Full Tilt (Full Tilt #1)(45)

My heart clanged against my chest.

Calm down. It might not be as bad as you think.

Whatever it was, I was in. When I told him I was thinking of staying in Vegas, a future was born between us. Not a romantic one. Just…being together. A bond. We had an undeniable connection.

Soon the Eiffel Tower loomed on our right. Across Las Vegas Boulevard, the Bellagio Hotel and Casino was illuminated majestically behind its lake. Jonah turned into the casino entrance and parked.

“Another water show?” I asked.

He gave a quick smile that didn’t make it past his mouth. “Not tonight.”

The water was still and dark as we walked along it. No colored lights or dancing jets. Shivers ran up my bare arms, despite the heat. Beside me, Jonah looked handsome in jeans and a black T-shirt. The medical alert bracelet on his right wrist caught the glittering lights of the hotel.

The Bellagio’s air-conditioned lobby made me shiver harder. A few people crisscrossed the marble floors or waited at the registration desks. The refined ding of an elevator echoed off marble. Beneath my feet, a gorgeous mosaic spread out in all directions, leading to a lush seating area with potted plants. Beyond that was the registration area with elegant arches in pale cream and gold. A coffered ceiling made me feel as if I’d stepped into a Roman palace.

Then my gaze was drawn upward, to the centerpiece of the Bellagio lobby, and undoubtedly, the reason Jonah had brought me here. The ceiling’s beams flowed toward a masterpiece of light and glass. Hundreds upon hundreds of what looked like upside down umbrellas, rippling along the ceiling in riots of color.

“Fiori di Como,” Jonah said, walking beside me. “Flowers of Como by Dale Chihuly.”

“Your idol,” I murmured, staring at the magnificent bouquet of delicate glass flowers bursting from the ceiling.

“Seventy feet long and thirty feet wide,” Jonah said, his voice low and reverential. “Over two thousand pieces.”

“It’s amazing,” I said, then looked to Jonah. “Your installation is better.”

He smiled, but it was a smile laden with something beyond sadness. Something so deep and profound, I longed to turn back, to find an exit and run away from whatever it was he was going to tell me.

“Dale Chihuly is a true master,” Jonah said. “A virtuoso. I could only hope to create something like he has. Something more than just a beautiful piece of glass.”

“Like what?” I asked in a small voice.

“A legacy,” Jonah replied. “Let’s sit for a minute.”

He led me to the plush maroon couches directly under Chihuly’s blown glass. The couch was soft and invited me to slouch into its cushions, but I sat ramrod straight, bracing myself.

Jonah leaned forward, resting his forearms on his thighs and turning his medic alert bracelet around and around. I could see him measuring words and assembling sentences, working up the courage to tell me something that was going to change everything.

“If you’re going to ask me to marry you, the answer is no,” I said. “We hardly know each other. I need at least three more cupcakes.”

Jonah laughed lightly.

“That’s not it?” I said, trying to lighten the moment but my voice wouldn’t play along. “Are you gay?”

Jonah looked at me then, his dark eyes warm and soft. “Strike two,” he said.

“Okay,” I said, swallowing hard. My next and last question stuck in my throat. Once asked and answered, my life would never be the same. “Are you sick?”

“Yes, Kacey.”

“How sick?”

“Terminally sick.”

The words dropped into the space between us like a grenade ready to blow. My chest constricted as if I’d inhaled subzero air. I nodded vigorously, spastically, as I tried to both process and reject the news.

“Okay,” I said. I raked my hands through my hair and kept them locked behind my neck. “Okay. Is it your heart?”

“Yes,” Jonah said. “Chronic transplant rejection.”

My brain raced through everything I had ever heard about organ rejection, which wasn’t much. “I thought that was something that happened immediately.”

“Acute rejection sometimes happens right after surgery. They give you drugs for that to calm the immune system down, and usually they work.”

“But you take all those drugs.”

He nodded. “I do. But instead of an all-out protest, my immune system has been chipping away at the heart over time, rejecting it slowly, despite the meds.”

My arms crept across my middle, clutching handfuls of my shirt and hugging myself tight. “How do you know that’s what’s happening? You don’t look sick.”

“Heart transplant recipients have to have a biopsy every month to test for this sort of thing. At my third biopsy, eight months ago, they found evidence of atherosclerosis, and—”

“What’s that?” I said, my voice harsh and accusing, as if he were making words up.

“Hardening of the arteries,” he said. “The actual diagnosis is cardiac allograft vasculopathy. CAV. The immune system attacks the heart, leaves scar tissue. The scar tissue builds up and starts to wear down the heart until it eventually fails.”

I hated the ceiling then. All that brilliant color and joy and beauty. A party raging over the horror and unfairness strangling me. I looked at the plain buff floor, trying to breathe.