Chapter XXIV
XXIV
Ana
“CUT!”
Production halts immediately, and I know this is bad.
Every muscle in my body tenses, and my heart pounds against my ribs.
Cast members guide their horses back to the holding pen, and a trainer runs over to handle Nesbitt.
Flashes of red-wool costumes and chestnut-brown tails clutter the scene, and I can’t see Levi amid the chaos, even as my eyes strain and dart to where he should be.
Medical rushes in, and for a moment—after the crew retreats and before our med team intervenes—I spot him.
He’s alone. A tangled heap on the ground.
“Levi!” The shout escapes my throat as my legs pick up speed to make their way to him.
“No, let them work.” Colt wraps his arm around my middle. My body strains against his grip.
“I just”—I struggle against him—“need to see that he’s OK!” The effort is futile. “LET GO OF ME.”
He doesn’t know about my joints, about how easily I bruise, about how careful I need to be with my body. About the risk I incur with him grabbing me like this. “Get off of me! I don’t need you to restrain me. I can control myself.”
“You’re clearly not in control, and it’s not your job to make sure Levi’s OK. That’s medical’s job, and they’re the best in the business. Take a beat. We don’t need you to have a medical event too.”
I suck in a breath, the dusty air tickling my nose before lodging in my chest, tightly coiled. Shallow.
“Accidents like this are part of the job.” Colt is still caging me with his arm, though more loosely now. “Levi knows that. Shit like this happens sometimes.”
I spin in his grip and meet his gaze, fire building behind my tongue.
“You, of all people, don’t get to tell me what Levi knows.
He’s aware of the risks of this work. But this ‘shit happens’ nonchalance you’re pulling right now?
Go to hell. Are you aware of how hard he’s worked for this?
What he’s given up for this opportunity?
The . . . the choices he’s made to court your favor? ”
“He’s green, Ana. He’s going to get knocked around, and of course he’s trying to stay close to me. That’s how this works. Smart man.”
“They’re putting him on a stretcher, Colt. He’s seriously hurt. Have a little empathy.” I place both palms on his chest and push. Hard. With a slight stumble, he steps back and releases me from his grip. His eyes search mine, perceiving me, and the intensity of it makes my stomach turn.
“Ah, I get it now.” He smirks. “You and Levi—you care about him. I knew you weren’t that good of an actress.”
“What we are to each other is none of your fucking business.”
“Noted.” He holds his palms up in surrender. “But when you’re ready, you can send your thank-you gift to my trailer for planting the story that launched this whole charade. I know my role here.”
“Planting the story? Why the fuck would you start a rumor that you were cheating on your wife?”
“What did I have to lose? No one blames the men.”
Everything clicks into place: He was willing to risk whatever he had left with Francesca. That’s how badly he wanted me out. Blood flows hot to my extremities. “Colt—with all my heart—go to hell.”
I turn and watch the medical team load Levi into the back of the ambulance. They’re working quickly, and while it gives me peace knowing they’re doing what they need to do for him, I’d feel much less frantic if this seemed like less of an emergency.
The back door of the rig closes. I watch a paramedic bring down the latch and bang on the window to signal they’re ready to go.
It’s a muffled thump of a sound, like hitting a knee on a wooden table.
Red and blue strobes whirl to life, and the set goes quiet when their sirens start to blare.
The last thing I experience of Levi, in this moment, is the screeching of tires peeling away from me.
“Let’s keep filming,” Francesca shouts as the vehicle turns onto the main road.
The cast and crew, who had been milling around, eating snacks, rubbernecking—the way people do when an incident doesn’t make their world stop turning—circle up around her.
“I want to praise all of you for the quick work of getting out of the way so we could get Levi loaded up quickly. Medical says he’s breathing on his own, and we’ll update you as we know more. ”
That coiled, shallow breath begins to seep lower in my lungs. My shoulders fall an inch from where I’ve been holding them.
He’s breathing.
That’s good.
Right?
