"Brody." I put a gentle hand on his chest. Felt his heartbeat under my palm. Rapid but steady. "Open your eyes, boy scout. Right now."
Tears ran down my cheeks, and when he didn't respond, I laid my forehead on the back of my hand and the sob that ripped through me was inhuman.
"Please wake up, Brody. Please don't leave me. You are my home, and I haven't had a home in a really long time, andI need you. Please open your eyes."
CHAPTERFORTY-SEVEN
The sky was real blue.
That was the first thing I noticed. That specific shade of Montana blue that postcards never quite got right—too big, too deep, too much of it all at once. It filled my whole field of vision like someone had poured it there, and for a second I just lay in it, floatin', not thinkin' about why I was lookin' at it from the ground.
Then my body checked in.
Every fuckin' inch of it, all at once, like a roll call from hell. Shoulder—screamin'. Hip—throbbin'. Back of my skull—poundin' so hard I could feel my heartbeat in my teeth. My lungs burned like I'd been breathin' through a coffee stirrer and my ribs felt like they'd been rearranged by a doctor who'd skippedBones 101in medical school.
Somewhere nearby, a horse was blowin' hard, panicked, fast breaths. Crowd noise filtered in cottony and distorted, the way sound traveled underwater.
Then the blue was gone.
Blocked out by dark hair and a face I knew better than my own. Calvin was bent over me, forehead pressed to the back of her hand where it rested on my chest. Her shoulders were shakin'—not the fine tremor I'd seen before, but deep, wracking things that rocked her whole body. The sound comin' outta her was somethin' I'd never heard—raw and animalistic and so gutted it didn't sound like it belonged to a human being.
And she was talkin'.
Not to me. Not really. More like prayin' to whoever might be listenin' through the dirt and the dust and the noise of two hundred people holdin' their breath.
"—need you. Please open your eyes."
The words landed somewhere deep. Deeper than the pain in my shoulder or the throbbin' in my skull. Deeper than anything had ever landed in my whole goddamn life.
You are my home.
She'd said that. I'd heard it—half-conscious, caught somewhere between the dark and the dirt, her voice the only thing sharp enough to cut through the static. I didn't know if she knew I'd heard. Didn't know if she'd meant for me to.
Didn't matter.
I heard it.
And it cracked somethin' open in my chest that I'd been holdin' shut for months—the thing I hadn't said, hadn't let myself say, because I knew what those words could cost me. How fast they'd send her runnin'.
I tried to lift my hand to her hair. My shoulder had opinions about that—loud, profane ones—so I settled for slidin' it along the ground and findin' her knee. My fingers curled against the denim. Dusty. Warm from the sun.
"Hey," I croaked. Voice sounded like I'd gargled a fence post.
Her head snapped up.
Jesus fucking Christ.
Her face damn near finished what the fall started.
Eyes red-rimmed and swollen, tears cuttin' clean tracks through the dust on her cheeks. Lips chapped where she'd been bitin' 'em raw. But it was the expression underneath all of that—wild, unfiltered terror because she'd already watched someone die in the dirt in a way too damn similar to this one—that hit me so hard I forgot every inch of my body that hurt.
She looked like she'd been shattered and was holdin' the pieces together with nothin' but a few pieces of tape.
"Brody." Just my name. But she said it like she was confirmin' I existed. Like she needed the proof of it in her own mouth.
"M'right here." My fingers tightened on her knee. "Still breathin'. Still annoyin'. Full package."
She made a sound—half laugh, half sob, all wrecked. Her hand came up and covered mine where it rested on her leg, and she held on like I might sink through the dirt if she let go.
