Taking Heart (9 page)

He continued the sweet assault, moving faster
and faster until he, too, was groaning his release, holding her tight as she
quivered all around him.

A trembling minute later he rolled away, took
care of the condom, and gathered Ren onto his chest.

“That was…” Ren couldn’t finish her thought. Her chest was heaving, she
was pleasantly sore in a few places, and her mind was occupied with one urgent
question: why was it never that good with Ben?

“Yes, that was,” he said breathily, and brought her hand up to his lips.

“Have you ever, um.” She looked up at him and cleared her throat, finding
it hard to get the question out. “Was it always that intense for you?”

His gaze was warm and soft when he shook his head. “No,
never
.”

“Never?” Surely that was not true. “Are you sure?”

“I’ve been with my fair share of women, true. But I wouldn’t lie about
something like that. In fact, if any other woman had asked me, I would have
refused to answer.” He pinched her nose. “How about you?”

She avoided his gaze, not knowing how to answer without betraying Ben.
“I’ve… it’s… Ben and I…”

“Really?” he said with genuine surprise. “It was never that good with you
and Ben?”

“That’s not what I said.”

He gave her a
come on
look that told her he knew the truth. “Fine.
What about with other men?”

“I’ve never been with other men,” she said. “Ben and I have been together
since high school.”

The surprise on his face was genuine. “Wow. I didn’t know you two had
such a long history.”

Not knowing how else to reassure him without debasing her history with
Ben, Ren simply snuggled into the crook of Eric's arm and laid her head on his
chest. She traced the scar once again and felt him shiver. “How did it feel,
after you woke up from the operation?”

He kissed the top of her head. “I felt sore,” he said with a soft chuckle
then added, “I felt different.”

“Different how?” She held her breath, listening for any signs of Ben
coming through.

“Like the doctors took something out, something that was an important
piece of me, and forgot to put it back,” he said. “I can’t explain it properly.
It’s like someone hid something from me and ever since then, I haven’t been
able to enjoy life like I used to. That’s why I’ve been traveling around the
country, trying to find that missing puzzle piece.”

“And how do you feel now?”

“Are you asking me if I think I’ve found it?”

She looked up at him and found him staring at her intently. Slowly,
hesitantly, she nodded.

“I don't know. Maybe.” He pulled away from her and sat up, his arms
resting on his bent legs. He twisted towards her. “I mean
,
I’ve never met anyone like you. You scare the crap out of me.”

“Why?”

“Because you make me... feel things.” He broke eye contact and turned
away. “But I still haven’t found my place in the world. I guess I’ve felt that
way for years, what with my stepdad hounding me about getting a job instead of
living on the family fortune.”

“Family fortune?”

“My stepfather is the CEO of a Norwegian shipping company.” Then, as if
she didn’t quite grasp the enormity of his wealth—which she really
didn’t—he added, “He’s worth billions.”

“Oh.”

“So the operation was an eye-opening experience. I woke up that day in
the recovery room, without a clue as to what I wanted to be when I grow up.
Except, I was already past grown up.”

She pulled on his arm and he lay back down. “A lot of us don’t know what
we want to be until later in life,” she said.

“Do you?”

“Well, I’m a bad example, because I knew I wanted to own a bakery ever
since I received my first Easy Bake Oven when I was twelve.”

“And did you do it? Is that what you are now, a bakery owner?”

“Yes, sort of. My sisters and I own a bakery together in Chicago. It’s
called Three Marie because we all have Marie as our middle name.” She made a
mental note to call her sisters; she had quite a lot to tell them.

“That’s what I want to find. That conviction and passion for something,”
he said.

“What do you like to do? What are you good at?”

“Absolutely nothing. I can drink and womanize and that’s about it.”

She stiffened. “Are you applying those talents to me?”

He laughed, but his eyes were serious. “No, you're not that kind. You’re
the exception. To everything.”

His words made her feel as if she were radiating from the inside out.
Surely her teeth were glowing in the dark as she fought to contain a smile.

Later, as the sun was beginning its ascent, she whispered against his
chest, “Thank you for coming back to me, Ben.” The scar tissue felt smooth
under her fingers as she traced it softly.

Eric stirred. “What did you say?”

“Nothing.” She pulled her hand away. “I thought you were asleep.”

“Did you call me Ben?”

“No, of course not.” She weighed her options and found no way out save
from the truth. “I was just thanking Ben’s heart.”

“What?” he said, scratching his
head.
“Is this a
dream?”

“Eric, I think you have Ben’s heart.”

“Figuratively? As in, we care for the same girl?”

“Yes, but also, literally. As in, your organ donor was Ben.”

He sat up. “Organ donor? I didn’t have a transplant.” Understanding
dawned on his face. “You think the reason why I’m with you is because Ben’s
heart led me to you?”

“Isn’t it?”

“No!” he cried, reaching for her hand. “I didn’t have a transplant. I
just had valve surgery.”

Ren’s eyes began to leak uncontrollably as her world tumbled around her.
“I thought that… I mean, why else would you be so drawn to me?”

“Because of your personality, our chemistry. Not because some
blood-pumping organ told me to be.” He sat back and looked grave. He swallowed
hard. “Is that the only reason why you were drawn to me?”

