Into the Tomorrows (Bleeding Hearts Book 1) (29 page)

“Okay, well I’m kind of trapped here.” I touched his hand, gave him a smile. This was new for me, waking up with someone wrapped around me—holding me like he was afraid I’d slip right through his fingers.

I felt him smile against my skin before he moved his arm off of me, rolling over to grab his pants. In mere seconds he shed the long johns and slid the jeans up over his legs. “Brr,” he said, rubbing his hands on his pants.

I sat up, tugged my long sleeve shirt—Jude’s—down. I put my hair up in a ponytail and grabbed the winter hat Jude handed me.

“The heat can be absolutely brutal during the day, but the temperature drops fast at night.”

I grabbed my hiking boots just as Jude finished tying his. He leaned in, kissed me, and then said, “I’ll go start the car and take your tent down.”

“’Kay,” I said against his lips. He kissed me again, rubbed his thumb along my jawline, and then left the tent.

I wanted to sink back to the sleeping bag, to process all that had happened in the last twenty-four hours. It was so much—all good—but the sheer enormity of my feelings for Jude and my need to figure myself out caused a complete mess inside my head.

I heard the engine start and then a moment later, the crunch of Jude’s boots around the tent as he took down my tent.

Wordlessly, we’d agreed to sleep in his tent that night. And we’d both been so tired from the hike and all that had happened that we fell asleep quickly, our sleeping bags beside each other.

Jude’s shadow crossed in front of the tent and the sounds of crunching tarp let me know he was about ready to take down the other tent. I shoved my clothes from the night before into the bag and began rolling up our sleeping bags.

I unzipped the tent opening so that I could see Jude and to air out the tent a little. The light was pouring in through the trees, so I saw him much more clearly than I had when we woke up. He was neatly packing the back of the car and I was struck by just how capable—how sturdy, steady—he was. He was a constant—the only person in my life I could expect that from.

It seemed to be an odd thing to find that attractive, that he was consistent. He was solidly his own person, living the way he wanted to. His cap was pulled down far enough to cover his hair, and his black and blue checked flannel shirt hid most of his body, but the wide breadth of his shoulders and the tightness in the shirt around his arms as he lifted the cooler to put it back in the car made my cheeks warm. It seemed so simple to say he was strong, capable, sexy. But he was, and more.

“Hey,” he said, looking over his shoulder. “You ready?”

I thought of what awaited me ahead, a drive to Old Faithful and then back to the airport. I was ready for all of that, but I was most certainly not ready for what was to come, after the plane landed in Colorado.

I nodded curtly and then averted my eyes, finding the picnic table suddenly very interesting.

The crunch of his boots on the ground should’ve caused me to lift my head, but I kept staring, hoping that Jude would walk right past to the tent. But that wasn’t Jude.

“Hey,” he said, taking my chin in his hand and lifting my face to his. “What’s wrong?”

“What are we going to do?” I whispered. It’d been fun playing for the last couple days, but Yellowstone didn’t erase the realities that faced us when we went home.

“We’re going to figure it out,” he said easily. He placed his hands on my shoulders and squeezed reassuringly. “It’ll be okay, all of it.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, shaking my head. “I shouldn’t have…” I pointed to the tent. “Last night…”

“Stop.” His voice was steel. His eyes, however, were warm. “I don’t regret a single thing, Trista. You’re who I want. This,” he squeezed my shoulders again. “This is what I want. Everything, okay?”

I nodded. “But I told you, and I meant it, that I need to figure out who I am. And take this—us—slow. You’re so solid, so self-assured. And I’m not. My last relationship, well, my current one—it hasn’t been good for a long time. And I don’t want to do that again. To you. To me.”

For some reason, my mom’s words filtered through my head.
You’re just like me. Men can’t love you for long. They’ll leave you.
She was partially true. Colin left me—though not in the way her many boyfriends left her. I didn’t want to be my mom, flitting from place to place, man to man, until the love dried out along with her money.

