With each slow heartbeat and ragged breath, his presence grew stronger until there was only him. His cheeky smile, his huge hands, his laughter, his tenderness, his strength, his love…
She crushed his medals to her heart and latched on to one of the giant roots anchoring the Wishing Tree to this magical land.
“Please…give him the life he deserves.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Whether in the middle of a war zone or the heart of a city, all hospitals reeked of the same sickening blend of desperate hope and debilitating reality. Ryder slumped in his chair and stared through the dim light filtering through the window at his world lying in the bed beside him.
He willed each breath to enter and leave Abi’s body as the bustling hum from Brisbane Hospital’s intensive care ward drifted into her room. Abi had woken three hours ago from the coma she’d been trapped in for over a day. She’d blinked away her confusion, stared at her kid sister, cursed him for ratting her out, then fallen back into a sleep that was almost as deep as the coma.
The lines on the EEG machines strapped to her head danced as her brain rebooted itself while the EKG hooked up to her chest sounded off each heartbeat like a countdown, but time had already run out.
He’d thought he’d known fear, endured misery, conquered pain, but he’d been kidding himself.
He shoved out of his chair as the door swung open and Olivia strode in. Her gaze darted between Abi and him as she made her way to the foot of the bed. She’d spent close to twenty-four hours battling airline representatives, bunny-hopping across the Pacific, and butting heads with Abi’s doctors, but it was impossible to tell. The woman was a machine. She scanned the chart one of the nurses had just updated and compared it to the printouts clutched in her hand.
He took a step toward her and almost fell on his arse as the panic-induced adrenaline he’d been drowning in for what seemed an eternity finally swamped his exhausted body.
He steadied himself on the bed’s stainless-steel railing and waved away Olivia’s outstretched arms. “Anything?”
Olivia studied him for a long moment before lowering her hands and straightening. “Vitals stable, brain function normal…” She sighed and patted Abi’s foot. “As normal as my big sister’s brain will ever be.” Her smile faded as she laid her hand over his and squeezed. “Seizures are normal for people with brain tumors.”
But comas weren’t. He’d let himself believe the monster lurking inside Abi’s head wasn’t that powerful, that her spirit would eventually crush the fucking thing. Only after he’d found her lying in the sand at the base of the Wishing Tree had the truth crashed down around him. What if he hadn’t been there? What if he hadn’t gone looking for her? What if she’d been by herself? What the fuck had Olivia been thinking letting her fly halfway around the world by herself?
“I’m pretty sure that’s how I looked when she first told me she wanted to go to Australia.” The corner of Olivia’s mouth quirked as if she’d read his thoughts. “Have you tried stopping her from doing what she wants to do?”
His anger evaporated as he stared into Olivia’s knowing eyes. Abi hadn’t exaggerated—her kid sister’s mind was even more potent than her looks. How many times had Olivia lived this nightmare? How many times had she looked down at her sister and wondered if she’d ever wake?
Olivia tucked the printouts into the red folder hanging from the foot of Abi’s bed and ushered him back into his chair. He’d been sitting so long even his real leg felt fake, and holding his ground without hurting Olivia proved impossible. After a wrestling match that was as pathetic as it was brief, they collapsed onto the chairs that had served as their beds for the night.
She huffed and sank back. “When you live with something like this for so long there comes a time when you have to ignore what the experts say and forget about the risks. Otherwise life becomes something you’re not willing to fight for.” She captured his hand. “I can never repay you for what you’ve given my sister.”
He shook the image of Abi’s lifeless body cradled in his arms from his mind and shrugged. “Nothing to repay.”
Olivia squeezed his fingers. “I’m not just talking about saving her life. The last two weeks have been the happiest and most alive she’s ever been.”
He studied the woman lying in the bed beside him. She’d become so much a part of him he could feel her heart beating inside his chest. Had it only been two weeks? The distant bustle from the nurses’ station down the hall filled the silence as he took in the force of nature that had stopped time with just a look and then turned his entire world upside down.
