“Oh, no? You are well aware that Sue Ellen Watts has told everyone, and there will be dozens of messages to return. She never could resist a good piece of gossip.” She flicked another page. “Besides, I’m not about to let you sit here all alone.”

God, I wish she would. I shifted my legs in the sheets, stubble catching on the smooth fabric. I needed a good shower and a razor. I changed tactics as I adjusted my oxygen tube. “Mama, go home. Get some sleep. I won’t be alone. Jagger should be here any minute.” I’d been telling myself that every minute since the clock hit five p.m. It was going on six thirty now.

“Hmm. Yes, about that boy.” She looked over the pages of her magazine.

“Jagger is where I draw the line. Not a single word.”

“Don’t you mean Prescott?” The magazine landed in her lap, right with my patience. “I mean, really, Paisley. What kind of young man hides the fact that he’s a senator’s son? Maybe if we’d known that from the beginning, we wouldn’t have been so against you seeing him, seeing as he’s a Mansfield.”

“Mama, who he’s chosen to be is so much more than what he came from. I’d actually prefer not to have your approval of Jagger based on his father, and I’m not kidding. He’s not up for discussion.” I never wanted to hear that name again. He was Jagger Bateman, and that was all there was to it.

“Well, if that’s how you feel. I wouldn’t want to do anything to upset your heart…like bungee jumping or anything, before you get this pacemaker put in.” She kept her voice sweet and level.

“Those are matters you know nothing about.” Heart attack or no, there would be no pacemaker.

She stood, smoothing the lines of her slacks. “Hospital bed or not, don’t you dare sass me, Lee. How about I get you some ice?”

I swallowed the messy emotions I knew she wouldn’t want me to voice. “That’d be nice, thank you.”

“How about I escort you to the machine, Mrs. Donovan?” Daddy asked her from the doorway. He winked at me. “Hey, darling. I’m going to steal your mama away and give you a second with this gentleman I found wandering the halls.”

Jagger stepped around my father, dressed in faded jeans and a ringer tee just tight enough to make me want to peel it off him, if I was ever going to be allowed to have sex again. “Hey.” I smiled, my heart already breaking.

His smile didn’t quite reach his eyes as he leaned over and kissed me lightly. “How are you feeling?” Tension radiated from every line of his body.

“Better now.” I tugged the oxygen tube from under my nose.

“Hey, you need that.” Jagger looped it over my ears and pulled Mama’s chair closer so that he could hold my hand. “So what now?”

“Wow, right to it, huh?” I joked. “No ‘how was your day, dear?’”

“Where are my manners?” A corner of his mouth quirked up, but his usual grin didn’t appear. “How was your day, my dear?”

“Oh, you know, mostly spent it being lazy and getting waited on hand and foot.”

“Sounds like a dream.” There was the smile. “More of the same tomorrow?”

My smile fell. “I’m being transferred to Birmingham tomorrow, so it should include a glamorous three-hour ride.” My attempt at humor fell flat. “My cardiologist is there. I have to…make a choice now.”

“You’re getting a pacemaker, right?”

I jerked back reflexively. “What?”

“I spent some time on Google today.” His eyes shot to where my tablet lay next to my hand. “I’m guessing you did, too. Anyway, I did some research.”

“I thought you had a test.”

“Yep. I took the test, and I researched new pacemaker technology.”

My stomach turned, but I couldn’t be mad since I’d spent my day researching him, too. But how much had he learned? “I’m choosing septal myectomy. End of discussion.”

He paled. “You want them to shave down your heart?”

Apparently a lot. “It’s not as bad as it sounds.”

He sucked his breath through clenched teeth. “I need you to explain your thought process.”

Logic couldn’t keep my hackles from rising, and besides, wasn’t this what I wanted? “I know you deserve an explanation, but you’re going to have to watch your tone. Nothing gets me madder than someone bossing me around when it comes to my heart.”

The chair creaked as he shifted his weight. “Do you love me?”

“Yes,” I snapped.

“Do you want a future with me?” His eyes lit with the same fire that had drawn me to him in the first place.

“Yes.” Which I can never have.

“Then stop acting like you’re alone in this, and explain your choice. I’m not saying I’ll agree with you, and I don’t have to, but we’re at least discussing it.”

He wasn’t Will or my parents. He wouldn’t bully me against what I knew to be right. “I just have this feeling…and I don’t want to be here again. I want the septal myectomy, because then it’s done. Other than monitoring, I’m not sentenced to a life of…this.” I gestured to the monitors. “It isn’t just a Band-Aid, it’s a fix.”

“It’s got a five percent mortality rate over six years, it’s only eighty-five percent effective, and it has a huge rate of bundle branch blocks afterward. The pacemaker is proven to regulate your heart and seems like the most logical first step before you ask them to crack your chest, especially since you have a family history of SCD. Septal myectomy isn’t guaranteed to keep you alive, the pacemaker is.”