“Most HCM patients are asymptomatic. They never have an issue.” Dang it, my defenses were back up.
“But you do. Most HCM patients don’t have a family history of SCD. You could have died yesterday.” The quiet tone of voice didn’t match the intensity of his eyes.
“Then I’m lucky that my lifeguard was there again.” My smile trembled.
“This isn’t funny, Paisley. None of it. You won’t even consider the pacemaker?”
“I want to fix my heart and really live, not manage HCM.”
“By taking the most reckless route possible? How long have you been showing symptoms?”
“Since that day you found me in the library.”
His mouth dropped slightly, and his eyes narrowed. I’d never seen that look leveled on me before and would have been quite happy never seeing it again. “You’ve had months and didn’t do anything?”
“It hasn’t exactly been an easy decision!” My hands gripped my sheets, desperate to stay grounded as the argument spun out of control.
“Living is a hard decision?”
“What kind of life would that be, Jagger? One where my heartbeats aren’t really my own? One where I steer clear of everything that makes me feel alive? The kind of life you would refuse to lead?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I can’t be the kind of woman you want, the kind you deserve, with a pacemaker. It will escalate to an internal defibrillator, and then what, you get shocked when we’re making love? Do I just stay home while you run off and…swim with sharks?”
“Swim with sharks? Do you seriously think I’m so shallow that any of that matters to me? I’ve got nothing to prove and no list to mark off—I only want you.”
“You wouldn’t want me like this! I would hold you back.” Don’t let me.
“I wasn’t the one jumping ATVs or begging to bungee jump. That was all you, with zero consideration for your own life while you marked off this stupid list.” He lifted his hips, pulling the folded list out of his pocket, and tossed it on the bed. I would have felt less exposed if he’d read my diary.
I snatched the paper and ran my fingers over the worn folds. “It’s a bucket list. People put crazy things on them. Isn’t that the idea? To stretch your boundaries?”
“Sure, if they were things you really wanted.”
Goose bumps raced along my arm. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that you’ve been so busy trying to live for your sister that you nearly died for her instead.” His eyebrows lifted in a challenge I couldn’t meet, not when he knew what I’d worked so hard to keep to myself.
“How did you know? It doesn’t matter. I don’t expect you to understand why I have to finish it for her.”
He jumped out of his chair again, pacing at the foot of my bed. “Oh, no. You don’t get to pull that card on me, like I don’t know what it is to sacrifice for a sister. I walked away from my entire life for Anna, and I don’t regret it. When my father cut her off, left her to rot in a crack house in Boston? That’s when I emancipated myself. It wasn’t just to get away from him, it was so I could get control of my trust fund and pay for her rehab when he wouldn’t—when she became worthless to him.”
“Your sister is still alive. It’s different. You can still talk to her, ask her questions, hug her. Finishing that list is all I can do for Peyton.” He didn’t understand. No one did.
“Maybe Anna is still here, but she’s buried under so many layers of her addiction that I’m not sure I’ll ever have my Anna again. She’s been in rehab thirteen times, Paisley. Thirteen times I’ve tracked her down and admitted her. Thirteen times she’s begged me to stay, and a couple of times I did and nearly lost myself in her world. I missed deadlines for term papers and hockey games because I was flying to Seattle, or Texas, or wherever she’d followed the latest boyfriend. I swore when I started flight school that I wouldn’t be distracted by anything…or anyone, that I’d put my goals first for once.” He braced his hands on the footboard of my bed, the muscles in his arms flexing as he gripped the plastic. “And what happened when she turned up in Chicago? I missed a week of flight training and went to get her again.”
“Isn’t that the same thing I’m doing, prioritizing my sister’s life?”
“No, because when I realized what it was doing to me, that I’d jeopardized my ranking to select the helicopter I’d worked half my life for, that I’d run off to Anna and left you hanging—that’s when I told her that I’ll always be there for her, but I can’t walk away from my responsibilities every time she does. My life is just as valuable as hers, and yours is, too!”
