Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
NATE
Five Years Ago
Bourg-Saint-Maurice, France
When I finally arrive at the hospital, I’m a wreck of a human being.
I haven’t slept in almost two days. And in that time, I’ve held my mom’s hand while she took her last breath; I’ve found out that my girlfriend of seven years is in the ICU; and I’ve left my father alone in Boston, wrapped up in his grief, because I needed to get back to France to be with Jackson.
I walk the halls of the hospital like a ghost. I encounter few people at this late hour, but when I do they don’t even look at me, either wrapped up in their work or their own grief, depending on why they’re at the hospital in the first place.
It’s like an out-of-body experience where I’m watching this happen to someone else.
There’s no way I gave up a kidney and my lifelong dreams to save my beautiful, loving mother and now she’s lying in a morgue—but that’s where she is.
There’s no way that my determined, headstrong girlfriend could possibly be in a hospital bed in the ICU—but that’s where I’m headed, because that’s where she is.
There’s no way I can survive if I lose both of them. I honestly am not sure how I’m even holding it together at this point. It’s like I’m on some sort of trauma-induced autopilot.
The walls of the rooms within the ICU are all glass, with curtains pulled to give the patients some privacy.
At the nurses’ station, someone checks a clipboard and informs me that I’m not on the list of visitors.
After the way I left, without even telling anyone where I was going or when I’d be back, I shouldn’t be surprised that I didn’t make “the list.” I’m surprised nonetheless.
She tells me she’ll check and see if it’s okay for me to visit, and walks toward one of the small glass rooms in the back.
Before she gets there, Jackson’s dad, Rory, steps through the glass door.
He talks to the nurse, then glances up at me.
He’s not trying to hide his surprise at seeing me here.
He closes the door behind him and firmly plants himself in front of it as he waits for me to come over.
So that’s how this is going to be.
“Where have you been?” he asks me as I approach. His lilting Irish brogue has turned hard, and I deserve that. He has no idea what I’ve gone through, he only knows that I deserted his daughter when she needed me.
“I had to go home for a few days.” He just stares at me, waiting for me to say more.
But I’m struggling to find the words, to say them out loud.
I still can’t believe my mom is gone. And knowing how close she and Jackson were, how much this will devastate Jackson, makes it that much harder.
I find myself unable to tell him she’s died, both because I don’t want to believe it and because I can’t take his sympathy. “Is Jackson going to be okay?”
“Yes. She’s in a medically induced coma to save her from the pain and let her heal a bit. But she has several surgeries and an incredibly long road of recovery ahead of her.”
“Oh, thank God.” My shoulders slump as the relief floods me.
“Maybe you shouldn’t have come back,” Rory says. His words are terse and he couldn’t have possibly said anything in this moment that would have stunned me more.
“What? Why not?” I ask, hoping I’ve misunderstood his meaning.
“Some people were not meant to live in the shadow of others. You’ve been living in Jackson’s shadow for years and hating every minute of it.” He’s wrong and not wrong at the same time.
“I don’t hate every minute of it,” I insist. But I do hate how unbalanced our relationship is.
“You’ve spent five winters following her around like a puppy,” he reminds me, “watching her do what you always wanted to do. Sometimes I feel like this is more your dream than hers, but she’s living it.”
I don’t know how to respond to that.
“And every year that she’s more successful, you get more resentful,” he claims.
“I don’t resent her!” I want to strangle him for even suggesting it.
“I know you don’t. But you resent the circumstances that have kept you away from racing. Every year you spend over here in Europe with her while she’s training and racing is a year you aren’t doing what you love and what you really want to do.”
“I don’t think we could survive long distance,” I say. Why does my voice sound so small? “We’re barely hanging on as is.”
“You’re unhappy because you’re not doing what you want to be doing, and she’s unhappy that you’re unhappy, and you’ve known each other so long you know exactly how to piss each other off. You can’t keep going down this path.”
I loosen my fist in my pocket, running my finger over the velvet box with the three carat emerald cut diamond engagement ring and the diamond encrusted wedding band inside. My mother’s rings. The ones she wanted Jackson to have.
“The doctors told me it would be too dangerous to race,” I remind him.
