Chapter 47 #2
"Can I ride with the sirens on?"
Rhett pinched the bridge of his nose.
Calvin had released my hand when the paramedics moved in—stepped back, gave them room, stood a few feet away with her arms crossed and her face wiped clean.
Tears dried. Shakin' stopped. She watched the medics work with clinical detachment.
She spent years around rodeo injuries and knew the difference between a body in crisis and one that was gonna hurt like hell but would be fine.
The walls were goin' back up. I could see it happenin' in real time—each brick settin' into place, mortar dryin' fast. She was disappearin' behind the armor, and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it from a stretcher.
They loaded me onto the stretcher and started rollin' me toward the ambulance at the far end of the arena. Calvin walked alongside—not touchin' me, not speakin', just keepin' pace with her arms crossed tight against her chest.
When we stopped at the back of the ambulance, I looked up at her. "You comin'?"
She opened her mouth. Closed it.
Rhett was already movin' toward his truck, hat in hand. "I'll meet y'all at the hospital," he called over his shoulder.
The paramedics slid me into the back. One climbed in after me. The other stood at the doors, waitin'.
Calvin hadn't moved.
She was standin' three feet from the open doors with her boots planted in the dirt and her arms locked around her middle like she was holdin' herself together at the seams. Her eyes were givin' me absolutely nothin'.
I knew that look. Knew what it cost her to be standin' here at all instead of in her truck, pointed toward Idaho.
Knew that the woman who'd sobbed into the arena dirt and called me her home was currently losin' a fistfight with the one who'd spent sixteen years survivin' by not followin' anyone anywhere.
Rhett had stopped halfway outta the arena. He looked at Calvin. Looked at me bein' loaded up. Looked back at Calvin.
She didn't move.
Rhett changed course without a word. Three long strides back to the ambulance, one hand on the door frame, and he hoisted himself in and dropped onto the bench across from me.
The doors closed.
Through the small back window, I watched Calvin get smaller—a dark-haired figure standin' in the middle of the fairgrounds, Sassy already movin' toward her.
Rhett sat with his elbows on his knees, hat in his hands.
"Speed spooked," I said as the paramedics did their thing.
Rhett looked up. "I know."
"Speed don't spook."
"I know."
We held each other's stare. The ambulance hit a rut and my shoulder filed a formal complaint.
"Rhett."
"Yeah."
"Somebody was behind the box."
His jaw tightened. His fingers went still on the brim of his hat.
He didn't say I know again.
He didn't have to.
I was fine.
Little bit of a concussion.
Wasn't my first, wouldn't be my last.
Fortunately, nothin' was broken—'cept my spirit.
She'd just stood there, frozen in place, and didn't get in the damn ambulance.
"Sassy took her to the house a few hours ago," Rhett said, lookin' up from his phone where my ex-fiancée had finally responded.
I nodded, which sent a throbbin' pain through my head that radiated down my neck and settled behind my left eye like a hot nail. "She didn't wanna come here?"
Rhett's eyes dropped to the scuffed linoleum for a beat. When he looked up, his mouth scrunched up into a cowboy's version of a sympathetic smile—one that said you poor, poor fool.
My mama walked in with a cup of coffee for Rhett and one for herself. The smell hit me sideways—burnt and bitter, the offending scent of hospital coffee that tasted like someone had brewed it through a dirty sock. My stomach lurched.
She looked around the room. "Still no Calvin?"
For fuck's sake. I groaned and pressed my head back into the hospital bed pillow.
The thin cotton was damp where I'd been sweatin' through it for hours, and the fluorescent light above me buzzed at a frequency specifically designed to make a concussed man wanna claw his own eyes out.
After I squeezed my eyes shut for a few seconds tryna fight off the pain and nausea, I pushed the call button on the bed. Repeatedly.
"I need to get the fuck outta here."
"Brody Lancaster, you quit buggin' those nurses," my mother scolded. "They got more important things to do than listen to your bellyachin' about a girl."
"She ain't just a fuckin' girl, Ma!"
I was yellin' now.
At my mom.
'Cause I knew.
Knew down to the marrow of the bones in my throbbin' skull that Calvin not bein' here meant shit wasn't right. She wasn't feelin' right about what went down, and who could fuckin' blame her?
I started to climb outta the bed—IV tape pullin' at the crook of my arm, hospital gown ridin' up in places no man wanted a hospital gown ridin' up—just when a nurse came in.
"Alright, Mr. Lancaster. You're all clear to get outta here. I just need a signature on the discharge paperwork, and we'll get that IV out."
She handed me a clipboard, and I signed where she pointed, barely readin' a single word—somethin' about concussion protocols and follow-up appointments and a list of symptoms that should send me back to the ER.
Mom intercepted the patient copy before I could toss it, foldin' it into her purse with quiet efficiency.
She'd be enforcin' every line on that sheet whether I liked it or not.
The nurse peeled the tape from my arm and slid the IV free. The sting barely registered against the symphony of everything else that hurt.
"Your clothes are in the bag under the bed," she said, noddin' toward a clear plastic sack I hadn't noticed. "Take your time gettin' dressed."
I did not take my time.
Rhett fished the bag out and handed it over. I swung my legs off the bed too fast—loss of equilibrium, think I'd seen that on the list Mom just pocketed—and gripped the mattress edge until the room quit spinnin'.
My jeans were dusty and stiff, one knee ground brown from the arena dirt.
Gettin' 'em on one-handed while my shoulder screamed bloody murder was a special kind of humiliation, but I wrestled the button closed and shoved my feet into my boots.
My shirt was a lost cause—stretched outta shape by the paramedics tuggin' at the collar to get the neck brace on.
I pulled it over my head anyway, and the dried sweat and arena dust hit my nose. Smelled like dirt and horse.
I grabbed my hat off the chair where Rhett had set it. Bent brim, dirt ground into the felt. I put it on anyway because a cowboy without his hat in a hospital was just a man in dirty clothes.
Callin' myself a cowboy was a stretch on a good day. But on rodeo day, I'd always felt like one.
I'm good with bein' your boy scout.
Hell, after today, I'd hang up my hat for good if it meant keepin' Calvin Jennings.
"Let's go."
Mom had already gathered the discharge papers, the prescription for painkillers I probably wouldn't fill, and the pamphlet about concussion recovery that I definitely wouldn't read.
"Rhett's drivin'," I said, snatchin' the keys from her hand.
"Hey now, what're you—"
"You drive too slow, Mom," I cut in as the three of us exited through the emergency room's automatic doors.
The parkin' lot heat slammed into me—that thick, August warmth radiatin' up off the asphalt, smellin' like tar and exhaust. "I love you, but it's a fifty-two minute drive home if you drive the speed limit.
" I shot her a look—one I hoped she read as don't even try to argue. "And you drive at least ten under."
"Better safe than sorry," she muttered as she climbed into the backseat. I buckled in, and Rhett made no comment on the whole ordeal.
I looked at him, and whatever he saw there had him noddin'.
He drove ten over the whole way home.