Page 65 of Reckless Skye

‘TJ …’

‘I don’t want you here!’ The words were true. He couldn’t bear for her to stay behind, to let her dreams go, only to watch him fumble back to a life that was suddenly so uncertain.

She was quiet for a moment. She searched his face with those big, beautiful eyes. But TJ saw the exact moment she realized he was telling the truth. Those eyes dimmed, losing their light. Her shoulders rounded. But she didn’t get mad. She just smiled sadly, whispered, ‘Okay.’

TJ’s heart broke.

When Skye turned her back on him and started for the door, panic filled him.

And when the last sound he heard before she walked out of his hospital room was a strangled sob, he lost his resolve.

He didn’t like hurting her.

He just wanted to spare her.

TJ tried to go after her.

Because he could move his left leg, he swung it over and off the bed. But his right didn’t follow. His unevenly distributed body weight took him down to the floor, so that he landed in a heap. He cursed violently as the IV was ripped from his arm, as those new injuries sent rivulets of pain down his entire body.

He didn’t dare move.

For minutes, he lay there, prostrate, his heart as broken as his back, blood pouring from where the IV had torn his vein. He waited for somebody to come as he gulped in air and tried to breathe through the pain.

It was his dad who found him. ‘TJ!’ He crouched on the floor, placed one hand on TJ’s face.

‘Help me up.’

‘No. Fuck. Let me get a nurse.’

‘Dad,’ TJ insisted. ‘Help me up.’

‘Son of a bitch,’ Ryan cursed. But he crouched lower, asked, ‘Can you put your arm around my neck?’

It took effort, but TJ managed.

‘On three.’

He nodded.

‘One. Two. Three.’ With one huge heave, his dad lifted him high enough that TJ was able to get his left leg under him. He cried out as he put pressure on the limb, swayed as the pain almost took him under.

A nurse walked in. She dropped the tray of pain meds she’d been carrying, said, ‘What on earth is going on in here?’ as she ran around the bed to help.

‘I fell,’ TJ replied dryly. When that grief rose heavily in his chest, when he thought about Skye, he added, ‘Hard.’

They painstakingly rearranged him on the bed. The moment he was horizontal, the nurse said, ‘I’m going to fetch the doctor and more morphine.’ She picked up her tray and the needles off the floor and hurried from the room.

‘What the fuck, TJ?’ his dad roared.

‘Skye …’

His dad sobered at that. ‘What?’

‘I just wanted to tell her something …’ TJ let his head fall back on the pillow and closed his eyes. He laughed. ‘I broke my back and got bit on the ass in the space of a few days.’

His dad sighed tiredly. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘It was the right thing to do.’