She looked at him through tear-filled eyes, not able to come up with a
satisfactory answer since the lines between Ben and Eric had been so blurred.
She had liked Eric before the idea of Ben’s returning heart took root in her
head, but it wasn’t until after that she really allowed herself to care for
him. And in that hotel room, as she looked at the pain in his eyes, the faint
light of the rising sun further clouded her mental faculties.

So she said the honest thing, the only thing that was clear: “I don’t
know.”

Eric hoped that he was dreaming. Otherwise, he was actually having this
screwed up conversation with Ren.

“You don’t know?” he echoed incredulously. He sat back with a cross
between a sigh and a groan. One minute he’d been sleeping peacefully with a
woman he’d come to really care about, and the next minute, said woman was
telling him that she only slept with him because she thought he had her dead
boyfriend’s heart. He felt like he was a bit player in a lame soap opera.
“Ren…”

She began to cry in earnest, and he had no other choice but to stamp down
his mounting panic and wrap his arms around her, murmuring indistinct soothing
noises. What else could he do?

“I’m sorry,” she kept repeating. “I was so wrong.”

“Ren, shh, it’s okay,” he said, though he knew it was anything but. He
didn’t want to have to share Ren with some dead guy he’d never even met.

When she looked up, he saw a lost little girl, and though he wanted
nothing more than to protect her, he couldn’t be with her. Not like this. “This
isn’t going to work out, is it?” she asked, and he nodded.

“The connection I felt with you was real, but this isn’t going to work if
you don’t feel the same way about me.” He closed his eyes and kissed the top of
her head. “I’m going to let you get some sleep, okay?”

She gripped his hand as he stood up, and just when he thought she was
never going to let go, she released him. “Can we talk later?” she asked, wiping
at her cheeks with the back of her hand.

“Yeah, sure.” With muscles of lead, he pulled on his rumpled clothes
before making the lonely walk across the room and closing the door behind him.

Sleep proved impossible. Not when a hundred images paraded before his
eyes, offering themselves up for dissection.

Did she like me, then?
he
thought, remembering the time she had held his hand under the stars.
Or
was it Ben’s hand she thought she was holding?

He couldn’t believe his rotten luck. Just when he thought he’d found a
small slice of the passion he’d been looking for, he discovered that it was all
just a misunderstanding. Ren was someone special, no doubt about it, but she
didn’t feel the same way about him. After she was done in Colorado, she would
fly back home to her bakery, to her life, and never think of him again.

So where does that leave me?

Maybe he would never find what he was looking for. Perhaps Ren was just
the universe’s way of reminding him that happiness was nothing but an optical
illusion you couldn’t look at directly.

Well, he could pretend to be happy back in Los Angeles too. He didn’t
have to waste so much time and energy traveling across the country to find
something that never really existed.

With a heavy sigh, he grabbed his laptop and proceeded to buy a plane
ticket home.

“I’m sorry for everything,” Ren said the moment he joined her for
breakfast at the hotel restaurant.

“How are the eggs? Because continental breakfast eggs are always awful,”
he said, but was met with a serious face. “No time for pleasantries then?”

She shook her head and looked up at him with her eyebrows raised.

“Hang on, hold that thought,” he said and got up to get some coffee. When
he returned, he sat down and took a leisurely sip of the bitter drink. Finally,
after she sighed impatiently, he said, “Okay. What I don’t get is how you could
have possibly thought I had Ben’s heart.”

She chewed on her lips for several moments. “It was when you made an
offhand comment about the doctors putting the wrong heart back in.”

“Ah.” He ground the heel of his hand to his forehead. “I’m sorry. I never
realized my joke was going to be misunderstood. I was just saying that
because—”

“I know.
Because you felt different.
That’s
another reason why. You feeling different, liking things you didn’t like
before.”

“The peanut butter and Nutella?”

She nodded. “And, you know, when you kept saying you felt some pull
towards me. I thought it was Ben’s heart leading you to me.”

“I guess I can understand why you’d come to that conclusion. It’s a
romantic notion.” He sat back, feeling his chest compress as he stared at the
sadness in her face. He’d had a glimpse of a happy Ren, and this battered shell
paled in comparison. “But all of that was just me. Only me. Isn’t that enough?”

She said nothing, and so he had his answer.

“I really thought you were starting to like me. Even before that damned
hike,” he said. “Were you?”

“I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s all fuzzy.”

“That night, eating pizza outside. I felt a connection between us. I
didn’t imagine it.” He felt like a kid, insisting that the tooth fairy existed.
Maybe if he just convinced her that she felt something for him before the heart
fiasco, it would all come true.

“I felt something, too. Something like hope.”

He closed his eyes and sighed.
Hope, you finicky shrew.

“I was glad to have you around, and somewhere in the back of my mind, I
liked you. But I wasn’t ready to get involved with someone new, so I never even
acknowledged it,” she said.

“Until…”

She bowed her head. “Yeah.”

They sat in silence for a long time. His eyes ate her up, committing to
memory the curves of her lips, the chocolate brown of her hair, the sprinkling
of freckles across her nose. “I’m leaving today,” he said finally. Chances were
he’d never see her again, which was just as well.