The Cowboy's Baby: Devlin Brothers Ranch

by Joanna Bell

  It was time to leave. It was beyond time to leave, time to get Brody out of there. But I was hesitating. Lacey noticed and pulled me aside.

  "Hailey –"

  "He's up there," I told her, anticipating what she was about to say to me. "I know it, I know he's up there."

  She didn't want to say it out loud. She didn't want to say that if Jackson was "up there," he was probably already dead.

  Desperately, I looked around. Already, police cruisers were pulling away from where we stood, carrying the people who had escaped the fire further south, to safety.

  "Take him," I said, pulling Lacey close so Brody wouldn't hear me. "Take him right now. I'll be right behind –"

  "No," she cut me off. "Hailey no, you can't –"

  But I could. And I don't want anyone to think I was out of my mind or that I didn't know what I was doing. I knew. I knew, as I bent down to kiss the top of Brody's head and urge him to go with Lacey, that it might be the last time he ever saw me. I saw his future in my head – not just fatherless but motherless.

  He'll have his grandmother. He'll have Sandra and Lili and Tiago. They'll love him.

  Those were the thoughts racing through my skull as I broke away from Lacey and ran towards one of the police cruisers, its door already conveniently open. I wasn't thinking about myself or the fire. I was thinking about the people I love.

  Did I do the wrong thing? I don't know. I didn't know it in the moment, either. It felt, as I yanked the cruiser door shut behind me, as if I was being physically torn in two. On the one side: Brody. My son. My heart.

  And on the other? Jackson. Jackson Devlin, whose treatment of me since finding out about Brody had been unforgiving, to put it one way. I thought I was done with him. Sure, there was nostalgia and good memories, but I honestly thought by then that I'd left the love behind. Left it somewhere in the foothills of western Montana, forever overlooked by the brooding Rockies.

  We fool ourselves because we have to. Because at a certain point most of us learn that there are choices to be made, and not all of them are neat or obvious. We have to choose between fooling ourselves or living every day in painful acknowledgement of our broken, battered hearts. I chose to fool myself. And then a fire swept through Malibu and the moment came that I could not fool myself any longer.

  I knew he was up there. I don't know how I knew but I did. I knew he came for us. And I knew I couldn't leave him there.

  I turned the police car onto the dirt road and gunned it. The smoke was so thick I wasn't even sure anyone noticed me drive away. I hunched over the steering wheel, peering into the darkness, keeping the wheels on the track more by feel than any visual cue.

  The heat was so intense it was coming through the car itself. On my left, the dry scrub that lines the road was burning. I screamed and started to cry, but I kept going.

  When the grounds of Sea Vista appeared before me I saw at once that the northeast corner of the barn was on fire. Flames leapt into the darkness and showers of embers rained down on the main house. Soon, it would be on fire too. Soon, the gas tank in the police car would explode.

  Jackson.

  The house looked deserted. I drove the car around the back.

  It's too hot to get out. You're literally going to burn up if you get out of this car.

  In the back, I spotted something on the far side of the yard. A deer? A pile of – something? I squinted. What was it? If it was a person, they were laying down. My heart raced even faster, so hard it hurt. I pulled the car closer.

  It sure looked like a person. I could make out an arm, thrown up over a head. At least I thought I could, if my mind wasn't playing tricks on me.

  Well it's now or never, Hailey. You're going to die if you stay up here.

  I jumped out of the car and a wall of heat hit me full on. I fell forward onto my hands and knees, gasping and choking. And then someone grabbed me. A hand closed around my upper arm and someone yanked me to my feet. I turned, struggling. A firefighter.

  "COME WITH ME!" He yelled, dragging me backwards. I struggled free of his grip – only managing to do so because the last thing he must have expected was a fight.

  "NO!" I shouted back, the wind so high we could barely hear each other. I gestured to the spot where the person lay about thirty feet away. "NO! There's someone there!"

  The firefighter peered into the smoke for a second before shaking his head and taking my arm again. "Lady, we have to GO! NOW!"

