Chapter 21
TWENTY-ONE
CORD
Who I Can’t Be
Her face blurs at the edges; then she’s gone.
I blink, the room around her too bright after so many hours spent…
elsewhere. Days? My brain chugs with all the power of a slug.
Unlike a night’s rest, no matter how terrible, I have no concept of time passing.
Blankness occupies that space. The world has simply turned on without me in it.
I force my eyes to stay open, searching for her blazing blue gaze.
She looks so exhausted—has she stayed the entire time?
My eyes close and open again, but all I see now is an empty chair.
White light blares into my face, narrowing to a pinpoint where retina burn becomes inevitable.
A nurse who looks nothing like any medical fantasy I’ve ever had pries my eyelids open.
“Gentle,” I croak.
“Welcome back.” She grins.
Then two faces in white masks peer down at me.
I squint as they check me over, trying to remember my name, but there’s… nothing. Not today. No answers to any of their questions set on repeat until I want to holler at them but don’t.
Because I know I’ve been here before. This is familiar. But back then, even though my body didn’t work, my mind did. Now… If my brain refuses to come to the party, I don’t know that I can function. Ha. Function. A ridiculous term. A chill grips me, my stomach lurching.
My eyes squeeze shut, opening to two panicked faces.
“Okay, personal space issues.” I reach out, shoving them both back. A pinch flares at my knee, then my toe. “Fucking ouch.” I kick back.
Two sets of eyes blink, and a grin spreads over the surgeon’s face.
“Welcome back, Cordell.”
“Only my mother calls me that,” I grumble, relieved something works.
“I think I have rights. Full name, please?” The surgeon putters around the room, but his restless action does little to disguise his relief.
I rattle off my stats that evaded me a second before but return in force now that he’s kickstarted my dust-laden brain.
I’d show him more gratitude, except that right now, everything hurts.
I yawn, my head heavy. Echoes of past recuperations slam into my thoughts, but I shove those aside.
Giving in to panic and wallowing in the negative won’t help me out of this bed anytime soon, no matter how many pinches and kicks it takes.
“Claiming the miracle, Doc?”
“It’s two-sided, I’m sure.” He winks. “Between the devil and me. Because if you get on another bull, Rand, that’s where I’m sending you.”
My eyebrows quirk. At least those fuckers don’t hurt. “I think I liked it better when you used my full name and were all paternal.”
“Just keep wiggling those toes, son.”
I snort, attempting to sit up. The nurse presses a hand on my shoulder. “Down, cowboy.”
I wince as the world sways, or maybe it’s my bed. “Did you spend all night thinking that one up?”
“Couldn’t wait to use it.” She pauses. “Your girlfriend has been outside the whole time. She refused to leave.”
“She was in here, with me,” I recall, starting to smile, but that hurts, too.
“I kicked her out after three days.”
“How long was I out?” I ask, looking around the room.
“Nurse?” I try to focus on her name badge, but my brain can’t cope with the fine print.
The red hair. Lanie has been here all this time.
But she was meant to be somewhere… else.
Away, right? I scramble to remember, but my unresponsive brain refuses to put two and two together and come up with any logical answer.
She swaps my IV bag for a fresh one. I follow her around the room with my gaze, but I don’t stay awake long enough to see her leave.
Sensation walks up my arm. I drag myself out of sleep with a monumental effort that uses as much energy as it gives.
Something bleeps near my head. It takes me a moment to place the sound.
Hospital. I pry heavy eyes open, already prepared to sleep again.
A blaze of red stalls me. I blink rapidly, grit and fog obscuring everything in a blur for a painful minute.
Lanie smiles, dark circles beneath her eyes where she curls in a chair with her wolf blanket wrapped around her.
My already gummy mouth dries. “You look—”
“Like absolute crap. I know.” She runs hands through her messy wild-cherry hair, pushing it back, but it cascades around her anyway, unwilling to be caged.
Just like her.
“Beautiful,” I finish.
Her cheeks burn as bright and deep as her hair.
“The nurse said you stayed the whole time.” My voice rasps with lack of use.
Lanie passes a glass of water into my hands, watching me carefully as she helps me work the straw. My swollen jaw doesn’t work the way it should, not yet.
“Five days,” Lanie murmurs, returning the glass to its stand.
I swear, the letters jumbling in my mouth. Fear grips my stomach. I cough, but that hurts, too.
“Did—did my lawyer speak to you?” I can’t remember his name, any more than I could my own the last time I woke. At least that’s there now.
