And Then You Kiss (Crested Butte Cowboys Series Book 3) (13 page)

Tucker looked out over the valley in front of them. On the other side of the highway he could see what looked like a fire road going up the side of Mount Herman.

“Ever been on that road?” he asked her.

“Many times. My dad and I go up there and shoot.”

“When’s the last time you were up there? Is the road open?”

“I don’t know, maybe three weeks ago. We haven’t had much snow since then, I’m sure it’s open.”

“Do you need to let anyone know you’re leaving again?”

“Nobody saw me, except Bree. She won’t say anything.”

“Why not?”

“Because she was the one who insisted I tell you I wished you hadn’t left.”

Tucker nodded his head, as if he understood and took Blythe’s hand in his. “Let’s go.” They walked hand in hand back through the woods to where he’d left his truck.

What would he say to her? He wanted to talk, but where did he start? He wanted more in his life, he wanted Blythe to wipe away the bad, and replace it with light, and love. But he wasn’t sure how to ask for it. He’d spent so many years believing he was incapable of loving or being loved by a woman. That was his damage, as Jace called it.

His brother felt it, that’s how he knew what to name it. Tucker was damaged. He hadn’t allowed himself to consider it would be possible to repair his heart, or his soul. But since he’d met Blythe, he’d felt hope. Even in the light of tragedy that hit too close, he’d felt hope.

She was quiet, sitting there in his truck, looking out the window as he made his way toward the remote mountain road. She’d practically begged him to come back to the house, to give her another chance. Now that he had, she was waiting for him to talk, to tell her what was so important that her unwillingness to hear him set him off, made him angry, made him leave.

He was scared, that was the truth of it. What would happen when he talked about the one thing he vowed he never would? Allowing himself to would mean the wound would be ripped open. Would he be able to get through it without breaking down? He doubted it. And when he did, how would Blythe react? Particularly now. She hadn’t had any time to process through the grief of the last week. Would she take on his pain too, the way she had her sister’s?

No matter what, he couldn’t start talking about it until he found a place to pull off the road. He couldn’t risk starting the conversation when it was more than likely his eyes would fill with tears, his body would react physically in other ways to the pain, and he would not be able to drive.

“You turn here,” she said so softly he almost missed it. The paved portion of the road ended, replaced by rough, washboard-ridden dirt in its place. Snow was piled on either side, but the road itself was clear.

When he rounded the bend, the last thing he expected was another car, coming from the opposite direction, driving down the center of the narrow road, as he was. When he tried to swerve to miss it, his truck hit a patch of ice and careened off into the woods. He frantically tried to turn into it, keep the truck from skidding further, but he couldn’t stop it. It hit a rock and he knew they were going to roll. He looked at Blythe. Her eyes were filled with terror, and looking straight into his.

He knew that look; he’d seen it before. The nightmare was repeating itself.

Tucker opened his eyes. Where was he? He tried to move, but his body wasn’t responding to the demands his brain was making on it. The truck was on an angle, the passenger side closest to the ground. Blythe’s back was to him. She was face down, as though she was still looking out the window. He couldn’t tell whether or not she was breathing.

The last thing he remembered was the sob of anguish he released, right before the darkness engulfed him again.

When he woke again, he was in a hospital bed. The sights and sounds were hauntingly familiar. He raised his head. Pain. Horrible pain. He felt as though his head was in a vice. He closed his eyes against it.

Blythe. Oh God, what had happened to Blythe?
He forced his eyes back open and saw Jace asleep in the chair next to the bed. He tried to speak, but his mouth was dry, his throat closed up, he could only get out a hoarse sound.

He cleared his throat and tried again. “Jace.” This time it was loud enough that his brother woke and stood, coming closer to the bed.

“Hey man,” he said, his own voice clouded with sleep. “How’re you doin’?”

“Blythe?”

The flash of a wince on his brother’s face told him more than he wanted to know. He had to know the rest. “How bad is it?”

“She’s in surgery.”

“Answer me. How bad?”

“It’s bad Tuck.”

There came the darkness again. This time he welcomed it.

***

Jace drove up the mountain road behind the tow truck. He wasn’t sure what he’d find, but at the very least, he had to get his brother’s personal stuff out of the truck. He’d made arrangements with the insurance company to have the damage assessed. Damage. There was that word again.

The tow truck stopped and Jace looked up the side of hill. There it was, on its side. The top of the cab was crushed in. Looking at it, Jace couldn’t believe his brother was still alive. Or Blythe. Fate had been kinder this time. Much kinder.

Jace sat down on a rock. He wanted to stay out of the way of the guys trying to figure out how they’d get the truck off the side of the mountain and back down the hill.

