Ugh, stupid photographic memory. “I don’t want a pacemaker.” I enunciated each word.
“Well, that’s a shitty reason.”
“Wait…you…you actually want me to have the pacemaker?” Heat flooded my cheeks and then my ears. “They fail!”
He pushed the chair as he stood. “Yeah, in 2 percent of cases, they do, in which case you get it replaced, no big deal. Those odds are a hell of a lot better than the other.”
“And you think you know best?” I sputtered. “I’ve been dealing with this for years, and in twenty-four hours you’re an expert?” Why couldn’t I stop the wrong thing from flying out of my mouth?
He threw his hands up. “No. I think that I know how to fly helicopters—that’s it. Yesterday around this time I was at dinner with my girlfriend, wondering how to keep my family from blowing up in my face, and today she’s making choices about fucking heart surgery. I spent some time on the internet so I could maybe not look like a moron, and what I read scares me more than when you collapsed on me yesterday.”
I deflated, my shoulders drooping. “I should have told you. I’m so sorry you found out like this.”
“We should have told each other a lot of things.” He sat down, resting his head in his hands. “I should have told you about my family, or that I spent that week getting Anna into another rehab. But the things I kept from you don’t change who I am right now, and you…” He looked up, the defeat in his eyes nearly breaking me. “I didn’t tell you what happened to me, or what effect it had on other people, but you hid something that’s killing you from the inside.”
“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.”