Except it doesn’t feel good. It feels like I’m being electrocuted, with each what if a jolt of pain that singes the nerves beneath my skin, hot and sharp. What if he’s paralyzed or has a brain injury? What if he can’t work again? What if he stays unconscious?
What if this is my fault?
After ignoring him for days, I decided to talk to him before the scene. I was awkward and noncommittal about meeting for dinner. I distracted him when he needed to be locked in, and now he’s paying the price. My throat tightens again.
Francesca’s voice interrupts my thoughts. “Everybody, back to one. Colt and Ana, hair and makeup is waiting to touch you up. Thanks, all.”
I get halfway to the makeup chair before I turn around. It’s a conscious decision to honor a gravitational pull in the opposite direction, away from the cameras.
“Actually, I’m out,” I shout at the AD, at Colt, at my poor makeup artist who’s confused as hell, and to Francesca standing farther back, analyzing angles for the shot.
“I’m going to the hospital. I’d say I’m sorry, but truthfully?
I’m not. You can plan on me arriving at call time tomorrow, ready and eager to continue filming. But today, I’m done.”
I’m halfway to the street when I realize I’m still in full costume. Gauzy, scratchy muslin draped over my shoulders, dragging on the ground like a bridal train. At least I have shoes on.
A Hyundai pulls up, and I rip open the door and throw myself inside. “Hannah?”
“Close enough.”
The Uber app shows twenty-one minutes from here to Vanderbilt University Medical Center—the adult emergency room, not the children’s hospital from our event.
“Any chance you can speed?”
“Nah, can’t do that. But I can let you choose the music?”
“Whatever you want. Just go, please.”
It’s a five-star ride: The driver doesn’t say another word, and we make it to the hospital in twenty.
The fluorescent lights humming in Levi’s room are as startling as the antiseptic smell.
At triage, when I barged in and demanded to see him, they told me he’d just gone to imaging.
They probably shouldn’t have, but either the woman at the desk felt bad for me or someone pulled some strings because I was quickly shown to a room missing its hospital bed.
Now I’m sitting in a plastic chair that creaks every time I move and shivering against the air conditioning blowing from above.
The rush to get here is gone, and with it, the channel for my nervous energy.
It’s easy to take fear and propel it into action.
It’s a lot harder to sit with it, in it, and wait.
I tap my fingers on my thighs. I tap my shoes on the linoleum.
I turn over in my head what I might say when he returns, and what he might look like.
What do you say to the person you thought you were falling in love with—and then broke up with—who then gets gravely injured?
And what if he’s not conscious to hear it?
The scrape of the glass door sliding open has me on my feet instantly. Two nurses begin to back Levi’s bed through the triage room door, and I realize he may not know I’m here. He may not want me here.
“Move!” a man in starched blue scrubs shouts, gruff and commanding, as I scramble out of the way.
“Is he going to be OK?” I beg.
The nurse looks me up and down. “Wife or sister?” My gaze is trained on Levi, who is concerningly still, save for the brief twitch of a grimace.
“Oh, um, I’m a friend. Girlfriend? A coworker.”
“If you’re not family, I can’t provide updates. Who let you back here?”
“Please, I just need to know if he’ll be OK. That’s all.” My eyes rake over Levi’s face, cataloging the scratches, the bruise on his right cheek, the bump protruding over his eyebrow.
“Ana?” Levi’s attempt at my name comes out on a groan. It’s groggy, like he has a mouth full of marbles. “Ana?” This time, one eye lifts half-open. The stiff fear pulsing through my body starts to dissipate.
“That’s me, I’m Ana.” I look to the nurse. “See, he wants me here.” I make pleading eyes at Levi, and he gives me the smallest, slowest head nod as they place the blood pressure cuff back on his arm.
The nurse looks me over again and shrugs. I grab the chair and drag it to the edge of his bed, taking a seat for whatever tests he has—we have—ahead.
I watch as Levi engages his abs to try to sit up. He woke up again after a round of X-rays, just before a neurological exam. When he did, he grabbed my hand, and I haven’t let go since.
