The Keaton Series Boxed Set

by B. A. Wolfe

After the salty tears had soaked my pillowcase and the sobs had stopped, I took a moment to breathe. I grabbed the drenched pillow, tossed it to the side, and rolled myself over on my back. I took in each breath through my nose and exhaled it through my mouth. I closed my eyes and placed my arms on either side of me. My body felt paralyzed as I laid there, unable to think of what to do or where to go next. Unfortunately, I knew what I needed to do and I could feel the pull my brain was having on my heart, telling me, yelling at me to go speak to him, to find out more of what was really going on. Little by little, I pulled myself up from the bed and perched on the edge, letting my feet touch the floor. They were coming; the tears and sobs were back and approaching quickly as I thought about what I was going to do. What I was about to let myself hear if he would tell me. I honestly wasn’t going to give him a choice. He owed me the truth; he owed my breaking heart the truth. I stood up and tried fiercely to keep the sobs back as I walked out my door and through the empty house, making my way to his room. The further I went, the harder it was to contain myself, and when I finally reached his door, the control I had over my sobs had vanished. I let myself have a few moments before I grabbed the handle to his door and turned it, pushing it open.

  Thirty

  I LOOKED AT HIM. His eyes were swollen and red, and his face was splotchy like mine. We were a pair right here. A pair of sobbing, frightened people who were no longer strangers. We were brought together by my accident and now I understood why. We had a connection far greater than mutual attraction; we were both brought together for deeper reasons. I was running from my past because it threatened my future and he was hiding from his future because of his past and the threat it had on his unknowing future. We could have been strangers or best friends, but nothing would bring us closer than this moment we were about to share. I took in a deep breath as I approached his bed.

  “I need to know everything,” I told him through the hard cries that were convulsing through my body.

  “Come here, Sweetheart.” There it was, his soft voice. The one that let me know he was going to tell me, that I didn’t even have to fight him for the truth.

  “I want you right here.” He lifted his blankets for me to get in. “In my bed with me. If I’m going to tell you what’s going on, I need you right next to me so I can hold on to you.”

  If that didn’t make my already soaked eyes release more tears, I didn’t know what could. I was a blubbering mess and beyond consolable. I climbed in bed, putting my body so close to his that there was barely any room between us for a blade of grass. I laid my head down on the pillow and looked up at him. His arm bent and his head was resting in his hand, he was lying on his side, his body open to where I laid next to him. He looked deep in my eyes, and pulled me even closer.

  “I didn’t mean to yell at you,” I told him quietly as he kept his hand on my waist.

  “It’s okay. You’re scared. Believe me; I get it.”

  “Is that what you meant when you told me you knew scared eyes when you saw them?”

  He closed his eyes as a few tears trickled down his cheeks. “When we first found out my kidneys were failing, all I ever saw in everyone’s eyes, including my own looking back at me in the mirror, was fear. It was horrifying, and then when I saw the same damn look in your eyes, I knew it wasn’t just the accident that had you scared. I knew it was something else and I didn’t want you to have to be alone, because it always helped me and my family that we had each other. You needed someone with you and I wanted it to be me.”

  “I don’t even know what to say, but you have no idea how grateful I was to have you there.”

  “I know.” His hand moved from my waist and cupped my cheek, his thumb caressing my skin. “Are you ready for the story?”

  “As ready as I’ll ever be,” I told him. I was scared. No, I was fucking scared of what I was about to hear. I didn’t want to hear it. I wanted to just close my eyes and fall asleep in his arms again, smell his familiar scent the whole night as I dreamt of what it would be like to stay with him forever. That was not the reality though; this was. I had to hear his story.

  He inhaled deeply and let it out slowly. “You remember when I told you about my brother?”

  “Yeah,” I said confused as to where he was going with this.

  “He’s fine, well, not fine. He and my parents are not on speaking terms right now. That’s why he remains unseen. That’s a story for another day. But the point I’m trying to make is that…” He inhaled again, struggling to get the words out. “Sorry, it’s just been a long time since I’ve talked about this.”

  I snuggled closer to him, grabbed the hand that was cupping my cheek, and held onto it tightly. “I’m here and I’m not going anywhere.”

