“Em?” I called her name and moved to follow her but stilled when Cy put his hand on my shoulder and handed me the phone.

There in black and white were the words:

-Send her home. I don’t want her here.

I couldn’t stop the protective growl that escaped me. Sutton had saved her, but just as quickly, I knew he had destroyed her. I knew he was grumpy and sullen, but I had no clue he could be cruel, especially so close to death.

“How could he tell her that?” I mean, he had been unconscious the last few days so there was no way he could know that she hadn’t left his side, but he had to know that she was going to want to tell him thank you for taking a bullet for her.

Cy put his arm across my shoulder and pulled me in tight for a hug. “Right now, I’m just happy that he’s awake and can communicate at all. I promise to kick his ass later for being an ass to your girl. But for right now, let’s be happy he’s working toward being okay.”

I gritted my teeth together and fought reminding him right now was all we had, and right now, his brother had gone from hero to villain in the span of a second. Em was already sinking and Sutton’s dismissal had added extra weight to the load she was already carrying. I wasn’t going to let her go down any deeper. That wasn’t happening on my watch.

No Such Luck

After Sutton sent Emrys away so callously, and she was no longer visible in the hallway, he settled down and the doctors stopped swarming around him. He drifted in and out of consciousness for the next few hours, but his heart rate stabilized, and they planned to take him in for surgery first thing in the morning. I was going back to check on Em when she surprised me by meeting me outside of her room dressed in street clothes, her hair brushed and pulled back in a braid.

Her eyes still looked empty and listless, but there was a determined tilt to her chin that was familiar and a welcome sight. “I want to go home, Leo.”

I nodded at her and gulped as I looked over my shoulder to where Cy and Lane were still huddled together outside of Sutton’s room. “Okay, Em. We’ll go home.” The words wrenched out of me, because as much as I wanted to help her any way I could, going home meant leaving Cy. “You have to give me until tomorrow. There is no way we can fly out of here tonight, but if you give me some time, I promise I will have you in your own bed by tomorrow night.”

She gave a little nod and her dark eyebrows twitched upwards. “You’re coming with me, right?”

I swallowed again and squeezed my eyes shut. My heart hurt. “Yeah, Em, I’m going with you. I’ll be right next to you, for as long as you need me.”

“Thanks, Leo.”

I didn’t really think I had a choice in the matter, even though it felt like my soul was being ripped in two. “Let me talk to the boys. They have rooms at a hotel close by. We can crash tonight and I’ll work something out. I still have to talk to the DEA and make a statement as well.” It was going to be a long night and that didn’t include figuring out a way to say goodbye to Cy. My head ached thinking about all of it, and the inside of my chest burned knowing this might be the last time I laid eyes on the not quite cowboys.

I made my way over to the brothers, and without me having to say a word, Cy stiffened and crossed his arms over his broad chest. “You’re leaving, aren’t you?”

I bit down on my lip and nodded slowly. “Em wants to go home, Cy. I have to take her.”

His heavy eyebrows snapped down over his eyes and the storm rolled deep and dark in the gray depths. “I’ll give you the key card to my room.” His chest rose and fell, but it was like a black cloud had moved into the hallway with us and was waiting to drop a torrent of freezing rain on all the heat and warmth that moved between us. “You better find a way to come tell me goodbye, Leo.”

My teeth dug into my lip so hard that I tasted blood. I hurt everywhere. “I will.” The words were broken and ugly because I didn’t want to have to tell him goodbye, even though I knew that was what was waiting for us all along. “I have to get Em settled, book flights home, and talk to Wyatt and Grady still. I’ll come find you, Cy. I won’t disappear on you, I promise.”

The assurances didn’t make either one of us feel better and I could feel his eyes bore into me as he watched me walk away from him.

The hotel was literally right next to the hospital, so hustling Em into Cy’s room took no time at all. Tracking down a reliable Wi-Fi signal so I could search for flights took a little bit longer, and so did dragging myself out of the room that smelled like Cy and had his things in it. Jeans tossed across the end of the bed, a shirt thrown carelessly next to the sink, and not surprisingly, a plethora of dude stuff for his hair that Lane must have brought in with him when he came from the ranch. It made me smile that the man would worry about his hair but couldn’t give two shits about his cell phone. I wanted to linger. I wanted to take in everything that was him and pretend like I would still be able to smell him and feel him in the air around me once I was home. It was a lie that I couldn’t even slightly sell myself, so I grabbed his discarded T-shirt, the Jack Daniel’s one from our first meeting, and buried my nose in it. I hoped it wasn’t his favorite because I was taking it with me when I left in the morning, and nothing was going to stop me from stealing a tangible memory of the man who had forced me to be the woman I was always supposed to be.

Em was resting, or at least she had her eyes closed and was lying still as stone after I told her our first flight out was at ten in the morning. We had to fly from Billings to Denver and then sit at DIA for a couple of hours before our connection left from there. She nodded at me, but I wasn’t sure the words were sinking in. She looked bad before Sutton sent her away, now she looked hollowed out and drained. It was hard to find any kind of life in her, even if her defiance and hurt was right at the forefront of the emotional wall she was building to protect herself. Once I was sure she was settled, well when I was sure she was still breathing and not drowning in her own tears and suffocating on silent sobs, I found the room number that Cy mentioned the DEA guys were in and knocked on the door.