Page 53 of Branded

“It worked.”

“So did my driving.”

“Yes.” He looks at me. The pain has stripped every bit of command out of his face and left only the certainty. “It did.”

I can breathe again.

Mercer reaches us four minutes later. He checks Garrett, then me, then the sealed case, in that order. The order is humane enough that I decide not to object.

“Ambulance is twelve minutes out.”

“The rural clinic is nine,” I say. “It has imaging. The ranch infirmary doesn’t, and his care needs a record nobody in his family controls.”

Garrett breathes through a wave of pain. “Clinic.”

The clinic smells like disinfectant and burnt coffee and air-conditioning that’s been asked to fix all of South Texas. A nurse cuts his shirt away. They look at him before anyone asks for a statement, which is correct, and which I have to remind myself is correct, because I want to follow them into the treatment room and I’m not allowed.

I stand where he can see me without being in the way.

They clean the glass cut on my cheek and three little ones on my forearm. I barely notice. I’m watching through the half-open door as they irrigate his arm, and every time he flinches I feel it somewhere behind my sternum.

X-rays. No fracture. No dislocation. The shoulder is badly sprained from the impact and the wrench. The arm takes twelve sutures. No tendon damage. No major vessel.

He comes out in a sling with a sheet of restrictions: no lifting, no driving, no firearms, nothing overhead.

He objects to the driving restriction.

“You can’t lift your right arm,” I say.

“The truck’s an automatic.”

The clinician looks at me. “Is he always this cooperative?”

“Today represents measurable growth.”

Mercer takes our statements separately. When he asks Garrett if the man at the door was Mott, Garrett says, “I saw gloves, a dark sleeve, a cap, and the bar. I didn’t see Mott.” He could make certainty sound natural. He leaves an unsupported name out of the record and pays for the restraint with every breath that moves his shoulder.

Mercer comes back an hour later. The deputy’s unit tracker puts him at the crossing, though dispatch sent him nowhere near it. A state traffic camera caught Mott’s ranch truck on the county road eleven minutes before we were boxed in. That proves the truck. Not the driver.

Then Mercer goes to make calls, and for the first time since 9:20, Garrett and I are alone.

He’s sitting on the edge of the treatment bed. His right arm is strapped to his chest. His left forearm still has the bandage from the gate. He looks like a man whose body has filed a formal complaint about the week.

I stand between his knees and check the edge of his dressing, because I need something to do with my hands.

“Tessa.”

“It’s dry. That’s good.”

“Tessa. Look at me.”

I look. His eyes are clear. The pain medicine they gave him is the non-sedating kind. He knows exactly what he’s saying.

“I love you,” he says.

My fingers stop at the edge of his dressing.

“I know it’s the wrong time,” he says. “I know I haven’t earned the right to say it and I know it doesn’t fix anything. I’m not asking for anything back. I just watched that hook come through your window and I thought, if I don’t say it and something happens, she’ll never know. And I’m done with you not knowing things I know.”