  He let a smile spread across his tear-stricken face as he squeezed my hand. “My brother was big into sports. He was really good at them too. We always went to his high school games to cheer him on. My parents were busy with work, the farm, and my brother. They were trying to get him a scholarship for college. The money wasn’t there to send him without one. I was only fourteen when he started his senior year of high school. Mom and dad were busy, and I didn’t mind because I kept busy helping at the farm and our hardware store. I kept getting more and more exhausted, but I didn’t stop working because I knew our parents needed my help if we were going to get my brother into college. I wanted him to go, probably more than he did.” He started to chuckle a little. “I was a very proud, younger brother and I couldn’t wait to go visit him at college. In the meantime, we were busy taking care of Grandma Maggie because a year prior we’d lost my Grandpa Art.” He peered down at me. I nodded, letting him know I remembered whom he was talking about. I could never forget Maggie. “He died of a stroke. He rarely took his medication, and they believe that his high blood pressure led to the stroke.” He paused to take in a breath. “I’m sure you get the point that we were a busy family, so when I started to feel pain in my back and on my sides, I didn’t say anything. I kept trudging on. I didn’t want the family to have to worry about me on top of everything else.”

  I put my hand over my eyes. I didn’t want to hear this. I didn’t want to hear how he felt he was a burden to others so he kept his pain inside. “I can’t hear this, Jase,” I said weeping.

  His hand pulled mine away from my eyes and he gripped it tight in his, placing it between us. “It’s okay, I’m not going anywhere. I’m right here,” he whispered. “It wasn’t until halfway through the school year that it got worse. I had blood in my urine, and the pain was now excruciating, so I had trouble hiding it. I finally went to my mom who took me to the emergency room. She thought it was a urinary tract infection or possibly a kidney stone. After testing for those and coming up with nothing, they did an imaging scan and saw two cysts on my kidneys. With a lot of doctor visits, probing and prodding, and too many tests to count, we learned the cysts are from a hereditary kidney disease that came from my father’s side. Even though Grandpa Art died from a stroke, the problems were created from this disease he didn’t know he had because he was too stubborn to go to the doctors. My father then passed it along to me. He has the gene but hasn’t developed the symptoms, which is why we never knew about it. My case is rare since I developed symptoms so early. I spent the remainder of high school in and out of the hospital.” He stopped to wipe the tears pouring out of my eyes once again.

  I clung to him as he spoke, unable to fully digest it all, and yet completely understanding why he was the way he was. My heart was hurting, breaking at the seams as each word slipped out of his mouth.

  “So what will happen to your dad?” I asked, scared to hear the answer.

  “I don’t know. He may live the rest of his life without ever having the symptoms and then again, he could. He goes for regular checkups with his doctors and monitors his blood pressure, which could increase with his symptoms. So right now, he’s good.”

  “This is a lot to take in. I couldn’t imagine hearing all of this when you were so
young.”

  “You have no idea. I’ll never forget being in the hospital as they were trying to figure out what was wrong with me, thinking that I should have spoken up sooner. But I had the family with me and that helped. I grew to hate that damn place though.”

  “It makes sense now. I wish you had told me. I could hit you. I’m so mad that you kept this from me, but I understand. I really do,” I told him.

  “I know. I should have told you sooner.”

  “What happened next?” I asked him.

  “My brother did get a scholarship but he declined. Toward the end of his senior year, I needed a kidney transplant because mine were functioning at less than ten percent. He stayed with me every step of the way, and then he did the bravest thing he could have ever done. He offered up his kidney. At first, we weren’t sure if it would work because he could be a carrier of the gene too, but as luck would have it, he wasn’t. I was thankful too. I didn’t want to have to watch my hero, my brother, go through this same disease. After match testing, we found out his blood type and mine were the same, so the kidney transplant was a go. My brother gave me his kidney. He acted as if it was the easiest thing in the world for him to do, but to me, it was the most courageous thing he could have ever done for me. I thanked him every day for giving me a piece of him that improved my life. He always told me it was nothing, that it was the least he could do, and that he would give me any organ I ever needed to save my life. It broke his heart and mine when just last year the kidney stopped functioning. It was quick for a living donor kidney to go that fast, but I guess it was just in the cards I was dealt. I’m on the waiting list and now under full dialysis until I get another kidney.”

  “The errands you’ve been running? They’re because of dialysis?” I closed my eyes, seeing him back in the hospital hooked up to the machine.

  “Yeah, I have to go three times a week for about four hours each time. I am lucky that, even though it’s a small hospital, I was able to get a dialysis machine there. They bring in a special technician three days a week to be there with me for the treatments. It costs a lot of money. That’s why we had to sell the farm. I couldn’t work there anymore because of the pain I would be in some days because the cysts were growing and making my kidneys larger than normal. We had to pay for everything, and the only way to do it was to start selling off things, the hardware shop included.”

  “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.”
<
br />   “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.

  Thirty-One

  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.