“I just want—need—to take this slow.”

“I can wait.”

“Are you always this patient?”

He smiled, ran his hands down my arms. “I am, when it’s something I want.”

O
ld Faithful was
a geyser that erupted every thirty-five to one hundred and twenty minutes, shooting thousands of gallons of water up over a hundred feet. Jude and I sat huddled on an observation bench for forty-five minutes before we were treated to the sight of it shooting straight up in the air. The wind had picked up around us, which created a wall-like stream of water instead of a straight tube up. There were tall trees behind us that bent from the force of the wind. I expected them to fall straight over, which gave Jude and I a reason to get out of there as the eruption ceased.

Along the southern part of the park, we saw bison galore—blocking the road and looking like they didn’t care at all. Jude stopped me from getting out of the car when they were in the road, but when we came across a herd of them in a field within a safe distance, we pulled the car over and Jude started taking photos.

Some people around us had started walking into the field to take closer photos with the bison and Jude shook his head. “Not everyone reads those handy pamphlets they give you when you enter the park.” He took a few photos of both of us with the bison in the background before we continued on.

Near our exit, we saw a handful of cars pulled off the side of the road, something Jude informed me signaled nearby wildlife. We pulled over and Jude made sure I stayed behind him as we approached a crowd overlooking a valley.

“Coyotes,” Jude said. “We didn’t get to see any wolves, but look—a little coyote family.”

Across the valley, I watched what looked like a sleeker dog, with a narrower muzzle and bushy tail, trot across a meadow. It was followed by two slightly smaller coyotes.

“They’re smart animals—not often seen like this.”

I waited until Jude had finished taking his photos and we walked back to the car, side by side, as he scrolled through his photos. “So, we saw elk, bighorn sheep, a grizzly, bison and coyotes. That’s more than a lot of people get to see.”

I nodded, realizing that we were at the end of this trip. I looped my arm though his, leaning into him. “We can see more.”

“We can, if we come back.”

I looked over my shoulder, seeing this grand, sweeping, majestic land behind me. “I want to come back,” I said. I’d learned so much here—about myself, about Jude. From the geysers, to the canyon, the waterfalls, and Mount Washburn, I’d done things I’d never done—things I enjoyed, loved even. And, most significantly, I’d fallen in love. Maybe I’d always been heading there, from the moment he offered me bacon in the kitchen.

When we made it back to the car, a silence settled over me. It remained with me until we arrived at the Jackson airport. Jude must have sensed my need to reflect on the past several days because he didn’t say anything but offer his hand as the plane ascended.

By the time the plane landed in Denver, I felt a heavy fullness in my chest, not knowing what awaited me.

* * *

I
had rarely checked
my phone while we were in Yellowstone. The only person I expected to call me was my grandfather, because Colin’s silence had made his feelings for me completely clear.

But Jude got a text as soon as we departed the plane. I carried the walking stick as his fingers flew across the keyboard, his eyes narrowed and his mouth in a thin line. He said nothing as he texted, just followed behind me all the way to baggage claim.

Whatever was in the texts had burst the little bubble we existed in the last few days. Jude was focused on what the person was saying, even going so far as to step away from me to make a call as I waited for our bags to roll up on the belt.

I had just secured the backpack to me when he returned, grabbing the rolling suitcase and walking stick from my hand.

“What is it?” I asked—anything to break the tension that was between us.

“Colin. He’s” –he looked at me with eyes that spoke what words couldn’t— “at a hospital. We’ll go there now.”

I checked my watch. Five p.m. “What happened?”

“I think we should wait until we get there.”

The answer was odd, but since Jude seemed more tense than upset, I figured it couldn’t have been too serious. Jude loaded up the car in the parking garage and then headed toward Denver.

I texted Mila to see if she could give me some clarity over what was going on. Her reply was abrupt.