Lanie nods, her expression shuttering. “He did.”
“And?”
West leans against the doorway. “You’re not dead yet, you ugly asshole. You can deal with your own damn business.”
A nurse bustles around him, frowning. “One visitor at a time, please.”
“I’m not in the room.” West smiles, and the nurse wilts.
“Oh, all right,” she huffs, fixing a new bag to my IV stand. “Ten minutes.”
I grin as she leaves the room. “You’ve still got it.”
“Did you ever doubt?” West snorts, his grin fading as he takes in the medical paraphernalia attached to my body. “How are you doing?”
“Oh, fucking dandy.” I reach out blindly on my other side. Lanie’s small hand slips into mine like she’s always been there, not edged into my life a month ago.
Billy appears next to West. “The police want to talk to you.”
“What about? Did I kill the damn bull?” My throat burns. West passes me a glass with a freaking straw in it. Fuck, I hate this part. I batt his hands away.
“Maybe someone tried to kill you, Cord,” Lanie says softly.
My grip tightens on her hand as Billy’s face sobers, West’s expression returning to his customary scowl.
The room sways as I lose a focal point to anchor to.
I close my eyes, battling nausea. “The bull felt odd.” I dredge the memories out of a skull full of brain soup, my swollen forehead drawing tight as I delve deeper into a night I would rather forget.
“His back quarters dipped. But I held on. Wait, did I make the bell?”
Laughter fills the room. I look around, from Lanie snuffling into her hand to West shaking his head in disbelief.
Billy grins. “This is why we love you, boss.”
“This is why he was crazy enough to get on a bull again, against all warnings. We tell you maybe someone wanted to commit murder, and you worry about if you pulled off your eight damn seconds.” West glares at me, but a smile creeps through his grumpy-ass facade.
“But yeah. You made the bell. Coyote Falls is still yours.”
I lean back into my lumpy pillow that feels like heaven, my hand wrapped in Lanie’s. “And here I thought I gave it away to you lot.”
“Like hell,” West growls.
“Not for all the wolf cubs in the world.” Lanie glares at me, shaking back her glorious red mane.
Mostly glorious. The movement nauseates me and I put a hand to my head. “Don’t do that.”
The nurse reappears, shooing everyone out. Lanie leans over to press her lips gently to my forehead.
“I’ll be outside,” she murmurs.
“You stayed the whole time, huh?” I study her sparkly aqua shirt I think she wore to the Invitational until my head aches worse, but it’s worth it. Damn, she’s so beautiful.
Lanie shrugs, but a grin tugs the corner of her lips. “It’s not like I have something more important to do.”
Then a memory slams into me. “What about Alaska? Your trip…” I frown, watching her eyes, but the blazing light that drew me in the very first time never dulls.
“I canceled it.”
She turned down her grant offer. For me. A dream for a dream. But that’s not how it should be. I hold her gaze for a long moment but then turn my head.
“West!” I holler, or try to. Croak is more like it.
The nurse glares at me.
I ignore her. “Take her home for a shower and a decent meal.”
“You got it, boss.” West grabs Lanie’s hand, Billy herding her from the other side. She sends me a look over her shoulder that churns me up. Soon, I’ll take more than a look from her. But not right now.
I laugh at my own ridiculousness until it hurts, which doesn’t take long. At least Lanie will be looked after until they let me go home to her.
Four days later, I have my story memorized better than the three different cops I told my statement to over and over.
Slowly my mind recalls information further back than when I came out of the chute with each iteration.
Wrecking Ball’s motion takes me back to the arena.
The sickening sway of his hindquarters, how we went down. Our little chat before the event.
I remember most of the beginning of the night, the terror in Lanie’s eyes when I told her it was time. How she softened when I said I loved her. I sit, grinning like an idiot, while I dictate my statement for the third time, hoping the officer thinks I’m high on something in my IV.
The last promise of my day is my truest—that I won’t ride another bull for as long as I live.
That one is easy, and I give it wholeheartedly to the surgeon.
What I don’t promise is not to train the boys.
Billy has potential if he can quit being so stubborn and get on the damn bull, and Jesse Duke’s name has done the rounds, too, despite his spectacular tumble early in the night.
West helps me out to his truck when I’m released with a talking-to from the surgeon, toting an oversized baggie of medicine.
“You know they tried to make me leave in a helicopter,” I snark, shuffling across the asphalt.
West rolls his eyes. “Ungrateful ass.”
“I told them to save it for emergencies.”