The view was beautiful from here. Beyond the trees that blanketed the Black Forest, the prairie opened up and spread all the way to Kansas. To the south, the city of Colorado Springs lay sleepily beyond the confines of the Air Force Academy, and to the north, the skyline of the city of Denver was barely visible. The sky was so blue, and the earth so green around him. Maybe if he sat here long enough, he could push the bad memories away.

Tucker blamed himself, carried the guilt around with him day after day. Jace buried it, denied it, tried to force it out of his mind whenever it crept back in. His biggest fear was that one day Tucker would feel it, and realize it wasn’t his own guilt he was feeling, it was Jace’s.

***

“What are you doing?” Jace asked Tucker two days later.

“I’m leaving.”

“I know they said you were being released today, but has the doctor been in yet?”

Jace brought Tucker clothes the night before, anticipating he’d go home today. Jace came in early enough that he’d be able to see the doctor too, and find out what aftercare instructions there might be. Tucker’s injuries were minimal, which was surprising given the state the truck was in. He’d suffered a concussion, and that was the biggest of Jace’s concerns.

When he found Tucker ready to leave, he was surprised. He’d expected it would be noon, at least, before he was released.

“Tucker, what did the doctor say?”

Tucker didn’t answer.

“I’m not taking you home until we talk to him Tuck. Don’t be an asshole. Mom and Dad are on their way too.”

Tucker sat down on the side of the bed. A few more hours. He only had to last a few more hours, maybe as long as a day or two, then he could escape.

He didn’t know where he’d go yet. Maybe Mexico. That was his only plan for now. And when the got there, he’d leave Tucker Rice behind. He had no intention of taking his past with him, and that included his name.

Yesterday his parents told him Blythe was going to be okay. Her appendix ruptured in the accident, and that was why she’d been in surgery. She broke her right arm and right leg, both in several places. There would be surgeries to fix them, when she was strong enough.

She was alive, but he still had to leave. He didn’t have a choice. He got the message. For a brief moment, he believed he could love again. And then, minutes after he’d allowed himself to hope, it was stripped away. Blythe lived, but he heard the warning loud and clear.

***

The bones in Blythe’s right arm and right leg were shattered—multiple breaks and fractures in both of them. Her face was covered in cuts and abrasions from the truck window that shattered in much the same way her bones had.

She woke once and saw someone sitting by her bed. At first she thought it was Tucker, but realized it was Jace.

Her father told her that Tucker was okay. He’d suffered a concussion and was expected to be released in a day or two. At least she thought that’s what he said. Everything was fuzzy; she couldn’t remember whether he’d actually said it or she dreamt it.

When she woke again, Jace was gone, and Bree was in the chair he’d been in.

“Hey,” Bree said, when she noticed Blythe’s eyes were open. “How are you feeling Sleeping Beauty?”

How did she feel? As though she’d been rolled over by a truck. But from what they told her, she’d been inside the truck when it rolled. Sleep was the only relief she could get from the pain.

“Where’s Tucker?” she asked, without answering her sister’s question.

“He was released today sweetie.”

Released. Maybe he’d come to see her later, or tomorrow. She let herself drift back into sleep. She’d see if someone could call him and ask, after she slept a little bit longer.

***

Brooke and her husband came to the hospital to say goodbye before they went back to Germany. Brooke started lecturing her about how none of this would have happened if she hadn’t been with Tucker in the first place.

Blythe’s response was simple. “Get out,” she turned her head and closed her eyes. She wasn’t interested in hearing anything her sister had to say.

The only thing she wanted to know, and no one seemed to be able to tell her, was where Tucker was.

***

“How’s she doing?”

Blythe pretended to be asleep when she heard Jace’s voice. He was talking to Bree.

“She’s getting there. She stopped asking about him.”

“We don’t know where he is,” Jace whispered.

“What do you mean?”

“He left the day after he got out of the hospital. It isn’t unlike him, but…”

“Finish your sentence,” Bree insisted.

“He usually checks in by now, and he hasn’t. My parents are worried sick. So am I to be honest.”

“Why would he leave? Doesn’t he care how Blythe is? For Christ’s sake, it’s his fault she’s here at all.”

Blythe winced at that. It had been an accident. It wasn’t Tucker’s fault. She almost interjected her opinion, but wanted to hear what Jace had to say, if he continued.

“That’s why he’s gone. It’s the second time this has happened.”

“Come with me,” said Bree, in her authoritative tone. Blythe wanted to stop them, so she could hear the rest, but something told her it was a story she didn’t want to hear. Instead she closed her eyes, and went back to sleep.

