“Don’t pull it out!” Josie clamped her hand over mine before I could pluck the blade from my thigh. “You’re never supposed to pull a knife out of your body. You should know that.” She swatted my other hand when it came around.
“This isn’t a knife, Joze.” I stopped trying to pull it free and twisted around to inspect her. “Calling this a knife is an insult to an actual knife. A butter knife included.”
“Just stabbed by a man who broke into our place and still the sarcasm.” A smile moved into place on her face. “Is there anything you take seriously?”
My eyes did another inspection of her. On the outside, she seemed unhurt. “You. Your safety. Your wellbeing. That I take very seriously, and thank you, by the way, for respecting that and listening to me when I told you to run.”
Josie wound her hand through mine, turning it over and grimacing when she saw my knuckles. “I don’t run when things get scary, Garth. I thought you would have known that by now.”
I looked around the room. The unconscious man beside us, the tipped-over wheelchair behind us . . . she had proven that for as long as I’d known her. I’d just been unable or unwilling to accept that about her.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
She nodded. “It would take a hell of a lot more than some junkie’s threats to hurt me.”
A wince spread across my face when another stab of pain shot up my leg. I could almost feel the rust crusting off inside the wound, just waiting to spread infection. “Joze, would you mind grabbing my phone from my wheelchair and calling 911? This guy’s going to require a hospital stay, and I’m going to need some antibiotics, and shit . . .” Another surge of pain, thanks to that pathetic little knife. “Some pain killers too.”
Josie was in the middle of shuffling through the side pockets of my wheelchair when she froze. Turning her head slowly, her eyes widened as they lowered to my legs. “Does that hurt?” She stared at the knife sticking out of my thigh.
“Like a son of a bitch,” I answered, tempted to rip the blade out again. I stifled the urge, knowing Josie would have been pissed. When she stayed silent, still frozen beside my wheelchair, I glanced up. She was smiling at me.
“You’re not getting it, are you?” she said.
“Not getting why you’re smiling ear-to-ear after everything that just happened? No, I’m not getting it.”
She crawled over, pausing at my feet before dropping her hands just above my ankles. Her smile stayed in place as she gently squeezed my legs.
“What are you doing, crazy person?” I tried to not return her smile, but it was impossible. I’d never been able to avoid smiling back when she grinned at me the way she did now. “You’re supposed to be calling 911. You’re supposed to be freaking out and making a mental note to call a shrink in the morning so you can talk about what you went through tonight.” Her hands slid higher up my legs, stopping just above my knees. “You’re not supposed to be grinning at me and crawling up my legs with that glint in your eyes.”
Her hands moved higher up my leg, that spark in her eyes growing. My brows pulled together as I tried to figure out what she was trying to tell me. Her fingers crept a little higher, stopping when they got close to the knife.
“How much farther am I going to have to go before it registers?” Her eyes dropped to her hands on my legs before her gaze moved higher. They didn’t stop until they locked with my eyes.
Only after she’d held my stare for a few moments, followed by an eyebrow slowly lifting, did I get it.
I could feel her hands on my legs. I could feel pain from the knife buried in my thigh. I could feel my feet and toes and how my sock had becoming annoyingly bunched up down in my boot. I could feel my legs . . .
“Joze . . .” I breathed, no other words seeming appropriate.
“I know, baby. I know.” Tears flowed down her face, and she threw herself at me.
Her arms wound around my neck, and mine slipped around her waist, our foreheads together as I let what had just happened, what was happening, sink in. We sat like that for a few minutes, me in a stunned silence while Josie kept smiling and crying. Just when it seemed like I was getting close to grasping what had happened, it would get away from me, and I’d have to start all over again.
I forgot all about the knife sticking out of my leg. I forgot about the man lying passed out a few feet away. I even forgot about the phone call to 911 and the wheelchair beside us, where my phone was still buried. All I could think about was the miracle that had, for some reason, fallen into my lap.
The miracle wasn’t the sensation surging into my legs again—it was her. Josie was the miracle. There she was, sitting in my lap and wrapped around me, whispering I love you over and over as she continued to cry happy tears, hanging on to me in the way she always had no matter what I’d been going through—like there was nothing I could do or we could go through that could ever get her to let go.
Like her love was forever.
She’d proven that to me countless times—that wasn’t the reason I hadn’t picked up on it sooner. I hadn’t seen it, because I hadn’t been ready to see it. I had to lose my legs, face the reality of losing her, and look the devil in the face with both eyes open before I could accept that she’d love me forever, the same way I’d love her. That fact wouldn’t change whether we were together or apart, so why make life harder than it already was by living apart? Neither space, time, nor situation would change that there was only one person in this godforsaken world for me. I could push her away and shove her away in my best attempts to save her from me, but nothing could change that Josie and I were bound to each other in such a way that nothing could sever the bond.
“Josie . . .” I swallowed and tightened my arms around her. “I’m sorry.”
Her head resting on my shoulder nodded. “I know.”
“I only did what I did because I thought it was best for you. All I want is the best for you.”
Another nod. “I know.”
