Eyes Turned Skyward

by Rebecca Yarros

  White-hot jealousy ran my mouth dry. “Jagger?”

  She scoffed. “No, you can keep Mr. California to yourself. Love, Paisley. Love. I would give my left eye for Will—I mean, well, anyone to look at me the way Jagger looks at you.”

  I studied her, putting pieces together in my head that I hadn’t realized fit before. “Oh, Morgan, was I that bad of a friend?”

  Color bloomed in her cheeks, and she picked fuzz off my hospital blanket. “Why on earth would you say that? You’re my very best friend.”

  “Ask him out. Promise me right now that you’ll ask Will out.”

  Her eyes shot to mine, but she quickly masked her surprise with a careful smile. “Oh, let’s be serious. I think that ship sailed.”

  “Because of me?”

  She shook her head and fluffed my pillow. “Oh, no. I’d say right around freshman year when I asked him to Sadie Hawkins and he took Peyton instead. As friends, of course.”

  “Of course.” I didn’t take my eyes off her as she straightened my covers. “Morgan, I love you, and I want you to be happy more than just about anything. Ask Will out. Go away to college and get drunk at a frat party. Get out of our little town because that’s always been your dream. Stop staying for me.”

  “Don’t talk nonsense. It’s just a pacemaker. In and out, right?”

  Now I was the one forcing a smile. “Right.” A healthy dose of fear lodged in my throat, and all I needed was the one person I’d shoved so hard and so far away from me that he was probably in Siberia by now. “Listen, just in case…well, I need you to tell Jagger that I—”

  “Tell me yourself,” he answered from the doorway, dressed in ACUs.

  My fingers dug into my blanket to keep me from flying off the bed and into his arms. I didn’t have that right anymore. “What are you doing here? It’s selection day.”

  “You know, you’re the second person to ask me that today. It seems everyone has a different idea of where I’m supposed to be.” He crossed to my bed and took the space Morgan had quickly vacated. “I’m exactly where I need to be, if you’ll let me.” His hand stroked my face, and I leaned into it, breathing in the scent of his skin, peppermint and home.

  “I said awful things,” I cried, tears pricking my eyes. “I’m so sorry. I just wanted you to get your dream, but now you’re here missing selection, so even that is messed up!” I pulled the sheet to my face, swiping at the stupid tears.

  “Why don’t we give you two a minute?” Mama handed me a tissue box, gave Jagger a small smile, and pulled Morgan out of the room.

  My heart pounded as we stared at each other in silence, each taking the other in. His eyes were bloodshot, making them seem more blue, and the skin underneath hung in purplish bags. “You look awful,” I cried. Oh, great, now I was dripping snot into my oxygen tube. I pulled it free and blew my nose.

  He laughed. “Hey, at least I’m not in a hospital bed. And besides, this is the best I’ve felt in a while.”

  “I’m so sorry about what I said.”

  He leaned forward and kissed my forehead, lingering long enough to take a deep breath. “There’s nothing to be sorry for. I wasn’t listening to you.”

  “What?” I draped the tube under my nose again.

  He picked up my non-IV hand and squeezed my cold fingers. “Explain why you want the myectomy.”

  My shoulders fell. “We’re not going through this again. I agreed to the pacemaker.”

  “Please, explain it to me.”

  “Jagger, no.” I couldn’t do this again. My hand slid from his.

  “I’m…” His eyes almost glowed in their intensity. “I’m begging you. Stop pushing me away, because I’m not going anywhere. I love you, and it’s not the kind of love that wavers. It’s the scary kind that doesn’t fade. I look at you, and I see not just everything I want for my life, but everything I am, because you took the emptiest, darkest pits of my soul and filled them with you. You are as much a part of me as my own heart, and it doesn’t beat without you. You pump through my veins and you fill my lungs. I may have saved you, but you’re the one who breathes for me every day. Do you get that? Stop pushing me away, because you make me imagine things, want things I never thought I could. Words like ‘forever,’ and ‘vows,’ and…‘family.’ I know I’m not good at that last one—”

  “Stop,” I whispered on the last of my breath. I hadn’t been able to take one from the first word he’d spoken. “What you do for your sister, the loyalty you show to Josh, to Grayson. Jagger, that’s family. What I said was unforgivable, and untrue. Once, I said I would be your family, but even that was wrong, because you already have one that I could only dream about belonging to. I love you. I love everything about you. There’s no one else for me, and there never will be.”

