“But it would’ve been nice if someone had come by to visit, you know? Just for a minute. I would expect a no-show from my family if I wasn’t on death’s door. But I guess I’d just thought of the people in Garnet Bend and Resting Warrior Ranch as being my family sort of.” I tried to smile, but it pulled at the split in my lip and I stopped. “It’s fine. I’m being ridiculous.”
“You’re not being ridiculous.”
“That’s debatable.”
Something crossed his face. It wasn’t disagreement. It was something I couldn’t quite read, there and then gone, replaced by a steadiness that felt deliberate.
“The people in this town care about you, Lark. You know that. You’ve seen it. You don’t have to worry about that.”
“Yeah, right. I know. I blame the IV. They’re obviously giving me the crazy drugs.”
He squeezed my hand and let the conversation go, and I felt stupid for having brought it up. People had more important things to do than sit in a hospital room with a woman who was mostly fine and a self-pity streak she was ashamed of.
I watched the parking lot through the window for a while, and then I couldn’t watch it anymore.
“I want to go home. Today. I know the doctors said tomorrow, but I want to go today.”
Logan’s hand stilled on mine.
“I need to see it, Logan. I need to stand on my property and look at whatever is left and start figuring out what comes next. I can’t do that from this bed.”
“You have a concussion. Your ribs?—”
“My ribs will hurt just as much tomorrow as they do today. One more night in this bed is not going to change anything except make me lose my mind.”
He was quiet. I could see him weighing it, and the fact that he was weighing it at all sent a flare of heat through my chest.
“We said no more of this,” I said. “No more deciding for each other. You promised me that.”
“I’m not deciding for you. I’m asking you to consider staying one more night.”
“And I’ve considered it. I want to go home.”
He looked at me for a long moment. Something moved behind his eyes, and it wasn’t the look of a man who’d lost an argument. It was something else, something closer to regret than defeat. He took a breath, let it go, and nodded.
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yeah. Let me go talk to the nurses and get the paperwork started. I’ll bring the truck around.”
He stood, leaned down, and kissed my forehead. His lips were warm and careful against the bruise at my temple, and he held there for a second longer than he needed to.
The road from the hospital to Pawsitive was the longest twenty minutes of my life. I tried to prepare myself for what I would see. I didn’t want to get blindsided by the charred ruins of the barn. I knew it would be hard to see.
I knew it would be an ugly reminder that I might still lose Pawsitive. That I might still have to call my parents and beg for money.
Logan drove with one hand on the wheel. I stared through the windshield and braced myself for blackened ground, empty paddocks, and the skeleton of a building that had held every animal I’d given five years of my life to protect.
He reached across the console and laced his fingers through mine. I looked at our joined hands. This. This was what I needed to be focusing on. That I wasn’t in this alone. Still, I knew what faced me in a few minutes was going to be the toughest thing I’d ever been through.
We rounded the bend toward Pawsitive, and I saw it. I blinked, afraid I was having some sort of hallucination.
It was abarn.
A new barn stood where the old one had burned, framed and walled and nearly roofed, raw lumber bright against the hillside. The siding was going up on the south face, and the roof was half-shingled.
There were people everywhere.
