Page 52 of Ride the Sky

Aiden.

I squirm, panicked, desperate for an escape.

A cool hand on my brow. “Fallon? Can you hear me?”

I calm.

I know that voice. Deep. Rough. Infuriatingly familiar.

“Fallon? Can you wake up for me, baby?”

Baby?

I moan, uncertain if this is another dream. If I’m in hell and my sole tormentor is Wyatt Montgomery.

I crack an eye, quickly scanning the face that comes into focus. His left cheek is bruised. His golden-brown hair is disheveled. He looks haggard, exhausted, but still unfairly, ruggedly handsome.

“Wyatt?” I rasp. “What happened? Are you hurt?”

“No, I’m not hurt.”

The bed—bed?—shifts as he sits beside me.

“Then who is?” I lift a hand to his face, gesturing at his silver-lined eyes, but he clasps it, stilling me. My brain is foggy, but even I know a cowboy crying when I see one.

“Fallon.” He bows his head, grips my fingers with his own calloused fingertips. “You are.” His throat works over the words. “You’re hurt.”

“Liar.” I try to remember what happened before this—just before these strange shadows—but can’t.

His throat works. “You’re in the hospital.”

“What happened?” My words are garbled, thick.

His face falls, full of raw emotion. “You don’t remember?”

Fear buzzes through my body, but I quip, “I’m asking, aren’t I?”

It feels like a thousand years before he says, “You fell off your bull.”

“Bullshit.” I grab the side rails of my bed, try to pull myself upright. Cords and tubes tangle, an alarm sounds, and I swear.

I don’t believe it. Won’t.

“Fallon,” Wyatt says with force. His large hands come out to lean me back against the pillow. I thrash, but I’m weak at the moment, and he’s too strong. “Listen to me. You did.”

I open my mouth to argue with him, but nothing comes out.

His haunted eyes, the look on his face, scare me worse than the night he found me in the cabin at the Edens.

Memory zips through me, screaming, tearing down the walls of my brain. The thunder of the arena. The snort of the bull. The dizzying of my mind. That rope, that tether, loose in my hands, and then I—

“I fell,” I whisper.

More sensation now. My left leg feels padded, thick, uncomfortable.

My stomach twists. I bring my hand down and feel bandages wrapped around my thigh.

This isn’t happening. It’s not real.

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