by Jamie Magee
“That’s the plan.”
“All right, get some sleep.”
She barely whispered a ‘bye’ before she hung up.
When she stretched back on the hospital bed, her mind raced in a million directions. Sometime hours later, a slow smile came to her. She realized that she had just stolen a month of time, a month of time that would give her the chance to set her past right, find a way to move on if that were the case.
She wasn’t counting on Wyatt sweeping her off her feet. After that talk with Camille, she was sure he was furious with her; the fact that he hadn’t come to see her pretty much told her that. But she thought if she saw him in the present, if he emerged out of her past, out of the dreams he haunted each night, she could stop the lingering nostalgia that she lived with every day. She’d see that he had changed, that she had, that what was, was - and maybe from that point, she could find her next step.
Chapter Ten
That entire way to the hospital, Wyatt was sure his heart had stopped. He knew enough about the medical field to assume that Harley was not dying, but he couldn’t see if anything was broken inside, if there was some hidden enemy that was going to steal her life away.
He was pacing the ER not more than three feet from her as they accessed her. He was in the room when they ran every test to make sure her neck and back were not broken, that there was nothing internal hurting her. He wanted her to wake up, and she did a few times; her stare would drift to where he was standing, she would smile, then close her eyes again.
Memphis, Truman, and Easton showed up sometime during when all of that was happening, all trying to calm him down, to tell him not to yell at the nurses. They tried to pull him out of her room just so he could get himself together.
It was when his mother showed up that the game changed. She walked in the middle of the firemen that towered over her in height and width and grabbed her son and pulled him by the back of the arm to a family room down the hall.
He could barely look at her. Too many memories were crashing into him. He didn’t feel like a grown man; he felt like a seventeen-year-old kid that didn’t know what the hell to do.
“What are you doing?” she scorned.
“It’s Harley, Mom.”
“I know who it is. I know who’s back in his stall.”
Wyatt looked down at her, dumfounded.
“What are you doing?” she asked again.
“I’m waiting for her to wake up.”
“Why?”
He just stared.
“You know what I know. Hell, I bet you know more because you can read through the lines of those articles. You know she’s with someone. Are you going to stand in that room when she wakes up and ask for her phone to call him?”
Wyatt could still taste that kiss Harley gave him, the touch of her lips against his, the wisp of her tongue. That kiss carried every emotion that it did four years ago, if not more. That kiss was giving him some kind of hope, some doubt that all the articles he had read were true.
He didn’t find her in some thousand-dollar dress with her make up and hair done just right; he found her in jeans, boots, he found her pulling a horse trailer alone through the deep south. Something wasn’t adding up.
“I don’t care about him.”
“And you didn’t care what anyone else thought four years ago, did you?”
“I cared, Mom. I cared enough to keep us a secret so I could have her longer.”
“Son, you don’t understand the world she’s coming from. You have no idea what they have done to her in all this time. Four years ago, you were a stubborn boy; do not be a stupid son of a bitch today.”
“What the hell?” he said with a glare aimed fiercely at his mother.
“That horse is at our farm. Her father just offered me board for his daughter once again. What’s going to happen if you walk in that room, if you hear her tell you that she’s with someone else? What if this blows up in your face? Do you think she will come to that farm?”
“I have to explain.”
“Explain what? That nothing happened with you and Dorcas? That your ass was strapped to some bronc that was determined to kill you at the time? You might get a reaction out of that; in fact, I’m sure you will - but what reaction are you going to have when you figure out she has no reason to give for why she moved on?”
“She’s not going to say that.”
“Slow, son. We know the real Harley. We don’t know how deep she is in that woman you pulled from that wreckage, but we know her. You’re going to take your time with this. Too many emotions, too much time. You’re your father made over; you’re bound to explode and ruin this if you don’t slow down.”
Wyatt looked away.
“If you love that girl, listen to me this go round, son. She’s going to tell you things, you are going to see things, hear things that are going to boil your skin. You’re going to have to take each blow one at a time and either get over this or get on with it. I want you back, Wyatt. I want the carefree boy who knew only how to enjoy life. I don’t want the one that acts likes he’s having a good time anymore.”
“What are you telling me to do?”
“Go check on her horse. Help your sister make sure her room is ready. Take a shower, get some sleep.”
“I’m not leaving her.”
“Yes, you are. Right now you are. I’ll let you know when she wakes up what they said.”
“Mom, she knows I pulled her from that wreck. I’m not vanishing.”
“No, you’re not; you’re her ride to the farm.” And with that, Camille left.
Wyatt struggled with her reasoning; he really did. He didn’t want to play games to get her back. He just wanted to tell her how he felt, tell her he tried. Tell her that now there was nothing but them holding them back.
When he stepped out of that room, he saw his mom pulling a phone out of a box in Memphis’ hands, then walk away.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing, just stuff that fell out of the truck when they flipped it. Her bags are still in it. It was towed to your farm.”
“Hand it over. I’ll put it in my truck.”