  “Don’t say that.” Fear jumped into his eyes.

  I brought his fingers to my lips and pressed a kiss to them. “Not because of the surgery, silly. There won’t ever be anyone else because you own my heart. It might not be in the best shape, but it’s yours. Nothing is ever going to change that. You say ‘forever,’ and I can’t breathe for wanting it so badly, to wake up next to you for the rest of my life, but Jagger, I can’t promise you forever. I can’t promise you tomorrow. You are quite possibly the most reckless man I’ve ever met, but I’m not sure even you should take this risk.”

  He braced one hand on the outside of my hip and wound his fingers through the messy bun of my hair with the other, then pulled me into him so our mouths were only a breath apart. “Don’t you remember? I told you the best things are worth the burn, the risk, and there is nothing better than you, Paisley Donovan.” Then he kissed me like it was the first or the last time. My mouth opened under his, and I whimpered as his tongue stroked along mine. I’d missed the taste of him, and he more than made up for it. I felt his kiss in the depths of my soul. My pulse jumped, and he pulled away with a grin as the monitors beeped. “I don’t want to bust your heart just before you have it fixed.”

  “Temporarily.”

  “Tell me why you want the septal myectomy.”

  “Jagger, we’ve already established that my reasons aren’t logical.”

  “So what.” He shrugged. “Tell me.”

  I ran my fingers through his hair, unable to stop touching him now that he was here. “Why are you such a good pilot?”

  His brows lowered in confusion for a moment. “The photographic memory helps for academics.”

  “But the actual flying?”

  “Instinct,” he answered. “I have really good hand-eye coordination and great instincts.”

  I ran my fingers down the back of his head and laced them behind his neck. “I have this feeling…that I need the septal myectomy. Call it an instinct, call it stupid, but it’s there. Getting the pacemaker feels wrong with every cell in my body. I know that’s a lame reason, but it’s mine.”

  His breath shook as he exhaled, and the muscle in his jaw flexed. “Then do it.”

  “Are you out of your mind?” I skimmed my hands across his shoulders. “You hate that idea.”

  “Yeah, well, I trust you and your instincts.” His thumbs stroked along my waist as he held me. “Maybe we should—” He hissed when I ran my hand over his heart.

  “What?”

  “It’s nothing. I got a new tattoo, and it’s still raw.”

  To Jagger, tattoos marked monumental events, and I had to know right now. His zipper on his ACUs was easy, and he laughed as I pulled his T-shirt free. “If I’d known you were going to strip me on sight, I would have gotten here sooner.”

  “Hush,” I reprimanded, doing my best to ignore the lickable lines on his stomach. By ignore, I meant ran my fingers over them briefly as I pulled his shirt up and out of the way. He lifted his arms and looked down at me as I studied it.

  Then I lost my breath. “Jagger, it’s beautiful.” It was a bird, its wings raised in flight. The colors were bright, unlike anything I’d seen on him, the wings and feathers immaculat
ely detailed in little… Oh, mercy. Little paisleys. The outline of the bird wasn’t just a line—it was made up of words.

  “‘For once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and there you will long to return,’” he recited as I gently traced the quote.

  “For finishing primary?”

  “For loving you. Because the first time I lifted you into my arms, I knew you belonged there. The first time I kissed you, tasted what it could be like with you, I was addicted. I realized that I loved you, that I was capable of really loving, and the first time I made love to you, I knew I was finally home. You’re it for me, and it didn’t matter if we were together or not. You’d always be it. You push me away, and I’ll still show up here looking for you because you’re all I want.”

  Before I could kiss him, heck, tear his clothes off his body, a knock sounded at the door. “Knock, knock,” Dr. Larondy sang as he slowly opened the door. “Ready for me, Paisley?”

