Montana Desire

Chapter 32

Cori

Movement. I was moving.

Why was I moving?

My eyes felt like I’d been walking out in the middle of the desert. They were so dry. Burning.

Slowly, I opened my eyes, and I saw something on my face. Plastic? What the hell was going on?

A siren sounded outside, and it clicked. I was in an ambulance.

The fire.

They’d left me in a fire.

I hadn’t expected to wake up at all, but here I was. Who was here?

Noah sat beside me, and a paramedic, but Grant wasn’t here. Where was Grant?

“Where is he?”

Noah’s head snapped up from his phone. “You’re awake. Hey. You’re going to be okay.”

“Where is he?” I asked again.

“We got your message, and they got there just in time. Right now, everyone not headed to the hospital is tracking down Pearson and his son. We’re going to get them. Charlie is going to meet us at the hospital, and you’ll have to make a statement.”

I pulled the mask down off my face, immediately noticing the difference the oxygen made. “Noah.” My voice was barely a croak. “Where is Grant?”

He was all that mattered to me right now, because I was fine and he wasn’t here. I wasn’t stupid. Even if I ripped his heart into shreds, he would still come for me. And he would be in this ambulance with me—wouldn’t let anyone else take his place—unless there was something wrong.

Noah looked hesitant, and my stomach flipped. “Please, just tell me he’s okay,” I begged.

“He’s alive,” Noah said. “They took him in the first ambulance because you were stable. It…doesn’t look good for his back. His legs weren’t working when they put him in the ambulance. He’ll be at the hospital by now, and they’re getting that surgeon here. Flying her in.”

“You can’t,” I said. “They’ll make her—”

“We know about her. It’s being dealt with. Believe me, Cori, we’re not going to let anything happen to him. I promise.”

My eyes were so dry that I didn’t feel like I could cry. But my chest ached all the same. He had to be okay. If I broke his heart, and then he…

I looked away.

“We’re here,” the paramedic said. “Hold on tight.”

They wheeled me in on the gurney, insisting that I keep the oxygen flowing. All I wanted to do was to see Grant.

Noah was with me the whole time.

“Can you find out where he is?” I asked. “As soon as they tell me I’m okay, I need to see him. I need to.”

“I’ll find out,” he said gently. “But Grant would also have my ass if I left you here alone.”

Jude walked into the room just then. “He’s upstairs. You can’t see him yet.”

“Please.”

There was understanding in his eyes, but no relenting. “Get checked out first, Cori. Grant isn’t going anywhere. Daniel is with him. And Lucas.”

I tried to push down the panic that was spiraling in my mind. The last thing I said to him couldn’t be me breaking up with him. Not when it was the last thing I wanted.

But Jude was right. Grant wasn’t going anywhere, and he would want me to get checked out. If he was awake, it would be the first thing he asked, because that’s who he was. It was the only thing that held me still through the examination and the chat with the doctor that told me what I already knew.

I’d been lucky. My burns were minor, and I suffered from smoke inhalation. Despite that, it looked like my lungs would make a full recovery. I had a concussion because of where they’d hit me, but there was nothing to do for that except to monitor it.

“While you’re here, please keep the oxygen mask on. We’d like you to rest for a few hours.”

“Can I see him?”

The doctor raised an eyebrow. “If you keep the oxygen with you, and you promise not to overdo it, you can go see him. But I’ll tell you now, he’s not conscious. They’ve already sedated him so that there’s no chance of him moving and making his injury worse.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “I just… I need to see him.”

She smiled. “Go ahead.”

I practically leaped off the bed. Jude had beaten me to the door, and I followed him. Noah was behind me. “Oh my God,” I said as I reached the elevator. “You’re my bodyguards.”

Jude nodded once. “Until we find them, you’re a witness they tried to kill. We’re not taking chances.”

That was a sobering thought.

I didn’t have to ask what room he was in—Daniel was standing outside the door, guarding Grant too. He held out his hands. “He’s not awake.”

