Total pages in book: 161
Estimated words: 154890 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 774(@200wpm)___ 620(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154890 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 774(@200wpm)___ 620(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
“I didn’t mean for it to touch you. I didn’t come here with the idea of seducing you. I thought you’d be way beyond the touch of a girl like me—and you were. You asked me if I believed in magic that afternoon at your mom’s house.” I feel the tears begin to fall, batting them away with my hands. “I didn’t. Not anymore.”
I don’t know how it happened, but I was already falling for you when I left your apartment with my scrunched résumé in my hand, my insides still pulsing in time with your words.
“Stop. Calm down.” I can see he wants to press me back against the pillows but restrains himself from doing so.
“Why? It’s not like I’m going to die now.” I’m behaving like a child, I know. I have to. I can’t let this go on.
“Isn’t it?” His voice is so arch as he watches me tap my fingers over my chest.
“No, because I’m in the hospital. I won’t be leaving until I’ve had the device fitted.” My fingers close over my chest and swallow over the ache of loss. I won’t regret having the operation. I’ve found I have too much to live for. Even if I can’t have him.
“I’ll never understand it,” he says, dropping his head.
“I wouldn’t expect you to.”
“I’ll never understand how you could make that choice,” he says, his head coming up, his gaze sharp and unforgiving. “You of all people. You lost your brother to this illness, and you decided to play fucking Russian roulette?”
“It wasn’t like—”
“I’m not finished!” he bellows. My gaze slides to the door, expecting a nurse to come running. Maybe he already warned them. “All that bullshit about going back to Florida. Were you really going to go back to live? Or were you set to die? To rob those who love you of your life.”
“I’ve been living my life for other people since Connor died,” I retort, my tone low and obstinate. “And you want the truth? I wasn’t sure when I left home.” God forgive me for my lie. The worst I’m guilty of is recklessness. “I wasn’t sure what I wanted. I was just frightened for the longest time. We’re all dying, Whit, from the moment we take our first breath.”
“A nihilist to boot,” he says with an unhappy laugh.
“I could’ve died without ever knowing I had Brugada, just like Connor. A death not chosen. The result out of my hands.”
“Here one minute and gone the next?” he demands with a snap of his fingers. “Well, that nearly fucking happened.” I hate that his hands are shaking. I hate that I’ve put him in this position and made him this angry. But I don’t hate that he was there to save me. To give me another chance. Just because I can’t have him doesn’t mean I don’t want to live.
“I know it might seem strange to you—”
“Doesn’t seem strange at all,” he retorts. “You weren’t thinking of anyone but yourself.”
His words land like a knife to the stomach. They are no more than I deserve.
“So what if I was?” My fear turns physical, a cold lump now in my stomach, my tears running freely now. “Dying or living with the threat of death? Living with the danger of eight hundred indiscriminate volts through my chest? Do you know how anxious I’ve been? No, you wouldn’t know. How could you?”
“Exactly my point. I couldn’t know because you never told me.”
“I just wanted to be an ordinary person,” I almost whisper.
“I won’t pretend I can even imagine I have one iota of that understanding,” he says, his voice softer. Even if he can barely stand to look at me.
“ICDs fail. They save lives, yeah. But they’re not without their own problems.” Not that I’ll go into it with him. They can shock you into a cardiac arrest for no reason. Parts of the device can be recalled; other parts just outright fail. Batteries need replacing and don’t let your iPhone get anywhere near it! I shake my head. Like my phone was even a consideration given the severity of the circumstances. Getting an ICD is signing up to a lifetime of operations—heart surgeries, possible infections. Those kill, too.
“It sounds like you were already weighing up your options for the best way to die when you arrived.”
And now I lie.
“Maybe I was. Maybe you’re right about playing Russian roulette. I considered that I might live a normal life without an ICD, bow out when it’s time.”
“You mean like last week,” he asks, “at the age of twenty-four? Did that time seem right to you?” Anger chases through his second question.
“I thought, hoped when I’d considered that an option, that I would be older. Or else I thought I might have the device fitted and have it kill me early anyway. I don’t know how to explain it.”