  “Yes.” No. Jagger zipped his top before he was fully in the room.

  Dr. Larondy smiled down at us as he examined my chart. Jagger untangled himself from my arms and stood, but he held my hand. “How are you feeling about today?”

  “Oh, good, we’re in time.” Mama sailed through the door, not so subtly checking the position of our hands. “Hmm,” she noted with a slight smirk.

  Dad came in right after her, winked at me, and stood next to Mama on the opposite side of my bed.

  “Well, now that everyone is here,” Dr. Larondy joked. “Paisley? You ready for today?”

  I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. He looked at me with expectation, but still, nothing. Jagger squeezed my hand when I looked up at him for help. He shook his head with a soft smile. “This is all you, Little Bird.”

  I sought my mother, her anxious eyes and trembling smile. “I’m sorry, Mama, but I need you to trust me.”

  Daddy moved closer to me and rested his hand on my shoulder in support with a satisfied smile. “Let’s hear it, Paisley Lynn.”

  I gripped Jagger’s hand and met Dr. Larondy’s eyes. “I’m sorry for all the trouble, Dr. Larondy, but I’ve changed my mind. I’d like you to perform the septal myectomy.”

  I ignored Mama’s gasp and relished the supportive hands of the men in my life. Dr. Larondy smiled. “Let me see what I can juggle on the schedule.” He walked out and shut the door behind him.

  “There is no way!”

  “Magnolia!” Daddy shouted, startling me. “The girl, as you say, has spoken her piece, and that is that. Be supportive, or be absent.”

  “I just don’t want to lose you, too.” Her voice broke, and she became fascinated with the ceiling lights.

  “Mama, Peyton died because she ignored this. I’m facing it head-on, but I get to choose how.”

  Her lip trembled as her gaze darted between us. “Okay, Lee. Paisley. We’ll trust your judgment.”

  An hour later, Mama and Daddy hugged me, then Morgan pretended not to cry as they wheeled me down to the OR doors, Jagger my only company for the walk. “This is as far as you go,” the nurse said.

  He leaned over me, grinning at the ugly cap that had my hair bound, and laced his fingers with mine. “You think this is as bad as it gets, right? In our life? This moment?”

  “Well, I’m breathing, which tops some of our other moments by that fact alone, but I’ve never been this scared,” I admitted.

  “Me, either.” Every line of his body was tense, and I knew it would remain like that until he saw me in recovery. “Well, if this is as bad as it gets, how do you think we’re handling it?”

  “Like pros.” He was so close that his face consumed all of my vision, blocking out the hospital around me, and with it a portion of my fear.

  “Right. I love you. You are the best thing that has ever happened to me. My life started the moment I breathed into you, and I can’t think of a better use for my breath now than to use it to say, ‘I love you,’ for the rest of our lives. I’m going to marry you, and we’re going to have gorgeous, green-eyed babies who will turn us gray with their recklessness.”

  My heartbeats paused, then hammered. “Is that a proposal?” I whispered, terrified of both answers.

  He shook his head, his dimple making an appearance. “No, a warning. Trust me, when I propose, you’ll know it.”

  I leaned up and kissed him, thinking of when he’d told me the same thing about his kisses. “Trust me, when I say yes, you’ll know it,” I whispered against his mouth. “I love you.”

  “I’m sorry, but we have to get going,” the nurse said behind a small sniffle.

  We didn’t say good-bye. Jagger held my hand until he couldn’t reach beyond the painted red line in the hallway, and then I was alone. When they told me to count backward from one hundred, I mentally counted the reasons I loved him, but I didn’t get past ninety-four.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Jagger

  I’ll be around, but you won’t see me, because you never really did. But I’ll find someone who will, and I’ll start my own family, not as a Mansfield. Prescott can stay with you and drown with your expectations. Jagger will fly way above them. Way above you.

  “Do you want to know?” General Donovan asked as he came into the waiting room. “I just spoke with Will.”

  I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter.” Nothing mattered except the blonde who currently had my heart out on the operating table.

