Oh, sweet Jesus, please.
No more.
No more.
His belly jerked as his eyes rolled. Coke couldn’t fucking breathe, couldn’t…
He remembered the bull coming at that little rider, the scream of the kid’s momma and he remembered knowing… Knowing without a shadow of a doubt that there wasn’t a bit of good coming out of this. That was steel chute behind him, steel gate beside him, a scared sixteen-year-old kid from Wyoming scrambling under his feet, and that piss-yellow bull bearing down on him like the rapture.
He didn’t remember nothing else.
Nothing.
“Coke? Man, can you hear me?” Nate’s voice slid over his nerves like a balm, one hand landing on the center of his chest, bracing him. “Relax, Hoss. Relax. I got you. You’re in the hospital, buddy. You got fucked up.”
He tried to ask how bad, but his throat felt like a bunch of horror movie leprechauns had been at him with sandpaper. He’d never liked those creepy little green guys.
Never.
There was something unnatural about the idea of gold-hoarding, green-wearing midgets with weird accents and stupid hats.
“It’s bad. They had to fuse C3 and C4 and wire your damn collarbone again. I told them to get you a fake one, but they wouldn’t listen. They fixed your hand, too. Surged on them little bones.” Nate’s face appeared above him, eyes a little like an unbroke horse, mouth just moving and moving. “You scared the fuck out of me, Hoss.”
“Yeah.” He almost asked over Dillon, then he remembered that he might not have the right to, no more. He didn’t know for sure, and it looked like maybe it’d be a couple three days before he could manage to find out.
“You’ll be out a few weeks, but you’ll be back working for the Finals, so it’ll be okay.” He got a quick, shit-eating grin. “You and Coop, man, always trying to make my life difficult.”
He tried to nod, then he went stiff with a wave of pain that had his legs slamming on the mattress, just pounding, and Nate groaned. “No. No, Hoss. Don’t. Nurse! Nurse, motherfuck! You get in here!”
God, yes. Get in here, because he was tired of this shit already.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“I’m sorry, sir. The fastest itinerary to Great Falls will take at least fifteen hours from DFW.”
Dillon sat back on the damned bed in the hotel room that was starting to seem like a prison. Oh, he’d tried to get up and go Tuesday night, but David had called Ace, all right, and Ace had mounted up from his ranch just south of Fort Worth and come riding up to give him what for.
He was under contract, Ace said. He needed to rest and heal, Ace said. He had to work again in just about a week and a half, and no one could do what he had to do without letting a dislocated shoulder heal.
There were even veiled threats about getting his ass fired if he didn’t calm down and do what was best for the league and all…
Dillon had looked Ace right in the eye and told the man where to fucking go. He needed to go to Coke.
Of course, by the time the fight was over, it was nearly three in the morning, and he couldn’t really walk anymore because Jonesy had snuck in with David and poked his ass with a needle.
Jonesy was so not his friend anymore.
Well, he was, but Dillon had a few choice words for him. Lurking around down on the next floor, waiting to see what Dillon would do instead of going home like a sane med tech would.
“There’s no way you can get me there sooner?” He chewed his thumbnail, wincing as his bad arm protested. Doc had said something about all the tension from him fretting, fretting of all things, was aggravating the strain.
“I can put you on stand-by, but you really ought to be at the airport before I do.”
“Okay. I’ll take the itinerary, and I’ll come sit at the airport. Here’s my card number.” It was Thursday. Fifteen hours meant he wouldn’t make it until Friday. That was five days. Five days since Coke had left, five days his bullfighter had been thinking Dillon was cheating on him, if Coke was thinking about him at all.
No one was answering Coke’s phone, Nate wouldn’t take his calls, and Jason wouldn’t talk to him. If it hadn’t been for Ace, asshole that he was, Dillon wouldn’t even know that Coke had broken his neck.
Broken his fucking neck. He’d been off his game, Nate had told Ace.
