And when I turn the corner and walk through his door, panic claws at my chest. The bed is empty. Not just empty—everything is gone, sheets stripped, monitors wheeled away.
I freeze. The coffee burns my fingers, but I can’t let go.
I step back into the hallway, searching for a face I know. Anything to give me clarity. No one tells you how long hospital hallways are until you’re walking one with no answers.
I find myself at the nurses station, tears welling in my eyes. Two women stand close, talking low behind the computer screens that haven’t noticed me yet.
“Yeah… he didn’t make it,” one of them says.
The other winces, her voice tight. “God. Such a shame. He was a bull rider too, right?”
I drop the coffee.
It spills everywhere, liquid soaking the white tile. Brown seeps into the cracks like blood, blooming fast and wide.
I’m on my knees before I even know I’ve fallen. The tile is ice beneath me. My jeans are soaked. My hands won’t stop shaking.
They’re talking about Trouble.
They have to be.
My chest caves in. I can’t breathe. I can’t blink. I can’t think past the pounding in my ears.
I don’t know if I’m screaming.
Or if that’s just the sound a heart makes when it tears in two.
thirty-five
Sawyer
To know love, you have to love a man like Trouble.
A man who’s too wild, too broken, too dangerous to want.
The kind you’re not supposed to fall for, the one every warning sign screams to run from.
But you don’t. You fall anyway. Because every inch of you—your heart, your body, your soul—is telling you that he’s the one. That nothing else matters but being with him.
And when you fight against every odd, every heartbreak, every obstacle that tries to pull you apart, that’s when the love becomes real. Not perfect, not easy—but yours.
Even if it means losing him. Even if it means losing yourself along the way.
I can’t move, I just stare down at the spilled coffee, dark and messy on the floor—like everything inside me. And a hand lands gently between my shoulder blades.
“Sawyer,” a voice says—I can barely make out the words but it’s familiar. It’s Charming. “He’s okay. Come with me, sweetheart. He’s askin’ for you.”
My head jerks up as he helps me to my feet. The room’s spinning, my hands still trembling. “But… the nurses said he didn’t make it. They said a bull rider?—”
Charming nods, one hand on my elbow. “Yeah. One of the Kennedys’ ranch hands. Not him.”
I stare at him.
“They moved him to a new room a little while ago. He woke up asking for you.”
For a second, I don’t move. Can’t move.
Everything inside me just broke open—and now it’s all flooding back, crashing hard against the sudden truth. My knees are wet. My chest aches like it’s still unraveling. But he's alive.
