50
M y worst fucking nightmare—staring at a closed hospital room door. Behind it, the woman I love fights for her life.
Making a fist, I look down at my hands, torn apart, covered in soot. I can still feel Ruby’s pulse beneath my fingertips. We got her heart beating minutes before the ambulance showed up. I told them all I could about her condition, then they took her away from me.
I screamed out everything I had left to the sky.
Numbness gives way to grief, to rage, as I pace the carpeted waiting room of Bozeman’s cardiac ICU, twisting a hand through my hair. I wonder if my eyes look as deranged as my brothers.
We’ve been here for six hours. My soul feels like it’s been through a shredder.
The doctors haven’t told us anything. If she’s brain dead, if she’ll wake up. If my heart should plan to keep on beating or just follow Ruby’s down.
Thirty minutes earlier, Ruby’s father and brother arrived. They barely paid me a passing glance before they rushed into her room. They must hate me. I hate myself.
Unable to take it any longer, I slam a fist against the wall. “Why aren’t they telling us anything?” I growl.
Davis’s head snaps to me, a snarl of warning on his lips.
I’m on thin ice as it is.
I lost it when we got to the hospital. When the nurses refused to let me see her, I started yelling. Security showed up. Then someone stuck me in the ass with a sedative, and my brothers manhandled me into a chair, and now we wait.
A security guard—the same one I tried to put a fist through hours ago for blocking me from Ruby’s room—turns in the hallway.
I glare at the guy. They’ll have to break every bone in my body and chop me up piecemeal if they think they’re going to get me to leave this hospital.
Sprawled out across two chairs, Wyatt sighs. “Charlie. Shut up.”
In two hard stomps, Davis is in front of me. “If you get your ass kicked outta here, how’s that going to help Ruby, huh?” My brother shoves me against the wall, staring fiercely into my eyes. He worked just as hard as I did to breathe life into Ruby. “Sit the fuck down.”
“If you fight in this goddamn hospital,” Ford says, eyes closed, pinching the bridge of his nose. An empty coffee cup balances on the thigh of his blue jeans. “I will disembowel you fuckers.”
Too exhausted to argue, I drop into a chair beside Ford. I smear my face in my hands, keep them there.
My eyes and throat burn. Regret grates my insides. I didn’t protect her. I kept her on the ranch. I put her in danger. If I had let her go, she wouldn’t have been in the middle of this war with DVL. Ruby would be in California watching her sunset.
Instead, the woman I love the woman I need, my reason to keep breathing is hurt because I failed her.
A tear rolls down my cheek.
She can’t die. Something this pure, this good can’t go out.
It feels like the sun has been erased from the sky. Frommy heart. My entire fucking world. Gone.
Without her, I’m gone.
I lift my head, my eyes burning again as I stare at Ruby’s closed door.
Everything that matters is in there. Nothing will calm me until I see her.
The longer I’m kept from her the more I feel like some desperate, deranged man.
I need to hear her voice, to hold her hand, to see her sweet smile.
Christ. If she wakes up and I’m not there . ..
If she wakes up.
My eyes land on the white ribbon tied around my wrist.
If.
An image of Ruby on the ground, cold and lifeless, smashes through my brain.
Only there’s more. Vivid memories of this summer.
Ruby. My sunflower. Her breathless laugh at night, her small hands on my beard, her murmured I love you like the softest prayer.
Her wide-eyed wonder at the simplest things in life.
The small gasps she made at night right before I devoured her mouth and held her tiny and warm in my arms.
Alive.
I can feel that hole inside of me, the one Ruby filled with her laughter and her smiles and her heart, emptying.
Emptying.
I don’t know who I’ll be without her. Happiness will become a fucking memory.
I could lose her.
Panic scrambles my brain.
Ruby died. She died .
Christ.
I can’t do it again. I can’t.
My gut clenches.
I must make a sound because Wyatt looks up at me. “Charlie, you okay?”
“No,” I grit out.
There’s a gaping hole in my chest.
“Fuck.” I spear a hand through my hair, keep it there. My voice cracks. “Fuck.”
“Breathe, Charlie,” Davis says sharply. His hand lands on my shoulder.
But I can’t.
I can’t breathe. Can’t think.
The need for her nearly strangles me.
“It’s not your fault, C,” Ford says, reading my thoughts.
