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.”