A sinking feeling of dread wrapped around me then. Whatever it was, Jude and Mila were both keeping it secret. Jude didn’t look at me once as we drove to hospital, and the entire time the anxiety was growing. So much that when we made it through the hospital to Colin’s room, I opened the door before Jude could and marched in.

Colin was hooked up to a few machines, his face pale and his eyes tired.

“Trista.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing,” he said, resignation in his voice. I finally noticed Mila sitting beside him in the bed, her eyes equally tired and her hair looking like it hadn’t been washed in a few days.

“It’s not nothing,” she said, leaning against his bed. The way she was leaning looked odd to me, but I couldn’t figure out why.

Shaking my head, I approached the bed and took the lone seat beside him. “What are the machines for?”

“They’re monitoring my heart.”

“Okay. Why?”

“I have a heart condition.”

He rubbed a hand down his face and I stared at him dumbly. Not comprehending what was happening.

“What? What kind of heart condition? Did something happen?”

“I haven’t been honest with you.” His gaze darted to Mila and then back to me. “About several things.”

“Well, I’m here now. Tell me what’s going on.”

“I have a heart condition. It’s called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.” He waved a hand at the wires hooked up to his chest. “My heart becomes abnormally thick and it’s hard for it to pump blood.”

“What?” I was dumb struck. I couldn’t process what he was saying, because it didn’t make sense.

He pressed the tips of the fingers from one hand against the center of his chest. “I lied to you. This scar is from a surgery I had years ago, before we met.”

My stomach tumbled over as I listened to him. Shock flooded in, like ice water. I felt as if I was hearing him speak for the first time, and the words were foreign and uncomfortable. I couldn’t reconcile this news, that he had a heart condition, after knowing him for so many years.

I kept shaking my head, trying to process what he was telling me. “I don’t understand.”

“I have an obstruction, and the surgery I had removed part of my heart to help the blood flow.” I watched, at a loss for words, as he told me everything that he’d kept from me for years. With each word, his body tightened, as if the weight of telling me was overwhelmingly heavy for him.

I shook my head, as if I rattled the words around my head long enough that I’d understand them. “And you still have it, even with the surgery?”

He nodded. “It runs in my family—my dad’s side. My uncle died from it, untreated. Luckily,” he said with a sardonic smile, “the symptoms presented themselves early for me, when I was in middle school. And I had the surgery a year before I met you.” He waved a hand around. “That’s why I came to Colorado after high school—this hospital is much more suited to my particular condition.”

I struggled to ask the question that I desperately wanted to, because I felt it sounded selfish. But I said it anyway. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

He sighed, wincing. “I wanted to. I was doing fine after my surgery and before you. It wasn’t until we were in college, when I noticed myself growing more and more tired, that I thought it was important for you to know. But then Ellie died and I saw how you coped and I thought if I told you, you’d fall apart.” His eyes hardened when he said that and I shook my head.

“You could’ve told me still. You should’ve told me. It’s your heart, Colin. That has to be pretty serious.”

“It is. I haven’t had any major symptoms in the last couple years. After the surgery, I felt a hundred times better. But it’s common to be asymptomatic until…” he paused and I watched his throat move as he swallowed. “Until sudden cardiac arrest.”

“What happened then? Why are you here?”

“I should refrain from drinking, and, well, you know I haven’t.” He shrugged and then winced. “But I was sober, until you showed up.”

“Showed up?” I asked, my voice a little higher than I expected. “You told me to come to Colorado. I didn’t just drop onto your doorstep.”

He shifted in the bed, looked defensive. “But that’s how it felt. I wanted to see if we could make us work, but obviously we couldn’t. Do you know how hard it is, sharing a bed with someone you don’t even know anymore?”

I gave him a hard look. Heart condition or not, he sounded completely self-centered at that moment. “I’m pretty sure I can relate to it.”

“I didn’t know how to tell you I wasn’t … happy anymore.”

