Page 83 of The CEO and the Mountain Man

I whipped my head up. “What?”

Clark tried to adjust the bed again, but hissed.

“Is it your arm? Your head?” I asked, hurrying to his bedside. “Should we get the nurse?”

“Arm. And no. I just need to be more careful when I adjust the bed.”

I helped him re-settle, waiting until the painful tightness across his mouth relaxed.

“Thank you.” He touched the bandages across his forehead and temple, wincing. He looked so small in his hospital bed.

“Clark—”

“I need you to shut the fuck up, Beau. And I really need you to stop saying that this thing between us doesn’t mean anything.”

“Clark, be reasonable…”

He responded with a glare that could have cut out my spleen.

“Reasonable was for before. Before my ex-wife decided to listen to her shitty ex-boyfriend and nearly killed our son. Before I watched my son put himself back together. Before I had to choose between forcing my son to go back to school without any of his friends or getting a GED.” He made a sad trombone sound that was funnier than it had any right to be. “And reasonable was way before putting my son in a car and driving a thousand miles to a ranch in Colorado. I think I’m done with reasonable.”

“What are you saying?”

This glare made the other glare look loving in comparison.

“Do you really think I’m going to abandon my son? Let him move out here to Colorado all by himself?”

“Clark, you have a business. You’re the CEO. The owner. All those people depend on you.”

“All those people work from home.” He held up a finger. “Actually, several have moved out of state to be closer to family.”

“Wait,” I said, confused. “You would pick up your whole life and come to Colorado for me?”

“Hell no.”

I might’ve believed him if he weren’t bright red and grinning like a lunatic.

“I would, however, come to Colorado for my son.” Plucking at his sheets, he continued, “You’re really just a nice bonus.”

The way his eyes devoured me said otherwise. Like, maybe, I was really more than a bonus.

My heart felt as if it was gonna beat out of my chest.

“Clark, don’t play with me. Think about what you’re saying. Think about what you’re about to do.”

His expression went from playful to serious in a heartbeat.

“I have been racking my brain since the beginning of the year. How do I bring my son back? How do I give him back the pieces of him that have fallen away? How do I make him whole again?” Tears brimmed and spilled. “And the answer is awful. The answer is …I can’t.I can’t make him whole again. I can’t give him back the pieces he lost of himself.”

Clark sniffed as he fussed again with his sheets.

“River can, though. Maybe he can’t get everything back, but he’s the one who has to do it. And he’s decided that this is the place where he wants to put himself back together.”

“Clark—”

“And you’re right,” he said, talking over me. “We need to have a bunch of conversations, and neither of us should be making any promises right now, but I have never seen my son so happy. Not just since the accident.Ever. It never would’ve occurred to me that he would apply practical thinking to his art. An art therapist? How brilliant. How generous. Howlovely.”

My thoughts went to the pieces I saw when I was looking over Clark’s shoulder. That first piece, that rough sketch of a boy bent over double. And I saw it. Clark, with his stupid leather tennis shoes, his sharply creased khakis, and his perfectly done button-downs. Even though his relationship with his ex-wifewas already over, her death would have, of course, reverberated throughout his entire life. Because he let himself feel everything.