Page 7 of Love Wells Kept

I careen forward until my forehead collides with his chest, the soft texture of his shirt against my skin, the scent of laundry soap and his sweat filling my nostrils.

And I pray for a heartbeat. A cough. A movement. The feel of his hand coming up to cup the nape of my neck so he can whisper that I’m being dramatic.

If any of that happens, I don’t feel it.

Then there’s Denny. He’s hugging me from behind, whispering things I can’t make out, his breath blowing hot against my neck as his arms wrap tight around me. He takes the panicked blows of my heart against my rib cage and slows them with the even gallop of his pulse on my back. His head rocks side to side against mine. His tears drench my hair.

He’s my straitjacket.

“He’ll be okay,” Denny murmurs. “You’ll be okay.”

This isn’t okay. This is my husband. The love of my life. The father of my children. My person.

Lying in a pool of blood on the cold concrete in the middle of a goddamn barn.

When Denny finally lets up, I lift my head to press a shaky kiss to Jackson’s lips. “Please…Listen to your brother for once and be okay. I need you to be okay. I love you so much.”

Just like so many late nights spent watching him sleep, my hands search his face, reveling in his stubble scraping my palm. I smooth a fingertip over his eyebrows. Sift through blood-soaked hair. Wipe a speck of red from the shell of his ear.

There’s a new commotion. Like the beating of a hundred angel wings, the heavy, dense whoosh of helicopter blades echoes through the barn. The guys collectively breathe a sigh of relief. And I clutch the front of Jackson’s shirt, digging a button so deep into my palm, it’s nearly embedded. Surely they can’t separate him and me if we’re sewn together.

“Jackson.” I lean in so my lips brush his ear, and my breath comes out a tattered death rattle. I lick my lips, holding on to him with a sinking feeling this might be our last moment. “Don’t you dare go. Don’t you fucking dare. You…you promised me. You promised you wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye. You can’t.”

“Kate.” Denny’s hand rubs a firm line across my shoulder blades. “Kate, the paramedics are here. We gotta let them do their job.”

I nod, the side of my face rubbing against the side of my husband’s. I need to memorize every piece of him, collect all the different ways he feels. But I have two men sliding hands under my armpits, attempting to forcibly remove me from the last person on Earth I ever want to be away from. The person so ingrained in my soul, I can’t fathom existing without him. I couldn’t. My heart wouldn’t allow it.

“You don’t get to leave without saying goodbye,” I sob into his wet hair one last time.

Pressing bloodstained hands to the cold, rough surface of concrete, I move from kneeling to crouching to standing. Some part of me keeps waiting for his eyes to flutter open and the gravel of his sleepy voice to tell me he loves me. I can’t take my eyes off him for fear of missing it.

Even as my lifeless body is pulled from the barn stall to make room for paramedics and a stretcher, I watch him intently. The fingers on one hand turn white around the edge of the stall door. My other hand’s encompassed by the warmth of Denny’s palms.

In a series of calculated movements and murmured medical terms, he’s loaded onto a board, then brought to the waiting helicopter.

The blades whip through the air like the roll of thunder. Holding my hand over my brow bone to shield my eyes from the sun’s glare, I watch the helicopter shrink into the skyline before I turn to Red. “Where’s Odessa?”

“Probably back at the house by now. I had Colt take her out of the barn after I’d made sure she was okay.”

Fresh air fully inflates my lungs for the first time since the moment Red barged into the kitchen, and I blow a loud exhale through parted lips. I had my moment to be distraught and inconsolable and terrified. Now I need to wipe away the salt that’s burned tracks down my cheeks, run a hand through tangled hair, and get my shit together for my kids.

Emotions settle in my chest cavity, weighing down every beat of my heart and cinching around my lungs. Pain radiates through my shoulder blades, tingling down my arms, with every step toward our house.

What do I tell the kids?

Red and Denny follow close behind me, our footsteps falling in sync, crunching over the gravel and pounding on the compact dirt. Trees sway and bend, birds flitting between them fully consumed in early-spring love. Otherwise, the ranch is eerily still, with no distant rumblings of tractor engines or cowboy chatter.

“You okay?” Denny asks softly, stepping in close behind me on the slow drag up the front porch steps.

“No,” I answer honestly, voice crack and all. I swallow against the lump wedged in my throat. “Not at all. I can’t even think about—Can you help me pretend to be okay? For the kids?”

Both men nod, and when Red steps forward to open the door for me, the cozy scent of wood fire and rising bread envelops me. Home. I swear I can even smell Jackson’s body wash lingering in the air.

I stumble forward, flanked by two men who have always been brothers to me, and soon I’m standing in the large kitchen. Rhett’s still playing with his blocks, and his singular tower has transformed into a small city. Austin’s coffee mug hasn’t left its spot on the kitchen table. Someone picked up my flour-coated apron and set it on the island while I was gone. Beryl’s nowhere to be seen.

Cecily looks up from where she’s shaping a loaf of whole-wheat bread, and runs her hands over the front of her too-small apron. “What’s going on?”

Rhett’s head whips around to look at us. “Is Daddy okay?”