15. TESSA
TESSA
“I, er … have an emergency date with a television.” Scarlett stood and patted my shin. “I’ll call you later, okay?”
“Thank you, Scarlett. For everything.” For being there, for not judging, for understanding.
“Don’t mention it.” She walked off with the nurse, and behind Blake’s back, she gave me an exaggerated thumbs-up and mouthed, Good luck.
I didn’t need luck; I needed a time machine to transport me back to the before. Before I ruined everything between me and Blake. Before I learned how it felt to be carved out of someone’s life. Before my stupid heart decided to stop beating in his ER.
Once she was gone, Blake took a tentative step closer, his eyes flickering to the empty chair, a muscle working in his jaw. “Did the boyfriend leave?”
“Ex-boyfriend.” I focused on smoothing nonexistent wrinkles from my blanket rather than the way his jaw tightened at the word. “And yes.”
He nodded, uncertainty playing across his features, visible in the slight hardening of his chest, his eyes more vulnerable than they’d been earlier.
“You’re right. We should talk about what happened between us,” he suggested.
I could only hope that talking about everything wouldn’t make it worse because the truth was, I couldn’t bear to lose him twice. Not today. Not when my body had already betrayed me in the most fundamental way possible.
“I owe you an explanation.” His voice dropped low, intimate. “I never meant for our friendship to stop, Tessa. I never stopped caring about you.”
He opened his mouth like he was about to launch into some speech, perhaps one he’d practiced multiple times in his head, but his damn pager beeped. Again. He looked at it, his face saying it all.
“Dammit!” Blake said. He looked visibly frustrated, hands sweeping through his hair. “This conversation is too important to rush.”
“It’s okay,” I said, forcing a smile. “Go.”
“How about we have coffee when you’re discharged?”
I eyed him.
“We can talk without interruption.”
“Sure,” I agreed.
He reread the page. “I have a few minutes before I need to leave, and we need to go over your medical history. It’ll help us figure out which tests to run.”
He pulled up the chair Scarlett had vacated, the legs scraping against linoleum, making it clear he wasn’t about to take no for an answer either.
I swear, my freaking body could feel his presence, even with my eyes closed. Some kind of current existed in the space between us, pulling me into his orbit, no matter how much I fought it.
“Now, please,” he said, sinking down, resting his elbows on his knees as he leaned closer to me, “tell me everything.”
It wasn’t lost on me: his word choice, how he’d flipped from medical jargon to Blake speak.
“It’s a little ironic, don’t you think?” My lips curled into a sad smile.
“What is?”
“You’ve never wanted to tell me anything about your life. But now you’re asking me to tell you everything about mine.”
He’d never talked about his sister, Faith, or why she’d wound up in a different foster home than him. A different school district, so I’d never even met her. And he never talked about the years of darkness that must have surrounded that chapter in his life.
Would he ever open up to me? It was a stupid question really, one my heart shouldn’t be wondering right now.
His face tightened. “This is different.”
“Is it?”
“Your heart stopped beating.” His voice cracked slightly on the last word. “So, yes, this is very different.”
That was fair. Childhood trauma wasn’t exactly the same thing as listing medical symptoms.
“I’m sure you have more important things to do right now than listen to my medical history. Can’t a nurse get it from me?”
“I prefer to do it myself,” Blake replied.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why you ? You’re getting paged, you probably have a hundred patients to attend to, so why would you waste time with something as mundane as taking my medical history?”
“Tessa, for nearly two years, I’ve wondered if you were okay. Now I know you weren’t, and nothing else in my life matters until I understand why.”
Heat bloomed across my skin.
“I can’t focus on anything else. I can’t help any other patient. I can’t even breathe right until I know what’s been happening to you.”
Warmth spread to my neck and flooded my cheeks.
“Now, we can dance around this all night, but I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what’s going on.”
Once again, I had to remind my stupid lungs to keep breathing. If I fainted one more time, he’d probably admit me for a year.
“I don’t want Ryker knowing about this,” I clarified.
His dark eyebrows shot up. “You’ve kept this from him?”
“That’s why I changed my emergency contact. He’s not my keeper, but he still acts like he is.”
He scratched the side of his face. “Yeah, Ryker would probably set up a medical command center in your living room.”
That pulled a genuine smile from me.
“There’s another reason you don’t want to tell me.” Blake eyed my twisting fingers. “What is it?”
It took me a second to find the right words.
“Once people find out that you’re not feeling well, it becomes all they see. Every conversation starts with: How’s that going? What are the doctors saying? What’s the next step? It’s like your whole life gets put on hold and these medical questions define who you are.”
And if Blake and I had any chance of rekindling our friendship, I didn’t want my illness to be the excuse for our speaking terms. I wanted our friendship to be genuine, not reborn out of pity or obligation.
“I found that out quickly with Eli.”
Blake’s slight flinch at the name didn’t escape me.
“He meant well, but his constant questions and passionate opinions about what I should do …” I trailed off, remembering the suffocation of constant concern that snuffed the life out of our relationship.
“Sometimes, you need to compartmentalize. Put the dark stuff in a box under the bed and just … be normal. Laugh about movies or books. But the minute people know something’s wrong, you lose that privilege forever. ”
Blake’s shoulders rose with a deep breath.
“I don’t want you to look at me differently.” My voice came out smaller than intended.
Despite everything, Blake was still my rock. Even through two years of silence, I’d known that if I ever truly needed him, one call would bring him running.
“It’s okay to be vulnerable sometimes, Tessa. It’s okay to lean on people; it doesn’t make you weak.”
“Says the man who refuses to lean on anyone. Ever.”
His lips twitched. “That’s not true. I’ve leaned on you and Ryker.”
“We’re the exception to the rule; you never let anyone else in.”
And never told us why .
“In college, I even made a few more buddies.” His attempt at lightness fell flat.
“On accident,” I teased. “Ryker made you join that fraternity.”
Something dark flashed in his eyes, and suddenly, I could feel the chasm opening around him. The one he always disappeared into when conversations strayed too close to his secrets. But what secrets could he have from college? I thought all his secrets preceded our time with him?
When he cleared his throat and looked down at his hands, I recognized the move like an old dance step. That throat clear was his involuntary SOS signal when conversations threatened to expose too much.
“Tell me everything, Tessa.” His voice was gentle but firm, doctor mode sliding back into place like armor.
I paused, the weight of my own secrets pressing against my chest.
Finally, I took a deep breath, feeling like I was about to step off a cliff.
“It started a little over a year ago …”