“I know,” I said. “I know, but I still have to see him.”

“You broke up with him,” he said gently.

My head was shaking before he finished the sentence. “I didn’t want to.”

“He knows that. But I want to make sure before I let you in there…there’s a chance he doesn’t come out of this walking. And I won’t let you get his hopes up if you’re not okay with that.”

It was a fair question, but it still hurt. I didn’t doubt that it would take the guys at Resting Warrior a little while to trust me again. “I was always fine with that. I think that I’m more okay with it than he is.” I swallowed. “If you think that would matter to me, you don’t know me very well.”

“I figured,” he said with a smile. “Just trying to protect my team.”

“I know.”

He stepped aside, and I walked into the room. Grant was facedown on the bed, not moving. His back was exposed, showing his scars. If he were awake, I didn’t think he’d want that. Grant never wanted to be judged by them.

I brushed my fingers gently over his back. I remembered the first time I’d seen them so clearly. The way he’d reacted when I’d seen them.

There were new ones here, a red stripe that looked like a burn. Fresh. This was from the fire—from pulling me out.

I dragged the chair next to the bed, close to where Grant’s face was. He looked like he was asleep and not unconscious, ready to have a surgery that could change his life forever.

“Hi.” I reached out and ran my fingers through his hair. Gently. With his back in such precarious shape, I didn’t want to touch him too much. At the same time, I couldn’t stand not to touch him. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered.

“This isn’t what I wanted. And if you can’t forgive me for last night, then I understand. But I love you.”

My emotions were too close to the surface, and tears frosted my vision. I tried to hold them back. “I love you so much it hurts. I hoped that if they couldn’t touch you, they would back off. But—”

No more words could come out.

I laid my head down on the bed next to his head, where I could hear him breathing. Making sure that my movements didn’t shift at all, I laced my fingers through his. “I love you,” I managed to whisper. “Please don’t leave.”

The chances of him dying were slim, but they weren’t zero. After Joel and the fire, it was at the forefront of my mind. Grant had to stay, so that I could tell him the truth, no matter if I’d broken us completely or not.

Tears streaked down my face and soaked into the bed. “Please don’t leave.”

“Cori?”

Lena stood in the doorway. She was wearing her apron, and there was flour all over it and some on her face. I leaned forward, lowered my mask briefly, and kissed Grant. Maybe, even unconscious, he would feel it.

I barely made it out of the room before I couldn’t hold it in anymore. Lena pulled me into a hug, absorbing my sobs on her shoulder. My oxygen mask was fogging. “Hey,” she said. “You’re okay. And he’s going to be okay.”

“You don’t know that.”

“No,” she admitted. “But I believe that.”

Lena guided me over to some chairs across from the door to Grant’s room. Evelyn was already seated, and as I looked up, Grace and Harlan walked in. Everyone was here.

“Are you okay?” Lena asked.

“No.”

She laughed softly. “Obviously not. But physically? They pulled you out of a burning building.”

Lena shuddered, and Evelyn looked over at her. They both had had bad experiences with fire.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m fine. Minor burns. Smoke inhalation. Head got knocked around a little. I’ll be good as new. I just hope that he is.”

Grace crouched down in front of me. “Even if he’s not, he’ll be okay. He’ll have you. He’ll have all of us.”

“It’s not that. Being in a wheelchair is fine. There’s nothing wrong with it. But movement is Grant’s life. It would be…devastating.” I curled my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. “I could have become a surgeon,” I said. “My whole fucking family are surgeons, and they wanted me to be one too. Then maybe I could help him. Maybe I should still do that so I won’t fail anybody else. That would be worth the four years, right?”

I was just talking. The words were pouring out of me uncensored, but I couldn’t seem to stop.

“Cori, honey,” Grace said. “Even if you were a surgeon, you already know they wouldn’t let you operate on him. Can’t operate on a family member or significant other.”

“Yeah, but still…”

She nodded. “I know.”