Page 54 of On the Edge

CHAPTER15

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.”

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