Page 78 of Jam and Jingle Bells
He shook his head and opened his eyes, holding mine with a pair of painfully open and honest mahogany ones. “No, I have to tell you this. I have to tell someone this,” he whispered. “I’ll be twenty-six in three days and I’ve held it in for seven years. The time is now if I’m going to face down my next birthday with a renewed sense of who I am as a man. I’m a man who has been hurt, I thought beyond repair, but then you came along and did something no one else could do in seven years. Convince me I was safe to tell this story to someone I love without them being afraid of me or disappointed or,” he tossed both hands up and sighed.
“Or stop loving you?” I asked and he nodded, his chin turning to look out the window.
“Or stop loving me,” he agreed. “I’ve been afraid to love in case that very thing happened.”
I tipped his chin back to face me and held his gaze. “This was not your fault, Ellis. You didn’t know you had a heart condition.”
He slid his hands into his hair again. “No, I didn’t know, and I didn’t know that heat made it worse. Syncope is the first symptom of a heart in ventricular tachycardia. I was in the throes of it and didn’t know it. I was out of it and thought I’d put the tractor in park, but it was in neutral and I was on a bit of a slope. There was still a bale in the baler and Dad was off to the side waiting for it. He heard me yell for him and, the best they can figure, he turned to walk toward the cab. The tractor started rolling backward and he was knocked down and run over by the back tire. I was thrown from the cab and my leg was run over by the front tire. The tractor kept going and my neighbor was out in his field when he saw it hit the road and flip. He knew something was wrong and called for help before he headed for the field. He found my dad, but he was beyond help. You don’t survive a tractor that size rolling over you, even at a slow speed. I was still alive, but before the ambulance got there, he had to start CPR. You know the rest.” He took a deep breath and let it out as though that was the end of it, but it only took one look into his eyes for me to know it wasn’t, not by a long shot.
Chapter Twenty-One
I filled a glass of water in the kitchen and carried it to the couch, handing it to him and kneeling in front of him. “It’s okay now,” I whispered, checking his pulse again. It was steady and not too fast, even if slightly elevated. “You’re okay now,” I promised again.
He finished the water and I took the glass before I climbed up next to him and rested my hand over his chest. He no longer quivered with anxiety, which was a relief. I was worried he was going to get a jolt that would aggravate his heart again.
He put his hand over mine and smiled. “Thanks for the water. Is it weird that I feel lighter already? I know people say that when they stop holding stuff inside, but I didn’t believe it. I just figured all it did was burden someone else and weighs them down.”
“Sometimes,” I said, kissing his cheek, “spreading the burden around makes it less for everyone to carry.”
He chuckled and nodded, his eyes going closed. “Apparently, you’re right. My chest doesn’t feel like it has a fist around it anymore.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Ellis.”
“I know,” he whispered, “ultimately, that doesn’t make it any easier though. When you wake up in a hospital with wires holding your sternum shut and a pacemaker stuck in the other shoulder, a cast on your ankle and a priest in the corner, you know it’s bad. My father was dead and I would never be the same. That’s a lot to handle for a nineteen-year-old kid.”
“That’s a lot to handle for anyone, Ellis. You’ve done extremely well with it.”
“Not in the beginning, admittedly. I buried it all. Pretended it didn’t happen. Buried my father and then buried his farm. I took the money from the farm and paid off our bills, bought a ticket to California, and never looked back. I worked myself into the ground there, taking every class offered to me to teach, but it wasn’t enough.”
“Which is why you moved to this little out of the way town where life is slower and people are friendly.”
He laughed and nodded, shrugging his shoulder. “I had to get out of the big city, I wasn’t cut out for it. I picked a bunch of random places on the map without yoga studios that had reasonably priced property. Then I visited them all and checked out the town, the people in the town, and the atmosphere.”
“And you picked Bells Pass from how many?” I asked, curious about his thought process.
“Six, and Bells Pass was the fourth. I didn’t visit the last two. I didn’t need to. I stopped in at the Nightingale Diner the first day I was here and knew I’d found what I was looking for. I left the diner, walked into the real estate office and rented the studio that day. I flew back to California and put my life in order then drove back here. I knew there weren’t a lot of rental properties, but it was February and I figured stuff would open up over the summer. Nothing did, but by then it was too late.”
I patted his chest. “You aren’t the only one to run into that. I bet you didn’t know both Shep and Mel had the same problem, and Shep has lived here his whole life.”
“Really?” he asked and I nodded.
“Really. Shep was living in an old hotel here in town because it was cheap but nice. Then it was sold and it became more of a drug haven. He got out at the right time and moved in with Ivy.”
“What about Mel?”
“She was living there just last year when it burned down. It was a complete hellhole by then, but she had nowhere else to go when the place she used to rent was sold. She ended up moving in with Mason when he found her there the night it burned down.”
“Wow, sounds like strings being pulled by the universe,” he said, shaking his head.
I grabbed his chin and held it. “And the same is said for us. You needed a place, and I had one. I still think you made the right decision moving to Bells Pass. We needed you and you,” I said, tapping his chest, “needed us.”
“True story,” he whispered, his forehead on mine. “Absolute true story. I love you, Addie.”
“I love you too and I’m going to take care of you tonight,” I promised, standing and shutting down the lights and taking his hand. He stood and I walked with him to my bedroom, clicking on the bedside lamp. He hesitated in the doorway.
“I’m, uh, not sure I can,” he motioned at the bed. “I’m exhausted.”
I shook my head and took his hand. “I know, baby. We’re going to climb in my bed, and I’m going to hold you for a while until you fall asleep. My bed is bigger than yours,” I said, laying my finger on his lips when he tried to argue. “Nothing will happen. Neither of us slept last night and today has been trying. We need each other right now. It doesn’t have to be sexual. We’re healing each other’s hearts, nothing more. Okay?”
