Cowboy Desires: The Complete Collection (11 page)

I also wasn’t ready to fall right back into his arms out of pity. He would need my help recovering, and I would be there, but I wasn’t going to agree to be his wife. He might be down for the count, but he was still the man who had loved and left me.

I got home within 10 minutes and made my way inside. It was well after midnight and I was completely exhausted. I went straight to my room, stripped down, and crawled in bed.

I ended up sleeping much later as usual. My phone was ringing loudly across the room. I tried to block it out, but it kept ringing over and over. I crawled out of bed and pulled it off my dresser. There were five missed calls from a number I didn’t recognize. There were also texts from Austin and Erin. Erin just wanted to know how Mason was and if I needed her to do anything. Austin’s was a little deeper.

I’m sorry if I was a little cold to you when I dropped you off. Just killed me to see you go running to him so fast after what we had just shared. As much as I can’t stand the guy, I hope he’s okay. If you need me, I’m here. I’m falling faster every day.

How did that man manage to still be so sweet after all I had already put him through? In all other circumstances, he would’ve been a keeper. But our situation was so complicated that it wasn’t that simple. I sent him a quick text back to let him know that Mason was in rough shape but out of the woods, and I told him that I felt the same way. Just as the text went through, the phone rang again from the unfamiliar number.

“Hello?”

“Good morning, beautiful. Sleeping in, huh?”

It was Mason calling from the hospital.

“Yeah, I had kind of a long night. You should know. I wondered who was calling me from this number.”

He sounded a lot better than he had the night before, and I was relieved.

“Hey, my night was long, too. But they have me on some amazing drugs that make the world seem all warm and fuzzy. The only thing that would make it better is to see you.”

“I told you I’ll be there. I have to take a shower and get some food in me.”

“You shouldn’t get someone in my state all excited by talking about showers. Maybe they’ll let you give me a sponge bath.”

“Settle down there, babe. I don’t want the nurses running in there from a crazy change on your heart monitor!”

He laughed on the other end, and then he went into a coughing fit that I knew must have hurt like crazy.

“All right, I’m gonna let you rest. I’ll be down in a little while.”

“Hurry, baby. I need to see you. Please.”

I promised him again that I would be there, and then I hung up.

I went in and got into a nice, hot shower. It was already warm outside again, but I needed to feel the scalding water and let it soothe my aching muscles. I felt like I could sleep for days. When I was done, I put on a sundress and some flip flops, and then pulled my hair into high ponytail.

I made myself two waffles with strawberries and had a big glass of orange juice. I looked through some e-mail from work and let my boss know that I needed to take the day off from writing because of what happened to Mason. Luckily, I had already met my quota for the week. I did a load of laundry and washed the dishes, and then I vacuumed the whole downstairs. Cleaning was therapeutic for me, so it helped me clear my head. I was willing to try anything to take my mind off of my crazy life at this point.

When I felt satisfied with the state of my house and my status at work, I locked up and got into the car. I headed to the drug store to get Mason some of his favorite red sports drink and some magazines about cars and a
Maxim
for some eye candy. I also grabbed some stuff for myself, in case I decided to stay at the hospital for a while.

Since the hospital was so close, I was there in less than five minutes. I parked in the visitor’s lot, and left my windows open just a crack so it wouldn’t get too unbearable in there. I went in and rode the elevator to the third floor where Mason’s room was located. When I reached his door, the doctor was in there checking him over. I stood in the doorway and listened.

“Well, you are very lucky this wasn’t much worse. I am ordering another scan to be sure there is no new swelling around your brain. You will be given breathing treatments every few hours to help with your lung. I am ordering a constant flow of pain medication to keep you comfortable. I want you in bed for at least another day. Then the nurses will start getting you out of bed to get your lungs working a little bit.”

“Sounds good, Doc. I like what you have me on so far. And I know I’m lucky. I have something, or should I say someone, to live for. She’d the most beautiful girl in the world. I broke her heart once, but I’m gonna get her back this time. This was my wake up call. If she wasn’t letting me in, I don’t know if I would have fought so hard to stay with you, and stay alive, last night.”

My heart was in my throat when he said that. He was confessing his great love for me to the doctor, and he had no idea that I was there to hear it. He really did love me that much! In that moment, I was ready to forget the past and be with him. My heart melted.

“Well, I’m glad to hear you’re not alone. Don’t forget that you’re not out of the woods yet. You need to take it slow and give your body time to rest and recover. If you push too hard, you could take a turn for the worse.”

“I promise to take it slow. I just want to be here to see her every day. To give her everything she wants. To marry her and start a family.”

“Okay, I’m not sure if that’s you or the pain meds talking, but keep that positive attitude up! I’ll be back later today to check on you again. Get some rest.”

The doctor went to exit Mason’s room, and I stepped back so he wouldn’t know I had been listening. I waited a couple of minutes before walking into the room.

“Baby, you’re finally here!”

“Hey, handsome. How are you feeling? You still look rough, but definitely better than last night.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment, I think. Come over here and sit by me. I need you close.”

He patted the spot on the edge of his bed, and I set down my bags on the side table and sat down. He grabbed my hand and held it in his own. It felt so natural. Our hands had always felt like a perfect fit.

“So how are you feeling? Honestly?”

“Honestly? My head hurts like hell. My vision is a little blurry. And I feel like I got hit by a truck. But thanks to these amazing drugs, I also kind of feel like I’m floating.”

“Floating, huh? Maybe they gave you a little bit too much. I need to talk to your doctor.”

