occur
to me then that my failure was not just my own; Will’s parents were going to be
devastated. They would probably blame me. Will’s sister would probably sue
me. And it was my failure for Will too. I had failed to persuade him. I had
offered him everything I could, including myself, and nothing I had shown him
had convinced him of a reason to keep living.
Perhaps, I found myself thinking, he had deserved someone better than me.
Someone cleverer. Someone like Treena might have thought of better things to
do. They might have found some rare piece of medical research or something
that could have helped him. They might have changed his mind. The fact that I
was going to have to live with this knowledge for the rest of my life made me
feel almost dizzy.
‘Want a drink, Clark?’ Will’s voice would break into my thoughts.
‘No. Thank you.’
‘Is my elbow too far over your armrest?’
‘No. It’s fine.’
It was only in those last few hours, in the dark, that I allowed myself to look at
him. My gaze slid slowly sideways from my glowing television screen until I
gazed at him surreptitiously in the dim light of the little cabin. And as I took in
his face, so tanned and handsome, so peaceful in sleep, a solitary tear rolled
down my cheek. Perhaps in some way conscious of my scrutiny Will stirred, but
didn’t wake. And unseen by the cabin staff, by Nathan, I pulled his blanket
slowly up around his neck, tucking it in carefully, to make sure, in the chill of the
cabin air conditioning, that Will would not feel the cold.