  But at the last second the wind changed direction, momentarily blowing the smoke away from where the figure lay still on the ground, and my rescuer saw what I saw.

  "SHIT!" He yelled, and things were so dire by then that we weren't emergency worker and civilian, we were just two human beings who didn't want to die. "STAY HERE!"

  I didn't stay. I ran with him across the dry lawn to the prone figure.

  It was him. It was Jackson. Up until that point I think I kept my cool pretty admirably. But the last fraying string of my sanity broke when I saw it was him lying there on the ground.

  "JACKSON!" I screamed. "JACKSON! JACKSON!"

  And then I kept screaming, grabbing his shoulders and shaking him as hard as I could, slapping his face, trying uselessly to drag him away from the flames as they inched closer.

  He was burned. I could see the skin peeling away from his right arm. I was burned too, I could feel it happening. It didn't even cross my mind to wonder if he was dead or alive. The only thing I was focused on was getting him out of there.

  So we dragged him. Together, me and the firefighter dragged him back to a second cruiser, lights flashing, parked behind the one I'd stolen. It took all of our strength to maneuver Jackson's limp body into the backseat. I jumped in beside him, clutching at the burned remnants of his t-shirt, still screaming incoherently.

  I don't know how we made it back down to the highway – but we did. The firefighter drove, even though he was having coughing fits so hard I thought he might pass out, and I stayed in the back clinging to Jackson, begging him to wake up.

  He stirred at one point, just before the cruiser skidded back onto the smooth asphalt of the highway, and my tears of terror and pain turned, momentarily, to tears of relief.

  The highway was empty. We were the only vehicle on it for about a mile, trailed only by fire and smoke. The firefighter managed to get us out of there, careening down the road before coming to a sudden stop next to an ambulance parked on the shoulder.

  I staggered out of the cruiser and looked up. Two paramedics rushed towards us and then, as more noticed the commotion, two more. I looked back at Jackson, sprawled across the backseat. The skin on his arm was peeling off, the flesh underneath a horrible bright pink color. But he was breathing. He was alive. I was alive. Brody and Lacey were alive.

  There was nothing else I could do. So I sank to my knees on the burning hot asphalt and passed out cold.

  Chapter 43: Hailey

  I woke up in a hospital that night and immediately noticed it hurt to breathe. Also, I couldn't seem to get enough air even when I did inhale.

  Brody.

  I sat straight up in bed, wincing as pain shot down my right side. I seemed to be alone. The room was white, clean, lights turned down low.

  "Brody." I called for my son, my voice hoarse.

  And then my memory started to come back. The fire. Stealing the police car. Jackson lying motionless and burned on the ground. Where was he? Where was our son?

  I tried to reach out and grab the edge of the table beside the bed, but my arm wouldn't bend properly. It was heavily bandaged. So was one of my thighs.

  Where was Brody?

  That time, when I tried again to reach for the table, I succeeded only in falling out of bed. A nurse rushed in, followed by another, and they helped me back into bed. I didn't want to get back into bed, though. I wanted to know where my son and his father were.

  "Brody –" I whispered again as a nurse reassured me that I was fine, just confused. But I didn't care if I wa
s fine. My concerns lay entirely elsewhere.

  ***

  The next time I woke up, it was day time. Sunlight flooded in through the window.

  "MOMMY!"

  Brody. He was already in my arms, his cheek pressed against my own.

  Thank God. Oh, thank God.

  I held him tight, breathing in the scent of his hair and weeping silent mom tears, the kind you cry when you don't want your kid to understand just how terrified you really were.

  "You burned your arm," Brody observed, pointing to my bandaged limb. "And your leg."

  I nodded. "I did."

  "Does it hurt?"

  Lacey was sitting in the armchair near the window, watching the reunion. I couldn't read the expression on her face. I didn't know if it meant she had bad news or good news.

  "No," I lied. "It doesn't hurt."

