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You did good.
You saved him.
We’re so honored to be your sister.
They stay with me for another ten minutes until the adrenaline drains, and the aches and pains start to set in. When my stomach is cramped from crying so hard, and my eyes are so swollen I can hardly move my face, I turn to my sisters and tell them exactlywhyI’m so upset.
“I would die if something happened to him.” My bodytrembles angrily against the mattress. “I love him as much as I love Hud. And the same way I know Hud is my future,Bear is, too.” I swallow thickly around the burning pain eating up my throat, raw from the screaming. So much damage was done in just a few pivotal minutes. I roll onto my side, tucking my hands beneath my cheek.
“He’s okay because of you,” Juni promises quietly.
“Rest,” Ivy says, placing a wet towel over my face, sweeping some debris and blood away.
Hudson’s truck rumbles loudly in the distance, and despite the usual stirring in my belly, I don’t get to my feet.
I turn in my bed and face the wall, aches echoing through the gash in my foot, a painful pulse in my blown eardrum. “Good idea,” I say, closing my eyes as I sink into an adrenaline-crash slumber.
eighteen
“TELL ME ABOUT DOLLY.”
Hudson
The phone call I received when I was the farthest from my house was utterly terrifying.
Tiffani. Whose voice I hardly even recognized, screaming over and over, the words echoing in my mind as I sink my boot to the gas pedal, tearing through my land as fast as my truck will go.
Bear’s gone. Bear’s gone. Bear’s gone.
I know my boy, and if he ran off, there’s only one place he’d go. And it’s the one place I never let him goalone.
My eyes try to blur but I blink away the heated moisture, summoning unfettered strength and calm for my boy. I’m tearing through the land between the cow barn and the hay bales when I spot a mass of people scatteredon my property. Slamming the brakes, then shifting the truck into park, I jump out, not bothering with the door.
“Bear!” I hear my voice rattle through the open land, echoing up to heaven as I shout over and over, “Bear! Bear!” My eyes lock with Deuce’s. “Where is he?” Deuce leaves the huddle of EMS workers, springing to my side. Taking my shoulders in his hands he forces my eyes to stay on him, our gazes idling.
His expression is serious and my stomach roils with unease because of it. “Bear is okay.He isfine, okay?” he starts, and even though he isn’t a father, he’s doing a good job of telling me the one thing I need to know to take me out of my frantic mental state.
I reach up and hook my hands on his wrists, holding him as he grips my shoulders. At some point in my efforts to get up to the house, I lost my hat, and I know it now as the sun pours over us in the lawn. Deuce continues. “He is okay. Okay? He’s getting checked out by the EMS but they don’t think he’ll even need to go in.” My hands fall away with the good news.
“He’s okay,” I repeat, needing to hear it again as my eyes slide from Deuce to the open ambulance. Bear is there, wrapped in a gray blanket, sitting in my sister’s lap, her arms looped tightly around him. A man with a clipboard is writing while talking happily to Bear, and he’s got a sucker in his mouth.
Seeing Bear snips the threads in my chest, releasing the suspended weight of doom that had filled my guts since my phone rang eight minutes ago.
Deuce leads me over, where I scoop Bear off Ev’s lap and kiss his face everywhere I can. “I love you,” I tell him athousand times, soaking up the little giggles and squirms he gives back to me. “Love you, too, Daddy.”
“You’re all right?” I ask him, sizing him up and down with the paramedic standing idle, allowing us a moment.
He nods, twisting his gaze to Everly, who is still swiping at tears. “I’m so sorry, Hud,” my sister says.
“It wasn’t your fault.” My focus slides to my son. “I’m gonna go talk to Uncle Deuce,” I tell him, reaching behind me to clasp my hand around the back of Deuce’s neck. “When we’re done, I’m gonna meet you inside and we’re gonna have a Daddy-Bear day, okay?”
“Them cows will get out if you don’t fix the fence,” Bear says, making my heart nearly explode. My boy is thinking of his daddy. I press another kiss to his head and put him back on my sister’s lap.
“I’ll get some guys out there. Don’t you worry aboutthem cows,” I say, shooting him a wink. Outstretching a hand to the paramedic, we shake as I lead him a few steps away from the back of the emergency vehicle.
“He’s okay. His lungs are clear. Vitals are good. Make sure he stays hydrated and for the cut on his calf, he’ll need to keep it bandaged for a few days, just until it closes.” The man scribbles something on his large metal clipboard and rips off a carbon copy, handing it to me. We shake hands again, and then Deuce pulls me into the tall grass under the oak, for privacy.
“He’s okay,” I say aloud just to hear it, to make sure that I know it’s true. Once I’ve processed that, my eyes slide to Deuce just as my anger seeps in. I look him square in the eye. “What happened?”