“I need some fucking air,” I gasp and rocket out of my chair. I take off down the hall, not stopping until I reach the automatic doors that lead out of the hospital.
I do exactly what I promised Ruby I wouldn’t do.
I run.
I make it as far as the parking lot before I remember Davis has the keys to my truck.
I tilt my head back to the early morning sky. “Fuck.”
A sharp, familiar floats across the air. “I know you’re not leavin’.”
“Fuck off, Wyatt.”
“Get your ass back to the hospital. Now.”
I bend over, hands on my thighs, and gulp air. “I can’t.”
I am a cowboy. I am a man, I am a tough son of a bitch, but goddamn if this pint-sized girl has the power to tear out my soul and rip out my heart.
Wyatt stalks toward me, his stride lethal. “You’re my brother and my best friend, Charlie, but you’re acting like an idiot. What if she wakes up and you’re gone?”
I squeeze my eyes shut. “Stop.”
One step closer. His voice is like a drill bit in my brain stem. “What if she needs you, and you’re not there because you’re out here having a pity party for yourself?”
I straighten up. My jaw locks. My muscles tense.
“She doesn’t need me,” I shout, whipping around. “I’m the one who got her hurt. I put her right in the middle of everything this summer. She’s better off without me.”
“You’re a coward,” Wyatt says, pointing a finger at me. Anger flashes in his blue eyes, and he shoves me backward. “Asshole.”
“Fuck you,” I growl, balling a fist.
The automatic door slides open, and Ford steps through it. He stands with his arms crossed, watching us. A long-suffering sigh makes its way out of him. “Christ,” he complains. “Y’all aren’t doin’ this.”
But we are.
“Yeah, you want to punch me, try it,” Wyatt sneers, flexing his fingers. “It wouldn’t be the first time you lost.”
“That wasn’t losing, that was giving you practice,” I snarl.
Then I explode.
Nostrils flaring, red blurring my vision, I charge my brother, grabbing a fistful of his T-shirt. My fist jerks back, and I hold him tight, inches from me. Sadness and rage scream for me to beat the hell out of him.
But I can’t. It’s not him I’m pissed at.
I’m pissed at myself, at DVL, at everything that’s happened.
My hand bobs in the air.
Before I can let him loose, Wyatt slams a fist in my stomach. No hesitation.
The air leaves my lungs. I stumble, doubling over, then find my balance.
“Cheap ass punch,” I say through gritted teeth.
Wyatt scoffs. “If I have to beat your grumpy ass to wake you the fuck up, so be it.”
He stares at me and I stare at him, tension breaking between us.
Wyatt walks away from me, taking shallow breaths, then he turns and says, “Maggie’s dead, you know, but you’re not. And neither is Ruby.”
I flinch, his words like a knife in my jugular.
A hiss from Ford. “You’re actin’ like a dickhead, Wyatt.”
“Someone’s gotta say it,” he snaps back.
I shove my hands through my hair, scrape them down my beard. “She deserves someone else.” Admitting it out loud rips my heart in half. Hot tears sting my eyes. “I never should have—”
“What, loved her?” Wyatt cuts in. “Charlie, this girl woke you up.” Eyes red, Wyatt shakes his head. Raw emotion crosses his face. “She deserves you. You fought for her, man. You worked on her for over twenty minutes. She has a pulse, she’s breathing, because of you.”
I freeze to the spot. Unable to breathe. Unable to think. Hope and hopelessness war within me. I’ve been so afraid of loving again that I waited to take that risk, to admit how I felt about Ruby. I almost lost her once. I could lose her now. But if I had to do it all over again—I would.
In a fucking heartbeat.
My eyes move to the sun rising in the east, momentarily robbing me of breath. Bright, brilliant gold. Pops of purples and pinks. As bright as my sunflower girl.
Ruby would love it.
I need to get back there. I need to stay strong for her. I won’t help her by crumbling.
I exhale and turn to Wyatt. “You’re right.”
“I always goddamn am.” He flashes a cocky half-smile. Because that’s Wyatt. My younger brother never lets me off the hook, has followed my ass halfway around the world to keep me from losing my shit, and for that I’m fucking grateful.
“Wyatt, shut up,” Ford orders. “Charlie, get your head on straight.” Then, in a low voice, he says, “The doctor’s here.”