Chapter 19
nineteen
The boot was under the bed, on its side, and Evander couldn’t reach it.
He’d hooked it toward him with one foot, gotten it close, then bent to grab it.
The cracked rib stopped him at sixty degrees.
White flared behind his eyes. He straightened, breathed through his nose until it cleared, and tried again from a different angle.
The rib said no. A fine gray film crept in at the edges of his vision.
The gown didn’t help. Two sizes too big, open all the way down the back, and every time he folded over, more of him met the cold infirmary air.
He sat up and let the boot win for now.
His body inventoried itself while he caught his breath.
Ribs wrapped tight. Temple stitched, tender when he touched it.
An IV port taped to the back of his left hand, the line pulled.
His clothes gone. His knife gone. The rifle he’d handed Brandt at the gate was federal property now, and the second boot was nowhere he could see.
A bedroom doing duty as an infirmary. One window, north-facing, the light coming in pale and thin. A shelf of gauze and tape and whatever else Bear kept close. A chair. A door. Nothing that asked him to stay.
He didn’t intend to.
The door opened.
“That’s impressive.” River stopped just inside it and took in the whole picture, the gown and the boot and Evander bent over his own cracked ribs. “You’ve been awake ten minutes and you’re already trying to leave.”
Boone came in behind him and set his shoulders against the wall by the door. Arms crossed. Stetson low. He didn’t say anything.
Evander straightened the rest of the way. River wore the rumpled suit jacket from the night before and a carefully neutral expression that didn’t cover whatever he’d walked in carrying.
“How long do I have to stay?”
River glanced at Boone. Boone gave him nothing.
“Bear wants twenty-four hours minimum. Concussion protocol.” River came farther into the room. “You cracked at least two ribs, and the stab wound needs watching for infection. Your fever didn’t break until around four this morning, so—”
“How long?”
“Until Bear says you’re clear.”
Dammit. He looked at Boone.
Boone looked back, steady and unreadable.
Evander wasn’t going to outwait him. He reached for the boot again.
“Jesus, sit your ass down.” River dropped into the chair by the window and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Three reasons. One, you’ll pass out before you make it to the door. Two, Bear will break your leg to keep you in that bed if he needs to, and Boone’ll probably help him.”
Boone snorted at that, but didn’t deny it.
River paused. “Three, we need to talk.”
Evander sat back. Not because of the first two reasons. Because of the third, and the way River said it — flat and braced, like a man who’d been holding a conversation in his head for eight years and was finally done rehearsing.
“Thank you.” River looked at the floor between his boots. “For keeping her alive. For—” His jaw worked. “For bringing her back.”
“Rainey saved herself more than once. She held the cabin while I was out. Dressed a stab wound in the dark with a headlamp and a first-aid kit. Kept me awake and moving on the hike down.”
“I don’t doubt it.” River’s voice was rough. “She’s tough. Always has been. But I also know she would’ve died at the Dead Marshall if you hadn’t walked in. So.”
That ‘so’ had weight and didn’t seem like the end of the conversation, so Evander waited.
“I’m sorry,” River said finally. “For believing the kidnapping report. I should’ve—”
“You knew she’d been taken from the bar in my truck with no word.” He kept his voice level. “Your suspicion was reasonable.”
“It wasn’t—”
“River.” He waited until the other man looked at him. “You barely know me and our few interactions haven’t been friendly. Suspicion was the correct response.”
River stared at him. Something in his expression cracked slightly before he put it back together. He nodded, short and tight. “Do you care about her?”
Evander looked at the window instead of at River and wished like hell he was out there, alone in the mountains where everything was less complicated. “She’s important to me.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“It’s the answer you’re getting.”
River didn’t push. He sat with his elbows still on his knees, turning something over, and when he spoke again his voice had lost the edge.
“I’m going to trust you with her, but you need to hear something first. Protecting her doesn’t give you the right to make her choices.
Doesn’t give you the right to decide when she stops needing you, or when the risk is too high, or when she’d be better off with someone else.
You don’t get to make those calls on her behalf.
” He looked up. “I convinced myself leaving home without her was best. That she was better, safer without me there. I believed it long enough to build a whole life on it. Do you know what that cost her?”
“Yeah,” Evander said. “She told me.”
River’s throat worked, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Don’t do that to her. If you’re going to leave, at least give her the courtesy of an explanation.