***

Blythe was going home in a couple of days. She’d be back in a week for surgery on her arm. Not long after, they’d operate on her leg. It had been explained to her more than once, but she was too groggy from the pain meds to understand much of what they were telling her.

***

Blythe went to her parents’ house. She felt bad about not being able to move into the house in Palmer Lake with Lyric, but until she got through the remaining surgeries, her parents thought it was best that she stay with them.

It was nice that Bree was at the house. Her parents pushed her to do physical therapy, which she hated. When Bree was with her, she’d let her slack off. Bree would spend the hour talking instead of making her do her exercises.

“You have to have surgery anyway,” she’d say. “You can do the physical therapy after that.”

Blythe agreed. What was the sense when she’d only have to start all over again after they put the new pins or rods or whatever other bionics they were going to put in her.

Renie visited, but she didn’t bring Willow with her. She was afraid the little girl would do something to hurt Blythe.

“You could stay longer if you brought her. As it is, you have to leave after an hour because you have to get back to her.”

“I’ll bring her next time,” Renie would say, but she never did.

Lyric, who had settled into the house in Palmer Lake by herself, came to see Blythe almost every day. She was able to do some RodeoChat work, until either the pain got so bad that she couldn’t concentrate anymore, or she’d take something for it that made her groggy.

Jace came to see her almost every day too. She never asked him about Tucker. She had no idea what he wanted to talk to her about before the accident, but it didn’t matter now. As he had before, he left. From what she could tell, no one had heard from him, no one knew where he was. She didn’t blame him for the accident, but it hurt that he didn’t seem to care whether she was okay or not.

“How about a movie today, maybe get some lunch afterwards?”

Jace tried to get her to go out, get some fresh air, but she didn’t feel up to it. Until her leg healed more, she had to use a wheelchair to get around. The cast on her arm went all the way from her shoulder to her wrist. It was uncomfortable, and it made her miserable.

It didn’t seem to matter to Jace. He took her bad moods in stride, which only made her irritated with him.

“Listen, you don’t have to come and see me. I’m fine. Aren’t you supposed to be out chasing girls on the rodeo circuit or something?”

When he laughed, it made her want to punch him.

“Billy and I will be headin’ out soon enough, and we’ll be chasin’ eight seconds more than girls darlin’.”

“Billy maybe. But you can’t convince me you aren’t gonna be hooking up with a buckle bunny or two.”

“You been talkin’ to Lyric or somethin’?”

As a matter of fact she had. And it was Lyric who asked her why Jace was hanging around so much.

“You two together again?”

No, they weren’t together. How could Lyric even ask her that? She’d had sex with Tucker for God’s sake. And honestly, being around Jace was becoming harder and harder. Looking at him, she thought about Tucker, they were twins after all. Whenever she thought about him, she got angry. And when she did, she couldn’t help but take it out on Jace. The meaner she got, the nicer he was to her. When he left, he’d kiss her forehead, or her cheek. It drove her crazy.

“I don’t want you to visit me anymore,” she told him, at least every few days.

It never stopped him. He might take a day or two off, but then he’d be back, as though nothing had been said between them.

Blythe asked her mother to put a call into her doctor. The medicine she was taking was making her nauseous, and she wanted to see if he could switch her to something else. Instead of calling in a different prescription, he asked Paige to bring her into the office.

“How complicated does he have to make it?” she asked her mother. “Has he ever been in a damn wheelchair? Does he have any idea how hard it is for me to come into his office? Why couldn’t he call something in?”

“I don’t know baby,” Paige was trying to be patient with the increasingly irritable Blythe.

When the doctor asked her to pee in a cup, Paige was sure Blythe would take his head off.

“Is he kidding?” she asked after he left the examination room. “How in the hell am I supposed to do that?” She pointed to her right arm, the one in the cast, and then at her leg. “Somehow I’m supposed to be able to hold a cup and pee in it?”

“I think you’ll need help,” her mother said, trying to be gentle.

“Argh! I spent the first two weeks having to have someone help me every time I had to use the bathroom. I’m tired of it. Forget it. Let’s go. I’ll take Tylenol.”

Paige wouldn’t budge and made Blythe give the doctor a urine sample. “You’ll get through this.”

Blythe wished she’d asked Bree to come with her rather than her mother. Bree was easier on her. Blythe might’ve even been able to talk Bree into giving the sample for her, so she didn’t have to.

They’d been waiting over a half hour when the doctor finally came back in. Blythe started to say something, but stopped when mother put her hand on Blythe’s good shoulder and squeezed.

He sat down on the stool and wheeled closer to her.

“Blythe, there’s something we need to talk about, and it’s fairly serious.”