The Heart (33 page)

“Why?” I asked

He looked down at me then pressed his lips to mine. When he pulled away, I could still see the same man I hurt. “I just want to be sure about us, Rose. You have a decision to make.”

“Decide what? I’ve made my decision and it’s you.”

“You weren’t sure three weeks ago. You’re still living in the past, with him. You said so yourself. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m jealous of a dead man.” Jack scrubbed his face with his hands as I pulled at his arm, forcing him to acknowledge me and my words.

“You told me I didn’t have to choose. You said—”

“And you don’t, but I’m deserving of a woman who can give me her future. I wanted to do it all with you, Rose, all of it. And right now, I can’t see how that’s possible.”

Panic coursed through me as I thought of how hard the last three weeks had been without him. “It is! I’m standing here telling you right now you’re all I want! I love you, Jack.”

His lips parted as he looked at me with soft eyes.

“You wanted me to acknowledge us. Well, I did. I told my father I was in love with you.” Jack gripped my shoulders and pulled me closer to him as frustration rolled off him.

“And now what? What would the next step be in our lives together? I move into the home you built with your ex-fiancé? I take his place in the life you were supposed to live with him?!”

“I hadn’t thought about it,” I said as I ripped my arms away from him. “It doesn’t have to be that complicated.”

“It is that fucking complicated? You buried yourself—” He pressed his lips into a thin line as he took a step away from me. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

“I’m well aware of what I’ve done. And lying about it didn’t help, but don’t you dare criticize me for what I’ve done. I’m living in it!”

“And I can’t!” Jack said, exasperated.

“No, you
won’t
. If you can’t let your jealousy go, that’s on you, Jack,” I said as I gathered what strength I had left. “I won’t pretend I didn’t make it hard on any man who eventually wanted to be a part of my life, but this right here is just you and your fucking pride. I’m not asking you to give anything up but that.”

“Bullshit,” he countered as he straightened his jacket. ”You made it damn near impossible.”

I moved closer to him and reached up on my toes to kiss him gently on the lips as I let him see my eyes, resolute. “Did I? Did he come between us in any way until you found out?” And even though I knew it was wrong to lie to him, I saw the realization of why I did it dawn on him.

“I can love you
anywhere
, Jack, even here, where I made it
damned near impossible
to love or think of anyone but Grant. And I fell in love with you
here
. You resent this place now because you see it as a way for me to keep him close, and in a way, it will always be that place. But now more than ever, I’m in love with it because it’s what brought you to me. It’s a place filled with love and healing. It’s my home. And I can love you
here
. And unless you can do the same, you’re right, it won’t work.
You
are the one with the decision to make, not me.”

“And what if I can’t make it work,” Jack said uneasily.

“You have to try to fail,” I said back, firm in my conviction. I would do whatever it took to make it work with Jack, but I would never give up my life’s dream. I belonged at the center with my sister. I’d never been more certain of anything. Even if it meant losing a love I never thought I have again, I wouldn’t sacrifice my life’s work.

We stood studying each other for long moments, and I could feel Jack slip away from me. I wanted magic words, but there weren’t any. I felt the last pieces of my heartbreak as he offered me nothing.

“I’m not a man who can play second fiddle.”

“And if you weren’t so damned blind right now, you would see that you aren’t. I’m not her. And you aren’t him. And we both have to let go of the past to be together.”

Jack snapped back as if I’d just slapped him.

“I can’t erase your past any more than you can erase mine. I’m not asking you to. I want to keep it. All of it, even the part that almost ended me. I’m not broken, and neither are you.”

“How did you know?”

“You woke up one day and changed your entire life, your career path. I knew something must’ve happened to push you into it. We’re see-through, you and me, when we’re together. I’ve known you were keeping something from me, too. You were just better at hiding it.”

Jack nodded.

“Tell me.”

He remained quiet as I waited.