“Peyton didn’t get a chance to finish…anything!”
“Stop making this about her. You’re the one in the hospital bed. This is about your life now.”
I lifted my chin, the words flowing from my mouth like an eruption of acidic lava. “My life. My heart. My choice. I choose to have the septal myectomy, and then I’ll finish the list.”
“So this discussion’s over?” He moved away, his hands in the air like he was under arrest. “My opinion doesn’t matter?”
“You don’t get a say in what I do with my heart!” The monitors beeped, spiking in time with my breaths.
“That’s right. Your heart in your body—”
“Yes! Mine! You don’t own it or control it. I do!”
“God damn it, Paisley! You own mine! Don’t you get it? I’m in love with you, so fucking wrapped up in everything you are—that we are together—that I’m not sure I can exist anymore if you don’t. Every single risk you’re taking with your heart, remember that I’m along for the ride, strapped in, because my heart is tangled with yours. Why can’t you see what you already have? You’re so hell-bent on ripping your chest open for a risky procedure because you think a pacemaker sentences you to a half life where you can’t complete these insane little tasks? Am I getting it right?”
“Yes.” I hated how he made me sound, how I must look through his eyes because he didn’t understand.
“I am that half life. Me. A pacemaker guarantees you me, and if our future isn’t a good enough reason for you, then I’m out of arguments.” His eyes pleaded with me to choose him, and I was. He just didn’t understand how.
“You want a glimpse of our future if I do what you’re asking? Look around you, Jagger. This is our future. Hospital rooms, stringy hair, bloody noses from dried-out nasal passages and oxygen tubes. A pacemaker isn’t guaranteed to solve the problem. We could be right back here in a year or two, making the decision for the surgery because the pacemaker isn’t going to do a damn thing about the obstruction. I will eventually go to an internal defibrillator. I’ll wind up in end stage, where I’ll need a transplant. That is our future if I don’t do this!”
“You’re jumping two steps ahead instead of buying yourself time.”
“I’m giving myself an 85 percent chance at a normal life with you!” Tears stung my eyes, hot and volatile.
“You’re giving me a 15 percent chance of losing you instead of a 98 percent chance of a happily ever after.”
The space that separated us was far more than the few feet it measured. “I’m done with people in my life telling me they know what’s best for me. I can’t control my heart, but I can control this choice, and I will. Peyton didn’t get a choice, and I’m not going to let mine be taken away because you think you know what’s best for me. I’m not a child.” I could be fierce.
He laced his fingers behind his neck and looked at the ceiling. “I’m not going to pretend that I knew Peyton, but I can’t imagine anyone who loves you wanting this for you.”
“Well, I knew her,” Will said, stepping fully into the door frame, “and I can tell you she didn’t want this for you, Lee.”
Oh, God. Please let this bed swallow me whole. “How much did you hear?”
He leaned against the wall next to Jagger, standing with him more than physically, but also blocking him from leaving. “Oh
, you’ve entertained a few of us out there. Your dad blocked every nurse who wanted to stop this overly loud discussion because we were hoping that out of all of us, you’d finally listen to him.”
I sat up straighter, but ruined my attempt at independence by having to untangle my oxygen tube to do it. I’d never felt so alone, or so attacked in my life. They were supposed to love me, right? Then why couldn’t they understand that there was something in my soul screaming against a pacemaker? Against an unnatural piece of machinery under my skin, controlling my heart—controlling me? “I can’t make you understand. None of you are in this bed with me; you all get to leave this hospital. I don’t. I’m the one taking the risks while you two go and fly your helicopters all day. I just…I want Peyton. I want to ask her what she would do, because I know she’d have the answer. She always did.”
“She didn’t have the answer,” Will interjected. “I was there, Paisley.”
