30. Danger
CHAPTER THIRTY
danger
I barrel through the automatic doors, still shirtless, blood everywhere. The lady at the front desk takes one look at me and tenses.
“I need to see Winnie Hawthorne.”
She tries for calm, types on the keyboard. “Sir, are you a family member?”
“No. I’m her?—”
She shakes her head, feeling sorry for me. “We can’t release any information at this time.”
I pick up a chair and hurl it against the wall, wood splintering, echo ringing down the hall. I don't stop there. I tear through the room, sending one piece after another into the wall, each crash louder than the last until security rushes in. By then, all I see is red. All I feel is rage.
I can’t make out what they’re saying. All I hear is the static hiss of my own pulse, rattling through the marrow. Then a man in a uniform pushes through the far doors. Sheriff Dawson looks like he hasn't slept since he took the job.
He fixes on me and lets out a slow, measured sigh. “Stetson. How many chairs did you break?”
“Not enough.” My hands still sting. I let him see it. “They won't tell me shit. They won’t even tell me if she’s—if she’s okay.”
He drags a palm down his face. We grew up together, and he’s more loyal to me than his job, probably because I pay him well to look out for us and the ranch. He knows exactly how far I’ll go, which is all the way.
“You can’t wait in the lobby like a normal person?” he asks, silencing his radio.
“I pay you more than your fucking salary,” I bark. “Get me back there. Now.”
He looks at me, then at the guards, then at the woman at the front desk, who’s currently using a nail file.
He walks over, leans in, and says something I can’t catch.
The woman nods, reaches for her phone, and dials an extension.
The guards exchange glances. Dawson turns, drops his voice.
“You break anything else, I let them taze you.”
“Whatever,” I say, but I’m already halfway down the hall. I hear him behind me, giving the guards the nod. “I got him,” he says. “Sorry about the mess.”
They start cleaning up the wreckage.
Sheriff jogs to keep up. “She’s in trauma 2, second floor. But no more damage.”
"Then you better hope I don't see a Kennedy in here." I hold his gaze. "Because none of them will walk out."
“I’ll keep my eyes out. I’m on my way to tell her family. Afterwards, I’ll stop by your place and have PJ get you some clothes.”
“Fine,” I say. The elevator dings open, empty except for the smell of sanitizer. I step inside. He doesn’t follow.
When the doors close, I catch a glimpse of myself in the brushed metal—shirtless, streaked red, hands and arms cut up and bruised.
If I saw me coming, I’d bolt.
I push through the hallway until I find Trauma 2. She's lying on the bed. The light over her is low, and she looks tiny and peaceful in white sheets.
There’s a nurse by the monitors, adjusting a drip. She glances up, mouth tight. “Are you family?”
“Yes,” I say, and it feels true. It’s the only thing that matters right now.
She looks me up and down, like she’s makin’ a note for the police later. “She’s stable. Right now she’s unresponsive, which isn’t unusual after an impact like that.”
I don’t breathe. I take three steps closer, still not close enough.
“We’ve stabilized her,” the nurse says carefully. “But the swelling is the concern. Sometimes the brain needs time to heal. Sometimes…” She hesitates, maybe thinking about how much to share with a man who looks like a liability. “Sometimes it doesn’t respond the way we want it to.”
“How long?” My voice comes out hollow. I’m wrecked.
“We will know more in the next forty-eight to seventy-two hours. These first few days are critical.”
Critical.
The nurse tells me she has a good team here, that I should go home and get cleaned up, shower, changed. I don’t even look at her.
“I’m not leaving her,” I say.
She tries once more, but I cut her off. “I’m not leaving.”
She nods, like she’s seen this before, and leaves the room, a soft hush of rubber soles.
I sit. I hate this goddamn room. I hate the noises of the machines. The smell. I hate everything except her, and I barely let myself look at her face, because if I do, I’ll break.
But I take her hand, careful, like I’m holding glass.
“Winnie,” I say. She doesn’t flinch.
I try again, softer. “Win. We need to talk. I know you probably can’t hear me. I’m gonna talk anyway.”
I close my eyes. My voice is gone, but I force it out.
“I’m sorry.”
The words aren't enough.
“They'll never be enough.”
My thumb brushes over her knuckles.
“I should have stopped you.”
The confession scrapes its way out of my chest.
