Chapter 47
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
The sky was real blue.
That was the first thing I noticed. That specific shade of Montana blue that postcards never quite got right—too big, too deep, too much of it all at once.
It filled my whole field of vision like someone had poured it there, and for a second I just lay in it, floatin', not thinkin' about why I was lookin' at it from the ground.
Then my body checked in.
Every fuckin' inch of it, all at once, like a roll call from hell.
Shoulder—screamin'. Hip—throbbin'. Back of my skull—poundin' so hard I could feel my heartbeat in my teeth.
My lungs burned like I'd been breathin' through a coffee stirrer and my ribs felt like they'd been rearranged by a doctor who'd skipped Bones 101 in medical school.
Somewhere nearby, a horse was blowin' hard, panicked, fast breaths. Crowd noise filtered in cottony and distorted, the way sound traveled underwater.
Then the blue was gone.
Blocked out by dark hair and a face I knew better than my own.
Calvin was bent over me, forehead pressed to the back of her hand where it rested on my chest. Her shoulders were shakin'—not the fine tremor I'd seen before, but deep, wracking things that rocked her whole body.
The sound comin' outta her was somethin' I'd never heard—raw and animalistic and so gutted it didn't sound like it belonged to a human being.
And she was talkin'.
Not to me. Not really. More like prayin' to whoever might be listenin' through the dirt and the dust and the noise of two hundred people holdin' their breath.
"—need you. Please open your eyes."
The words landed somewhere deep. Deeper than the pain in my shoulder or the throbbin' in my skull. Deeper than anything had ever landed in my whole goddamn life.
You are my home.
She'd said that. I'd heard it—half-conscious, caught somewhere between the dark and the dirt, her voice the only thing sharp enough to cut through the static. I didn't know if she knew I'd heard. Didn't know if she'd meant for me to.
Didn't matter.
I heard it.
And it cracked somethin' open in my chest that I'd been holdin' shut for months—the thing I hadn't said, hadn't let myself say, because I knew what those words could cost me. How fast they'd send her runnin'.
I tried to lift my hand to her hair. My shoulder had opinions about that—loud, profane ones—so I settled for slidin' it along the ground and findin' her knee. My fingers curled against the denim. Dusty. Warm from the sun.
"Hey," I croaked. Voice sounded like I'd gargled a fence post.
Her head snapped up.
Jesus fucking Christ.
Her face damn near finished what the fall started.
Eyes red-rimmed and swollen, tears cuttin' clean tracks through the dust on her cheeks.
Lips chapped where she'd been bitin' 'em raw.
But it was the expression underneath all of that—wild, unfiltered terror because she'd already watched someone die in the dirt in a way too damn similar to this one—that hit me so hard I forgot every inch of my body that hurt.
She looked like she'd been shattered and was holdin' the pieces together with nothin' but a few pieces of tape.
"Brody." Just my name. But she said it like she was confirmin' I existed. Like she needed the proof of it in her own mouth.
"M'right here." My fingers tightened on her knee. "Still breathin'. Still annoyin'. Full package."
She made a sound—half laugh, half sob, all wrecked. Her hand came up and covered mine where it rested on her leg, and she held on like I might sink through the dirt if she let go.
"You weren't moving." Her voice was scraped to nothin'. "You weren't—Brody, you hit the ground and you didn't move and I—"
"I know." I squeezed her knee. "I heard you."
Her eyes doubled in size as the horror of realizin' I'd witnessed her little confession set in—realizin' every wall she'd built had come tumblin' down and the rubble was still scattered around her.
I held her gaze. Steady as I could manage with my brain rattlin' around in my skull like a marble in a tin can.
"I heard you, Calvin. Every word."
She pressed her lips together so hard they went white. A fresh tear spilled over and she didn't wipe it away. Didn't look away, either. Just let me see her—really see her—in a way she hadn't since the first time I'd made her come undone on a tarp in my half-built house.
Rhett was somewhere to my left. I could feel him—that solid, immovable presence standin' guard. Other shapes hovered at the edges of my vision.
"Brody, can you feel your feet?" Rhett's voice. Steady. All business.
I wiggled my boots. Felt the leather shift against my socks. "Yeah."
"Fingers?"
I squeezed Calvin's knee again. She answered for me. "His grip's fine." Her voice was steadier now. Just barely. The viper puttin' herself back together one scale at a time.
"Let's keep him still 'til the medics get here." Rhett's hand landed on my good shoulder—brief, firm. His fingers lingered a half second longer than they needed to.
More shapes in my periphery. The crunch of boots on arena dirt, slower than the rest.
