Instead of answering or even acknowledging him, she took the baby expertly and started rocking him, almost like it was second nature for her to do it.
I knew from Marcus that Santana was spending a few nights at Remy’s place to help him out with Toby and go through things with him, so he didn’t feel so overwhelmed, and I could get why she was so pissed about what he’d said.
By the time the guys had gotten me back to Marcus’s place, aside from the understandable stinging cuts and painful bruised areas, I didn’t feel half bad. That was until I tried sitting down on the couch and yelped when my weight went onto my sore butt cheek.
Of course, that just had to be the moment that Marcus walked through the door.
“Why did— Fucking hell, what happened?” He pushed past the other occupants of the room and dropped down onto his knees in front of me. “Are you okay? Has someone called an ambulance?”
“I’ve looked her over,” Kaylon told him, “and Corey’s on his way to see if she needs to go to the hospital.”
“If? Of course she needs to go,” Marcus snapped, his eyes searching over me like he was looking for a bullet wound. “How the shit did this happen to her?”
“I got run over by a horse,” I told him, suddenly finding the humor in it but biting down on the giggle that wanted to burst out of me at the absurdity of it all.
Marcus’s eyes narrowed on me. “Which horse?”
“It was Hayes,” Gus—the narc—told him. “He’s got a laceration on his flank we think was responsible for it.”
Hearing the horse’s name, the biggest horse on the ranch, Marcus’s eyes widened. “Holy shit. He could have killed you, Addy.”
Something about that statement niggled at me, and I met Santana’s eyes over his shoulder. If I were a paranoid person, I’d say maybe that’s what someone intended to happen. I mean, he came out of nowhere, he had a deep cut on him like someone had hurt him, and he was the largest and heaviest horse here. Then again, I also believed in coincidences, so maybe that was it?
Santana was obviously of the same mind because she looked over her shoulder and out of the window that faced the stables, then looked back at me and raised an eyebrow.
“I think we should take you to the ER and at least get you checked out.” Marcus sounded like he was begging me to do it, and I felt my shoulders slump because I just knew I was going to give in.
“Fine,” I sighed. “Maybe they can check and make sure I haven’t broken my butt cheek.”
Come to find out, I was just severely bruised all along one side of my body. However, the reason for the pain in my backside was a small, sharp stone that’d cut through my jeans and embedded itself in it. I may not have broken bones or any significant injuries, but I had the embarrassing experience of having a stone removed from my ass and three stitches placed in it.
Three stitches in my ass cheek.
I don’t know if it was done intentionally, but if I found out my accident wasn’t an accident, I was going to shove a stone in the person’s ass and then tie them to a trampoline while I jumped around on it, just so they could enjoy the experience.
Three days later…
Funny fact: injuries following accidents feel bad when they happen, but they felt worse for the following three days.
Thankfully, the people I was working with on the song were understanding about what’d happened, especially when they saw my bruised and grazed face on the screen during our Zoom call the day after it happened. I had another two days sick leave before I had to get back to it, and I’d just finished the first book Santana had ever written.
“I just don’t know how you do it,” I told her as we sat down for coffee, with Toby wide awake in her arms.
She’d become the unofficial nanny for him, but she still did her work on the ranch, too. Remy rarely left him alone, but it was only if Marcus or Santana was there to take him when he did. I was allowed to hold him or watch him if they went to the bathroom or made his bottle, but that was about it. He was the most controlling, anxious, and scared parent I’d ever met.
She’d just opened her mouth to say something when Remy came storming in, his eyes laser-focused on her and his son. He wasn’t meant to know what she got up to in her free time, so wisely, she just smiled at him while I guiltily hid my Kindle for some unknown reason.
Like he’d check what you were reading, Addy. Get a grip.