  "Did Daddy get burned, too?"

  ***

  They discharged me from the hospital 3 days later. My injuries weren't serious. The burns, while extremely painful, were superficial. So were those sustained by the firefighter who saved my life. I met him in the hospital, where he was recovering a few rooms down from me, and apologized for what I'd done.

  His name was Alberto and his room was full of visitors – his 2 little daughters, his wife, his parents, any number of cousins. He told me, when I apologized, that it was alright. When I expressed skepticism about that – how could anyone be 'alright' with risking leaving their children fatherless because some dumbass stole a cop car and drove it into a wildfire? – he just grinned.

  "You didn't have a choice," he told me as one of his daughters sat on the end of his hospital bed painting his toenails a particularly vibrant shade of purple. "None of us does. Someone you love was in danger. You didn't have a choice. How can I blame you when I would have done the same?"

  "I'm still sorry," I repeated. "And I'm happy you're OK."

  Alberto the firefighter glanced at his daughter and then back at me. "So am I."

  ***

  I didn't see Jackson Devlin for almost 3 weeks. He was in an induced coma in an isolation unit, pumped full of painkillers and antibiotics as the best doctors and burn specialists in the state fought to keep him free of infection. No one knew if he would live.

  I spent those weeks stumbling around in the west coast sunshine like a zombie. My family flew out and we all, including Lacey, stayed together in a house that belonged to one of Candy's friends. Miraculously, Sea Vista Ranch didn't burn down, and the horses I let out of the paddock as the flames approached were all found alive and well. But the main house still needed to be cleared for habitation and the entire property was still covered in about 6 inches of ash.

  Those days and weeks after the fire felt like living underwater, or in one of those dreams you can't quite pinpoint as dream or nightmare. I was OK. Brody was OK. But Jackson was not OK. We didn't even know if Jackson would be alive in a week, or 2 weeks, or a year. And we didn't know, if he lived, what his life would be like.

  The house where we stayed had a back deck that overlooked Los Angeles. At night you could sit out there and gaze down at the city spread out below you like a glittering carpet. I got into the habit of, after putting Brody to bed, sitting out there in the quiet, gentle evening breeze.

  "It must be so hard," Lacey said to me one night, after joining me. "Having to go through this with Brody, having to hold yourself together for him."

  She was right – it was hard, and I was having to hold myself together for Brody. But it would have been harder without him.

  "I don't know," I replied, shivering at the sound of a coyote howling in the hills. "It feels like he's the only thing keeping me in one piece. Like if it wasn't for him I would just dissolve into atoms and float away."

  Lacey reached out and squeezed my hand. "It's going to be OK. I know it. Jackson is strong."

  I took no reassurance from the well-meaning promises of Lacey and my family. I wasn't filled with hope when they reminded me just how strong or young or healthy Jackson was. For one thing, there was no room in my soul for any more hope. All that it was possible to feel, I already felt.

  If he lived, everything was going to be different. I knew that. The fire swept through my soul and heart as thoroughly as it swept through the hills north of Los Angeles, leaving behind nothing but smoking ruins. There was nowhere left for me to hide, including from myself.

  If Jackson lived, I was his. If he didn't want me, that was fine and I would build a life for myself and Brody regardless. But if he did want me, nothing else mattered but being with him and our son.

  So he had to live.

  He had to.

  What was I going to do without him?

  Chapter 44: Jackson

  Drowning. Endless dreams of drowning. Ironic, given my flame-scarred body and lungs. It felt like a day, maybe two. A day of swimming through dark water, reaching for the surface as my lungs threatened to burst only to find that what I thought was the surface was actually the bottom. My hands, my fingers clawing at the mud, scraping over the shells of the creatures that lived at the bottom of the sea as I fought desperately for my breath – for my life.

  And then, voices. Oddly calm, businesslike voices. Not the kind of thing you expect to hear at the bottom of the ocean.

