Page 64 of Take Me to the Wedding

She laughed. “You’re too funny.”

That broke the more solemn mood and stopped the discussion about our past. The past was done and over. And I couldn’t wait to move on.

“Okay, kids,” the ER nurse said. “Time to go. I’ll wheel you right up to the car.”

I thanked her and managed to fold myself into the passenger seat, managing a nod of thanks to Gabe. As soon as I buckled in, I sent Sam a photo of my cast, told her all was well, and begged her to let me know how she was doing. She responded with three thumbs up emojis and wrote that she’d see me later.

Fortunately, Lilly didn’t say anything else beyond the norm in front of the guys. I was ecstatic when we finally pulled into the gravel lot near the farmhouse. “Home at last,” I said. I grabbed my discharge instructions—and the bag with the salad—from the floor. “Thanks, everyone, for everything.”

“I’ll help you to your cabin,” Lilly said when I managed to get myself out of the car.

“We got him,” Gabe said, intercepting Lilly physically by standing between us and taking my stuff from her. “You can get ready for tonight if you want.”

“Are you coming to the cookout?” she asked me.

“I’ll do my best.” What I really wanted was to go home, but that would mean Sam would have to leave early too, and I figured I’d already put enough of a wrench into Ani’s weekend. I could rally one last night for her sake.

I awkwardly placed my crutches on the uneven ground and headed down the path to the cabin, Brax and Gabe at my sides. How many times had I instructed patients to avoid mashing them into your armpits? Now I got how hard that was.

Somehow I felt like I’d shut a door. One that had been closed for me long ago. But now this time I was the one doing the closing. And it felt like a relief. I just hoped that Lilly got the memo.

ChapterSeventeen

Samantha

As soon as I knocked on the guys’ cabin door at around four that afternoon, a flutter of nerves made me second-guess my errand.It’s all right, I told myself. I’d find out how Caleb was doing. Simply a friendly gesture from someone who’d shared his scary ordeal and cared about him. I left just as everyone was getting ready for the evening. I’d be back shortly and never miss a beat.

I didn’t know how he’d feel about company. Maybe he was irritable and exhausted. Maybe Lilly had won him back with her sudden attentiveness and care.

That was the real issue here. How had he received her emotional outpouring, her insistence to be with him?

I scratched my leg. And then my arm. The bugs were terrible out here.

Who was I kidding? This was more than care. I was worried sick about him. What if his head injury was worse than they’d thought? What if the break was much worse than it had seemed? What if he’d injured his internal organs when he rolled down that hill or?—

“Come in,” a groggy voice called, interrupting my catastrophizing.

It sounded like I’d probably just woken him up, and that made me second-guess myself even more. I pushed open the door to find the main room full of slanted rays of sunlight in the late-afternoon light. In the bedroom, Caleb was lying on a bottom bunk with his leg stretched out, toes sticking up from the bright green cast. With all his height, he seemed pretty squished into that bed. His head was a little sideways so that his cast could fit. Otherwise, his leg would be hanging off the bed.

“Hi,” I said. I thought about trying for a joke with dumb lines like “That cast is so bright I need my sunglasses,” or “It took a broken bone to finally keep you from springing to the door,” but I was too nervous to say anything.

“Hi,” he said back, looking a little surprised. He instantly started smoothing down his hair, which cracked me up a little inside. His voice kind came out kind of wobbly—the way it does when someonefeelssomething. Could he have been nervous like I was?

I didn’t know. I’d always been someone who made sure she didn’t ever feel too much. This was novel territory.

Everything seemed different between us. There was nothing to argue about. The air, void of our usual back-and-forth, was quiet—too quiet. It was charged with something else entirely.

I was so relieved to see him. And then—how embarrassing—I got a little teary. I had to swipe at my eyes because—well, because tearing up was just plain weird.

“Are you okay?” he asked. Oh no. He was askingme.

“Yes! I mean, there’s nothing to get emotional about. You broke a bone, and it wasn’t even bleeding or sticking up out of your skin. It wasn’t even your femur, which would have been amuchbigger deal, and your head injury wasn’t even enough to keep you in the hospital overnight.” Could I have babbled on any worse?

He was going to be just fine. Yet I sank down on the bed, trying to control my shaking.

His gaze resting on mine in that intense way of his threw me. Wiped my mind of all thoughts, humorous or otherwise. And so I just sat there, brown paper bags in hand.

He inhaled deeply. “I smell meat. Youdocare about me.”

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