“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.”