“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
* * *
NEAL KNEW HIS grip had to be crushing her small hand. It couldn’t be true. He didn’t want to believe her. The pain in his head intensified until he almost screamed.
Forcing himself to let go of her, he raised a trembling hand to grope at the bandages on his face. His eye was gone. He was half-blind. He wanted to tear the dressings off and prove it wasn’t true.
“Is that the worst of it?” he managed to ask.
“Yes. You will have a scar on your face, but you’ll be able to get a prosthesis as soon as it’s healed.”
“A glass eye, you mean?” Repugnance filled him. This was some kind of cruel joke. It couldn’t be happening.
No, the real joke was that she was the one to see him like this.
She leaned close and took his hand. “I can’t imagine what you’re going through, but your family and friends will be here for you. You will get through this.”
The pain in his head grew along with his need to lash out. He jerked away from her. “You should leave now. It’s what you do best.”
“I’m so sorry, Neal.”
“I don’t want your pity! Leave me alone.”
“Anger is a very normal reaction to such terrible news.”
How could she be so calm about the worst moment in his life? It infuriated him. It wasn’t rational to blame her, but he couldn’t help himself. “Don’t tell me what’s normal. Just get out!”
“Neal, please,” she pleaded.
“Get out!” he shouted.
The pain was making him sick. He didn’t want her to see him puke his guts up. He closed his eye and gritted his teeth. Cold beads of sweat broke out across his forehead as his stomach roiled.
The room grew quiet. Had she gone?
A feeling of panic swelled in him. He didn’t want her to go. He needed her. He had always needed her; he just didn’t know how much until she was gone.
A hand touched his face and a cool cloth was laid on his brow. “Breathe through your mouth. Take slow, deep breaths,” she said.
“I told you—”
“Shut up. I’m a nurse, and you’ll do as I say. I have a basin here if you need it.”
Damn her. She knew what he needed almost before he did.
Did she know he needed to feel her lips against his? That he wanted to hold her in his arms? Did she know that he still lay awake at night missing her warmth next to him?
No, she couldn’t know, and he’d be damned if he would tell her now. She had left him.
He heard the door open as someone came into the room, but he couldn’t see who it was. The door was on his blind side.
His blind side! Just thinking the words made him feel sicker. This couldn’t be happening. It had to be a nightmare. Any second he would wake up.
Robyn moved away and spoke quietly to someone. The door opened and closed again. He wanted to call her back. He didn’t want to be alone. He wanted her by his side. He raised his hand, groping for her.
She moved back into his line of sight and his feeling of panic began to lessen. He heard the door again, and a woman’s voice said, “This will help.”
A cold sensation snaked up his arm from the IV in the back of his hand. After a few minutes, the pain and nausea began to recede.
Robyn held his other hand. “The nurse has given you something for the pain. Is that better?”
“Yes,” he admitted weakly. He grew strangely weightless. The pain slipped away, leaving him weary. There was so much he wanted to say to Robyn, only he had no idea where to start.
Her fingers caressed his face. “Sleep now. Your mother will be back soon.”
“Don’t go.” He wanted her to stay. Foolish as he knew that wish was, he didn’t want her to go.
“You’re going to be okay, Neal.”
“I’m sorry I yelled at you.” He tried to hold on to the feeling of her hand touching his face, to the scent like spring flowers she always wore, but everything began to fade. He couldn’t sleep. He fought against the drug. “Tell me why,” he begged.
“Why, what?”
“Why you left me.”
“Because you didn’t love me.”
She was wrong, so wrong, but he couldn’t form the words to tell her as the darkness closed over him.
The drugged sleep brought him no peace. Instead, it carried him into a world of foggy, half-formed nightmares where an enormous bull with bloody horns pursued him relentlessly. He awoke in near darkness with pain pounding in his head again and the taste of fear in his mouth.
He turned to search for Robyn, craving the gentleness of her touch. His hopes soared for an instant until he recognized his mother asleep in the chair beside him.
Robyn was gone. The pain he felt then had nothing to do with his injury. It was an old, familiar pain. One he knew he deserved.
Raising his hand slowly, he touched the gauze bandage on his face. He hadn’t dreamed this. His eye was gone. He would be scarred for life.
Why him? What kind of life would he have as a one-eyed freak? A sudden thought sent a new chill of fear through him.
What if he couldn’t ride again? What would he do? He couldn’t lose that. Not that.
He was Neal Bryant, soon to be a world-champion bull rider. Not a runner-up. Not a loser. He’d given up everything to make it this far. Everything, including Robyn.
His hands clenched into fists on the sheets. He would ride again. He had to.
CHAPTER THREE
“MOM, ARE YOU sure you want to go through with this?” Robyn sat behind the wheel of her battered green Ford pickup and struggled not to cry as she gazed at her mother’s face. Martha O’Connor was pale but composed as she buttoned the top button of her blue cotton blouse.
She took a deep breath and nodded once. “I don’t want to do it, but I have to. I have no other choice. The ranch is too much for me to handle now that your dad is gone. There are too many decisions to make, too much work that needs doing. This is the only way.”
“I could help more,” Robyn offered one last time. It didn’t seem right to sell the ranch that had been in their family for generations. Who would love it as much as her family had? Her great-great-grandparents had come from Ireland and settled in the green treeless hills so unlike their native land. They were hearty people. They had survived in spite of drought, prairie fires and floods and built a ranch to be proud of. She would make them proud by keeping her head up.
Her mother said, “You can’t help more. You work five and six days a week as it is. If we move into town, you’ll be able to spend more time with Chance. You won’t be driving thirty miles twice a day to get to work and back. I should have put the place up for sale two years ago when we started losing money, but I thought— Well, it doesn’t matter what I thought. This drought has finished us.”
She turned pleading eyes toward Robyn. “You can make a decent living as a nurse. You don’t need to worry about outguessing the weather or gambling everything on the cattle market. You don’t need to watch your dreams wither and dry into dust. I want a stable, secure life for you and my grandson. Can you understand that?”
“Are you doing this because you think Chance won’t be able to run