Eyes Turned Skyward

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.”