Olivia released her grip and leaned forward in her chair. “They’re going to operate as soon as we get back.”
He nodded but couldn’t tear his gaze from Abi. “When do you leave?”
“Two hours. I couldn’t get a direct flight, but it’ll be good for her to stretch her legs in Hawaii. The hospital has organized transport to the airport.” Olivia cursed and shook her head. “Christ, she’s going to love being pushed through the airport in a damned wheelchair.”
“Is it safe for her to travel?” It was a stupid fucking question. There was no way in hell the doctors would’ve agreed to transfer her otherwise.
Olivia glanced at her sister. “The swelling from Doris’s tantrum has stabilized. Abi’s as safe as she’s going to be until they cut that bitch out of her head.”
He nodded, but whatever relief Olivia’s reassurances provided was washed away by yet another wave of misery, doubt, and fear.
He gritted his teeth and mapped their schedule home. Ten hours to Hawaii, a couple of hours in Honolulu to swap planes, five hours to L.A., and an hour to prep her. Eighteen hours, twenty tops, before they opened her head and tried cutting out the monster slowly killing her.
Olivia pried loose his fingers from the armrest he’d been crushing and trapped his hand between hers. “Can I ask you something?”
In between driving the doctors and nurses crazy, Olivia had casually interrogated him like an overprotective parent. Around midnight he must have passed some sort of test because she’d relaxed and started to share stories of Abi’s and her childhood. Olivia had filled him in on the battles Abi had had with child services to keep Olivia out of foster care, the terrible jobs Abi had worked to put food on the table, the arguments she’d had with Abi about dropping out of college to help pay the bills, and the endless abuse Olivia had endured taking care of her hardheaded, foulmouthed big sister.
Before long they’d been swapping stories and cursing the stubborn woman who’d brought them together from opposite ends of the world. Not once in the hours they’d shared had Olivia taken a backward step or hesitated before digging into his life. He couldn’t blame her. If the situations had been reversed and his sister had hooked up with an unemployed grunt soldier living in the middle of the desert on the other side of the world, there would’ve been no way in hell he’d have been so welcoming.
She pulled him closer and leaned over as if she was worried Abi would overhear before staring into his eyes. “How do you feel about my sister, Sergeant Harper?”
The tenderness of Olivia’s touch and her serene features hadn’t given away her intentions, but the my sister and the Sergeant Harper sure as hell did. He could pretend the last two weeks had just been a holiday fling between two consenting adults and have Olivia’s huge doctor brain peg him as a lying arsehole, or he could tell her the truth and have her summon hospital security to escort him to the psychiatric ward. Either way, he was screwed.
“I’m in love with her.”
Olivia did an admirable job of hiding her shock, but the whispered intake of breath and the widening of her way-too-perceptive eyes gave her away.
Some of the tension cramping his shoulders eased. It was like he’d finally dropped the weight of truth he’d been lugging around for God knew how long. If he hadn’t been so exhausted, he might have been able to summon up the energy to get pissed off at the way Olivia studi
ed him, but he had nothing left and nothing to hide.
He shrugged and squeezed her hand. “When you’ve died as many times as I have you try not to waste too much time second-guessing yourself.”
Olivia closed her gaping mouth, opened it, then closed it again before shaking her head. “Does she know how you feel?”
He tilted his head at her and eased his hand free before turning back to the bed. Abi was half his weight and fast asleep, yet he’d never been more terrified of anyone in his life. “I haven’t had the balls to tell her.”
Olivia nodded and followed his gaze to her sister. “Do you know what she’s up against?”
The information he’d squeezed out of Abi and his covert googling had filled his head so full of intel and statistics he’d probably never sleep again. “Most likely an extended bifrontal craniotomy to provide access to her frontal lobe. They’ll cut out as much of the tumor as possible then use radiation and chemo to try and kill whatever they missed.”
This time Olivia didn’t bother hiding her shock. “You know the odds?”
