Away (32 page)

“Seriously Jason, I don’t know how much more I can take. This is too much to listen to.” I cried into the pillow as his hand brushed strands of my hair behind my ear.

“There are some good things. Like when I received my kidney from my brother, it was like a whole new world. I still had to watch myself carefully, eat more salads.” He winked. I tried to give him a small smile, but my heart was in too much pain. “I take more pills than an eighty-year-old man, not to mention I have to watch out for cyst bleeds. But things were going okay. So I decided with the encouragement of my family, and especially my brother, to enroll and take a few classes at the community college in Lamar, the only college around. It’s about forty five minutes away.”

“Those are the college courses you were talking about,” I said, starting to piece together the answers he gave me when we first met.

“It was, but it was getting to be too much for me. I struggled with making sure I was okay, dealing with abdominal pain, the pills, and the dietary restrictions. I started to panic and those scared eyes I saw too many times in myself were back. I couldn’t do it. So after my first year, I left and came back home. I tried to help out, but Mom and Dad wouldn’t let me. I argued until they let me work at the hardware shop on the weekends. In fact–” he paused to look down at me, “–Moose and his family purchased it so that we could keep our family name on it. They let my father and me work there too. They’re a good family.”

“That’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard,” I replied, thinking of how special Moose was to him and this family. He had a special place in my heart too.

“There are people with this hereditary disease that are far worse off than I am, and then those that don’t even show symptoms. It all just varies case by case. I’m doing the best I can with it. Some days, I wish that it would just take me already, and other days, when I take a moment to appreciate everything around me, I’m glad it hasn’t. I don’t know what my future holds, and honestly, I don’t want to know. What I want is to enjoy each moment that I do have because that’s what I’ve been given.”

“What will happen next? I need to know.” I asked, not knowing if I was ready for his answer.

“I don’t have a timestamp, Sweetheart. People can be on dialysis for a long time. Some get other complications. With my disease, I can have a lot go wrong; we just always have to prepare for the worst but hope for the best. I was supposed to get a kidney last week. When you saw my mother crying, it was because the kidney went to another person. So, I had to break the news to my mom. It’s coming. I know it is, but in the meantime I have had the best time of my life being here with you.”

I wiggled out of the hold he had on me and sat up. I knew what I had to do.

“I will give you my kidney. I will get tested to see if I’m a match,” I said, hoping I was a match.

He rolled on his back, and put his hands under his head. “Sweetheart, you’re pregnant. I wouldn’t take one from you anyway. You have a baby to take care of now.”

“But there has to be something I can do to help Jason. Please, what can I do?” I pleaded with him. I had to know how I could help save him.

He chuckled and pulled me down so I was cradled right next to him. I rested my head on his chest as he put his arm around me, holding me tight. “You’re already doing it. Here I was thinking that I was helping you, saving you from your problems. But I haven’t felt more alive since the day I received my first kidney. Your being here has shown me how little I’ve been living all these years.”

I glanced up at him; his green eyes were no longer glossy with tears. “Funny, being here with you has shown me how little I’ve been living too. Only living for everyone else and regretting things in my past, but you’ve changed my mind about everything I thought I once knew,” I said.

“Then I guess it’s a good thing we found each other.”

“You have no idea how grateful I am for crashing my car. It led me to you.” I propped myself up on my elbow, raising my head up so my lips were directly across from his.

His eyes gleamed and his lips moved just a tad closer to mine. “You get to tease about crashing, but I can’t tease you?”

“Exactly,” I said, keeping my lips close, but still not touching his.

“Typical woman.” He took his hand and placed it behind my head, tangling his fingers in my hair. “How about if I say that I want to crash my lips onto yours? Is that use of the word
crash
allowed?”

“I think that would definitely be allowed,” I said softly.

“Good, because I wasn’t going to take no for an answer,” he said, mimicking the softness of my voice.

He brought up his other hand, tangling it in my hair as he
crashed
our lips together. This was more than a good form of crashing. He untangled one hand and pulled me so I was now laying comfortably on top his body. He continued kissing me, but it grew softer and less hungry. His lips gently pressed against mine, and each time, he would open his mouth just enough to let our tongues delicately touch for seconds at a time. It felt like teasing, but it was, in fact, all too pleasing. I loved when he kissed me with hunger and passion, but there was something to be said for gentle, tender kisses. He slowly drew his lips from mine before kissing me one last time, pulled the extra pillow over, and moved it to prop up his head. He wrapped an arm tight around my waist and he held me there. I looked up at his gorgeous eyes.

“You make crashing very enthralling.”

“You make it easy,” he said, placing a sweet kiss on my forehead.

“Thank you for telling me. For opening up to me about what’s going on.”

“Thank you for giving me the chance to explain.”

I couldn’t believe I was mad at him for keeping this from me. It seemed so trivial now that I realized I could have let my emotions get in the way of what Jason was battling. He would never grasp how thankful I was for him filling me in on everything from the beginning to where he was at today. None of it eased my feelings on how scared I still was for him. What he was going through frightened me to my very core. He said he didn’t have a time stamp, which was sometimes worse than having one. I could only pray to anyone wanting to listen to me how much I needed this man to stay alive for his family and for me.

I lowered my head and laid my cheek against his chest as he held me in place. For a day that started out well, happy even, it turned unbearable quickly, only to end where it should. I thought about the ending, for the ending was all that mattered. I remembered Jason telling me,
“Because in the end, everything will be okay. It has to be.”
And for tonight, it was. I closed my eyes as I listened to his ever-soothing heartbeat.

