Maverick (Star Valley Book 3) (27 page)

Rowan paled. “Wh—what?”

Leah shook her head and couldn’t muster the energy to tell her again.

“Willow was in the storm,” said Sofia. “Leah ran out to get her. That’s when she fell. Willow’s okay but…but…”

Rowan and the hospital worker were still running alongside the gurney as the automatic doors opened. There were too many loud voices, as far as Leah was concerned, and too many people standing over her poking prodding. Or maybe not enough. She’d deal with anything to hold onto the life that was slipping out of her grasp. “Please,” she whispered to a man in a white coat shining a light in her eyes. He had dark hair, like Austin. But no one was Austin. And she wished he was here.

“Paul,” came Rowan’s voice drifting from somewhere over Leah’s shoulder.

The man with the dark hair was already lifting Leah’s shirt.

Later, much later, the voices had dwindled to all but a few. The curtain was pulled in the multi-bed room which, Leah guessed, was supposed to give her some privacy. She could hear the doctor and Rowan speaking in quiet tones. She wasn’t sure if it was for her benefit or for the people around them.

She could hear a clock ticking, probably on the wall, but couldn’t see it. Instead she counted the drops of the IV bag beside her cot. Finally, the curtain was pulled back. She gripped the sheets, throat tightening, tears stinging her eyes. But it was Rowan, not Austin, who stepped through as she’d hoped.

‡

A
ustin’s ears were
ringing from a combination of the storm and the report of the pistol. The shot had gone wide in the collision and he nearly lost the weapon entirely as he sprawled with Palmer into the mud. The man screamed, though, and for a moment Austin thought perhaps he’d been mistaken and hit his intended target. But Palmer moved off him, attempting to scramble away. He apparently had only just realized Austin was armed.

One of the dogs caught Palmer’s ankle and pulled, slamming his face into the dirt. Austin leapt up and swung his hand, cracking the man in the skull with the butt of the gun. The man screamed again, as the dog gnawed on him.

“All right!” Austin cried. “All right, all right.” He had no idea how to call them off. He reached down with his free hand and grabbed the collar of the one using Palmer as a chew toy and pulled.

Reluctantly the dog let go but Austin could see blood running in rivulets through the man’s torn pant leg. Around them, the dogs were barking furiously, spurred to a frenzy.

Austin aimed the weapon again, directly at Palmer. “You should never have come here!” he shouted above the storm.

“Fuck you!” Palmer replied. “You’re not going to shoot me, Barlow!”

He was right about that, at least. Austin wasn’t going to pull the trigger. He’d just march his ass down to camp and radio for the sheriff. “Get up,” he demanded.

“Fuck you!”

Austin sighed. “As much as I’d love to stay up here,
in a motherfucking electrical storm
, having stimulating conversation, Palmer, we need to get to lower ground.” Coincidentally, lightning flickered at the moment he stopped speaking, adding emphasis to his words.

“Shoot me!”

For a brief moment, Austin considered it. “If you don’t—”

“Austin!”

The sound of his name startled him, because it wasn’t Court, who could’ve stumbled upon them if he’d returned to camp while Austin had been gone. But it was Walker charging up the slope.

Austin seized Palmer’s arm and dragged him to his feet. “We’ll carry you, you bastard,” he growled in the man’s ear, “if that’s what it takes.”

“Leave him!” Walker shouted running toward them.

Austin frowned. “What do you mean leave him? I got him!”

Walker shook his head. “You’ve got to let him go.”

“Bull
shit
I do! I caught the sonofabitch! Help me get him back to camp.”

Walker grabbed his arm and tried to pry it off Palmer’s. “Leah’s hurt!” he finally cried when Austin wouldn’t let go.

Austin froze. “What do you mean hurt?”

“She got caught in the storm. Sofia took her to Star Valley.”

Austin blinked at his brother, needing a moment to process his words. Walker said Star Valley but that could only mean one thing. Star Valley Medical Center. He threw Palmer into the mud and left him there. Then he raced down the ridge at breakneck speed, alongside his twin, both men slipping in the shifting soil.

There was no way to ask his brother what happened, not and keep up the grueling pace to get back to camp. A thousand images filled his mind, none of them good, all of them had him panicking. When they finally got to the bottom, he saw Court had returned and was pulling a saddle off his horse.

Court turned and frowned at them. “I waited for it to let up!” he shouted. “What’s wrong?”

It seemed like too much to explain and Austin had little patience for it. He didn’t know the details anyway. Not yet. Walker could fill him in on the way. “Palmer’s on the ridge,” he cried, throwing an arm in the direction they’d just come.

Court’s eyebrows raised. “What?”

“I had him but I had to let him go. He might still be up there. But Walker says Leah’s hurt and I have to go. Now!” He passed Court the muddy pistol, pressing it into his hands.

Court looked past him up to the highlands. “I’ll bring him back,” he vowed, gripping the weapon.

Austin nodded and practically threw himself toward Walker’s truck. He clawed his way inside and slammed the door so hard the entire vehicle rocked.

“She fell,” his brother told him before he even had to ask. He dropped the truck into gear and stomped on the accelerator. They fishtailed in the mud but Walker recovered easily. “That’s all I know. She fell outside the house.”

“What else?” said Austin, because they were brother—twins for fuck’s sake!—and he knew Walker was holding back.

