Free Harvesting the Heart by Jodi Picoult Page A

"An
appendectomy?"
    "No,"
Paige breathed. "Nothing." She lifted her head as Nicholas
grazed her breasts with his knuckles.
    Nicholas
swallowed, feeling as though he were seventeen all over again. He
wasn't going to do something he'd regret. After all, it wasn't as if
she'd done this before. "Intact," he whispered. "Perfect."
He lowered his hands, still shaking, to Paige's hips and pushed her
back several inches. He brushed her hair away from her eyes.
    Paige
made a sound that started low in her throat. "No," she
said, "you don't understand."
    Nicholas
sat on the couch, curling Paige close beside him. "Yes I do,"
he said. He stretched out lengthwise, pulling Paige down so that
their bodies were pressed together from shoulder to ankle. He could
feel her breath, a warm circle on the front of his shirt.
    Paige
stared over Nicholas's shoulder to the blank wall, haloed in pale
light, empty of shadows. She tried to picture their hands, knotted

together,
fingers indistinguishable in the far reflection. Nothing she could
conjure in her mind was quite right; she knew she'd miscalculated
the length of the fingers, the curve of the wrist. She wanted to get
that eagle right. She wanted to try it again, and again, and again,
until she could commit it, faultless, to memory. "Nicholas,"
she said. "Yes. I'll marry you."

chapter 4
    Paige
    I should have known better than to begin my marriage with a lie. But it
seemed so easy at the time. That someone like Nicholas could
want me was still overwhelming. He held me the way a child holds a
snowflake, lightly, as if he knew in the back of his mind I might
disappear in the blink of an eye. He wore his self-assurance like a
soft overcoat. I was not just in love with him; I worshiped him. I
had never met anyone like him, and, amazed that it was me he
had chosen, I made up my mind: I would be whatever he wanted; I would
follow him to the ends of the earth.
    He
thought I was a virgin, that I'd been saving myself for someone
like him. In a way he was right—in eighteen years I'd never met
anyone like Nicholas. But what I hadn't told
him grated against me every day leading up to our wedding. It was a
nagging noise inside my head, and outside too, in the hot hum of
traffic. I kept remembering Father Draher speaking of lies of
omission. So each morning

I
woke up resolving that this would be the day I told Nicholas the
truth, but in the end there was one thing more terrifying than
telling him I was a liar, and that was facing the chance I'd lose
him.

    Nicholas
came out of the bathroom in the little apartment, a towel wrapped
around his waist. The towel was blue and had pictures of
primary-colored hot-air balloons. He walked to the window, shameless,
and pulled down the shades. "Let's pretend," he said, "that
it isn't the middle of the day."
    He
sat on the edge of the mattress. I was tucked under the covers.
Although it was over ninety degrees outside, I had been shivering the
whole day. I also wished it were nighttime, but not out of modesty.
This had been such a tense, awful day that I wanted it to be tomorrow
already. I wanted to wake up and find Nicholas and get on with the
rest of my life. Our life.
    Nicholas
leaned over me, bringing the familiar scent of soap and baby shampoo
and fresh-cut grass. I loved the way he smelled, because it wasn't
what I had expected. He kissed my forehead, the way you would a sick
child. "Are you scared?" he asked.
    I
wanted to tell him, No;
in fact, you'd be surprised to know that when it comes to sex I can
hold my own. Instead
I felt myself nodding, my chin bobbing up and down. I waited for him
to reassure me, to tell me he wasn't going to hurt me, at least not
any more than he needed to this first time. But Nicholas stretched
out beside me, linked his hands behind his head, and admitted, "So
am I."

    I
didn't tell Nicholas right away that I would marry him. I gave him
time to back out. He asked that night in the diner after he'd brought
his witch of a girlfriend