“Well, she would tell me not to get bullied into something that I didn’t want. She would have known what to do if she’d been in my shoes—if she’d known her heart was a ticking time bomb. Peyton never would have given in to what other people wanted.”
“And that’s probably what killed her, Paisley!” Jagger dragged his hands over his face, then dropped them, his shoulders sagging.
My head snapped like I’d been struck. “Why would you say that?”
“Because she knew! You don’t want to see it, but she knew about her heart.”
“She did not! She would have told me—told my parents!” My spine straightened until it almost hurt.
“Lee—” Will tried to interrupt.
“William Carter, get out! This isn’t a conversation you’re welcome to!”
“Seriously—”
“Now!” I yelled, but he didn’t budge.
“Use that beautiful brain of yours, Little Bird.” Jagger’s voice softened, but he seemed farther away than ever. “Why else would she make a bucket list? Why else would she have done all those things the summer before, or handed you that note the last time you saw her? She knew, so stop hiding behind her and that damn list, or what you mistakenly think I need, and make your own choice, because she sure did.”
My brain overloaded, caught between trying to process what he implied and knowing that if I wanted to give him what he really needed, this was my chance. I took it. “You want me to make my own choice? Fine. This”—I motioned between him and me—“we’re over.” The words ripped through me, and I half expected the heart monitor to show it, but it stayed as steady as my voice. “My sister never would have kept this from me, not if she knew it was genetic.” Maybe if she had known, she would have kept it from me, needing to spare me the same way I’d tried to spare Jagger. But it was too late for either of us now. I refused to be the distraction that sank him. I felt adrift in a giant sea of uncertainty, and I was pulling him down with me…so I cut him free. “Go find another girl. As I recall your past, that shouldn’t be hard to do. We’re done.”
“We’re not done, we’re fighting. I might not be proud of my past, but you’re the only woman I want. You are irreplaceable, which is why you’re scaring the shit out of me with the choices you’re making. You’re my family, and we are not done.”
He was perfect, and I loved him so much that I saw the line and walked right past it, my chest aching with every step it would take to push him over. “The son of a drug addict? I should have known better than to be with someone who didn’t know the first thing about commitment and real family. You would seriously try to use my sister, my deepest pain to manipulate me? You really are your father’s son. Get out.”
He stumbled backward, every feature on his face slack with surprise. Hurt streaked through his eyes, and I watched his heart break as surely as I felt mine rip into shreds. What did I just do?
“Maybe you’re right. Someone with no real family can’t understand one. But you’re right, I am the son of a drug addict, so I do know a little something about trying to change a woman who’s too stubborn to walk away from her own self-destruction. I love you, Paisley, more than I ever thought possible. You own everything I am, down to the very breath in my lungs, and I’m sorry that’s not enough. Not enough for you to treat me like a partner instead of the enemy, and not enough for me to stand here and watch another woman I love kill herself over something she has complete control over.”
He was more than enough. He was everything, but I couldn’t force the words past the tangle in my throat. “Jagger,” I choked out as he made his way toward the door.
“Stop it, Paisley!” Will shouted. “Damn it, he’s right! Peyton knew!”
Jagger paused at the door frame.
Gravity shifted, taking with it everything that had been holding me together. It was one thing for Jagger to speculate, but for it to be truth? She couldn’t have known. Not really. “No.”
“Yes.” He didn’t break eye contact with me, and I saw the truth and his embarrassment at hiding it. “She knew for months, since our scuba classes early that summer. She knew she couldn’t stay at West Point if anyone found out.”
Pain ricocheted through me, scraping every nerve ending raw. I closed my eyes on everything I thought I knew and opened them with tears streaking my face, washing away my anger, my pride, and my certainty. My soul started soundlessly screaming, but I was so hollow inside that I was sure everyone could hear the echo.
He’d been right, and I hadn’t listened. “Jagger?”
He shook his head, his eyes hard as he turned around. “Funny thing about families, Paisley. They’re not always biological, none of them are perfect, and even if they have all the answers, sometimes they fail the first test they face.”
