Page 145 of Wild Sanctuary

My voice is wrong. It’s too damn rough, and I don’t know how to make it right.

“It’s over, baby.”

Nothing. My head is spinning and my lungs are on fire as I work to draw a breath when I go around the stack slowly, one hand open and visible.

And then I see her.

She’s wedged between the last bale and the outer wall, impossibly small, with her knees up to her chest. There’s a paring knife in her right hand, and her phone is cupped in her left, pressed against her chest. Her face is drained of all color, and her eyes are not quite focusing on me.

I go down to my knees in the hay in front of her, but I don’t touch her yet.

Instead, my hands come up slow and steady, palms open.

“Daisy-girl. You’re safe. It’s me.”

Something comes back into her eyes before she makes a sound that isn’t quite a word. Only then do both of my hands come to her face and I cup her jaw careful as anything I’ve ever held.

I don’t kiss her.

I don’t speak.

I barely dare to breathe as I look at her and run a check almost absentmindedly—thumbs along her cheekbones, down the sides of her neck, across her shoulders, her arms, her ribs through her shirt.

I reach for the paring knife and close my hand around her wrist to stop her from cutting herself, though my hand shakes worse than hers does.

Then I see her bare feet, all cut up and bruised, and my heart damn near breaks.

“Oh, baby.”

She blinks several times rapidly, and I can see when my features come into focus for her. She reaches out to brush the pad of her thumb across my cheekbone, making me wince slightly from Stan’s lucky shot.

“I’m okay, Wyatt. I’m okay. I’m okay. I’m okay.”

She reaches for me, and the knife drops out of her hand, falling onto the hay-scattered floor. I pull her into my arms, and only then does she break wide open against my chest.

I hold her while she cries, my nose buried in her bedraggled hair. One of my hands cups the back of her head, while the other goes flat between her shoulder blades, and all the while, I’m shaking worse than she is.

After several minutes, Rhett’s voice comes up from the floor beneath us.

“Sheriff’s in the yard, Wyatt.”

I don’t answer him. I can’t.

Daisy is crying into my shirt with both her hands balled in the front of it, and I’m shaking against her, and the barn smells like hay and blood and her shampoo underneath all of it. And I’m sick to my motherfucking stomach that I could have lost her today.

“I’ve got you.” My voice is raw, torn wide open, and I don’t care. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

She says something into my chest that I don’t catch, so I ease her back just far enough to see her face.

My eyes flicker between hers as my thumb brushes over a tear-stained cheek. “Say that again, baby.”

“You came.”

Two words from her lips, and I’m on my knees for this woman.

“Course I came.”

My forehead goes to hers, and I close my eyes. Her breath on my mouth is the first clean air I’ve had in hours, and I breathe it deep into my lungs.