  She’d been in surgery three and a half hours for a procedure that should have taken a flat three. Each movement of the second hand took a minute. I counted twenty-three chairs in the waiting room, and one hundred fifty ceiling tiles. “You’re driving me crazy,” Morgan whispered.

  “She should be out.”

  “No news is good news,” she countered, flipping the page on Paisley’s Kindle.

  “We’re in a hospital. No news is usually dead.” I cursed my slip.

  “And they call me dramatic.”

  The door opened and a scrubbed doctor headed for the Donovans, but it wasn’t Larondy. I was halfway across the room before I thought about standing up.

  “We found something,” he explained. A weird sense of calm swept over me, numbing the panic. “She needs to have her mitral valve replaced. We couldn’t tell the extent of the obstruction until we were in there, and the valve isn’t salvageable.”

  Mrs. Donovan sagged into her husband. “Right now?” she asked.

  “It’s best to do it while we’re in there, yes.”

  “I didn’t want this in the first place. Oh, Lee.”

  “Ma’am, this isn’t a complication of her surgery, but of her heart. It’s a good thing we did the septal myectomy. We’ve already removed nine grams, and the pacemaker wouldn’t have helped the obstruction. She would have been back in here before too long.” He lifted the clipboard. “Who wants to sign?”

  Her instincts had been right. She’d saved herself. “Do it. She doesn’t want another surgery. Get it done now,” I ordered.

  Her father studied me carefully, then nodded. “He’s right. She would want you to do it now.” He took the clipboard and signed, then handed it over.

  We waited another hour before I couldn’t take it anymore. I paced the hospital like a caged tiger, with no goal or destination in mind. They had her heart open. Right now. Doctors were touching the most precious thing in my world, and I had zero control.

  People moved around me, oblivious to the fact that my world hung in a precious balance. Probably because theirs did, too, but the noise…the noise was too fucking much. I paused at the chapel and pressed in on the doors.

  Blissful quiet came over me, and my ears slightly rang from the abuse they’d been taking all day. Even though I was alone, I picked a pew at the end and sat in a church for the first time since my mother’s funeral. I bowed my head and began to pray. I made every deal I could think of with God, in the hopes that he existed and listened. I would do anything
, give anything, as long as she lived. Anything.

  I don’t know how much time had passed, but my hands had gone numb where they supported my head, and I was no longer alone.

  “She’s out and in recovery,” General Donovan said, his voice full of reverence that had nothing to do with where we were.

  My head fell back, and my eyes turned skyward, where the small stained-glass skylight rained down color. “Thank you.” He dropped a folded piece of paper into my hand.

  “Paisley wanted you to have that. But I sure as hell wasn’t going to deliver a death letter before she lived.”

  I turned the note over and shoved it into my pocket.

  The halls of the hospital looked completely different when my eyes weren’t fogged by fear. “Didn’t take you for a churchgoer,” he said as we took the elevator to recovery.

  “I’m not, usually.” Ever.

  “Well, there are no atheists in a foxhole, right?” The elevator came to a stop.

  “Something like that, sir.”

  “‘Any reason is a good reason,’ that’s what Mom used to say.”

  “Mine, too, though for completely different circumstances,” I finished awkwardly.

  He shifted his weight uncomfortably. “Jagger, I know she seems pretty…put together, but if you ever need to talk to someone about your family, your mother or your sister, well, Magnolia might know a thing or two about growing up like that.”

  What? “Um. Thank you, sir.”

  “Well, you’re family now.”

  “Sir, you’re not going to hug me, are you?”

  “Hell, no.”

  “Good. That could get awkward really quickly.” He shot a sideways look at me and walked away.

  It was another two hours before Paisley was awake enough for us to see her. They’d removed all her tubes except the IV and oxygen. She was pale and tiny, and had never looked more beautiful to me. I kissed her forehead and walked behind her bed as they wheeled her to her room.

  “Hey,” I whispered as I sat next to her and reached for her hand as they locked the wheels. “I love you,” I said, just because I could.

  A faint smile ghosted across her lips. “I love you,” she whispered, her green eyes barely visible as her eyelids drooped drunkenly.