Chapter 35
thirty-five
. . .
FINN
To say I was furious with Reagan would’ve been an understatement, but my rage was tempered by my worry.
When we arrived at the hospital—Dusk Valley Memorial, thankfully; her injuries weren’t serious enough to warrant a trip to Boise—they wheeled her back for examination and tests. I was forced into the waiting room.
My mind ran rampant with worst case scenarios. Obviously, she’d broken her arm. The bones had been visible, for fuck’s sake. But what about her legs? Back? Head?
Dropping heavily onto one of the world’s most uncomfortable chairs, I propped my elbows on my knees and my head on my hands. Digging my palms into my eyes. So lost in my own thoughts I hadn’t noticed my family come in.
Mama and Aria. Trey. Lane. Crew, West, and Aspen.
My twin sat beside me, hand falling to my shoulder.
He didn’t speak, but I knew what he’d say if he did.
She’s going to be fine. It’s not your fault.
I shot him a glare, and his hand lifted.
The fuck it wasn’t my fault. I never should’ve left her alone.
Then again, what had she been thinking, leaving the house by herself and not telling anyone where she was going?
And where the fuck had she been?
I had so many questions, and Reagan would be lucky if I ever let her out of my sight again—at least until we found the fucker who was after her.
A gentler touch found my opposite shoulder, and I shifted my head to find Aria.
“What are you even doing here?” I asked, my gentle tone at odds with my distress.
“Reagan is family,” she said with a shrug.
Looking around the room at my siblings and mom gathered, I realized she meant that, and they all thought it. None of them would be here otherwise.
“Finn?”
I rose and turned in the direction of the voice, finding Sonya, a nurse who had worked here for most of my life, standing in the doorway.
“Is she okay?”
Sonya nodded. “She’s asking for you.”
Without another word, she left, and I rushed to follow her.
“She’s really okay?” I asked when I caught up.
“Yes, but she did sustain a few injuries. I’ll let her explain it all.”
As long as she was breathing and would make a full recovery, I didn’t give a fuck.
Even better news was that she wasn’t in a private room, which meant they wouldn’t need to keep her for observation.
Instead, she was in a bay of the ER. When Sonya pulled the curtain back, I found Reagan laying on the bed in a hospital gown, looking so small and ghostly pale against the bright white sheets.
An equally stark bandage wrapped around her head.
“Belle,” I murmured, rushing to her side and taking her hand in mine.
“Soldier,” she replied softly, eyes instantly welling.
“Shh,” I breathed, cupping her face and brushing the fallen moisture off her cheeks. “You’re okay.”
“I was s-so scared,” she whispered, her teeth chattering.
“I’m here, baby. I’ve got you.”
“Miss Lindsey?”
“Yes?” she said to the doctor, eyes not shifting from my face.
“Your tests came back clear, so the good news is you don’t have a concussion or any other brain injury.”
“What’s the bad news?” I asked.
“Unfortunately, based on the x-rays, surgery will be required to properly set her broken arm.”
“Surgery?” Reagan croaked in disbelief. “It’s that bad?”
“Afraid so. You snapped both your radius and ulna. The radius is the one that came through the skin, but the x-rays showed some bone fragments floating around in your arm. A surgeon will need to go in, clean those up, and set the breaks with pins.”
“Fuck,” Reagan breathed.
The doctor, at least, appeared sympathetic.
“Is that something you can do here?”
Doc shook his head. “She’ll have to go up to Boise.”
Reagan’s eyes widened, face draining impossibly further of blood.
“I don’t want surgery.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Lindsey,” Doc said, though she’d been speaking to me. “I’m afraid we don’t have any other options.”
“It’s okay,” I told her, trying to reassure us both. “You’ll go under, they’ll clean you up, and you’ll come out good as new.”
“You’ll come with me?”
“I won’t leave your side unless I absolutely have to,” I promised.
The same vow I’d made myself earlier, but the tone was different now.
My anger had dissipated entirely at seeing her in this bed, brow scrunched in obvious pain despite the IV on her skin pumping meds through her system.
None of that mattered anymore. Not where she’d gone or why she’d been out alone.
All that mattered to me now was helping her heal in any way I could.