She’d been sitting on my lap with her legs wrapped around my back for so long, I could feel my legs starting to go numb. The pricks and stabs of my lower half going numb had never felt so damn good.
“I love you,” I whispered.
Her head bobbed against my shoulder as she repeated, “I know.”
“I want to spend the rest of my life with you, and I swear to God, Joze, I’ll swear to every God you want me to, I’m done trying to do what’s noble and pushing you away to keep you safe from me. I’m done thinking you’ll be happier with someone else. I’m done thinking we could one day move on from each other if we tried. I’m done being an idiot.” I stopped. “Well, I’m done being an idiot in those ways at least.”
Josie’s small laugh rolled across my neck. Her arms tightened around my neck. “I know.”
“Oh, and Joze? The next time you hear me talking to someone in a dark room late at night when neither of us were exactly expecting company, please don’t come charging in dressed in nothing but your underwear, okay? For Christ’s sake.” I let out a long sigh as I shook my head at her.
Another laugh came from her, but just as she was about to repeat her two-word mantra, my mouth found hers and silenced it.
EVERYONE WANTED TO give a name to what had happened to me. The pastor at the community church in town preached to the congregation about it being a miracle. Dr. Murphy gave it a really long, drawn-out name that I couldn’t have repeated if someone had offered to pay me a thousand bucks. The hippie lady who owned a candle-and-hemp store in town said it was something having to do with transcendentalism . . . or something like that. Everyone had a name for it.
I did too. But it wasn’t miracle or some lengthy medical term. It was her name. Josie. She was the answer and explanation as to why I was walking again. Some physiological phenomenon might have played a part in healing the nerve damage, but I was walking again because Josie had never given up hope in me. That hope didn’t come with the condition of if I ever walked again, nor did it only
stem from her keeping her fingers crossed that my spine would one day heal. That hope came from her just believing in me and never giving up on me, despite all of the reasons I’d given her to.
If that kind of thing couldn’t make a man walk again, then nothing else could.
The last three months had passed in a blur of physical therapy, doctor appointments, and re-mapping my future. My legs had been weak after being immobile for over a month, but spending a few hours a week in PT and a few more hours in the gym strengthening them on my own got them back to feeling like normal after a month. Doctor Murphy finally twisted my arm into getting that damn MRI. Seemed kind of backward that I wouldn’t pay for it when I was injured and needed to get better but would after I was healed. It might have been because after paying that ungodly hospital bill that still haunted my dreams, five grand seemed like chump change.
Dr. Murphy had another drawn-out explanation as to what the MRI revealed, but what it all boiled down to was that my back looked good, my spine looked good, and I was good. That might have been the first time that designation had been assigned to me, but I’d take it after spending a month feeling the very opposite.
Lots more had happened since the night I’d beaten the shit out of that bum and recovered my legs, but the highlight of it had been accepting that if everything life had thrown at us couldn’t manage to break Josie and me apart, what we had was something a person didn’t just let go of. I couldn’t say good-bye even if that was what I thought was the right thing to do for Josie, because unless I was in her life, nothing could be right in her world.
I’d known that for myself for a long time, but I had refused to believe Josie was prisoner to the same sentiment. I knew better now though. She’d said it best when she’d said loving someone was like giving them permission to destroy you yet trusting that they wouldn’t. I wouldn’t betray her trust by destroying her.
After hitting the low point of trying to set up my girlfriend with her old flame, I’d made a vow to myself that I was done doubting what I’d done to deserve her or what I could ever do to be deserving of her devotion and opted to accept it for what it was and do everything I could to honor that kind of love by paying it back twofold.
I didn’t need to understand the why and how of Josie’s love to accept and return it.
Four months ago, I’d been in a wheelchair. My career in bull riding had been over. A third of a year later, there I was, wheelchair-free and about to compete in my first ride since the one that had shaken up my whole existence. I’d missed nationals, which was an unfortunate side effect of having been paralyzed, but even though I’d missed that ride, it didn’t mean I had to miss all future rides. Just because I’d been one ride away from a national championship didn’t mean I couldn’t start all over and work my way back up again.
When people had heard of me riding again, I got a wide range of responses. Some, the real cowboys who’d gritted their teeth and would have finished their day even if they’d broken a leg, patted me on the back and grunted, “Atta boy.” The doctors and therapists had to—grudgingly perhaps—confirm that as far as my back and health were concerned, I wasn’t at risk . . . I mean, other than the obvious risks associated with bull riding. My back would be fine. Until it wasn’t, as Dr. Murphy continually reminded me, when I took another bad fall and found myself back in a wheelchair. Or worse. Most people were of a mind like the good doctor’s, baffled as to why I’d want to return to the very sport that had nearly killed me. They thought I was spitting on the gift of regaining my mobility by hopping on another bull’s back months after healing. They accused me of being careless and stupid and of having a serious god complex that came with assumed invincibility.
They could think whatever the hell they wanted though. I only cared what one person thought, and in so many words, Josie had ordered me to get back on the horse. She hadn’t done it without hesitation seeping into her voice or anxiety filtering into her eyes, but I’d gotten the confirmation that she was supportive of me returning to the arena when she flashed my registration, which she’d filled out herself, in my face. The one she’d signed me up for was the one I was riding tonight. My first one back.
