61. Chapter 61
He kept looking at his hands as if he’d never seen blood in the cracks, as if they belonged to someone else.
The tall man, whose name was Saul, had tossed him the truck keys and asked Jason to follow the ambulance. Now, his new bike was in the bed of the truck and the truck was parked outside the hospital and Jason was sitting in a hard, plastic chair, waiting.
Down the hall, through a set of doors Jason wasn’t allowed to cross, Saul was begging God and the devil for a woman named Linda to live.
After midnight, the tall man fell into the chair beside Jason. Dirty streaks stained his cheeks from tears that dried in the blood and sand.
“She’s going into surgery,” Saul said.
Jason nodded and wrung his palms together. He could’ve taken his bike and blown out of there by now, but his hands were shaky, and his legs were heavy, and he was so fucking tired, even if he didn’t know how he’d ever sleep again.
“It’s a miracle, but they think…” Saul swallowed hard. “They think she’s going to make it.”
The man dropped his head in his hands and shuddered with grief so violent Jason thought he’d heard wrong. Didn’t Saul say she was going to live?
Jason put a hand on his back. It was all he could do. A nurse passed with a sympathetic smile he didn’t return.
“Holy hell,” Saul said, his voice wet. “Holy hell. How many times I’ve asked her not to go out walking at night.”
Saul sat up and turned to Jason. It might’ve been their first good look at one another.
“Thank you. If you hadn’t…” Saul bent over again, overtaken by more sobs. “She’s my world. She’s my everything.”
He’d never seen another man cry—didn’t know what to do with it, or the ache of something he’d rather stay buried slowly creeping up his own chest.
Saul wrapped his spindly arms around Jason, who couldn’t remember ever being hugged by a man, or hugged this hard at all. He let Saul break against his shoulder until the tall man sat back and wiped his face with shaking hands.
“Holy hell,” Saul said again.
“She your wife?” Jason asked. It was a stupid question after he noticed the gold band on Saul’s left hand.
He nodded. “You know what I was thinking about on the way here, in the ambulance?” Saul stared down the hall. “I was thinking about how it didn’t make a lick of sense to be made to love someone that much only to lose her.”
Jason picked at a callus on his palm. Four nights ago, Theresa had rubbed lotion onto his hands, saying she liked them rough but not too rough.
Why did you stay here and make me fall for you?
He was sorry now, and he couldn’t remember if he’d told her. He cleared his throat and asked, “How long you been married?”
“Two years.” Saul smiled and shook his head. “She blew into my shop one day like a freaking tornado. Tore up my whole life.”
The tornado. Jason had run into a storm for Theresa—life, limb, and ten-million-dollar check be damned.
…this kind of thing doesn’t just happen. This is once in a lifetime, Jason.
“I wasn’t ready for her, you know? She did the one thing none of the others did.”
“What’s that?”
“Besides putting up with my dumb ass? She stayed.” Saul crossed his arms over his chest and looked almost relaxed in the memories. “Even crazier was I wanted her to. We were together a month when we ran off to Vegas and got married.”
“A month?”
Saul shrugged. “When you know, you know.”
You might not want it, but you’ve got it. How can you even think about letting it go?
“Thank you,” Saul said.
“I didn’t—”
Saul nudged Jason’s shoulder. “Hey, look at me, man. You saved her life.”
Jason grunted and rubbed his eyes. If he hadn’t spotted her leg in the ditch, he’d be on the coast by now and Linda would be dead. Saul would be sobbing for a whole different reason.
His nose stung and his eyes leaked over and the aching ball in his throat spurted out of his mouth in a gruff rush of anguish and disbelief and other things Jason couldn’t name.
He’d never done anything worthwhile. Never stayed anywhere long enough to lend a hand that didn’t come with a couple bucks for gas, a hot meal, or a warm bed.
He hadn’t even called his own mother to tell her he’d inherited enough money to get her out of a trailer and in with a good doctor who could pry those menthols from her fingers before they were cold and dead.
He’d never been loved by anyone, never let anyone love him. Not Maggie. Not any of the girls from the trailer park where he grew up.
Not Billy, who was ferocious in and out of the bedroom, who kept him coming back for years and still somehow wasn’t enough to turn him north down the rut that would’ve led him back to her doorstep.
Instead he took a long desert stretch he normally avoided and saved a woman’s life.
Jason got a whiff of Theresa’s scent on his jacket and was overwhelmed by her loss. Then it was Saul’s turn to squeeze his shoulder while he cried. He wanted to call her and tell her what happened, because he needed to tell someone, and she was the only person who came to mind.
Fuck.
“You okay?” Saul asked.
He’d said it out loud, the growled fuck he thought was only in his head.
Jason couldn’t call Theresa, because when she asked him if he was head-over-heels, butt-crazy in love with her…
He lied and said he wasn’t.