“I got it.”
Wyatt turned stone cold. “Give me the box, Memphis.”
Memphis didn’t back down from his glare; he engaged it. “Look, man, you need to calm down. I’m not going to let you fly off the handle this go round.”
Wyatt jerked the box away from him. One glance inside told him that leaving now, getting air, was the best thing he could do. There was a half-used pack of birth control on top, her wallet that was open to a picture of her and Collin. Other things were there, too: a man’s Rolex, loose change, makeup.
He was a fool to think that she was not involved with him, or any other guy for that matter.
Wyatt went home, checked on Danny Boy, helped his sister, did everything his mother said. Just before dawn, he was walking into the Emergency Room with a change of clothes he had Ava get out of Harley’s bags. He wasn’t about to move through her things and find anything else he’d rather not see.
He wasn’t in his uniform anymore. He’d thought to put on his best jeans, one of his nicer shirts, and cleanest boots.
When he made it to the section they had her in, she was on the phone. He heard her say, “I know, I will, I love you,” then hang up.
Wyatt almost walked away then, called his sister to come get her instead. In all the haunting daydreams about her, he never once imagined that when he was face-to-face with her again, she’d be in love with someone else. It just didn’t seem possible in his universe.
Harley’s father had called her first thing that morning. He told her not to push Danny Boy to recover; worst case, he’d find another barn. Told her to take it easy and not push herself. Harley gave him the short, sweet answers he wanted to hear, told him she loved him, then hung up.
Right as she did, she felt this electric current race down her spine, felt adrenaline come to the surface of her skin for n
o reason. When she glanced to the curtain just behind her, she lost her breath.
Wyatt was standing there. Time had not been good to him; it had been extraordinary. At seventeen, she would have told you that there was no way for him to be any more gorgeous, heart stopping. But manhood looked good on him. He seemed taller (not by much), his hair was the same, that short, dirty blond, barely kissed by the sun. Those eyes were bluer, his jawline was sharper. Shoulders were broader, he had filled out even more so.
There was no way in hell he was single, and if he was, there was no way that he did not have girls like Dorcas knocking on his door every chance they got.
He didn’t smile at her; there was no expression in his stoic image. She was really feeling like a fool for kissing him when she woke up from that crash.
He stepped forward, carefully, like she was a wounded animal. “Ava pulled these from your bags,” he said with a husky voice.
She held his stare, not able to say a word. Every emotion was flooding to the surface so fast that it hurt.
“Are you in pain?” he asked in a softer tone.
“They gave me some medicine. They told me I could go.”
He walked a few steps closer, leaned in, and reached to let his thumb brush across the burn on her cheek. Harley’s eyes closed on contact.
Harley had become a woman. Even with the hint of burns from the airbag, the gash at her hairline, she was radiant, breathtaking to him.
“You scared the hell out of me.”
Her eyes opened and connected with his. “You made me feel safe.”
His jaw clenched, and he nodded to the clothes. “I’ll let you get dressed, take you home…I mean, to the farm.”
Wyatt left before she could say a word. All night she had rehearsed what she would say to him, how she could tell him that she knew Dorcas had played her, how’d she tell him her dad was sick then, not much better now. She didn’t expect a conversation like that, for there to be that much tension, anger in his ice blue eyes.
He lingered at a distance as she was discharged. Walking outside, he kept space between them.
In the parking lot, she felt her skin flush. He was still driving the same truck, the truck that had more than enough memories attached to it. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do if she got inside and found the mark of another girl, some picture or hair tie on his gear shift.
He helped her in the passenger seat. As he walked around, she glanced down to the small box in the middle of the seat, recognizing her things, some very personal things: a picture of her and Collin that she didn’t even know she had, her birth control, her wallet. She swallowed nervously as he climbed in. She had to wonder if that was why he was being so distant from her. Her only issue was that she couldn’t explain any of that away.
She was in a public relationship with Collin. It had been over a year, but she had slept with him. She gritted her teeth and chanted, Backbone in her head. Even if he was mad about this, he had no right; she seriously doubted he had not slept with another girl.
Wyatt glanced at the box that she was shifting through, at the things she was trying to get out of both their faces. “That fell out when they were towing the truck. Everything else should be in it.”
He started the truck and pulled away, leaned into his door as if he wanted as much space between them as possible.
“I talked to your mom,” Harley finally said.
He nodded once.
“Professional, huh?”
Wyatt glanced to his side, wondering exactly what his mother had said to Harley, if she had used the caress she had sworn him to. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“You’re all right, though. Right? You were all right there.” It terrified her that he had been in any kind of danger, that she had been clueless. As hurt as she was, she still would have cared, still would have been worried.
Wyatt clenched his jaw. He was still fairly fresh out of the world of being on the road constantly. Those years were not his best to talk about, not with Harley. They did make him a man, did make him strong, but that was also when he dared to take another girl to bed, more than one. When he fought Harley’s memory with them and beer. It took him long enough, but he figured out that neither of those would stop any hell; only created more of it. For the last year, he’d more or less been walking the innocent line.
