Chapter Twenty-Five
Bailey paced back and forth through the hospital waiting room, still bleeding some from her arm. She had too much nervous energy to sit down even though she was exhausted.
As soon as Aaron had passed out in front of the hospital, nurses and doctors had whisked him away on a gurney and straight into surgery to remove the bullet from his torso.
She had run alongside him until she wasn’t allowed any further, shooing away the nurses who were trying to fuss over her injuries.
“I’m fine,” she had insisted. “Go take care of Aaron, please.”
The surgeon had come out to tell her that the bullet had been successfully removed from his torso and that if the bullet had entered just a millimeter to the right, he wouldn’t have been so lucky.
Lucky.
As it was, Aaron was still unconscious. Recovering from surgery, blood loss, and a gunshot wound just shy of hitting important internal organs. She knew the doctor meant to be encouraging, but right now, things didn’t feel so lucky.
The doctor had also said that all she could do now was wait. Wait there in the same room she’d been in since they had arrived, wait for Aaron to wake up, wait to see what his long-term recovery looked like.
She decided she was done waiting.
She marched up to the closest nurses’ station and put on her best charming smile even though she knew she must look crazy—bleeding and disheveled—from what she’d been through.
She took a calming breath. “Hi, I need to see my friend. We came in together. He was shot and just got out of surgery, and I need to be with him when he wakes up.”
The nurse looked a bit shocked but quickly regained her composure. “Ma’am, you seem to be injured as well. Can we have a doctor look at you?”
“No,” Bailey replied forcefully, “I just need to see Aaron Ward.”
The nurse smiled patiently. “Okay, I can take you to his room, but maybe you could let someone bandage up that shoulder once you’re there.”
She nodded in agreement and the nurse led the way down the maze of identical hallways to the room where Aaron was lying, still unconscious, from his surgery.
Just seeing the rise and fall of his chest eased some of the anxiety in her stomach. She let out a relieved breath as she walked across the room to his side.
“I’ll send someone in to look at your shoulder and any other injuries,” the nurse said before closing the door behind her.
Sure enough, a different nurse came in a few minutes later to clean up, stitch, and bandage her injured shoulder, and look her over for any other injuries. Once that was done, she sat in the chair next to Aaron, holding his hand and waiting for him to wake up.
Her eyes started to get heavy as she listened to the rhythmic beeping of the heart monitor.
She decided to climb into the bed next to Aaron and close her eyes, just for a few minutes.
She knew she shouldn’t—she was filthy, after all—but she just wanted to be close to him right now.
She’d rest a few minutes and then she’d wake up before he did and be the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes.
She curled up next to Aaron’s uninjured side and dozed off thinking about how thankful she was that they were both alive. And she realized that at that moment, lying next to Aaron, lucky was exactly how she felt.
Bailey woke to the feel of someone’s fingers running through her hair, and it took her a moment to figure out where she was.
The smell of antiseptic filled her nostrils, and she sat up. Oh God, she remembered now. She had insisted on being let into Aaron’s room after his surgery, and had fallen asleep lying in the hospital bed next to him.
He had collapsed just outside of the hospital, and the panic that had run through her veins in that moment was unlike anything she had ever felt before.
She blamed herself for getting him involved in this situation and she was furious at the crooked cops who had hurt them both so much, both physically and emotionally.
But, as she opened her eyes, she saw that he was awake and smiling at her. She threw her arms around him and hugged him tight, emotion rising up inside of her.
“You’re okay,” she gasped.
“Well, I feel like I just got shot.” He grunted at the impact of her attack, but she could hear the smile in his voice. She sprang back, eyes wide.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she blurted out, realizing she had applied pressure to his fresh wound.
“No, it’s okay,” he replied. “It feels a lot better than it did when I passed out. Sorry for giving you that scare, by the way.”
“Yeah, you should be sorry,” she joked, swatting him playfully on the arm as she shook her head. “You scared the hell out of me!”
“My bad.” He smiled, and she grinned back.
“How are you feeling?” he asked her, nodding to the bandage on her shoulder.
She had wanted the nurses to focus on Aaron instead of her, but she was thankful they had taken care of her wound as well.
She’d hardly been paying attention to it, ordering the nurses to focus on him instead, but she was thankful they’d ignored her.
“I’m fine,” she replied. “Better than ever, actually.”
And even though Aaron was waking up in a hospital bed today, it was the truth.
She and Aaron were alive and they would both be okay, though they’d need some time to heal and get back on their feet.
But, this time around, they weren’t going to have to look over their shoulders the whole time for fear of someone coming after them.
Ziegler and his cronies were behind bars, and there was already an ongoing investigation into what they had been up to.
They were going to spend a long time in prison for what they had done.
