I nodded and stepped around him to climb into the back of the ambulance. None of the first responders tried to argue with me as I took a seat on one of the narrow benches and picked up the limp hand that was closest to me. Her doe eyes flicked open and locked on mine as the guys rushed around her and tried to get an IV line in her arm.

Her droopy gaze drifted over me and landed on the point where her hand was trapped in mine. Scarlet red coated our fingers and stained the backs of our hands. Her eyebrows pinched together and her mouth pulled into a little pout that I wanted to kiss.

“You’re bleeding.” Her voice was ragged and I could tell every word was a struggle to get out.

I looked down at our joined hands and couldn’t stop the dry bark of laughter that escaped my chest. The wound from my shoulder and the gash across my arm were indeed leaking drops of blood onto the back of her hand where I was holding it. The minute I knew she was okay I forgot all about my own injuries. “You were just pulled from one of the worst accidents these guys have seen and you’re worried about me?” I sighed and lifted her hand to my lips so that I could put a kiss on the back of it. “It’s my turn to take care of you, pretty girl. You’ve done all you can do for me, now it’s up to me to show you that I was worth every sacrifice you made to make me see that love wasn’t something to run from. I don’t want to be a coward. I want to be the man that’s brave enough to love a woman like you.”

Her eyes blinked rapidly and I could see moisture gather behind her lashes. They put an oxygen mask over her mouth, so she couldn’t respond, but I didn’t need her to tell me what she was feeling, she’d been giving it to me from the start without a single word spoken. She never had to tell me she loved me because everything she’d done since agreeing to get on the back of my bike showed me she did. She loved because her heart was strong and she was the bravest person I had ever met. They said that love was war and if that was the case Dixie was winning and well on her way to being undefeated.

Dixie

I was in the hospital for a little over a week. My shoulder and the damaged muscle and tendons underneath were in bad shape and needed surgery, but all the doctors and surgeons I saw were cautiously optimistic that I would regain full range of motion once it healed and I did some physical therapy to regain strength. Surprisingly it was my sprained ankle that proved to be the biggest hindrance. It was swollen and bruised a grotesque shade of blackish green. I couldn’t put any weight on it and there was no balancing myself with one of my arms out of commission and strapped across my chest in a sling. The stupid thing screamed at me whenever I tried to move it, so I spent a week immobile and antsy as Church barely left my side complete with a matching sling that he promptly discarded as soon as his own wound started to feel better. He acted like catching a bullet was no big deal, which I found totally aggravating. He kept saying that the gun was a small-caliber weapon, so the shot to his shoulder was far less involved compared with the way mine was mangled. Like that was supposed to make the situation better. Begrudgingly I told him I thought it was cute that we were going to have matching scars.

I wasn’t used to being the one that was fussed over, so it took some getting used to. I didn’t want to be a bother but eventually it was obvious I was limited in what I could do for myself, so I settled in and let everyone around me fret and fuss. Church and I didn’t talk about the future, the fact that he admitted that we were going to have one was enough for me. He wasn’t running away from me and the way I loved him anymore, in fact he was sprinting towards it and chasing me with his own chaotic, wild kind of affection. Frankly I thought our story was going to kick my parents’ story’s ass!

Currently his booted feet were propped up on the edge of the hospital bed and he was scrolling through something on my phone. He’s been tasked with explaining to my family why I was a leading story on the national news and with convincing half of Denver to stay put until I was up to seeing visitors, so he’d had my cell in hand pretty much twenty-four/seven since I got out of surgery. I was getting my walking papers in an hour and I couldn’t wait to get out of the hospital and back to some semblance of reality.

My parents had arrived the day after the crash and were currently staying with Elma Mae. They hovered but quickly realized Church wasn’t leaving my side and had spent most of their time in Mississippi falling in love with Lowry and Church’s family the same way I had. I was going back to Denver with them at the end of the week.

I still had an entire life in Colorado I needed to situate before Church and I could make some decisions about what was next for us. I missed my dog, and I didn’t want to push Church when I finally had him where I so desperately wanted him to be. He loved me. He wanted me. He needed me but I didn’t know if he was planning on doing all of that here or if he was going to come back to the Mile High. I couldn’t imagine him leaving his family when he’d spent so long hiding from them, but he hadn’t said anything one way or the other.

I nudged his boot with my good foot until he looked up at me. “What are you doing on my phone?” There was nothing incriminating on the thing unless he’d managed to get onto Pinterest and found my wedding boards, that might be embarrassing but he had to know that’s where all of this was heading for me regardless of what state we called home.

“I’m looking through that dating app.” He looked up from my phone and lifted his eyebrows at me. “I’m reading all the things you filled in to find your perfect guy.”