“Me and Easton had each other’s back. Brant was ‘round, too.”
“Now, too, right? You’re both firemen.”
That was a fairly new development. He’d been on the volunteer for years, but now it was a career. “So’s Memphis and Truman.”
“That’s what you wanted, that’s good.”
He didn’t have a response for that. The career as a fireman was something to do, something he loved to do, but Harley was all he ever wanted.
Harley’s biggest regret in life was not fighting harder for Wyatt. He may not be the boy that she loved then anymore, but she was going to tell the man why she did what she did.
Normally after being away from him for long periods of time, she would be timid for the first bit, mostly because she was always trying to figure out if he still had feelings for her, if in her absence some local girl had stolen him from her.
She didn’t have time to be timid, or rather she learned long ago that you waste time by doing that, so she chose to be blunt. Just to get this edge out of the way. Feelings or not, she wanted him to know that being ripped from him was something she’d yet to get over.
“I thought you were with Dorcas. I was ready to run away, spend the rest of my life with you. I had a transport company ready to bring Danny Boy down, everything in line, then when I got there I knew I was too late.”
She saw him tense, was sure she saw emotion flash in his blue eyes; it was anger, at who she didn’t know. She knew she was a coward then, ran. Hell, for all she knew she was still one. This break between them, this unspoken goodbye, it was all her fault. He had the right to be angry. But at the time, she thought she had every right to run. Emotion had always been Harley’s enemy, clouded her judgment constantly.
“Have I ever lied to you, Harley?”
“No,” she breathed.
“And what did I tell you about Dorcas?”
“I know what you said, but you thought you had reason to be mad at me, you thought I’d moved on. For all I knew, she was revenge,” she said to justify the thoughts she had years ago, the ones that had been her curse up until she woke to find Camille standing over her hours before.
“I thought I had reason?”
She looked out the window, told herself to breathe. Dorcas or not, he’d been with other girls - she’d seen enough images online to gather that much - and he was giving her hell about Collin, a basically platonic relationship.
Part of her wanted Wyatt to think they were together; that way, Collin could be her shield once more. She could hide behind the idea of him and act like she didn’t care who Wyatt was with today. “I wasn’t with him.”
“So now you’re going to lie to me.”
“I’m not lying,” she shot back.
“I saw you, Harley.”
“It was just an event, he was my escort to it. We weren’t together.”
“But you are now,” he said, elbowing the box closer to her.
She had no response for that. Wyatt would never get the public game she and Collin were playing, no matter how she explained it. If he had not come at her as hard as he was now, she would have figured out how to tell him they were good friends.
She knew Wyatt well enough to know that no matter how she put it right now, with this much space between them it would only make it worse. She needed to figure out how to get past this, not rip open the feelings that had barely dulled.
“And it took you all of two days after seeing Dorcas to decide to be with him. It was that easy for you.”
Harley furrowed her brow in confusion. She was well into her second semester of school before the public gave her and Collin th
e title of dating.
“I called, Harley, and Donald told me that Mrs. Tatum was entertaining Collin Grant, for me not to call anymore. But I did, over and over. Hell, I called you a month ago. Same answer, that or that you were not in at all.”
Rage boiled inside of Harley. She was sure at times she hated her mother; this was one of them. “I was home for all of a day after Willowhaven. I already had a flight booked overseas. I made that flight. Mrs. Tatum was entertaining Collin. Not me; my mother.”
“Not always,” Wyatt said under his breath.
“I never knew you called. Trust me. I may avoid confrontation, but if I knew that you gave a damn, I would have run right into the hell of you.” She wanted to argue that she didn’t live at home anymore, that she hadn’t really stayed there at all since they were ripped apart, but thought better of it. His knowing her address now was not going to help this matter.
Wyatt slowly glanced to his side. Harley raised her brow as if to dare him to challenge her on that point.
“Doesn’t change now,” he finally said.
What about now? she thought. About the way you feel about me, or that you think I’m with Collin? Do you have to be such an ass?
“Are you trying to tell me that you think you have the right to give me an attitude for dating someone almost two years after we were torn apart? What are you? A saint? Are you telling me that there has been no one between me and now for you?”
She noticed his body tense, the way he glanced away. Felt a sickness slam into her. He had.
“Girls, yes; dating, no.”
“Oh, so it would be better for you if I had just slept around? That would put me in the right if I had?”
“Where the hell did that come from?” he snapped. The Harley he knew, that girl that blushed when she told him she wanted him to be her first never would have said something like that.
“Where did that come from? You’re mad at me because of Collin.”
Yeah, he was. He was mad because clearly he loved Harley more than she loved him, then and now.
“Harley, I fought like hell for you, and I clearly fought alone. One word from you, one random word was all I wanted. I don’t care how big of a bitch your mother is, I know she did not have you in chains. You would have found a way if you cared, if you wanted to.”
