Chapter 79
CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE
LOLA
It arrives all at once, like someone has turned the volume up on every nerve in my body. My temple throbs with a deep, nauseating pulse that syncs with my heartbeat. My ribs ache when I breathe. My wrists burn.
I try to open my eyes, but the light is so bright it feels like being stabbed. I squeeze them shut. Try again. Slower this time. The room comes in fragments.
Hospital.
I’m in a hospital.
Memory floods back in a rush that makes my stomach lurch. Beau. The house. The rope. Wyatt’s face at the window. The gun on the floor. Reese’s blood spreading across the hardwood.
Hunter.
Where is Hunter?
I try to sit up, and my body screams in protest. A wave of dizziness crashes over me so hard the room tilts sideways, and I grab the bed rail with my free hand to keep from sliding off the earth.
A nurse appears beside me, and she puts a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Easy. Don’t try to move too fast.”
“My husband,” I rasp. My voice sounds like it’s been dragged over gravel. “Is my husband here?”
She smiles. “He hasn’t left the building. He’s been in the hallway the entire time.”
Something in my chest unlocks. I need him more than anything right now. “Can you—can you get him? Please.”
“Of course.” She squeezes my hand. “Let me go find him.”
She disappears, and I lie there. Staring at the ceiling. Listening to the beep of the monitor counting my heartbeats like a metronome, keeping time on a life I almost lost.
My fingers find the bare skin of my left ring finger, and my heart sinks.
I let the tears roll down my cheeks. The rings are on the nightstand at the ranch.
Where I left them this morning in anger.
In hurt. Because Hunter said something stupid and I said something worse, and we both let pride burn a hole in the only good thing either of us has.
That fight feels like it happened in another lifetime.
I want my rings back.
I want my husband.
I want to go home.
The door opens. And he’s there.
Hunter fills the doorway. His shirt is stained with blood. My blood. His hair is wrecked from running his hands through it. His eyes are red-rimmed and raw in a way I’ve never seen on him.
He’s been crying. Hunter Sterling has been crying. He stops just inside the door and looks at me. And I watch his whole face come apart.
“Hey, cowboy,” I whisper.
That’s what does it. He crosses the room in three strides, and I don’t care about the IV or the monitor or the pain or the nurse who told me not to move. I reach for him.
He sits on the edge of the bed and gathers me into his arms so carefully that it makes me cry, not because it hurts, but because of how gently he’s holding me.
I bury my face in his neck, and I break.
The sobs come from somewhere so deep I didn’t know it existed.
Not the pretty kind either. The ugly, gasping, full-body kind that shakes through me in waves and soaks his collar and steals the air from my lungs.
Everything I held together in that house all comes pouring out against Hunter’s chest.
He holds me through it. Doesn’t shush me. Doesn’t tell me to calm down. Just wraps himself around me and lets me fall apart because he knows I need to.
His hand cradles the back of my neck. His lips press against my hair. “I’m here, firefly,” he whispers. “I’m right here.”
“I was so scared,” I choke out between sobs. “I was so scared, Hunter.”
“I know, baby. I know.”
“Beau—he—”
“You don’t have to talk about it yet. Not now.” He pulls back just enough to look at me. His hands frame my face, thumbs wiping tears, palms warm against my cheeks, his touch so impossibly gentle after everything those hands have done today.
“All you need to know right now is that you’re safe. Wyatt is safe. And I am never letting you out of my sight again.”
I hiccup through a sob-laugh. “That’s going to make showering awkward.”
He chokes on something between a laugh and a cry. “I’ll take that risk.”
His forehead presses against mine. I can feel his breath on my lips. His pulse racing in his wrists where they rest against my jaw. “I am so sorry, Lola,” he says. “For this morning. For what I said. For letting you leave that house thinking—”
“Stop.” I press my finger to his lips. “Don’t.”
“I need to—”
“You don’t.” I hold his eyes. “You came for me. You found Wyatt. You came, and you got me out.” My voice breaks again, but I push through it. “That’s all that matters. The rest of it… It’s nothing. It’s dust. It’s already forgiven.”
His eyes close. A tear rolls down his cheek and disappears into his stubble.
“I nearly lost you,” he chokes out.
I reach up and wipe it away with my thumb. “Don’t cry, cowboy. You’ll ruin your tough-guy reputation.”
He laughs, and I smile. I actually fucking smile.
“That reputation went out the window the day I met you, city girl.”
He kisses me. His lips barely pressing against mine because he’s treating me like glass, and I don’t have the energy to tell him I’m not breakable. Not anymore.
Because right now, I need him to look after me.
When he pulls back, his hand slides down to mine. His thumb finds my bare ring finger and traces the empty space. “First thing when we get home,” he murmurs.
“First thing,” I agree.
He settles into the chair beside my bed, and he pulls it so close that the armrest presses against the mattress. His hand doesn’t leave mine.
“Is Wyatt okay?” I ask.
“He’s with Colten. He’s safe, I promise you.”
I nod. Letting the relief wash over me. All of this pain is worth it knowing that no harm came to our boy. “Does he know I’m okay?”
“Not yet. He’s asleep now. I’ll call Colten in the morning and bring him to see you.”
“Tell him I said I kept my promise. I came back.”
Hunter’s grip tightens on my hand. “Yeah, you did, firefly. You came back.”
“He called me mommy. Is… that okay?”
He brings my hand to his lips and presses a soft kiss there.
“That is the best damn thing I’ve ever heard in my life, other than you saying you’d marry me.”
I can’t stop the tears and the little hiccups that fall out of me. But I can’t fight my body any longer. Exhaustion is pulling me under. My body is screaming at me to rest. “Hunter?”
“Yeah, baby?”
“Will you be here when I wake up?”
He brings my hand to his lips and kisses my knuckles. “I’m not going anywhere, Lola. Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not ever.” He presses another kiss to my hand. “You sleep now. I’ll be right here holding your hand when you open your eyes.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
I let my eyes close. Let the tiredness take me. Let the beeping and the hum and the warmth of him blur together into something that feels like safety.
The last thing I’m aware of before sleep pulls me under is Hunter’s thumb tracing slow circles on the back of my hand. And his voice, barely above a breath, saying something he thinks I can’t hear. “I love you, firefly.”
I hear it.
And I fall asleep smiling.