I
PLACED
EVERYTHING
THAT
I once put away per Jason’s request back into my suitcase. It didn’t take long for me to pack up my belongings as I zipped my suitcase closed. It was time. I couldn’t be away from him a second longer. I quietly hauled all of my things downstairs to his room. I set my suitcase down by his dresser. It was early in the morning, so his room was just starting to get light from the sun. And from what I could see, he was still in bed.

I barely slept last night while thoughts of yesterday flittered through my head. It would be impossible to sleep upstairs knowing that he was down here. Knowing that he needed me just as much as I needed him tore at me. I wanted to spend every moment that I could with this sweet man.

I inched my way over to his bed and slid under the covers, filling the spot that I was in before. I felt his hand slip around my waist as he pulled me closer to him.

“You were gone for a while. You feeling okay?” he asked in his husky morning voice.

“I’m feeling okay, a little nauseous, but not too bad this morning. I just had to take care of something,” I answered, slightly unsure of how he would take me moving down to his room.

“Would it have anything to do with the suitcase you just brought down? You’re not leaving me are you?”

“How did you know about my suitcase?”

“I heard you set something heavy down over there, so I just took a wild guess. Unless you’re the one I should be worrying about and you just brought down a dead body.”

“Definitely not the crazy one. Although you might think I’m crazy for this, but I can’t be without you anymore. I don’t want to spend one more minute upstairs when I could be down here instead. So to answer your questions, yes, it was my suitcase, and no, I’m most definitely not leaving you. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.”

“Not the answer I was expecting,” he replied as he brushed a hand against my cheek. “But I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I’ve wanted to have you bring your stuff down here for a while now.”

“Well, in that case, consider your room officially taken over,” I said.

“Well, in that case, consider it okay,” he replied back before placing his lips on my forehead. “My room welcomes you with open arms. You can use everything except the bottom right dresser drawer.” He looked at me like a parent, telling me the one thing in a room of fun that I couldn’t play with.

I searched his face for a moment, waiting for the ‘I’m just teasing’ to come out, but it never did. “You realize that you just told the person that you called nosey when we first met to stay out of a certain drawer. Why on earth would you trust me? Not to mention, I don’t like it when you keep secrets. They aren’t the easiest to take.” I frowned at him.

He put his hand on my waist and slid it under my cami, gently tracing circles with his finger on my bare skin. “There is nothing hidden in there. It’s just personal items that I’m not ready to share yet. And I do trust you because you’ve had every opportunity to go through my whole house to look for things, and I know you haven’t. What’s in the drawer is nothing secretive. It’s only personal. I have nothing to hide from you. You never have to worry about that again, okay?” His hand had stopped making circles on my skin and was holding me tightly.

“Okay, I believe you,” I told him. Even though I believed him, I also had a hard time not knowing what was in the drawer. I needed to show him he could trust me, and honestly, he could. He was right; I had many opportunities and didn’t take one of them. I was changing, and for the better.

“So,” he said quietly. “Doesn’t someone come down today?” His eyebrow arched.

My eyes widened and I put a hand over my agape mouth. Oh. My. God.

“You forgot? Melanie is not going to like that,” he said.

“I honestly can’t believe I forgot,” I said, shaking my head. “My thoughts have been elsewhere.” My smile slowly faded as my heart knew the reason why my brain had been so consumed. It hurt even worse when I realized I was going to have to fill her in.

“Hey, Sweetheart,” he said, pulling his hand from my waist. He put a finger under my chin, raising my head to look at him. “It’ll be okay.” His eyes were serious and his lips were pressed together. He truly thought everything was going to be all right all of the time. I wish I had just an ounce of the positivity he had.

“Or if you rather, just don’t tell her,” he said teasingly. “It worked for a little bit with you.”

I frowned and pulled his finger from my chin. “You better be joking right now,” I said, giving him a stern look.

“I was only teasing,” he said, bringing his hand back to my face and pulling me in for a soft kiss on the lips. “She’ll probably be here soon though, so we might want to—” I placed my finger over his lips and cut him off.

“She will most definitely be here soon but I just want five minutes. Five minutes of this,” I said, pointing between us. “Okay?”

His eyes found mine, and in a matter of seconds, his lips did too. I knew right then that my five minutes were approved. He knew what I was after and he was delivering. His hand slipped under my cami again, slowly inching higher and higher until he reached one of my taut peaks. My skin erupted with goose bumps as he gently massaged it, puckering my nipples even more. He had the most tender touch. It was the perfect amount of pressure from his hands and lips. They had a way of running tingles from my head to my toes and every place in between. He had my whole body on edge, as every inch of me was sensitive to his affections and thought-out touch or kiss.

His lips left mine as he slowly sat up. The satisfied look on his face was apparent as he took the bottom of my cami and lifted it over my head. I ached to be touched again, which I found unusual because my breasts were very sensitive from the pregnancy. He clearly had a magical way of making them throb for his touch. He straddled my body, his hard-on settling right where I needed it. A soft moan escaped as I felt him pressed against me. His lips grinned before he sealed them against mine. One hand held his weight up, and the other went back to my breast. I took my hands and ran them across his back, using my fingers to lightly trace circles or other random shapes. My mind was in a fog as his tongue continued to stroke against mine. I stopped tracing and gripped his back harder as his lips devoured my neck, making their way to my chest. They were almost there when my phone started making noises next to his on the nightstand.