“I should have made you stay long enough to have the conversation you deserved.”
I shake my head.
“Instead, I let you leave.”
The monitors keep beeping.
Steady.
Unforgiving.
“I told myself maybe it was what you needed. That it was time to let you go because you'd be better off without me.”
A laugh catches in my throat.
“But I can't.”
Every ounce of fight drains out of me.
“I grew up thinking it was my responsibility to stand between the people I love and everything that could hurt them.
I took the punches, the hits, the blame.
I did whatever I had to. If something bad happens, I take it.
If someone gets hurt, I step in. If there's a burden, it's mine.
I thought there wasn't anything that could ever break me.” My voice cracks. “Until you got hurt.”
I squeeze her hand.
“I don't know if you'll ever forgive me.”
Silence.
“I don't even know if I deserve it.”
Another breath.
“But if you wake up…”
My eyes burn.
“I'll tell you everything.”
I bring her hand to my lips.
“Because I love you backwards, Winnie Hawthorne.”
My granddaddy said that I’d know exactly what it meant to love someone backwards one day, and now I understand. I know because I can’t lose her.
I rest my head against her hands, holding on. I stay like that until I hear something in the doorway. It’s Trouble. He steps in slowly, like he’s taking in the heaviness of the room.
“Heard a tornado ripped through the lobby. That your work?”
I nod, but I don't let go of Winnie's hand.
He tosses a stack of clothes in the empty chair next to me. “Go get changed.”
I look down at Winnie one last time before carefully slipping my hand from hers. "Sit with her."
"She's tough," he says, glancing from her to me. "She'll wake up."
I head to the bathroom, strip down to my skin, and wipe blood and dust off my arms. Toss my clothes in the garbage and grab the clean ones. After I’m dressed, I look at myself in the mirror: less monster, but still not the man I want to be.
When I come out, Trouble doesn’t say anything until I sit.
“Sheriff Dawson said her parents are closing the bakery and coming out. Should be here in a few minutes."
I nod. “I’ll stay.”
He watches me. “If you need to shower or, like, breathe, I’ll sit with her.”
“No,” I say. “I’m good.”
He’s quiet for a minute, then says, “She came to see me, you know. After I got shot.”
I turn to him. “What?”
“Yeah. Brought flowers. She should have hated me because of Sawyer, but she didn’t.” He grins, small and sad. “Just the kind of person she is. Never stops caring, even when you don’t deserve it.”
I glance at Winnie’s face, at the beautiful freckles on her cheeks. “You got that right,” I say.
He lets out a shaky breath. “Charming and Rogue are in the waiting room. Sawyer and Honey are on the way. We’re all here for you. Both of you.”
I nod. He gives my shoulder a squeeze before heading out. His footsteps echo, then fade.
It’s quiet again, except for the machines.
I talk to her. I tell her everything I didn’t say when she was awake.
I tell her about the time I almost burned down the barn when I was a kid and lied to Mama, and about how Fisher’s starting to like baseball.
I tell her about the first time I saw her chasing after my brother in pigtails.
Back then, I thought she was just another kid.
Looking back now, I think that's the day I started looking out for her.
Somewhere in there, I must doze off. I wake to the sound of footsteps—urgent, not hospital-casual. Then the door flies open and her parents rush in, wild-eyed and winded. Her mom goes straight to her, takes her hand, and starts whispering prayers and crying.
I stand and back up to the window. The doctor comes in and talks to her parents. The words are always the same: wait and see, hope for the best, critical, no promises. I hear the sound of a mother breaking, and it almost knocks me to my knees.
I can’t watch it.
I turn toward the window.
Outside, a single balloon has slipped loose from someone’s hand. It drifts upward, slow and stubborn, tugged by the wind but refusing to fall. I track it as it climbs past the parking lot, past the trees, past the gray stretch of sky where rain hangs undecided.
It doesn’t pop.
It doesn’t drop.
It just keeps going.
I don’t know who I’m praying to. Haven’t in a long time. But I do it anyway—quiet, desperate. I pray that if something or someone up there is paying attention, they see her. See us. And that they let her find her way back to me.
The balloon disappears into the clouds.
I stay where I am, staring at the empty sky, holding onto the idea that surviving doesn’t always look loud or fast.
Sometimes it just means hanging on and riding out the storm.