With Every Heartbeat (Forbidden Men #4)(9)

I spent the next half hour carefully lining the notebooks up on the bare shelves above my new bed. It was easy to tell which ones were older by their colored, frayed condition so I put them in order from oldest to newest. Then I blew out a relieved breath, feeling better about being here.

Resolved to my new future, I made Cora breakfast. It was way past noon; she needed sustenance, and I was beginning to get hungry for lunch myself.

She still wasn’t up when I finished, so I carried a tray into her room and set it on the nightstand, then I sat on the mattress beside her and drew the blonde hair out of her face carefully.

“Cora,” I sang softly. “Time to wake up.”

She groaned and rolled over onto her stomach, where she buried her head under a pillow. “Why am I wearing clothes?” came the vexed, muffled question.

I blinked, not sure what to say. “Um...because you passed out before you made it all the way home to undress, I guess.”

She made a very irritated sound before asking, “Where’s Quinn?”

“He went home.” I took the pillow away. “I made you breakfast.”

She lifted her face, her bloodshot eyes hopeful. “Waffles?”

I shook my head. “Scrambled egg whites. I heard they’re good for people on dialysis.”

“Ugh.” She flopped her face back onto the mattress with a dramatic sigh. “Don’t mention that word today. I just want to forget about anything medical for the next twenty-four hours.”

It was all I could think about, though, so...no. Forgetting wasn’t an option for me. I’d obsessed about her health for the past six weeks, ever since the night I’d received that dreaded phone call from her.

“How about some water and ibuprofen?” I asked, remembering Quinn’s instructions from last night.

She sat up, looking cross and still tired. I bit my lip, beyond worried as she silently took the pain reliever.

Her voice was raspy as she said, “Mmm. Warm water, good. The cold water Quinn brings me first thing in the morning always hurts my teeth.”

Her morning voice reminded me vaguely of how she’d sounded when she’d been sobbing and hysterical on the phone. “I’ve entered the fifth stage of kidney failure. They’ve started me on dialysis three times a week. This is the end stage, Zoey. If I don’t get a transplant, I could die.”

Those four sentences had haunted me every night since hearing them. I didn’t want my best friend on earth—my only friend—to die. So I’d made a life-altering decision before that dreaded conversation was over.

I’d offered to be a living donor. The problem was, I couldn’t tell my father because he’d never agree to it. He’d find a way to keep me from helping her.

But I wasn’t going to let that stop me. Instead of preparing to attend the college nearest my hometown where he’d enrolled me, I had secretly applied for admission into ESU, the college Cora attended some six hundred miles away from Ernest K. Blakeland.

The day I’d gotten the acceptance letter from them, my planning had started. I was already pretty good at saving back money. Father had never allowed me to do or get anything, so the monthly allowance from my mother’s inheritance trust fund merely sat in the bank, gaining interest. Transferring money over to an account my father knew nothing about was a bit of a challenge, since he happened to be the president of the bank. But I managed to get it done. To be safe, I’d transferred it again, and then once more for good measure, so he wouldn’t know which financial institution the money ended up in.

It was my money and I was finally of legal age. I shouldn’t have had to hide it from him, but “shouldn’t have to” wasn’t a term my father knew when it came to me.

After withdrawing a sizable chunk of my interest for cash, I’d taken a bus to a few towns over and bought a car. Then I’d driven it back to my neighborhood and parked it down the street behind an abandoned garage where one of our neighbor’s summer homes was being foreclosed. Each night, I’d carried one or two boxes down and stored it in the car in preparation for the big escape.

Three days before my planned breakout, Father had attended a benefit charity dinner. Thinking there might not be a better time to leave, I jotted out a quick note, telling him I was leaving and never coming back, and if he’d ever cared for me at all, he wouldn’t look for me. And then I’d become free.

I had no idea free was such a scary thing until I was suddenly on my own with no rules to tie me down.

“So what are our plans for the day?” I asked Cora, nudging her hip with my knee as I scooped up a forkful of scrambled egg whites, hoping she’d give me some guidance to help me with all my freedom anxieties. “Are we going to visit the doctor and tell him I’m going to do the transplant with you?”

When I held out the forkful, she obediently ate the bite, only to choke on it and wave her hand in front of her face, her eyes watering. “Salt,” she gasped.

I shook my head. “Too much salt can’t be healthy for you.”

She pushed my hand away when I held out another bite. “I’m dying. Do you really think I care about eating healthy right now?”

The casual way she said that shot an arrow of cold, panicky fear right through the center of my chest. “You are not dying. That’s why I’m here, remember. And yes, you do need to eat healthy if you want to get better. And probably drink less.” I lifted my eyebrows to let her know how much I didn’t approve of all the drinking I’d seen her doing last night.