I sucked in my breath, and Jagger stepped to the right, blocking me. “We’re done here.”
My head started buzzing like I’d had too much to drink, and my watch blinked. I turned off the alarm and leaned into Jagger, trying to calm my heart. I needed to lie down.
“We are not done!” his father hissed. “I left you alone for nearly seven years after you dropped that ridiculous letter on me about how wretched I was. I gave you time to get over your tantrum, to be out of the public eye. I let you use your ridiculous new name.”
“Let?” Jagger’s voice rose, and my eyes flickered to the doors, wondering how much longer we could make it without causing a scene. “You don’t let me do anything. I control my name, my trust fund, and my future. Remember? You are nothing to me but a biological contribution.”
I concentrated on my breaths, trying to slow them down, but the buzzing only got worse.
“Of course I remember. I signed the damn papers, didn’t I? I let you leave your preparatory school, turn down your appointment to West Point, and attend some middle-of-nowhere third-tier school all in the name of tracking her down. Was it worth it?”
Her? I looked at Jagger, who was quickly blurring in my vision. Anna.
“Yes,” he seethed. “She has always been worth it, you bastard. She is beautiful and smart, and deserves far more than the shit you threw at her!”
I wavered on my feet and grabbed ahold of the large table we stood next to for balance. A feeling of unease settled into my heart. He’d told me he’d never been in a functional relationship before. Was Anna the dysfunctional?
“She’s a washed-up drug addict who did nothing but pull you under, drowning you. I did what I had to in order to save you.”
“Save me?” Jagger shouted, his voice booming across the foyer. “Losing her destroyed me! First Mom died, and then you ran Anna off. She was all that was holding me together!”
“She was ripping you apart! She still is!” His father took a deep breath and smoothed the lines of his lapel. “I thought I could trust you to make better decisions, Prescott, but when I learned that you raced off to be with her last month…”
I tensed. He’d been with her last month? My hand slipped from his, and I turned toward the table, using both hands to hold my weight. It was getting more and more difficult to stand, my head clouding. He spent that week with another girl, and it hurt my heart physically.
“Is that why you’re really here? Because Anna wouldn’t sign your nondisclosure? Do you want to know where I found her? On a dirty mattress in a roach-infested house where she’d prostituted herself to get by. Is that what you wanted for her? Were your expectations of me really worth what you did to her?”
I’d gotten to the point where I couldn’t look at the two of them arguing, and the flowers on the table had gone out of focus, multiplying in my vision. My breaths came in tiny gasps.
“I did nothing to her! She is exactly what she chose to be, and I’ll be damned if she drags you under with her again. I don’t care that you still love her!”
Love her? I leaned heavily on my arms and looked at Jagger’s back. The pain was crushing my chest.
“Still love her? Fuck you, Dad. I never stopped. I’m not like you. Anna is the other half of me, and if you couldn’t love her for who she was, then you should have loved her because I did, I do! Mom loved her, too.”
“Well, there’s a judge of character for you,” he quipped.
The other half of me. No. No. No. He loved someone else. He’d lied. He’d told me I was the first girl he’d loved. God, how many other girls had he said that to? Was that how he got me? Another notch on his bedpost? Another conquest? I wasn’t anything to him, not when the other half of him was another girl. He loved her like I loved him. Everything spun in my vision, and my arms ached from holding my weight. I slipped, knocking the vase of flowers to the ground. The sound of shattering glass halted their fight.
“Paisley?” Jagger asked, turning around.
I stumbled away drunkenly, my feet somehow finding their way to the door. I pushed open the bar and fell into the evening air. I tripped on the cobblestones but caught myself on one of the pillars. He loved someone else.
My Jagger, but her Prescott.
“Paisley!” he shouted, running to me.
“No!” I screamed, throwing my arm out in front of me to keep him away. “Get away!” I pulled the arm back to clutch my chest. Why was the physical pain from a broken heart so bad?
“Stop and let me explain!” He blurred in my vision, but I thought he looked stricken, scared. Pain radiated from my chest, through my shoulders, and into my arms. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, let alone focus on his face.