The man frowned, yanking the wheel to set them on the highway. He shifted again, into a higher gear, saying nothing. Austin didn’t argue because no good would come of wrapping themselves around a tree before they got to her. He gripped the door handle, knuckles turning white, and waited.

“She was bleeding,” Walker finally admitted.

Austin didn’t have to ask where.

“Please, God,” he whispered, but he didn’t know what to ask for. The baby? And lose Leah in the bargain? Leah? And lose the baby? He asked for both and knew it was a gamble. He’d always been lucky, but this time Austin couldn’t shake the feeling that his luck may have finally run out.

‡

L
eah scrutinized the
woman standing over her now. Pregnant herself with a wedding ring on her finger. Twice in her life, Leah had read the grim faces of doctors before they’d said a word. Each time the Earth seemed to stand still on its axis before they parted their lips to speak and she officially had leukemia and then had two relapses.

Rowan, the woman Leah had once thought would end up her sister-in-law, didn’t need to say anything at all.

“Could you leave?” Leah asked quietly, before Rowan could speak. “I…I don’t mean to be rude, but…could you leave?”

Rowan hesitated. “We’re moving you,” she finally said. “To a private room.” Blessedly she said nothing else, just kicked at something on the leg of the bed, close to the floor, and soon Leah was being whisked away again, down a hall, through a door.

Alone in her new room, she cried great heaving sobs as she tore at the sheets. The rain on the window pane couldn’t match her for drops as they spilled down her cheeks, blurring her vision. She cried until she had no more tears to cry. Then she cried again.

Finally, she collapsed back against the bed, knowing Austin would come soon but now she didn’t want him to, didn’t want him to know. She could see this clock and watched its ticking hands.

When the door finally opened she sucked in a deep breath. She saw the look on his face after he stepped through the door, saw it change from confusion to bleak understanding with the passing of a second. It was obvious no one had told him. He must’ve read it on her face when he’d walked through the door. She closed her eyes and wished for that to be the end of it, that no words would ever need to be said about it. One because it would break her heart, and two because she didn’t have enough words of apology for the man standing in front of her now.

She heard his footsteps on the tile and felt him take her hand gently. He squeezed it. She couldn’t muster the strength to squeeze it back. “I fell down,” she told him. But that wasn’t quite true. She had fallen, yes, but it wasn’t over. She was still falling, like a heavy stone sinking in dark water. It hurt to even breathe. She was drowning.

She might never stop.

“Are you…are you all right?”

She opened her eyes to look at him.

“I mean…” She watched him fumble, watched him struggle over his words, the same way she would have if she were the one speaking. “Are you…hurt?”

Yes.

Leah hurt all over, in her body, in her heart, in head…in her soul. Her whole body was open wound, infected, contagious. “No,” she told him quietly, because she knew he didn’t mean it like that.

In fact, it did hurt and they’d given her painkillers but he didn’t need to know, didn’t need to worry about another thing right now. Leah could feel bruises forming over her body, over her stomach and her thighs, but didn’t have the courage to lift the gown they’d put her in and look at them.

They remained silent and unmoving, nothing more to say to each other. And wasn’t that the truth? Without the baby, they wouldn’t know each other at all, would they? Without the baby, she could’ve spared him this, but she felt the loss so keenly, so sharply, so opposite the intense love she’d had for the person she hadn’t yet met, that she couldn’t wish it had never happened. Never that.

But still. She could’ve spared him.

He looked dirty, caked in mud, with a bruise on his own face and she wondered about it.

“Are
you
hurt?”

He shook his head. “No. I…” He licked his lips, which were still red, maybe more red when contrasted against his pale face. “I fell, too.”

“Oh.”

The storm had found both of them, as storms always do.

She could barely stand to look at him as he stood over her, holding her hand. He was destroyed. She’d destroyed him. She’d brought him into her awful, unstable, unstoppable orbit and allowed him to be smashed into a million jagged pieces right alongside her.

She should’ve known better.

She should never have told him about the baby.

She should’ve spared him.

She could, however, stop dragging him down with her.

“I want to go home,” she told him, feeling as though her limbs were heavy.

Austin nodded. “Yeah. We’ll go home. We’ll get some rest. We’ll get you well. I’ll—”

Leah shook her head and watched his brow furrow. “Not to Star Valley. I want to go home to Cody. I just want to go.”

A moment ago, mere seconds, really, Leah could’ve sworn truthfully that it was impossible to bring him any lower, to hurt him anymore than she’d already let him be hurt. But his face crumpled and his hand tightened on hers. She could hear his breath turn sharp and rapid.

“Leah—”

“I’m leaving.”

Austin seemed to have no idea what to say. He cried, though. A tear fell and slipped down his unshaven cheek. “Leah, don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me.”

“There’s no reason to stay anymore,” she said flatly, which was an easy tone to pull off given how sapped of energy she was right now.

“Leah, I love—”

“The baby was the only thing holding us together,” she said, interrupting him. “And now it’s gone. Call Candace. She’ll come.”

Austin merely blinked at her for a minute, maybe two. Leah could hear the clock ticking on the wall but didn’t have the energy to mark the passage of time. Then he finally turned, wordlessly, and left the room.

That was it, the last hammer to fall. She hated doing it. Hated herself, hated her life, hated everything in that moment and she knew that from now on, she always would. But Austin, with his easy smile and optimistic outlook, could never be allowed to share that bitter, hollow existence with her. And he would. She knew that. His sense of honor and obligation would never allow him to walk away from her. So she had to do the leaving. For his sake and his alone.