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“TJ?” he called next, and he heard the little boy’s footsteps running toward him. “Where’s your mom?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I got shoes.”
“We need to find your mom.” Trey hadn’t been anywhere else in the house but the kitchen, and Beth wasn’t there. “Where’s her room?” He scanned the front of the farmhouse, where Beth had couches and chairs, a TV and a beanbag for TJ. She wasn’t there either.
“This way.” TJ skipped back the way he’d come, detouring down a hall that curved around to the side of the kitchen.
Trey followed right behind him, reaching out and grabbing TJ’s shoulders before he could go inside his mother’s bedroom. “You wait out here, okay?”
“Okay,” TJ said, not picking up on the anxiety flowing from Trey like water through a sieve.
He took a deep breath and stepped into the bedroom. “Beth?” he called again. “It’s Trey from next door.” If she didn’t know who he was by now, Trey would be equally surprised and devastated.
He heard sniffling from the bathroom, and light spilled onto the wood floor in the bedroom from that direction too. “Are you okay? I’m coming in. It’s just me. I left TJ in the hall.”
Trey’s heart pounded as he approached, his desperation for Beth to say something making his vision blur for a moment. Every time he’d offered to help her, she’d refused him. Once, he’d said he’d bring a crew and come help put up her wheat, and she’d argued with him for ten minutes.
Beth really didn’t like accepting help, though it was Trey’s opinion that she desperately needed it. He’d tried to tell her that getting help wasn’t a sign of weakness, but she’d just kept shaking her head until he’d stopped talking.
Trey had the distinct impression she was going to have to accept his help this afternoon whether she liked it or not.
He arrived in the bathroom doorway and took in the scene in front of him as quickly as he could.
Beth stood at the bathroom sink, blood dripping from her hand. Tears ran down her face, and when she looked at Trey, it was if all of the strength she’d been using to keep herself together fled.
“Okay,” he said, stepping over to her as her face crumpled and she swayed on her feet. “I got you. It’s okay.”
She sobbed, a horrible, gut-wrenching sound that chilled Trey’s blood and made his whole heart hurt. “I cut myself,” she said, her voice stuttering and tinny. “It was an accident, and I can’t get the bleeding to stop.”
Trey didn’t dare move too far from her, and he kept one leg behind her completely in case she passed out. “Can I see?”
She nodded, gaining some semblance of control over her emotions. “It’s across my palm. I was out in the stupid barn trying to get down another length of sprinkler pipe that Danny had lashed to the wall.” She held out her hand slightly and lifted the one pressing a blue cloth over her palm.
“I was on the ladder, and I just kept swiping at it, and—” She cut off, her breathing labored as she struggled to talk and inhale at the same time.
“How long ago did this happen?” he asked, taking over the job of removing the cloth from the wound. The blue was soaked with blood, and he wasn’t sure why he hadn’t whisked her off to the hospital yet.
“I don’t know.” Her body shook, and Trey edged forward to shore her up with his as he got the cloth to release.
He peered at her palm, and there was no way that gash was going to heal by itself. The muscle was plainly visible on both sides of the wound, which went from thumb to pinky, and Trey caught a flash of white before he quickly pressed the cloth back over the wound.
“I’m taking you to the emergency room,” he said, looking at her. “Don’t argue with me.”
She nodded, no argument in sight.
“Great,” he said. “Let’s go.”
14
Bethany Dixon couldn’t stop sniffling, and she battled the pain in her hand, the worry in her heart, and the embarrassment that Trey drove her truck while she cried in the passenger seat, a thick towel wrapped around her hand.
TJ rode in between them, each hand clutching one of the army men he loved so much. No one said anything.
Bethany’s hiccups sounded above the radio in her truck, but Trey didn’t seem bothered by it. His hands didn’t clench the wheel. He didn’t drive particularly fast or crazy. He was the ultimate picture of calm, collected, and oh-so-sexy cowboy.
She kept her gaze out the window, desperately trying to fight against the urge to scream. She really didn’t have time for a five-inch gash across her palm. She had hay to put up, and fields to tend to. She had pregnant mares who needed constant attention, and a garden that needed to be cleared, the fruit trees picked, and all of those fruits and vegetables canned, pureed, sauced, or frozen.
TJ needed a ride to school every morning, and someone to go pick him up in the afternoon. He needed a haircut, and new shoes, and probably ten thousand other things Beth didn’t even know about.