“I won’t leave her without a word.” The promise came out before he’d decided to make it.
Fuck.
But even as he battled against it, he knew it was the truth. He’d never be able to just walk away from Rainey like he had this ranch all those years ago.
River studied him a long moment, like he was checking for cracks. Whatever he found seemed to satisfy him enough.
“Okay.” He rubbed a hand over his jaw. “Okay.” He pushed up out of the chair, knees popping, and some of the tightness went out of his shoulders.
He crossed to the shelf and straightened things that didn’t need it, and when he turned back, the patented River smile had returned.
“Glad we got the heavy shit settled. I really didn’t want to have to kick your ass. ”
He took a step toward the door, then stopped and turned back, his gaze dropping to the gap down the back of Evander’s gown.
The grin spread. “Oh. Okay, no, that changes things. That’s a fully exposed target right there.
You’ve got zero coverage, man. I could walk right up behind you and you wouldn’t even hear me coming.
” He mimed a slow, exaggerated wind-up, boot cocked back.
“Full swing. Right in the— Bear couldn’t stitch that fast.”
“River,” Boone said from the wall.
“I’m just saying it’s available.”
Boone pushed off the wall, crossed to the bed, and set a folded shirt and jeans beside Evander, then a pair of boots on top.
Evander looked at the pile. “What’s that?”
“Clothes.”
“I have clothes.”
Boone looked at the gown. “Had clothes.”
Evander looked down at himself. Apparently Bear had cut off whatever was left of his shirt and pants the night before. He looked back at Boone. “Why are you helping me?”
“You’re one of us.”
“No, I’m not. I left.”
“But you came back.” Boone met his eyes. “Always figured you would. Welcome home.”
Evander had nothing to say to that.
Luckily, Boone didn’t expect him to say anything and just went back to stand sentinel by the door.
He reached for the clothes, but getting dressed with two cracked ribs and a concussion took longer than it should have and cost him a cold sweat and all of his dignity.
By the time Jonah arrived with breakfast, he was upright in the chair by the window with his boots on, flat-out exhausted.
Jonah set a tray laden with coffee, eggs, toast, and a bowl of fruit on the wooden chair beside Evander without asking whether Evander wanted it, then settled himself against the wall with his own cup and the comfortable air of a man with nowhere else to be.
“Bear says you should eat before you do anything fuck-wit stupid,” Jonah said and held up a hand. “His words. I’m just the delivery system.”
Evander looked at the mug. The coffee was black and hot and smelled better than anything he brewed up on the mountain. It tasted as if it had been made by someone who understood that coffee was not a beverage but a necessity. He drank half of it before he set the cup down.
“Careful. Nessie’s coffee is addictive.”
“Ain’t that the truth?” River chimed in. “Why didn’t you bring enough to share with the class? I haven’t had my caffeine fix yet today.”
Jonah ignored him. “Your old room’s free,” he said off-handedly. “Well. Technically it’s full of engine parts, because River turned it into a junk room.”
“It’s not junk,” River protested. “Lots of good parts in there.”
“He’ll clear them out today,” Boone decided.
Evander looked between the three of them. “Don’t bother. I’m not staying.”
“Sure,” Jonah said.
“River will still clear out the room,” Boone said. “It’s overdue.”
He wasn’t going to convince them, so he turned his attention to his plate. He ate the eggs because his body was running on empty and refusing calories at this point was stupid rather than principled, and the difference mattered to him. Or had once.
The door opened, and a pretty blond woman he didn’t recognize came in with a mug in hand.
“Sorry,” she said. “Didn’t mean to interrupt. I was looking for—”
River turned toward her the way a compass needle turned north. “Right here.”
She crossed to him and handed him the mug.
“Oh, bless you, you gorgeous woman.” His arm went around her waist as he took a deep drink. “Evander, Gemma. Gem, Evander.”
“Knew you’d be needing that.” She turned, and her smile brightened. “So you’re the mythical Evander.”
He nearly choked on his own coffee. “Mythical?”
“They talk about you around here like you’re a legend or a ghost story.”
He narrowed his eyes on the men. Jonah looked sheepish. River, of course, was unrepentant. And Boone, as usual, remained stone-faced. “They all talk too fucking much.”
The room was getting too crowded and his patience for it had reached its limit, but it was another fifteen minutes before everyone finally cleared out.
The door closed.