  Voices and... beeping. So many beeps and blips and blops and, every now and again, the feeling that they were right there, right behind me or beside me, just out of view. But they weren't. No matter where I looked, there was only that black, endless water and the panic to get to the surface.

  Until I turned and saw, as if through fog, a woman in white. She saw me looking at her and immediately rushed towards me.

  "Jackson? Jackson?"

  How did she know my name?

  And then, suddenly, looming out of the darkness like a specter – my dad.

  My dad? What was he doing at the bottom of the ocean?

  My confusion was soon replaced by an incoherent anger. I tried to lash out, to push him away – but I couldn't move properly, I couldn't connect, the water made my limbs slow and clumsy.

  "Get out." I said. I tried to say it, anyway, but no sound came out of my mouth. Somewhere, the beeping reached a frenzied level.

  And then he was gone, replaced once more by dark water. I resumed swimming, turning my head this way and that.

  I was searching.

  For what?

  For her.

  Even in the fathomless depths of a coma, my unseeing eyes looked for her, my unhearing ears strained for the sound of her voice.

  Hailey.

  Chapter 45: Hailey

  Almost 3 weeks after the fire, I was finally allowed to visit Jackson. Brody was allowed too, but I didn't want him to see anything that would upset him so I made those first visits alone.

  The hospital was new, clean and welcoming in the bright afternoon sunshine. I hesitated briefly at the entrance, worried that I wasn't ready, that I wouldn't know what to say to Jackson if he was awake.

  And then who should the automatic doors silently pull back to reveal but Jack and Darcy Devlin. There were a couple of other people with them, a young woman and – was that Cillian?

  For a moment we all stood stock still, blinking at each other in disbelief. And then Jack's face suddenly twisted into a grimace. He eyed me the way you would eye a smear of something foul on your shoes, turned his head slightly to the side and spit on the ground. And then he kept walking, brushing past me with his wife – who refused to even look at me – in tow.

  At the last minute, the man who could only be Cillian glanced at me and mouthed the word "sorry" before continuing on his way.

  It took a good few seconds for it to even sink in that I'd just come face to face with Jackson's dad. And his stepmom and brother. The people responsible for – everything.

  What the fuck?

  What were they doing in that hospital? Visiting Jackson, obviously. Which meant he was still in really bad shape – because there was no goddamned w
ay he would be spending time with his father. Not if he had any say in it.

  I watched the Devlins walking away, infuriated. And then I stormed into the hospital and approached the reception area.

  "They shouldn't be in here," I told the receptionist, turning to point out who I was talking about in the parking lot. "They – you shouldn't – Jackson Devlin wouldn't want them here! He wouldn't want –"

  "I'm sorry, if this is about a patient you're going to have to talk to one of the assigned nurses. Is this about a patient?"

  I took a deep breath as the adrenaline from the encounter fully kicked in and my hands began to shake. "Yes. Uh – yes. Jackson. Jackson Devlin. He's, uh –"

  "He's on the 5th floor," the woman said, smiling calmly and gesturing to a row of elevators. Turn left out of the elevator and follow the blue arrows to the nursing station. They'll be able to –"

  "Thank you." I mumbled over my shoulder, already on my way.

  ***

  Jackson was unrecognizable.

  Wrapped in bandages almost from head to toe and immobile in a hospital bed. I thought I was prepared to see him like that – so wounded, so damaged. But now I think nothing could have prepared me.

  I brought my hands to my face and wept silently, fighting the urge to reach out and take his hand in mine because a nurse had warned me not to touch him.

  Jackson didn't stir. The only sounds were the beeping of the machines monitoring him and the dry, awful rasping of his breathing.

  Outside, at the nursing station, I wiped my eyes and asked why Jack Devlin had been allowed to visit.

  He was family, I was told. I was not.

  Jackson wouldn't want his dad there. Or his stepmother. I told the nurses as much but they responded that it was beyond their control, that they could only restrict family if Jackson asked them to. And so far, as he had yet to speak a single word since his arrival, he hadn't done so.