“Oh no. I’m just fine. I’m actually a little bit afraid to feel the pain I felt when I crashed last night. I thought it was over for me, baby. I thought I was going to be with our little girl.”

My breath caught when he said that, and my eyes welled up with tears.

“Please don’t say that, Mason. I can’t even bear that thought. You’re here now, and that’s all that matters.”

I held his hand a little bit tighter when I spoke those words with him. I didn’t even want to discuss what the alternative was last night. I just wanted to hold his hand and be with him, shutting the rest of the world out. In that moment, Austin wasn’t even on my mind. I needed to get this man who had my heart for so long better. Even if we didn’t get our happily ever after, I wanted him to live a full, happy life.

“You would have been just fine without me, pretty girl. Look how great you are now, and I haven’t been here for over a year.”

“I survived because I had to. If you had come back six months ago, you would have seen a different person. I was in a terrible place. I stayed in the house and cried myself to sleep every night. No one knew my secret, so I had no one to talk to. I worked during the day, and it was a struggle to come up with happy stories just to keep my job. It ended up being my escape, though. I lost myself in that world, and then when I was done, I would go right back into my black cloud and hide.”

“I guess I had myself fooled thinking that you would bounce back better than I did. I knew you were strong and convinced myself that you would be better off without me. I could live with the pain and the struggle if I knew that you were happy and moving on. Then one day, I realized I was wrong and couldn’t live without seeing you again. Even if you told me you hated me. Even if I came back and found you engaged to someone else. I had to look into your eyes again and remember what it felt like to be in love.”

At this point, I was really crying. All of the pain came flooding back again. It must have been the drugs that were making him pour his heart out to me like this. His eyes were filled with tears too, and I knew the pain medication was like alcohol in the fact that it was a truth serum. He wasn’t able to hold back anymore. I got as close as I could to him without pulling any tubes or lines out and held him in my arms.

“Baby, I understand. Unfortunately, we dealt with our pain in exactly the wrong ways. You should have never left. I should have tried to find you. I should have told my sister about the baby. I should have gotten help sooner. You should have come back sooner. But we can’t change the decisions we made now. We just have to go forward and let things take a natural course. If we are supposed to be together and have a second chance at a family, then it will happen. I still love you. I never stopped. I don’t think I ever will. But we both have a lot more healing to do. My physical wounds have healed, but yours have just started. Two broken people can’t make a family.”

“I agree with most of that. Except for the fact that I believe we can heal together. The only thing that will make me better is you. Please promise you won’t give up on me yet, baby. Please promise me.”

He was sobbing, and I realized I should have stopped him from talking about this right now. His body couldn’t take the stress. As I was trying to calm him down, a couple of nurses came rushing in. The alarm on his breathing machine was going off and his heart monitor was going crazy.

They asked me to get off the bed while they checked him over. One of the nurses shot some medicine into his IV, and within minutes he was calm. It wasn’t long before he fell asleep, and the nurses told me to leave so he could get some rest. I felt awful. I let them know that I had brought him a bag full of stuff before heading to the elevator feeling even worse than when I got there.

I got in my car and went for a drive. I drove past all of the places that meant something to my relationship with Mason. There was the bar where our flirtation began. The tree out back where we made out for the first time. The little Italian restaurant where we had our first real date. The drug store where I bought the three pregnancy tests that all came out positive. It all still looked exactly the same, and only the walls and scenery held the secrets of what we had shared. Our happiness was locked away in the whispers of those places.

I thought maybe if I went back to all of them, some of that joy would find its way back into my soul. Unfortunately, the only thing that happened was it made me even sadder. I knew I needed to make a decision soon, but I had no idea how I was going to do that. If I ended things with Mason now, he might never fully recover. But if I said goodbye to Austin, then I worried that I would always wonder if he was the right one for me. I was afraid to fall back into a trap with Mason and end up with a heart so broken that it was beyond repair.

With a head full of more questions than I had before, I went to the store to get some groceries then headed home. When I got back to my place, a familiar truck was parked out front.

“Hey, pretty girl. Let me get those for you.”

It was Austin. He unloaded all of my groceries from the car and waited while I unlocked the door to let us both in.

“Thanks. I wasn’t looking forward to carrying those inside in this heat. I’m already a sweaty mess.”

There was an awkward feeling in the air, and I knew it was because the last time we were together, I left him to go be with my injured ex. I felt guilty, but I also knew it was the right thing to do.

A new feeling of guilt began to settle over me as I stood here getting butterflies in my stomach over Austin. I should be worried about Mason and caring for Mason, not standing here looking at Austin like he was the most gorgeous thing I had ever seen.

How did someone like me get into this mess? I wasn’t the most beautiful or perfect woman. I had curves, too many if you asked me. I dressed plain. I wasn’t a millionaire. I wrote porn for a living, for God’s sake. Yet here I was with two men that most women would love to have, both of them wanting to be with me and me only. And not just for now. Both of them wanted me to be part of their futures.

“I think you look beautiful. How is everything today?”

“Everything is fine. Could be better. Could be worse.”

I knew this was his way of asking about Mason without actually having to say his name. I guessed that, even though he was in an accident, Austin would never forgive him for being such an ass to me. He was the kind of guy that believed a man only got one chance to make a woman happy. And he didn’t even know about the baby. I was afraid to tell him.

“Well, I just wanted to see you. To let you know that I’m still here. That I’m willing to wait for you. Even though it kills me to see you with him, I know you are worth it. I also want you to know that I’m here to support you. I can listen if you need to get something off your chest. The only thing I ask is that you be honest with me.”