Chapter 32
Mackenzie
“Love, you need some rest.” Mom was in surgery and I had spent every minute pacing back and forth across the floor. Sleep? I had only grabbed a few hours here and there in the last couple of days, and yet the nervous tension had me moving. “Mackenzie.”
The sound of my name said in that deep, masculine voice was enough to stop me for a second. Looking up, I stared into those blue eyes, catching the moment they crinkled at the edges.
Troy was here.
Troy was freaking here.
The juxtaposition of the big, tall Australian against the white walls of the hospital was still too odd for me to process. Especially when my head felt stuffed full of terrible thoughts. My lips pressed together, my facial muscles tensing, as if that would be enough to hold it all back.
“Mackenzie…”
Somehow Troy just knew what I needed. A crooked smile, then feeling his hands on my shoulders before he pulled me closer. The hard wall of his chest was a barrier between me and the outside world, and that allowed me to go still just for a second.
“I can’t rest.” I whispered that into a shirt that smelled of sun warmed-cotton, hay, and him. “I can’t. What if—?”
“I know something about what ifs.” Oh, I thought, going still.
Somehow I’d forgotten that Troy had been through all of this before with his own mom.
“Pretty sure I spent the entire time my mum was in hospital running all the scenarios through my head.” He tilted my chin up so I met his eyes.
“I can tell you from experience, it doesn’t help.
What will happen will happen.” A thumb brushed against the side of my face.
“Getting your mum through surgery, then helping her during recovery, that’s a marathon, not a sprint. If you don’t rest—”
“After.” I felt like I was bargaining with him, with fate itself. “After she comes out of the surgery. After…”
“Once she’s in recovery and in the ICU.” He looked down at with a meaningful look. “Mackenzie, promise me. If… When she comes out fine, we’ll find somewhere to sleep for a few hours at least.”
I smiled despite myself, even if it was a weak and shaky thing.
“Trying to get me back to your hotel room, cowboy?”
“Cowboy…” He snorted at that, then grew serious. “To rest, love. If you just spend the entire time resting in my arms, I’ll take it.” A thumb brushed the skin beneath my eyes. “Sleeping in a chair for days is hard on a body.” He made a show of stretching. “Ask me how I know.”
“Deal.”
So that’s how we came to be standing in the ICU hallway, hours later.
Seeing the tiny figure on the hospital bed, swathed in blankets, helped alleviate some fears and created new ones at the same time.
My hand went to my mouth, but before it got there, Troy grabbed it.
Clinging to it like a lifeline, I watched my mom get wheeled past.
“The surgery was a resounding success,” the surgeon said with a smile. “There’s still some irregular heartbeats.” My hand gripped Troy’s harder. “Which is all to be expected post ablation. It’s the fact the rate has come down to normal levels that is reassuring…”
The doctor described what recovery would look like, when Mom could come home, but I barely heard a thing.
Troy’s deep voice as he asked the right questions kept me grounded as I watched Mom get set up in her room.
Still unconscious, I couldn’t talk to her, sink to my knees beside her bed and hold her hand tight. For once, I had to be the strong one.
Which meant I needed to follow Troy’s advice and get some rest, because when Mom woke up, when she was released from the hospital, the real work would begin.
“Ahh, Troy…” I said as the taxi pulled up out the front of the ‘motel.’ “Is this the place?”
“It was close to the hospital.” He squinted through the window and then blanched at the sight of the motel.
Weeds in the parking lot and a sign that would’ve had its glory days in the 1950s, it didn’t look like it’d been updated since then.
A couple of people milled around outside one room, making me wonder if this was their place of business. “Cheap too.”
“I can see that,” I said.
“You getting out?” the taxi driver asked, eyeing the place warily.
“We’ll find somewhere else,” Troy said hurriedly, then turned to the taxi driver. “Mate, do you know of any nicer hotels around here?”
“It’s fine.”
Troy was right, I needed to rest and my body was done pretending.
Exhaustion hit me like a ton of bricks as I opened the door and got out of the cab.
Standing there, wavering on my feet, Troy paid the taxi driver, then carried our bags over to what passed for a front desk, eyeing the people in the parking lot the entire time.
“Hey…” A skinny guy who looked like a greasier, older, more stoned version of Shaggy from Scooby Doo said as we walked in the door. “Looking for a room.” The way he checked me out, then turned to Troy had my nails itching to scratch at my arms. “Only ten bucks an hour.”
“An hour?” Troy stared at the man, his brows drawing down. “Why the hell would we want a room for an hour?” Oh, my sweet summer child. Before I could explain, he forged on. “I booked us a room online under the name, Drysdale?”
“Online?” The man seemed a little befuddled at that. “Oh yeah, here it is.”
He went to grab a set of keys off the wall behind him, but Troy stepped closer to the desk.
“That better be the nicest, most secure room you’ve got,” the big Aussie growled. “And at the opposite end of the complex than those… people who were hanging around out front.”
The man glanced back over his shoulder and seemed to measure up Troy mentally, before grabbing another set of keys.