“We’re not going to do this, remember? No misunderstandings!” He reached for me, and I fell into him, not for want but weakness.
“You love someone else. That’s not a misunderstanding,” I whispered. I couldn’t catch a breath. Why was it so hard?
“Yes, Little Bird, but I love you more. Stop crying, please, and listen.” He wiped away tears I hadn’t realized had fallen. “Anna is my sister. My twin sister. But she’s an addict like my mom, and I didn’t want to expose you to that. I didn’t want you to see that I’d done almost every drug she had, just never gotten addicted. I was lucky, and she wasn’t.”
“Your sister?” I whispered, my knees giving out.
He held me up, cradling me gently. “Yes. You’re the only woman I love, Paisley, I swear it. You’re my fucking everything.”
Relief, sweet and pure, sang through me, but the pain was still there, crushing my ribs, moving into my jaw. Shouldn’t it feel better? Shouldn’t—
Oh, God. Not now. I’m supposed to have fifty more days! “Jagger, I have to tell you,” I whispered, my weight completely collapsing against him.
“Paisley?” He wavered out of my vision. “What’s wrong?”
“My heart. I should. Have told. You.” I forced out every word, but then pain wracked me again, and I wasn’t sure I was going to survive it.
“What? Paisley…no, what do I do?” His words came through jumbled, and I wanted to concentrate on him, but I couldn’t think of anything but the pressure pulverizing my chest.
“My heart,” I managed to whisper, fading. This was it. I had been right—I was never going to be older than Peyton.
“What?” He looked all around and started screaming in a voice I barely recognized. “Someone call 911! Help us!” His hand left my face, fumbling for something. “I need help! We’re at the Enterprise country club, and I think my girlfriend is having a heart attack.”
“I love. You. Jagger. More than I ever—”
Another surge of pain pressed through my chest, crushing me like a vise. There was no air, no beat, no thought but pain.
Then I felt nothing.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Jagger
Some things are worth holding onto, Dad, fighting for. I’m just sorry you never found it. That’s your loss. Never mine.
One. Two. Three. Four. I counted compressions in my head, remembering to lace my fingers as I worked over Paisley. I thought of nothing but pushing her chest down rhythmically.
“Can you tell me her status?” The voice came from my phone, where it had crashed to the pavement on the other side of Paisley. I made it to thirty, then tilted her head to open her airway, breathing for her. I didn’t have time for the dispatcher.
My father grabbed the phone. “He’s doing CPR. The girl looks to be in her early twenties.”
I continued compressions, placing my hands above the mark I’d already rubbed into her skin. It was the same shade as her dress.
Fingers brushed across Paisley’s jugular, accompanied by a sharp intake of breath. I caught the gleam of a West Point ring on his hand just before he took the phone from my father. “She’s in full cardiac arrest. She has HCM, but until now has shown minimal symptoms. There is a family history of SCD. Her records are filed electronically. Paisley
Lynn Donovan.”
“Twenty-eight, twenty-nine,” I counted out loud. Her dad took over breathing so I didn’t have to stop compressions.
“Come on, Paisley. Don’t you dare do this,” Carter begged in a strangled voice I barely recognized. “You’re the fierce one, remember? Fight.”
I concentrated on each thrust of my hand, catching the small sucking sounds she made as air dragged into her lungs when I pushed just right.
Her chest cracked beneath my hands, a sickening pop sound. “Shit!” My hands flew off her. “I broke something!”
“Probably a rib. Keep going!” General Donovan ordered.
Bile rose in my throat, but I kept it down and returned to compressions, trying to ignore that I’d just broken Paisley’s tiny body. “Let’s go, Little Bird. We know how to do this, right? CPR is nothing new to us. We’re old pros.” Don’t puncture her lung. Don’t puncture her lung.
Wails came from behind us. Her mother? I didn’t check, just kept pushing down on her chest, forcing blood to circulate through her body. Where the fuck were they? How long could it possibly take to get an ambulance here?
“Two minutes,” General Donovan answered, my phone up to his ear. I must have spoken out loud.