“Easy there, cowboy.”
“You know, I think calling me cowboy is even worse now that I’ve been thrown off a horse,” he replies with a sharp intake of breath, the kind someone takes when something—everything—hurts. “Are you insulting my skills? Or is that sarcasm, and if so, where’s my signature Ana Barlow eye roll?”
“Glad to see your personality is still intact, but please, tell me where the pain is so I can call the nurse.”
“You should see the other guy.” He adjusts his position in bed, and his face twists with a wince. “Speaking of, is Nesbitt OK? I hope I didn’t bang him up in the fall.”
“Levi, Nesbitt is twelve hundred pounds of pure muscle. He banged you up and trotted away like it was nothing.”
“I’ll heal just fine.”
This man, bloodied and bruised, with dirt matted in his hair, is trying to convince me all of this is just another workday. He attempts to contort his mouth into a smile, or something approximating it, before pain pulls his lips back from his teeth.
I move my chair even closer and bring my hand to his hair, freeing a small twig from it. “Do you remember what you said to me, once?”
He shakes his head. “I’ve said a whole lot to you, sweetheart.”
The endearment, and the feeling behind it, pinches at my heart. Needles at the part of me I’ve tried to seal shut.
“Your reality isn’t a burden. That’s what you said to me that night of the tornado warning when we were talking about my bruises. Your reality isn’t a burden to me, Levi. I wouldn’t be here if it was. It’s OK if you’re not OK.”
“You came all the way here and stayed all afternoon just to tell me it’s OK if I’m not OK?”
“No, I’m here because I needed to see you.
I left set because we were supposed to talk, and I was supposed to apologize, and then you went and got yourself flung off a horse.
Honestly, if you didn’t want to hang out with me, you could have just said so.
” What was supposed to be a chuckle at the end of my sentence comes out choked.
His eyes meet mine, vulnerable. “Wait—they didn’t wrap for the day? You left set in the middle of filming to be here? After I wasn’t honest about Colt?”
“I left because I couldn’t physically bear the thought of staying behind.
” I clear my throat and bring my hand back to his, sliding it gently under his palm to avoid the IV threaded into his skin.
“I left because I think this . . . what we have, or had . . . is fixable. The idea that I might not have the chance to fix it, that something could happen to you before I got the opportunity—it wasn’t something I could live with. So I’m here.”
He nods before pushing his fingers through mine. “You can go back, if you want. Now that you see I’m going to live. We don’t have to talk now if they’re waiting for you to film.”
I give him his eye roll. “What I realized on the way here is that I don’t care.
I don’t care if the crew is mad at me, or if the tabloids print something about me ‘storming off set.’ And until now, that’s been the only thing I’ve ever cared about—making sure I look a certain way and act a certain way so I can control perception.
But as I was running to meet the Uber . . .”
“You took an Uber?” Levi is incredulous.
“Yes, Levi, I took a fucking Uber because I realized, for the first time in my life, I have something I care about more than controlling what people think of me. I also realized that while calling you selfish for keeping what Colt said to yourself, I was selfish for expecting you to share it. I . . . I don’t want to be selfish with my heart anymore. ”
“Sweetheart, that’s a lot for me to take in right after a concussion.
” He gives me a wink that makes me want to smother him, or at least press my body flush against his.
Levi has always known how to diffuse my big feelings with well-placed levity, even during that very first date at the gym, like he somehow knew me before he knew me. What a gift it is to be known.
“Thank you for being here.” His voice turns serious. “I . . . God, I was so glad to see you. I want to apologize too, and I want to do it right. Can we do that?”
“We don’t have to do anything right now. I don’t need anything from you other than the knowledge that you’re OK.”
“Promise not to fake date the backup they bring in to replace me?” Levi’s hand grips mine tighter, and I laugh at the absurdity of how we got here and with hope for the promise of where we could go.
The way he fights a chuckle and his chest stutters under the weight of his visible joy, even while in a hospital bed, has warmth flooding my veins and wrapping around my heart. I twist my pinky finger around his.