Christ, he’d spent most of his life ignoring odds, but this was different. “Depending on what they find when they get in there, her odds of surviving the next six months could be as low as 25 percent.”
He hoped Olivia would shove him, burst out laughing, and tease him for being a paranoid internet doctor, but she simply nodded and continued staring at Abi. “And the side effects?” Olivia’s voice grew quieter and darker with every question.
“Paralysis, cerebral palsy, difficulty reasoning and talking, personality changes, memory loss, inability to process and calibrate emotion.” And a partridge in a fucking pear tree.
When Olivia turned to face him her eyes glistened with unshed tears and her lips trembled. “No one would think any less of you if you…if you…” A tear trickled down her creamy cheek as she shook her head. “She never wanted this to happen.”
The fear and panic Olivia had tried so hard to conceal fractured the mask of professionalism that had enabled her to keep it together so long. She was giving him a way out, granting him permission to escape this nightmare and get on with the rest of his life. Problem was, his life was meaningless without the woman lying beside him.
He drew Olivia into his arms and cradled her to his chest. “No shit. She’s been trying to get rid of me since the day we met.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Beep, beep, beep.
The rhythmic chiming grew louder as Abi turned to the man riding beside her and smiled. He was as rugged and breathtaking as the crimson desert and cloudless sapphire sky stretching to the horizon of her magical kingdom.
He tipped up the brim of his weather-beaten hat to gaze at her with the same storm-cloud-gray eyes that had not only seen every part of her body but had gazed into her soul. Even after everything they’d shared he still terrified her and melted her heart all at the same time.
Beep, beep, beep.
He nodded as if he’d heard the alarm counting down in her head and turned toward the setting sun slicing through the heat haze in the distance.
She reached out trembling fingers, but he’d already vanished into the blinding light invading her world. She gasped in air and threw open her eyelids.
Beep, beep, beep.
With every chime the light faded and the warmth that had enveloped her grew cold and clammy. The all-too-familiar scent of antiseptic and sterile linen drifted into her nostrils as her eyes adjusted to the dim light and reality washed through her.
A shadow emerged from the fog to loom over her. “’Bout time you woke up, slacker.”
Bustling footsteps, muffled conversations, and Olivia’s voice floated through the chaos as visions and memories drifted back into her mind. She tried blinking the haze away, but it only grew thicker and more distorted.
Olivia huffed and slid something over Abi’s face. “I was hoping Doris’s hissy fit had restored your sight.”
Abi readjusted her glasses and stared up at her sister. If it hadn’t been for the smile consuming Olivia’s features, her sister could’ve been a corpse.
Abi licked her lips and swallowed the gravel in her throat. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Olivia shrugged. “Someone had to come and drag your sorry ass back home.” Olivia cupped Abi’s jaw and ran a thumb over her cheek. “You must have really pissed her off. She had a good crack at you this time.”
She tried to sit up, but Olivia held her down. “Whoa there, girlfriend. That noggin of yours is going to need time to reboot. You’ve been out almost two days. Your cowboy tour guide found you hiding in the desert and carried your worthless butt all the way back to Brisbane.”
The molten sand burning her flesh, the bronze crosses digging into her palm, the Wishing Tree towering above her, Doris tearing open her skull. “Where…where is he?”
Olivia bit her bottom lip and glanced to her right. As if appearing from a dream, Ryder emerged to tower above her.
She’d seen him laugh, seen him cry, seen him happy, angry, and nervous, but she’d never seen him scared. Huge eyes studied her from a face that looked like it hadn’t slept in weeks. It hurt to look at him, and the agony of knowing she was responsible for his pain tore what remained of her heart to shreds.
Olivia cleared her throat and squeezed her hand. “As far as we can tell, the party Doris threw inside your head hasn’t caused any serious damage, but it’s time we evicted the bitch.”
Abi braced herself for what was coming.