We went through another few sets of breathing before we heard the sirens. “They’re here!” her mother cried.
The ambulance stopped, the paramedics rushing us. Her dad filled them in while they took vitals, but I didn’t stop compressions. I couldn’t. They slid a board underneath her. “Sir,” said one of the paramedics, braced on one knee next to me. “Sir, we’ve got it from here.”
He covered my hands with his own, and mine fell away.
They lifted her into the ambulance, the paramedic continuing compressions. “We’re coming with her,” General Donovan announced, helping his wife into the rear of the ambulance while he took the front seat. “Bateman, we’re headed to South East.”
I nodded, because speaking wasn’t going to happen. I didn’t even have the strength to get off my knees. What the hell just happened? She had been okay, right? We’d just been bungee jumping today. We’d had mind-blowing sex an hour ago, and now she was strapped to a gurney?
Fuck. Did I cause this?
My heart jumped as the doors to the ambulance slammed home. I couldn’t keep up with them, but I could get to the hospital soon after. I palmed my cell phone and gripped Paisley’s abandoned purse when a shadow fell over me.
“Prescott?” My father hovered, blocking out the last of the sunset.
I stood, fishing my keys from my pocket. “Go away.”
“I came here for you, son. Given what’s just happened, I think you could probably use me around right now.”
His eyes softened, but I was too schooled in his bullshit to give in. “In the scheme of what’s just happened, you are absolutely nothing to me. Anna and I aren’t going public, and it’s not because you don’t deserve to lose but because you’re not worth the effort or the press in our lives. Go back to Washington and forget I exist, or that Anna does. You’re really good at that. I have to get to the hospital.” I turned and headed for the truck. He followed me.
Carter honked his horn next to where Lucy was parked and stuck his head out the window. “Let’s go!”
“I’m not leaving until we talk, Prescott.”
Damn, he was actually following me. I slipped my key into the door and turned. “Maybe Prescott would have bowed down to you, given you anything for five fucking minutes of your time, but that’s not who I am anymore. I changed more than just my name, Dad. Now get the hell out of my way before I run you over.”
“Sign this, and I’m gone.”
“What?” I threw open Lucy’s door.
“Your nondisclosure. Sign it in your new name, and I’ll leave. But be warned, I’m not coming back. If you want to see me, you’ll be the one making an effort. I don’t beg, Prescott. I’m the last of your family.”
“Paisley and Anna are my family.” I ripped the paper from his hand, took a pen from my glove compartment, and signed my name. “Get the hell out of my life.” I shoved the paper at his chest.
He stepped to the side, and I pulled out, speeding before I left the parking lot.
“Here.” General Donovan held out a cup of coffee, and I took it but didn’t drink. Three hours and fifty-one—no, fifty-two minutes had gone by in this waiting room with no word since they’d taken her. I’d worn a path from one end of the room to the other, and gone through every possible scenario—none of them pleasant—in my head before he settled into the seat next to me for the first time. “You didn’t know.”
I shook my head, tapping my feet in a rhythm only my racing pulse understood. Yeah, I needed caffeine like a fucking hole in my head.
“You really should drink that,” he suggested and took his own advice.
The thought of swallowing anything made me want to hurl, but the smell masked the sterilized scent of apprehension all around me. I hated hospitals. Three hours, fifty-three minutes. No word. We should have heard something by now. Anything besides, “We’re still trying to stabilize her.”
“You saved her life. Starting compressions that fast. If…when she’s stabilized, it will only be because you were with her.”
“She didn’t tell me,” I muttered, dropping my head. “Could you please explain before I lose it?”
“She has hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Her heart has thickened to the point that she has an obstruction and struggles to pump her blood. We were lucky with Paisley, and we’ve been able to monitor it, but we only caught it because we lost Peyton. Her heart failed without warning one morning after PT. Sudden cardiac death.”
The SCD triggered a memory. “Sergei Zholtok.”
“I’m sorry?” Carter asked, taking the seat across from me and stretching out his legs.