"Boy, you hit that ground harder than a sack of wet cement."
Hank. Toothpick still in place, cloudy eye squintin' down at me. He lowered himself with careful economy and crouched at my left side.
Beside him—slower still, one hand on Hank's arm for balance—John Calvin settled onto one knee with a grunt that said this was costin' him somethin', but he'd be damned if it stopped him.
"You in one piece, son?" John asked. Gruff voice, sharp eyes.
"Think so, sir. Might be missin' some pride."
"Pride grows back." John's bony fingers gripped my forearm with surprisin' strength. "Bones don't always. You lay still."
I caught Calvin's eyes flick to her grandfather—just a second, just long enough to clock that he was there, in the dirt, next to me. A man she'd only reconnected with weeks ago. A man who'd called her Vinny and made her cry in the doorway of a room in Livingston. Here. On his bad knees. For me.
She looked back at me. Her hand didn't leave mine.
That's when the air shifted.
A shadow fell across us from behind Calvin's shoulder, and the quality of the silence changed—drew taut, like a wire pulled to the point just before snappin'.
"Damn." The voice was easy. Warm. One that had rehearsed charm so long it had calcified into somethin' permanent. "That was one hell of a spill. Real men know how to keep their seat, though, don't they?"
Every muscle in Calvin's body locked. I felt it through her hand—the instant, full-body shutdown, every joint sealin', every tendon pullin' taut. Her fingers didn't tighten around mine. They went still. Completely, absolutely still.
I couldn't see him from where I lay, but I didn't need to. The effect he had on her was identification enough.
Wyatt Cole. Standin' over me with a smile in his voice.
Rage hit clean and immediate, floodin' every bruised inch of my body with somethin' hotter than pain. My good arm tensed. My jaw locked. Every instinct I had screamed at me to get up—get up and put this man in the ground, make him eat that smile, make him understand what happened to people who—
Calvin's thumb pressed into my palm. One firm, deliberate stroke.
Stay down.
I stayed down.
Not because I wanted to.
Because she asked.
Then a voice I hadn't expected.
"I think you've done enough."
Denny Jennings. Somewhere behind Wyatt. His voice was different than at the ranch—flatter, stripped of the good-ol'-boy performance. Not angry, exactly. Just finished.
"Time to get gone, son."
"Aw, c'mon, Denny, I'm just—"
"You heard him." John Calvin didn't look up from my side. Didn't turn. Just spoke toward the dirt like he was addressin' somethin' beneath his notice. "Go on now."
Hank shifted his toothpick. "Ain't no one needs a washed-up bull rider here anyhow."
No confrontation. No showdown. No dramatic reckoning where Wyatt Cole got to feel the weight of what he'd done. Just three men and a silence that gave him nothin'—no anger to feed on, no fear to leverage, no scene worth spinnin' into a story later.
He was bein' dismissed. The way you'd shoo a fly off your plate.
I couldn't see his face, but I felt the shift in the air—the one when a man who expected the room to bend around him realized it wasn't goin' to. A beat. Two. The crunch of a boot sole pivotin' on packed earth.
Then he walked away.
Not fast. Not slow. But the way a man did when he wanted you to think leavin' was his idea.
Calvin's hand was still in mine. Still rigid.
I watched her face and saw none of it land.
Her eyes stayed on me, focused with a precision that told me she'd registered every word, every voice, every second of what had just happened, and filed it somewhere she wouldn't open until she could afford to.
Right now, she couldn't afford to.
Right now, she was barely holdin' it together.
"Hey, viper."
Her jaw flexed. "What."
"I think Gerald the ceiling duck is gonna have to share his spot with a new water stain. Pretty sure I left a dent in this arena."
The sound she made wasn't a laugh. Wasn't a cry. Somethin' jammed right between the two, pressed through clenched teeth, her shoulders curlin' in like her body was tryna protect her from the inside out.
"He's concussed," Rhett said flatly.
"I am not con—" I tried to lift my head and the world did a real unfriendly barrel roll. "Okay. Maybe a little."
The paramedics arrived about thirty seconds later—a guy and a gal with a stretcher.
They operated with calm efficiency. They'd seen worse, no doubt.
They checked my neck, my spine, shone a light in my eyes that I could've done without, and asked me questions I apparently answered well enough because nobody said the word surgery, which I took as a W.
"Probable concussion," the gal said, wrappin' a brace around my neck that was approximately as comfortable as wearin' a toilet seat. Rhett shot me the same told-ya-so look I'd been gettin' from him for over two decades. "Gonna want imaging on that shoulder. You're goin' to Bozeman."