Three days later, we returned home—to my entire family waiting with balloons and food and far too much enthusiasm for Reagan to face in her post-surgery exhaustion.
I cleared them all out quickly while Reagan disappeared into our bedroom.
She was asleep before the last of my family members drove off.
We passed the next week in much the same way. Reagan had little energy and a lot of pain, so I spent a lot of the time quietly moving around the house, completing what little work I could remotely while Abel covered things at the ranch.
Despite the fact that we were home together all day, every day, I could sense her pulling away. I hoped this was merely her way of dealing with the pain, drawing into herself while she healed, but I had a bad feeling there was more to it than that.
Nine days after her operation, I woke up to find the bed at my side empty.
“Reagan?”
No answer.
Louder, I called for her again.
Still no response.
Rushing from bed, I first peeked into the bathroom and found it empty.
Checks of the kitchen, living room, and even the basement yielded the same result.
At last, I found her in the guest room, curled into a ball in the middle of the bed, her casted arm jutting out from her body and tucked awkwardly under her head.
“What’re you doing in here?” I asked softly as I approached.
“Thinking.”
Her voice was so small, so quiet, she might as well have been in a different dimension.
I sank down onto the bed at her side, but didn’t touch her, somehow knowing that pulling her close would only drive her further away.
“Thinking about what?”
“About how this wouldn’t have happened if you’d let me leave in the first place. Actually, I should’ve never come back here in the first place. My presence has done nothing but cause pain and problems for all of us.”
I thought, after Aria’s ordeal, we’d turned a corner. That she’d given up on this desire to protect us all by taking herself out of the equation.
Inexplicably, my anger rose.
When some people got mad, they exploded.
Me? I stilled, my entire body settling into a deathly calm.
Coddling her, whispering sweet nothings, making all the grand promises in the world clearly hadn’t been enough for her to knock it off with these thoughts.
Maybe tough love would work.
“I can’t keep doing this with you, Reagan,” I said, tone even.
“You pull me in then push me away. You let me fuck you like you belong to me, say all the right things, convince me you’re mine, then try to run the next second.
There are a lot of things I will endure for you, but I’m not some puppet whose strings you control.
I’m a person with feelings, and right now, you’re hurting them. ”
“You survived a war, Finn. I refused to be the thing that costs you your life now.”
A derisive laugh escaped me. “Don’t you see? You are my life now.”
Reagan sat up abruptly, as though she’d been forced into position. Her mouth gaped, opening and closing as she searched for a response.
“I’ve lost everything,” she finally said. “My parents. My sister.” Her eyes swam with tears. “I draw the line at losing myself.”
“Is that what you think is happening here? That being with me means losing yourself? That loving me means you don’t love yourself?”
“I told you before that I couldn’t do this with you. That Lainey had to be my top priority. And since I’ve gotten here, I feel like all I’ve done is get further away from that promise to myself. I’m losing myself in you, and I think by extension, I’m losing Lainey too.”
“You think I haven’t lost people too?” I exploded, losing the grip on my fury at last. “As you so helpfully mentioned, I’ve been to fucking war, Reagan. And lost my dad long before that. I know exactly what this feels like, so don’t try to use your losses as some bullshit excuse to push me away.”
“It’s not bullshit,” she said stubbornly.
But she’d softened slightly, as though her indecision between whether to stay or go balanced on a razor’s edge, and my anger deflated like a pin stuck in a balloon.
We weren’t getting anywhere screaming at each other.
There was a simple way to settle this, a single question I needed to ask. The answer would determine our future.
“Reagan?” I murmured in question.
“What?”
“Do you love me?”
I was certain I knew the answer, but acknowledging how deep her feelings for me ran would alter reality as we knew it—would force her to confront she was in too deep to run now. We were living one of those moments that we’d look back on, point at, and say, “That’s it. That’s when it all changed.”
“What does that matter?”
“Answer the fucking question, belle.”
She was silent for long enough that I thought she’d ignore me altogether, wash her hands of us, and leave without another word.
Instead, she crossed the room and threw herself into my arms.
“You know I do,” she said, the words muffled by the fabric of my tee.
“Then that’s all that matters.”