Page 121 of Promised to the Cowboy

Daniel sighs. The sound is familiar enough that I know where I am before I open my eyes.

Hospital. The air smells wrong. Too clean. Too dry. Machines hum somewhere close, and something pulls at the skin on my chest when I breathe.

My chest.

Memory returns all at once. The field. Evie running. Falcon. White light tearing through me. My heart stopping.

I open my eyes. The room is dim except for the monitor beside the bed and a narrow strip of afternoon sun cutting through the blinds.

Daniel stands near the door with his arms folded. My father sits in the chair beside the bed. He’s leaning forward, forearms braced on his knees, staring at the floor.

Neither of them notices I’m awake.

“Where is she?” My voice comes out rough.

Both men move at once.

Daniel reaches the bed first. Dad is only half a step behind him.

“Easy,” Daniel says. “Don’t try to sit up.”

“Evie.”

“She’s here.”

The answer loosens something inside me. “Where?”

“Getting checked downstairs,” Daniel says. “The doctors wanted to examine her and the baby after everything that happened.”

My pulse jumps. The monitor immediately tattles.

Dad’s gaze snaps to it.

“They’re all right,” Daniel says quickly. “Both of them. She fought the examination until Ethan threatened to carry her down there himself.”

“That sounds like her.” The words scrape my throat.

Daniel pours water into a plastic cup and holds the straw toward me. I take two careful swallows. Every part of me hurts. My ribs. My sternum. My shoulders. And a deep ache beneath all of it, as though somebody reached into my chest and wrung my heart out by hand.

I look down. Hospital gown. Wires. Bruises are already spreading beneath the adhesive pads.

Then I see my father’s hands. His knuckles are scraped, and one palm is bandaged.

I remember the pressure. A voice calling me.

Come on, son. Come back to me.

My eyes rise to his face. He looks older than he did yesterday. Stripped raw.

“Did you—” My throat closes.

Dad looks away first. “Ethan started compressions.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Daniel takes the cup from me. “I’m going to find the doctor.”

Coward.