“Have you heard anything about Ziegler and the others?” he asked.
She nodded. “Yeah, I spoke to Willis while you were in surgery and it sounds like they’ve got plenty to work with just in the van—unregistered weapons, stuff like that.”
What she left out was the shovel, rope, and plastic wrappings they had found in there, too.
The shovel was no doubt going to be used to dig her grave if they had succeeded in finishing her off.
The rest, she didn’t want to think about.
She’d already be having nightmares for a while to come.
She didn’t want him knowing about that part, either.
It just didn’t seem fair to put him through that when he was the one who had taken a bullet.
“And the fire?” he asked.
“There were a few empty gas canisters in the van,” she explained. “It seems like way too much of a coincidence for something like that to have happened on the same night they were there on the road to Warrior Peak, so they’ll most likely be charged with arson, too.”
She paused for a moment before asking quietly, “How bad was the damage to the lodge?”
Nobody had given her a straight answer yet, like they knew she would find a way to blame herself.
And of course she did—it was because of her all of this had happened.
If she hadn’t come to the sanctuary, the guys would never have tracked her down there.
In her mind, she was at fault as much as the men who had started the fire.
“It wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be,” he replied neutrally. “There’s still plenty of work that needs to be done in the paddocks to get them right again, but it will be summer soon. Things will start growing back quicker than you think.”
She smiled at him. That was a relief, and she hoped he was being totally honest with her. Warrior Peak Sanctuary was such a beautiful and peaceful place, she couldn’t stand the thought of it being ruined.
“And what about the horses?” she asked. They had been on her mind ever since she had left.
“They’re okay,” he replied at once. “River and Hannah helped me get them out of the way of the fire. Wheatie was pretty freaked, but I think she’ll calm down when she sees you again.”
“I think you vastly overestimate my horse-wrangling skills.” She laughed, squeezing his hand.
She sat up and stretched as much as she could while yawning.
She could have slept for a week and not felt rested.
After everything she had been through in the last few days, she shouldn’t be surprised about that.
She hadn’t expected to come out alive, but now she was here with the man she loved, and she couldn’t imagine anything else that mattered.
“You going to come back to the sanctuary with me?” he asked, and she nodded at once.
“Everything I said last night, I meant it,” she promised him.
When he had asked her about their future, it hadn’t taken her long to realize what she wanted.
When it came to him—when it came to them—she had to give it a chance.
She wanted to find out what lay ahead for the two of them.
They could finally let go of all the stress and fear, and find out how they would be as a normal couple.
Well, after all that had happened, she doubted that the two of them would ever be a normal couple. But they could be a happy one. And that was all she cared about.
“I want to go back to the sanctuary with you,” she continued. “And I want to help you in your recovery. You’ve got some of the best people around you to help with that, and I know Xavier and Lawson want to do everything they can to get you back on your feet.”
“Just so I can get to fixing fences again.” Aaron chuckled.
Bailey shook her head. “You should give yourself more credit than that,” she told him. “They really like you there. I know you’ve mostly kept to yourself since you got there, but this could be your chance to open up and get to know people and let them get to know you.”
Aaron nodded. She could see it made sense to him. He had been avoiding putting down roots because he had been scared of his past catching up to him, but he didn’t need to fear that any longer. He could put that all aside now, and just let himself be the person he wanted to be.
“You’re right,” he murmured, skimming his thumb over her knuckles. “I’ve already done a little of that, but I think it’ll be easier with you around.”
“That’s not the only reason I’m staying,” she promised him softly.
“I… I really want to try and make things work between us, Aaron. God knows what we’ve got is complicated, but I want to give it a try.
When I’m with you, I feel… I feel something I’ve never felt before. I want to see where that takes us.”
“I don’t think it’s complicated at all.” He smiled. “I think it’s completely straightforward. I’m in love with you, and I want to spend every day of the rest of my life proving to you just how much I mean that.”
“Oh, Aaron,” she breathed, and she leaned over to kiss his lips.
She was just so overwhelmed with emotion, she hardly knew where to start in sorting through it.
But the one at the top of her list, the one that most stood out to her, was sheer and utter gratitude.
Gratitude that despite everything that had happened, the path to their future finally seemed clear.
“I love you, Aaron,” she murmured to him. She would never get tired of saying those words to him, she was sure of it. When she looked at him, she just wanted to tell him over and over again.
“I love you too, Bailey,” he replied.
She closed her eyes for a moment, letting the sweetness of this moment linger.
She couldn’t wait to get back to Warrior Peak with him, so the two of them could settle into their new life together—whatever that happened to look like.
As long as they were together, she didn’t care at all.
Whatever she did next, as long as it was with him by her side, she would be happy.