“Bateman,” Will said quietly.
“Don’t,” Jagger snapped.
I’ll be your family now. My own words cut through what remained of my heart, mocking the way I’d failed him.
He crossed the room toward me, pulled something out of his front pocket, and placed it in the palm of my hand. I couldn’t look down, not when his eyes held me captive in my own stupidity and stubbornness.
“I won’t be needing this anymore.” He brushed a lingering kiss across my forehead, and my eyes slammed shut, fresh tears leaking down my face. He took a deep breath in my hair and pulled away. I looked up at him, but the hurt was gone from his face, replaced by the carefree grin I’d seen on the beach before we met. Only this time it didn’t seem beautiful, or sexy, but lonely.
“Jagger,” I begged.
“I like to think it kept me safe, and I hope it does the same for you on your flight, Little Bird. I’ll see you around.” He smiled again, firmly entrenched in the impenetrable shell everyone else knew him so well for. “Carter, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
My eyes followed his figure out the door, but I was incapable of speech or thought. There was nothing I could say that would erase what I’d said, or how stupid I’d been. But he was free. He’d bounce back. He’d get his dream, but I wondered if he’d ever realize that he’d been mine.
“Lee?” Will sat on the edge of my bed. “I should have told you, but I promised her that I’d let you make your own choice.”
“I don’t want to hear about Peyton. Not now.” Losing Jagger hurt too much. I released my fingers from the fist I’d made, and the light instantly reflected on Jagger’s nickel. “At least he’ll get what he’s worked so hard for, right? Without me distracting him?”
“That’s why you did it—said that crap to him. You pushed him away.”
“He deserves better than this. I know how hard he’s worked, how much flying that helicopter means to him. He was exhausted this morning and had no business flying, and it will only get worse if he stays with me. At least now he has a shot. He can get his dream.” Will’s mouth tightened. “What? Don’t you dare hide anything else from me, William Carter.”
“He’s got no shot at top of the OML. He’ll be lucky to get into the top ten even if they let him retake the test.�
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I blanched. I clung to one last hope, knowing the aircraft numbers varied from class to class. “How many pilots?”
“Twenty-three made it through.”
“How many Apaches are there for selection?”
“Six.”
You just shattered him for no reason. He’s not getting one anyway.
I’d done this to him, taken away the one thing his family hadn’t been able to. I picked up my cell phone and dialed the number by heart. It rang four times and then went to voice mail.
I waited, and then spoke, my voice stronger than my determination. “Hi there, Dr. Larondy. It’s Paisley Donovan, and I just wanted to let you know that I’ve made my decision, so you can go ahead and schedule that surgery. I’ll be ready.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Jagger
But when you have that thing worth fighting for, you claw, you kick, you beg. Mom taught me that. But I couldn’t save her. And you didn’t bother trying. I’m not going to make the same mistake twice.
I raised the beer to my lips and swallowed. A few girls danced in the corner of Oscar’s bar, Marjorie one of them, but I didn’t care enough to even notice what she was wearing. She was pretty damn loud when she drunkenly toppled over the speaker, though.
Six fucking days had passed since Paisley had kicked me to the curb, and I wasn’t sure how I was still breathing, seeing as most of my blood supply was made up of alcohol. Oh, I’d shown up sober to fly and even aced that retake on the test, but it only served to get me through school. The original score was tallied into the OML. Selection was the day after tomorrow, and with only six Apache slots…well, I’d lost the two things I loved the most in one week.
It wasn’t the helicopter that hurt the most. No, that was a gaping, festering gash in my soul, but at least it was something. But Paisley…I couldn’t feel anything—not pain, or grief. Nada. I kept myself busy or drunk, because if I slowed down, even for a millisecond, and realized what had happened? I wasn’t sure I’d ever breathe again, or have a reason to.
Eyes Turned Skyward Page 29
