I woke up to pain,voices, and Dylan Degan holding my hand.
For a second, I thought I was still in the desert.
There was heat behind my eyes. Smoke in my throat. Dirt under my tongue. A roaring sound somewhere far away that might have been fire or engines or my own blood trying to escape my body.
Then I blinked.
Ceiling.
Wood beams.
Dim yellow light.
The upstairs room at the clubhouse.
Doc’s room.
Not officially. Officially, it was a guest room with a bed, a dresser, and an old painting of a desert sunset that had been hanging crooked for as long as I could remember. Unofficially, it was where men went when they came home bleeding and couldn’t go to a hospital. I’d brought towels up here before. Ice. Coffee. Once, a bowl of soup Regan had bullied a prospect into making because the man on the bed had taken two bullets and still tried to claim he wasn’t hungry.
I never thought I’d be the one in the bed.
Something tugged at my arm.
I looked down.
An IV ran into my vein, clear fluid dripping slow and steady from a bag hung on a hook that had definitely not been designed for medical care. My left hand was wrapped. My shoulder burned. My ribs hurt when I breathed too deep, which apparently my body considered an unnecessary luxury. One side of my face felt stiff, like dried blood had pulled the skin too tight.
Everything hurt.
But Dylan’s hand was around mine.
Warm.
Callused.
Careful.
That was what made my throat close.
Not the pain. Not the IV. Not the fact that I was probably in enough trouble to make the entire state of New Mexico point and laugh.
His hand.
Because the last clear thing I remembered was the desert, stars wheeling above me, sirens coming closer, and the certainty that I had ruined everything.
Then him.
His voice.
His arms.
You bled first.
Guess that makes us even.
My eyes shifted.
He sat beside the bed in a chair pulled too close, elbows on his knees, one hand around mine and the other resting near his thigh like he hadn’t decided whether he was allowed to touch me and had compromised by refusing to let go. His black hair was messy from wind and hands dragging through it. Dirt streaked his jaw. There was blood on his shirt.