Josie hadn’t been able to mask her nervousness quite so well tonight, and her nails had been chewed down to nubs by the time we’d made it inside the arena. I’d told her I was willing and ready to walk away then and there if that was what she wanted. If never having to hold her breath while I clung to the back of a bull made her happy, that was good enough for me . . . but instead she’d kissed me and said to ride hard. Following another kiss, she’d turned and rushed away to where I guessed she was going to finish chewing down what was left of her nails until my ride was over.
I thought she felt as I did though, and that was why she hadn’t asked me to stop riding. She knew a person couldn’t just back away and go down another road every time life dropped a challenge that terrified them. You couldn’t walk away from the things and people you loved because of inherit risk. I’d learned that in my way this year, and Josie had learned that in hers.
I’d been holed up in some small room since arriving, stretching and preparing myself for my ride. I’d never been one of those guys who’d had to find a quiet spot to “get his head in the game”—I’d usually just hung out with the rest of the guys staggered around the chutes. But tonight, something was different. I needed a quiet spot. Not just to get into the right mindset but because I didn’t want to look like a little ballerina, stretching and limbering up. Plenty of guys had their routines that included stretching, but after what I’d been through, I wanted to be as loose and limber on that bull as a person could be. I wanted to be able to bend in half frontward and backward without snapping or breaking or injuring anything.
I wasn’t sure I would get there, ever, but I didn’t want my competitors and the spectators to witness my attempts at getting there. Some of the stretches my therapist had me doing made me look more like a little girl hoping to be a prima donna rather than a rough and tough bull rider.
A quick knock sounded at the door right before a couple bodies popped inside the room. One looked apologetic for the abrupt interruption. The other didn’t appear concerned in the least.
“Are you praying?” Jesse asked as he and Rowen surveyed me on my knees with my elbows propped on the seat of a chair.
Rowen let out a sharp huff. “To what? The only god Garth believes in is himself.”
I smiled humorlessly before lifting off of my knees. “For your information, Mrs. Sterling-Walker, I was visualizing.”
Jesse’s brows lifted. Rowen’s brows came together.
“You? Visualizing?” She moved closer, giving me a look of pure and utter skepticism. “What’s next? Developing a mantra and reading self-help books?”
I grabbed my hat hanging off the chair and slid it back into place. I felt naked in front of people without it. “My therapist recommended visualizing the ride before actually getting out there and riding. He said it’s, like, been proven to enhance athletes’ performance when they do it.”
Rowen’s skepticism was transferring to Jesse.
“What? You should give it a try before painting a picture or sculpting or whatever it is you do. It might help.” I finished strapping my protective chest guard into place. Then I double-checked it. I wasn’t leaving anything but fate to fate tonight.
“Yeah, I’ll get right on that, Black.” Rowen fired a wink at me as she stopped a few feet in front of me. “The nice thing about my chosen profession is that I don’t have to worry about my paint brush crushing me and breaking me in half or wonder if a tube of paint will stab me in the ass with its horns.”
“If you’re not dodging a set of horns or hooves every few weeks, you’re not living life to its fullest.” I scooted the chair beside me behind Rowen. That was about the same time Jesse showed up with the other chair from the corner.
“What are you talking about?” she said, thanking us both with a tired smile as she maneuvered
into the chair Jesse had retrieved for her. Of course. “I’m living life so much to its fullest I’m about to burst.” Her hands covered her stomach, which was long past the is-she-or-isn’t-she point. I guessed with Rowen being such a tiny slip of a thing that when a baby was developing in her stomach, it really stuck out. She looked as if she’d shoved a basketball underneath her shirt.
“How you feeling there, mama bear?” I asked, pushing the empty chair Jesse’s way. He wasn’t carrying the baby, but he looked more tired and beat-up than Rowen.
“Like if pregnancy could magically change from being nine and a half months in duration to six, I’d be the happiest person in the world.” Her hands continued to slide up and down her stomach. “Other than that and not being able to sleep at night without waking up every two hours to pee and feeling like I could eat the contents of the Country Buffet in town at every meal and feeling like my chest is on fire from the heartburn I get after eating said buffet and having to assure and reassure this guy every time I make a face that might even hint at discomfort . . .” She shot me a smile. “I’m doing fantabulous.”
Jesse slid into the chair beside her, hovering just as he’d taken up doing since Rowen got pregnant.
“How’s the old ticker?” I asked, lifting my chin.
Rowen chuckled while Jesse shot me a sneer. “Still ticking away. Thanks for asking. How’s yours?”
“Good. But I’m not the pregnant one with a heart condition.”
“Garth,” Jesse warned, but his irritation dimmed when Rowen’s chuckle continued.
I wasn’t trying to make light of the threat posed to Rowen and their baby, but sometimes life needed to be laughed at instead of feared. At least some of the time.
When she finished laughing, she looked at me. “No, but you’re the one about to go out and crawl onto the back of a bull after the last ride left you paralyzed from the neck down.” She gave me an evil little smile. “In terms of who’s got the bigger death wish, you’ve got me beat, Black. Congratulations.”