“Martinez brought the surgery forward. We leave in an hour.” No hesitation, no apologies, no sugarcoating. She and Olivia had been through this so many times there wasn’t any point. She nodded but couldn’t tear her gaze away from the man staring helplessly at her as if his world were crumbling around him.
“I’ll sort out the discharge paperwork and double-check the flight details.” Olivia nodded once and glanced at Ryder before leaving the room.
Like the heavy iron gate of a dungeon clattering closed, the door to her room clicked shut and trapped her in the nightmare that was her reality. Their time together had come to an end. She knew it, and her warrior prince knew it, too. She held her breath and gazed at him through the murky silence as the EKG counted down the heartbeats they had left.
He’d held a fragile, inexperienced, terrified girl in his arms and carried her out of her lonely existence and into a world where happiness and laughter were as abundant as the endless red dust of his outback kingdom. It didn’t make sense, it was impossible, it was crazy, it was suicidal, but love wasn’t meant to be understood.
She loved the monstrous, exhausted man looming over her, loved him more than what remained of her life, and now she had to hurt him in ways that were going to make the operation and torturous chemo treatments to come seem like paradise.
She’d known, even before she’d seen the half-buried medals glinting up at her from the sand, she’d known. But selfishness and greed had allowed her to believe her own lies for just a few more days, for just a few more hours with him.
She tamped down the fear, the anger, the disgust, and forced herself to smile. “You look like shit.”
He faked a smile of his own. “You scared the crap out of me.” The words gushed from his mouth as if he’d been holding his breath.
“Just as well I’ll be out of your hair soon.”
His counterfeit smile faded as he shrugged and continued looking at her like he was trying to figure out a puzzle with no solution.
She had no idea what drugs seeped through her body via the drip hanging from her arm, but Doris was uncharacteristically quiet. Was the bitch as exhausted as her, or was the evil little shit just catching her breath for another shot at the title? She tried pushing herself higher and found herself floating above the mattress before she’d even realized he’d moved.
Her arms automatically snaked around his neck as he settled her into the mound of pillows above her head. With arms that felt more like half-cooked
spaghetti, she pulled him down until her lips molded to his. The warmth of his kiss and the power of his presence flowed through her, and she once again found herself searching the future for a pinprick of hope, but only darkness and ice-cold realization remained.
She freed his lips and eased back but couldn’t bring herself to let him go. She stared into eyes that had witnessed more than any should. She’d wanted to ask him what lay on the other side of life, but it had never been the right time, but time had finally run out. “What’s it like?”
She was sure he knew what she was talking about, the miraculous bond they shared had grown so strong she could almost feel his heart thudding inside her own chest, but he remained silent, as if talking about death somehow made it more real.
She ran her fingers over his still lips. “I’ve read firsthand accounts, watched interviews, lurked on coma survivor forums, but you’re the only person I’ve ever met who’s actually died.”
His face turned to stone beneath her touch. “You’re not dying. I’m not letting you.”
She chuckled and ran her fingers over the scars carved into his forehead and along his jaw. “So your Special Forces training also included brain surgery?” With each beep from the EKG, the fear she battled slowly overwhelmed her fake smile. “Please, I need to know.”
He captured her hand and held it against his chest. “There’s…” His heart thudded against her palm as he tightened his grip. “There’s nothing. No bright lights, no singing angels, no fear, no pain, nothing. You’re just floating in an infinite black ocean of nothing.”
“No fear, no pain. Sounds pretty cool.” She shrugged as she whispered the words. “Except the bit about the angels. I was kind of hoping for angels.”
His crooked grin distracted her from the gnawing ache in her gut, but as his smile faded, the darkness once again closed in around her.
She clawed her fingers into his T-shirt and pulled him closer. “I never meant for this to happen. I’m so sor—”
He cut her off with a kiss that crushed her into the mattress and sent her heart-rate monitor into overdrive. She pulled him down harder, her desperation for him overcoming the need to set him free.
Against All Odds (Outback Hearts) Page 25