“A hockey player who died from HCM during a game. It caused sudden cardiac death in the locker room.” Shit. Everything we’d been doing the last few months raced through my mind—the bungee jumping, the ATVs, the sex. Every spike of adrenaline, every time her heart rate must have skyrocketed, caused more damage than she could afford. My stomach turned another degree sour. I could have killed her. Maybe I had. “God. I did this. She wanted to go bungee jumping today, so I took her. I never would have done half of the things…” My throat closed.
“I know.” General Donovan placed his hand on my shoulder, but it didn’t feel as awkward as it could have. “This isn’t your fault. Bungee jumping was probably the stupidest thing you could have done—”
“Try the actual stupidest thing.” Carter growled, finally loosening his tie. Mine hadn’t made it out of the car.
“—but you had no reason to suspect what was going on with her.” He glared at Carter and stood slowly, his eyes tracking his wife as she paced, but she waved him off.
“Why wouldn’t she tell me?” The knot that had permanently wedged itself in my throat tightened again.
“She didn’t want you to know,” Carter answered. “She wants to feel normal, and you give that to her…gave that to her.”
I ignored his assumption. “But you knew?”
“Of course.”
“And you didn’t think I should?” I leaned forward on my knees, embracing the rush of heat that inched its way through me, replacing the numbness.
“I told her to tell you; you needed to know. There was no way you could take care of her without knowing. I’m still not sure you’re capable.”
General Donovan cleared his throat, his weight shifting side to side. “Boys, Paisley made a choice, and it’s not like arguing that point is going to get us anywhere at the moment. Bateman, the only answers you’re going to get will have to come from her. We’ve all been trying to get in her head for months, and she won’t let us in.”
“It’s not like she really let me in, did she?”
“You’re one to talk, because she looked pretty damn shocked to meet your father.” My jaw flexed. “This is j
ust one thing,” Carter added. “You know everything else but this one tiny part of her.”
Everyone else had known. Her parents. Carter. Morgan. Morgan. Shit. Someone needed to call her. I reached over to the chair next to me and picked up Paisley’s purse. A quick look, and I had her cell phone in hand.
“I’ve already called Morgan, if that’s what you’re thinking. She had to wait for her mother, but she’s on her way,” Carter said.
“Of course you already did,” I replied. I slipped her phone into her purse, and it fell off the seat, scattering the contents on the foot-worn linoleum floor. She didn’t carry much, just her phone, a tube of lip gloss, a small wallet, and a folded piece of paper that landed between my feet. I put everything back in and picked up the paper last, carefully unfolding its worn edges.
Short, tight handwriting lined the page, accompanying small boxes on the left-hand side. Some were checked off in green, and others in orange. Some were still open and blank. This was Paisley’s list. I ran my fingers over some of the entries, remembering how we’d done some of it together, and wondered when she’d found time to do the others.
“What is that?” Carter asked.
“It’s her crazy little bucket list,” I answered. “Everything she wanted to get done before graduating college.” Carter raised his eyebrows in a look I’d seen many times since we started flight school, the figure-it-out look. “Oh, shit. It’s because of her heart.”
He nodded as a doctor was paged overhead.
My chest tightened, the paper wrinkling under my grip. “It’s stupid. Everything on this list can get her killed.”
“Hence why I told her no every time she asked me to do something.” My eyes narrowed at him. “Hence why she chose you. She wouldn’t even let me see the damn list.”
I thumbed over some of the orange boxes—they were the ones I’d done with her—and let those words sink in. Paisley chose me for a reason, and she’d chosen not to tell me for the same reasons I’d chosen not to tell her about my father. We’d been happy in our bubble, as she called it.
The doors swung open, and my breath caught, but it was only Morgan and her mom, followed closely by Masters. I shoved the list into my pocket before reading the rest of the boxes. General Donovan met the women and directed them to his wife. Grayson crossed the room, dropped a black backpack at my feet, and consumed the seat on my left, taking my coffee and handing me a bottle of ginger ale without so much as looking at Will. “It’ll help with the nausea.”
Eyes Turned Skyward Page 27