“Jack, just tell—”

“She was my first mate,” he said in a whisper as he looked through me into his past. “The first person to really talk to me when my face was... the way it was,” he said, circling his finger over his lip. “She just ignored it, like it didn’t matter, and eventually it stopped mattering. I was eight.”

I stood silently as he continued.

“She was the first hand I held, the first kiss, she was my first everything. She taught me how to dance, and we used to explore the swamps together. As we got older, we planned trips everywhere, all over the globe. She seemed to want it just as much as I did. She was passionate about it, about everything. She
was
my childhood in a way.” He cleared his throat as emotion choked him.

“We grew up, I fell in love with her, and remained devoted, but she pulled away and declared us life-long friends.”

He shoved his hands in his pockets as he walked over to my window and peered through the blinds at the party. “And so I waited for her to come back to me. But she didn’t. She kept falling head first for asshole after asshole, and when they left her in pieces, I would pick them up.”

I stood silent, scared, so much so I was unable to go to him, my heart heavy as lead as his voice turned to gravel.

“One morning I woke up, drove to her apartment”—my stomach dropped—“but there were too many pieces.”

“Oh my God,” I said as I gripped my chest.

“I know exactly how you feel,” he said as he turned to me suddenly. “I’ve lived it, lived through it. I know that a brief explanation of what a person meant to you and how they died doesn’t begin to cover it for the person who lost them.” He took a fist and hit his chest. “I know this pain.”

Words failed me completely as I stared at him in shock.

“I’m not a complete bastard, Rose. I’m dying a little each day without you. I just don’t know how to handle this because I
have
lived it. I know what you’re battling. I know how you feel... about him, how you will always feel. And now I know
why
you’re so scared to love me. But mostly, I don’t know if I’m the right man to walk in his shadow.”

I nodded as the tear across my chest increased tenfold and my throat stung unbearably.

“I have to go,” he said as he looked at me with regret. There was absolutely nothing I could do for him. His insecurity and jealousy stemmed from a deep scar he’d suffered long ago. Just as my paranoia and panic about his wellbeing had moved me to act irrationally and had pushed him away.

There was no quick remedy for our fears: my fear of losing and his fear of rejection.

I could tell him how amazing he was, how perfectly we fit. I could tell him how much I wanted him every day, how good he made me feel, but I knew it would be in vain. He’d been there right along with me. I couldn’t force him to believe in what we had. He had to come to that conclusion on his own.

I couldn’t stand to watch him leave me a second time so I made my way to the door, my back to him, keeping my tears inside. I could fall apart all on my own. I’d perfected the art.

“I’m not sorry, not for any of it,” I said softly. “No matter what decision you make, I’ll never regret giving you my heart. You’re the only man in the world I want to have it.” I looked back at him, freely saying the words that felt so right. “I love you, Jack.” I looked at him for another few seconds, both scared and beautiful, as he watched me but no decision came. “Love doesn’t have to hurt to be real. You reminded me of that.”

I closed the door behind me and walked back to the party. Minutes later, as I reluctantly danced with the new lab tech underneath a blanket of Jack’s stars, I watched him leave through the doors where I met him.

“I feeled it move, Aunt Wose,” Grant reported as he wiggled his fishing pole. “I have a fish?”

“No, buddy,” I said, watching his bobber closely.

“I feeled it move!” Grant insisted as he pushed the pole toward me.

“Grant, look at your bobber, see it?”

“Wu huh,” he said, watching the red and white plastic bobber as it sat perfectly still, afloat in the motionless pond.

“When that goes underwater, you know a fish has swallowed the worm. Then you jerk really hard, okay?”

“Otaaay,” he said in a singsong voice, excitement clear in his features.

“Grandpa teached you how to fishing?”

“How to fish,” I corrected. “And nope, it was Grandma,” I said, thinking of the time my mother had taken Dallas and I out on the lake at her old house in Colorado. My father had been busy with a project, and my mother had taken it upon herself to make us one with nature, though she refused to bait the hook and laid that burden entirely on me.