“That was years ago. And it would have been too dangerous then. But you’ve recovered. Have you gotten a second opinion? Or are you out here being a martyr, making up reasons to be pissed off at the world?”
My back stiffens at his words. I’ve been telling myself that I couldn’t get back to racing because I needed to be here to support Jax.
“Jackson needs someone as strong as she is. Stop being her doormat,” Rory says, his face softening as he runs his fingertips across his forehead like he’s squeezing away a headache.
“You were meant to race. Go do that. And when you’ve figured out who you want to be, maybe she’ll take you back.
I’m telling you this because I think of you like a son.
You’ve forgotten how to make each other happy, and you can’t make someone else happy unless you know how to make yourself happy first.”
“I don’t even know how to BE without her in my life.”
He looks at me like he really wants to tell me to grow a pair. But Jackson and I have been together since we were seventeen and have traveled and lived together since we were twenty. She’s a part of my family and I’m a part of hers. We are married in every sense but the legal one.
In my pocket, I rub my thumb across the velvet box again, wondering why I brought it with me. She’s put off marriage so many times, why would she change her mind now? Do I really think waking up out of a coma will make her want to get married?
I glance through the glass door of Jackson’s room. Because of where Rory’s standing, I can’t see Jackson’s face, but I can see the tubes coming out of her body, the machines surrounding her. Then my eyes land on the figure sitting next to her, bent over her bed.
His lips are moving and he’s holding her hand. I’ve been gone for two days and already Marco’s there, ready to replace me. She insists they’re just friends, but her dad has welcomed him into the room that he’s keeping me out of.
So this is why she hasn’t wanted to marry me. Suddenly it makes a lot more sense. Maybe I haven’t been the man she’s needed me to be, despite the fact that I’ve done everything I could possibly do to support her and her career. Maybe Rory’s right and I need to grow up a bit before I deserve her.
“Don’t think for a second that I won’t be back,” I say to Rory.
Then I do the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
I turn and walk away.
Present Day
Transatlantic Flight
Jackson’s got her bottom lip between her teeth and her green eyes are glassy. It’s like she’s frozen, her face transfixed in the same shocked expression it’s been in the entire time I’ve been talking.
I wait, watching for her reaction. And then her lip is trembling as it slips from between her teeth, her eyebrows dip, and tears are streaming down her face.
“Hey,” I say, reaching over with both hands to cup her face and smooth away the tears with my thumbs. “Why are you crying?”
“Are you serious right now?” she whispers, a hoarse laugh escaping her lips.
I don’t answer, just keep her face cupped in my hands.
“Nate.” She sighs. “You just told me that everything I’ve believed about what happened between us was a lie,” she says, pulling back and using the sleeve of her dress to wipe her face.
“No, what was between us was not a lie,” I growl and I pull my hands back to the console that rests between us.
“No,” she says, “I mean about your leaving. We had a fight and you left Val d’Isère without telling me where you were going or that you weren’t coming back—”
“Because I was coming back,” I insist. “I got the call from my dad that my mom was being moved to the ICU right after our fight. I wasn’t thinking.
My dad chartered a jet and I was on my way back to Boston within an hour of finding out.
I should have told you. But I was stupid and upset and not making good decisions.
I should have brought you with me. I know now that if I had, everything would have turned out differently. ”
She knows what I mean—she wouldn’t have raced in Val d’Isère, which means she wouldn’t have crashed. She might still be racing today. She might be the best in the world. We might still be together.
“We can’t change what happened,” she says with more strength than I would have expected. “My crash was just bad luck.”
“Your crash happened because you weren’t focused. You were worried and upset, and that’s on me.” It’s the truth I’ve been living with for years. “I can never make that up to you.”
“You don’t have to.” She reaches out and squeezes my hand before quickly pulling her hand back. “I shouldn’t have skied with how upset I was. But I was so close. That overall World Cup title was within my grasp.”
“I know,” I tell her, “and you deserved that victory. I’m so sorry.”
“Nate, that part isn’t your fault. I skied when I shouldn’t have, I should’ve known better. Yes, I was upset because of you. But you didn’t force me to ski in that condition, I did that to myself.”