Page 138 of Bad Cowboy, Tennessee

Completely not in control.

My heart was yanked toward him like it was magnetized to his body, but I couldn’t follow.

Fuck.

I looked down at my own body—still shirtless, with so much of my chest and arm covered in Draven’s blood.

“Come inside,” a nurse said to me. She took my arm and led me, and I blinked through my tears as I moved through the fluorescent hallways inside.

I ended up in a room with a standing shower where the nurse helped me rinse off.

I couldn’t think.

Couldn’t process anything that just happened.

They gave me a clean cotton shirt and the nurse led me down more hallways until I rejoined Draven’s security crew, standing outside the emergency suite where Draven had been taken.

“Max,” a member of the crew told me, coming to my side. “The police just apprehended a man in a blue sedan, at an intersection not too far from Mr. Lyons’ property. Reggie Sandlefield. The man was shaky, incoherent, and he had the knife in the passenger seat of his car. He has been taken into custody.”

I knew the news was good, but it didn’t land on me in any way I could process.

The man was caught.

I should have been glad.

But all I could do was think about Draven’s blood. About his body there in that operating suite, hopefully holding onto consciousness.

And how Draven had done it all because of me.

Chapter 22

Draven

Ialways thought that if I was ever near death, I would go out fighting, swinging, full of rage until the last gasping moment.

Turns out that when it finally actually happened, all I felt was love.

I was in and out of consciousness for brief flashes of time after I left the operating room and had my battle wound all stitched up.

In that void, all I had were brief, passing thoughts. Dreams, maybe.

I thought about everything.

About my father.

About Brody McGowan.

About Lily, and Dominic, and every acre of my land.

And then I felt all of it, floating away, until the only thing left was Max. The blue of his eyes, the ruddy pink of his lips.

Like he was clearer, brighter, than everything else.

What have I done?

What have I been doing?

How could I have been so lost, when it was right there in front of me?

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