“So you started drinking?” I stood, not wanting to be near him at that moment. “That’s a poor excuse, and you can’t blame me. You have a voice. A vocabulary. You can talk to me, tell me how you’re feeling. Instead of keeping me here and not wanting me anymore.”

“You can’t tell me you haven’t felt the same way.”

“Of course I have!” Mila gave me a look at the volume in my voice, so I lowered my tone and continued. “I have, but you wanted me here. So I came, because you insisted.” I pointed a finger at him. “The day I showed up, I talked about leaving. You talked me out of it. Why did you keep me here if you didn’t want me here?”

“Because—you’re fragile.” His eyes were weary, but not from physical exhaustion. Instead, the weariness was weighed down by some kind of disdain he held for me. “You haven’t let go of Ellie and she died three years ago. If I broke up with you, I worried you’d do something reckless.”

I thought of how I’d coped—with liquor and contemplating ending my life. He wasn’t wrong there, but I still wanted an answer. “Why would I suddenly be reckless?”

“Because you’d be alone.”

Bile rose in my throat but I swallowed it down. “Newsflash, Colin. I’ve been alone for three years since my best friend died. And alone longer than that—longer than I’ve even known you. You’re not the first person to abandon me. But you kept me out of pity.”

“If that’s what you want to call it.” Colin dropped the mask he wore over his face, and I saw through all the bullshit he’d been wearing. “I needed you, when the symptoms started up. I needed my girlfriend, but you were so depressed—you weren’t there for me.”

My heart throbbed. We’d both abandoned each other. “Maybe we should have this conversation alone,” I said, glancing at Mila who was by his side.

“There’s nothing left to say—we’re both finally being honest about how long we’ve been lying to each other.”

I was struck by his coldness. He looked like I had taken up his last sliver of patience.

Mila leaned over the bed, shushing him and settling a hand over his chest. Something clicked in my head then, as his hand came up and laid over hers.

I stared long and hard at their hands as I thought about what it could mean. When I raised an eyebrow to Colin, he nearly rolled his eyes. “Yes. We’re together.”

“That was fast,” I said, though it was hypocritical of me to say.

“No, we’ve been together. More or less. For over a year. Which was why I wasn’t upset when you decided to go to Yellowstone with Jude.”

I shouldn’t have felt angry. But I did. It gurgled and popped as I stared at them both, as they watched me. My mind raced, trying to connect the dots. “For over a year?”

Mila, to her credit, looked a hell of a lot more apologetic than Colin did. “I didn’t know he had a girlfriend, when I met him. It just happened one night. I’m sorry.”

I shook my head. I shouldn’t feel angry. I’d gone off to Yellowstone and slept with Jude. But knowing that this had been going on for a year, and Colin moved me in anyway, pissed me the hell off.

“You’re saying you’ve been with her for a year, and you talked me into moving in with you because?” I was working really hard to control my anger, but it burned on my tongue. It was all I could do not to lash out at them.

“Because
you
were my girlfriend. I owed it to you to try.”

“No, Colin. What you owed me was the truth.”

“You want the truth?”

I nodded, my eyes hard. “Yes, the truth.”

“The night Ellie died, she made me promise to take care of you.”

A fleeting memory of Ellie on the stairs with Colin, sharing a joint and having him making promises, crossed my mind. Awareness settled in.

“You felt guilty?” I asked, my anger rising.

“She made me promise. And then she died.” Colin sounded angry almost, like it was my fault.

“Why did you move me in? You didn’t have to do that. We could’ve kept the status quo.” I pointed to Mila. “You’ve been with her for a
year.
A year! You could’ve let me go.”

“I couldn’t. Not until I gave it a shot.”

I laughed, because the anger needed release. I wanted to hit something suddenly. I wasn’t normally flushed with anger, but knowing that I’d been fooled—that he’d tried to make it work with me to appease his own guilt over words Ellie had said to him three years earlier—made me want to drag my nails down my chest, if only to feel something other than the anger, the hurt, that seeped into me.