“Grandma!” Grant said, seemingly tickled at the idea of my mother fishing. He laughed heartily, and I looked down at him, his little, bare feet swinging off the dock. He was such a beautiful boy. I got just as tickled at his laughter and joined him just as his bobber went under.

“Aunt Wose!” he said with big eyes.

“Okay, buddy, jerk hard,” I said, setting my pole down and wrapping my arms around him to show him how to jerk at an angle. When it seemed we’d hooked the fish, I started reeling it in. Grant let go of the pole and stood in my arms, far too excited to do the rest of the busy work. When we’d pulled the fish in and it began to struggle on the deck for air, Grant began to cry.

“No! No, I don’t wanted it to died!” he insisted as I pulled the hook from the fish’s mouth and held it out to him. “No, Aunt Wose!”

“Okay buddy, okay, look,” I said as I set the fish gently in the water and it began to thrash wildly. “He’s still alive.” I looked at a clearly distraught Grant, who nervously watched the water. Was a two-year-old even capable of grasping the concept? After several moments of studying my nephew as he watched the water, I took him into my lap.

“Grant, what does it mean to die?”

“You go way up high,” he said as he pushed his arms into the air, “to heaben.”

My question seemed to upset him more, and I pulled him closer to me to console him. “Buddy, it’s okay,” I said, noting the time and wondering if he needed a nap.

“I don’t want to kill the fishes,” he started again, and I couldn’t help the small amount of heartbreak I felt for him at the empathy he felt. Grant apparently didn’t like needless suffering. I wondered where he’d gotten it from. His heart, though it had a lifetime of aches and pains to get through, was already so beautiful in that he cared so much.

“Baby, what in the world,” I said as he sobbed into my chest.

“I don’t want them to be died.”

“You saw me put him back, baby blue. He’s okay, I promise.”

“Grant died. I don’t want to be died, too.”

And there it was. A full explanation of why my nephew was suddenly terrified of death.

“Who told you Grant died?”

“I heard Mommy say it to Daddy. Is Annabelle going to be died, too?”

Grant looked up at me with a quivering lip, and though I wanted to erase the worry from him, I felt I owed him the truth, even if in the smallest dose. It was apparent I had to do damage control for my sister who I knew deep down hadn’t meant for little ears to hear her conversation.

“Everyone dies, baby, every single thing dies, but you have a long, long, long, long, lonnnnnnng time before that happens, okay?”

“I don’t want to,” Grant protested. Realization struck me as I looked down at my fearful nephew and decided to break the cycle. I too had been afraid of death for far too long.

“Don’t you want to go to heaven?” I said, kissing his sweet, full cheek and wiping his face.

“No,” he protested.

“Oh, buddy, it’s the best place to go. You know there are angels there that sing to you.” Grant lay in my arms, sucking in shattered breaths as I soothed his back with my hands and explained to him what I thought heaven might be like. He was asleep in minutes as I looked over the pond and stroked his back.

My biggest fear was an inevitable fate we would all see. Death was the only real certainty in life, and I’d let my brush with it cripple me to the point of being afraid to fully live. It didn’t matter how hard I’d try to escape it or to protect those around me from it. I would eventually lose them all. My parents, who meant more to me than anyone, would perish in my lifetime. The gravity of that alone had me slightly reeling. Who was I to think I could escape it? I was created to try to heal those preventable hurts, but it was only by design and not my own. Did I believe in God and heaven after death? I looked down at my sleeping nephew and decided then that I did. I didn’t want to be a part of the bigger picture if it didn’t include a sanctuary for those I loved the most after life. I had to believe Grant had a home elsewhere and lived in the tranquility of that home. That his gentle soul dwelled in a beautiful place I couldn’t see, and it was full of joy. I had to believe that the beautiful baby in my arms truly had nothing to be afraid of. It was a decision to believe, just like it was a decision not to be afraid of inevitable death.