“There you go, my man.” The man’s grin had me fighting back a shudder. “Best room in the place.” He gave Troy the once over, then nodded. “And hey, if you need someone else to tap in to keep your girl happy—”
Troy’s hand moved so fast I only caught the moment when it grabbed the stained front of the man’s shirt, before hauling him closer.
“The next words out of your mouth better be ‘I’ll have clean sheets and towels brought to your door’ or so help me, I’ll punch your teeth down your throat.”
“Yeah, man.” The guy made a show of straightening his shirt when Troy released him. “Of course. Housekeeping will get right on it.”
“We’re finding somewhere else,” Troy growled as we walked back outside and then along the motel, towards the rear stairs. “What the hell kind of place is this?”
“The kind of motel where people only need a room for an hour or two.” I stared at him, willing him to understand. Were there no sex workers in rural Australia?
“Who would need to sleep for an hour or two?” he asked, hoisting our bags up as we walked up the stairs.
“I’m not sure there’s a whole lot of sleeping going on,” I replied, unable to stop myself from smiling.
“What?” He paused and then looked down at me, that frown deepening, before his eyes went wide. “Oh…” The scowl was back again as he glared at the reception. “So he thought…? That you—?”
He was just about to storm right back to the front desk to correct the sleazy guy’s assumptions when I put a hand on Troy’s chest.
“I don’t care what some random guy thinks,” I told him. “What I do care about is getting some rest. You called it, Troy. Seeing Mom get out of surgery, it’s like all the adrenaline of the last few days is gone, and I am so tired…”
A jaw-cracking yawn helped make my point and that had my man springing into action.
Bags were abandoned as he swept me into his arms again and despite my protests, he carried me right up to our door, before opening it and sweeping in.
The room smelled close and musty, the decor so dated it could almost be featured on an antique show, but I didn’t care.
“I thought I said goodbye to all of this when I got on the plane,” I said.
“That no other guy would be able to pick me up and carry me around like a doll. I…” My hand found the small curls at the nape of his neck, teasing one free.
“I thought it was just some summer dream, but you’re here. Troy, you’re here.”
“Always, love.” He pressed a gentle kiss to my lips.
“When I woke up and found you gone, it was like all the light, all the warmth, went out of the world. Thought I could just keep going through the motions on the farm, but Charlie set me straight. They staged an intervention and made clear that being an arsehole was not a viable option anymore. That I needed to go where my heart is and, Mackenzie, that’s with you. I…”
Never had I been so fascinated by a man’s Adam’s apple. I watched it bob, tried to count all the stubbly hairs on his throat, because that was easier than hearing this.
“I’m in love with you, Mackenzie. Think I have been since the moment I found you in Wally’s field. I—”
He didn’t get to finish his grand speech, because right now I didn’t need it. My mouth crashed down on his, claiming every inch, before I glanced up and into his eyes.
“I love you too. I didn’t want to. Knew that summer was going to come to an end and a whole lot of heartbreak would come with it. Kept telling myself that we had no future, but I wanted it. God, I wanted it. A life…”
It was all there. I’d tried to keep a lid on it for so long and now it all came rushing out.
“The farm, the rescue, Charlie, Bronson, even Billy.” I let out a sigh.
“Everything. I jumped on a plane to escape my life, but I’d found a whole other one.
” My hand trembled as I touched the side of his face, needing that warm skin, that scratchy stubble because it was only when I was touching him that this felt real.
“A life I loved. It feels like everything that came before this.” Alex’s smug expression had me frowning for a second, but there was no room for him here.
“It was just a bad dream and being with you helped me to wake up.”
“Need you to get into bed now,” he growled. At my grin, one eyebrow cocked upwards. “To sleep. You get under the covers…” With a wince, he considered the bed. “Maybe we’ll just sleep on top of them. I don’t think you’d want to shine a blacklight on that quilt.”
“Could make a temporary barrier with the clothes we have in our bags,” I suggested.
“Shit, the bags!”
When Troy set me down, I felt ten times lighter. So much I wouldn’t have been surprised if my head floated off my shoulders. The muffled sounds of him going outside, then down the stairs barely registered, nor did the sound of a conversation.
“A very nice lady gave us some fresh linens,” he said. “Assured me she washed them herself, so they’re OK to sleep under.”
“Rescuing me from spiders, bulls, and now…” I blanched when I stared at the bedspread. “Really, really questionable stains on a bed.”
“I know it’s going to take a while.” I stared fixedly at the stain, unable to look away until he whisked the bedspread off and then the sheets.
“But you’re gonna see it, Mackenzie. Making you happy, that’s my number one priority.
Once your mum is out of the woods, you won’t have to worry about a thing. ”
Part of me rebelled at that idea, unable to believe his words, but the other part?
It stripped off stale clothes and tossed them onto the floor because sliding under the sheets with Troy?
It was a comfort I couldn’t afford to push away right now.
Instead I snuggled in closer, feeling the way our bodies fit together like puzzle pieces, allowing me the luxury of fully exhaling for the first time in days.
“You’re my girl…” I was falling into sleep, but some part of me clung to consciousness, because it wanted to hear all of this. “And that means I need to spend my life giving you the world…”
All I needed right now was this. To be held, to be seen, at the moment when I was feeling my most vulnerable, so I pressed my face into his chest and finally let myself rest.