Chapter 10 #3
Justin clinked his glass with Drew’s, but barely took a sip. Holding Taylor in the middle of the vineyard, hearing her say that she loved him and that she wanted to be with him, meant more to him than anything else ever had. He’d never felt so high.
Or so low, when he thought about how much time he’d wasted. “How could I have been such an idiot not to tell her how I feel years ago?”
“No point in worrying about the past,” Drew said. “You’ve got the future to look forward to.”
The future. Justin had read all the statistics about the life-spans of PKD patients—the progress the scientific community had made with dialysis and kidney transplants was impressive.
But he wanted guarantees, damn it. For the hundredth time in the past hour, he went back through everything he’d read before leaving the B&B.
Drew frowned when Justin didn’t immediately agree that his future was all roses and sunshine now that Taylor was his. “I’m pretty sure you have everything you’ve ever wanted now,” his brother remarked. “So why aren’t you skipping through the vineyards with cartoon hearts floating around your head?”
Justin hated to break Taylor’s confidence, but he needed to talk this through with someone.
His father, though brilliant, was out of the question.
Something told Justin there was a chance Dad might even agree with Taylor’s concerns about getting too close—if only to try to protect his son from any harm.
When the truth was that the only thing that would truly devastate Justin was living without her.
“You’re right,” he said to his brother. “This should be the best day of my life. After all these years of loving Taylor but not being able to tell her or show her, and not knowing if she felt the same way, my mind is blown to find out I’m not the only one who has those feelings.”
“So then I’ll ask again—where are the cartoon hearts?”
“She’s been diagnosed with PKD.”
Drew frowned. “What the hell is PKD? It sounds like the name of a bad metal band.”
“I wish it were.” Justin quickly explained the parameters of the disease to his brother, who looked shell-shocked by the news. “Unless she gets a kidney—and preferably from a live donor—things are likely to get really rough, really fast.”
“Donate yours.” Drew said it as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“I would, in a heartbeat.” Of course, Justin had already thought of that. “But she was so intent on shielding me from her disease that she didn’t even want us to be together. How the heck am I going to convince her to take one of my kidneys?”
“Do you think she’d be more open to taking one of mine?”
Justin had never been a crier. Even when his mother had been sick, he’d pushed tears away with medical books and scientific research up until the very end. But hearing his brother offer to donate a kidney to Taylor without even a moment’s hesitation—
Sometimes a guy couldn’t stop himself from choking up.
“Thanks, Drew.” Emotion at the sacrifice his brother was willing to make made his voice rough. “But if Taylor’s going to have a piece of someone inside her, it’s going to be me.”
As brothers who had shared endless dirty jokes as kids, they both had to laugh at the double meaning of his words, but it was muted humor.
“I’m going to tell her I want to be tested to see if I’m a match.” Now that Justin had made up his mind, he was unwavering. “And if I’m a compatible donor, I’m not going to let her say no.”
“Whatever you need,” his brother said, “just let me know.”
Justin looked in the direction the women had gone. “I’ve got to make a couple of calls to get the ball rolling ASAP. Could you distract Ashley and Taylor in case they come back before I’m done?”
He knew without a shadow of a doubt that since Taylor had only just come on board with dating him, she really wasn’t going to be happy about him wanting to be her donor.
If she overheard his calls to the transplant center before he had a chance to talk her around to the idea, it wouldn’t help his case one bit to debate it in front of Drew and Ashley.
“No problem,” Drew agreed.
Justin knew a couple of scientists at the University of California at Davis, which was not only less than an hour away, but also had one of the best kidney-transplant centers in the nation.
Thankfully, they were more than happy to connect him with the transplant team, and dropping their names got him an appointment first thing the next morning for the blood tests he and Taylor would have to have to check their compatibility for a transplant.
“Nice work,” Drew said when he put his phone down. “Perfect timing too. Looks like Ash and Taylor are just heading back.”
As he watched the woman he’d always been crazy about laugh with Drew’s fiancée, Justin pushed away every ounce of doubt, letting only hope and love remain.
He and Taylor had always been the perfect match for each other.
They just needed to be a perfect match again so that he could give her his kidney.
He refused to accept any other possibility.