Page 129 of Buck ’Em Cowgirl

I was unclean.

I was nothing.

The world blurred, tilted, and everything went black.

47

Beau

When I woke up, I hadn’t heard from her. Even after my dad wheeled me home, the silence continued. Despite my better judgment, and even with my dad staying in the guest room, the day I got home from the hospital, I had to see her.

I didn’t know why Fable never came, why she never texted or did anything after the accident. Dad said she fell apart in his arms, that she and Harleigh left after he gave them the hospital info, but when I woke up, it was him in the chair next to me.

Harleigh had called once. Told him Fable was home—processing. That stupid-ass word. Processing. What the fuck did that even mean? I was the one with the concussion. I was the one who spent two weeks in the hospital.

The longer I sat with it, the more it gnawed at me.

My arm was fucked—broken clean through in two places—and the concussion still made everything spin if I moved too fast. I popped a couple pills for the headache and walked anyway. Through the back gate, across the pasture that separated my place from the guesthouse behind the Twisted Spur. We used to walk it together. Me and her. Barefoot, sometimes. Careful not to get too close to the bulls grazing along the fence. I could’ve done it blindfolded, every dip in the land, every creaky board in the fence burned into me, but this time felt heavier.

She never came.

I woke up in that damn hospital, dazed, hurting, hoping. There was nothing. Not a text. Not a call. Not a knock on my door or a stupid get well card. Silence.

Yeah, I was pissed, but more than that, I was wrecked because when people loved me, they left.

My mom didn’t mean to die, but she still left. My dad was gone long before she was. Not physically, but emotionally, yeah. He checked out when shit got hard. When she got sick, it was like he didn’t know what to do with a broken wife or a scared kid, so he worked the circuit, rode his bulls, and left me to deal with the pieces.

So yeah. People left. I guess I thought maybe she’d be different, but she didn’t come. Not when I needed her. I know I shouldn’t be walking to her. My dad was in the guest room, and he’d come check on me. I was supposed to be resting, healing, staying out of trouble. But I couldn’t sit still, couldn’t breathe with all that silence. Not when she was right fucking there.

So I walked. Broken arm. Concussion. Didn’t matter. Now, I was standing outside her door, my chest caving in, wondering if I was about to make the biggest mistake of my life.

Because even if she didn’t come for me, I needed to come for her.

I stood on the tiny front porch of her guesthouse, shifting my weight, my arm throbbing like hell despite the pills. The air smelled like hay and cedar, the kind of scent that should’ve been comforting, but all I noticed was the pounding in my chest. I could hear noises inside—movement, rustling, something dragging, maybe. My stomach twisted.

If she was in there, living like nothing had happened while I spent days flat on my back, thinking I might never see her again, I was going to find out what the hell that meant.

The door opened, and my heart fucking dropped into my stomach, but it wasn’t her. Not the honey-gold hair I knew like the back of my hand. Not the familiar eyes that used to soften when they looked at me. Instead, it was blue eyes and black hair.

“Harleigh?” I asked anyway, stupidly.

“She’s not here.”

I blinked. Behind her, more noise, footsteps, the muffled clatter of something being moved.

I hesitated. My throat was dry. “I thought something happened to her,” I said. “She never— she didn’t come to the hospital. I thought maybe she was hurt. Or gone.”

Harleigh stepped out just enough to block the doorway more. “She can’t see you.”

Can’t. Not won’t. Not doesn’t want to.

Can’t.

Suddenly, it wasn’t just my arm that felt broken. It was all of me.

“She can’t see you,” she said again, like that would be the end of it.

I shifted, staring past her into the dim hallway. “What does that even mean? Is she hurt? Sick? What the hell happened?”