Page 5 of Entwined Hearts
If he hadn’t looked at me, none of this would be happening. He’d probably be adding yet another belt to his collection instead of lying on the ground.
“Wes!” I screamed, slamming my hands on the fence, my throat raw. “Weston!” As soon as the bull was put away, medical professionals rushed around him. I raised a leg over the fence to hop over, needing to get to him. He’d get up if I went over there. I knew he would.
Tattooed arms wrapped around my body, too strong for me to break free from, and they yanked me away.
“Let go of me!” I flung around, kicking my feet as they dragged me away from the fence. Away from Weston.
“Easy, Savvy. It’s just me,” Emmett said.
I went limp in my brother’s arms, my hair hanging over my face as he pulled me out of the arena. “I need to get to him,” I cried. “He needs me.” Eleven years of distance didn’t matteranymore. Not with him lying in the dirt, broken and alone. A sight I feared for years.
“We gotta go to the other side,” he said. He set me down once we were out of the crowd, and I turned and booked it to the other side of the arena the second he let go. I shoved people out of my way, my lungs burning from the exertion as I ran.
Beau and Claire were somehow already there, talking to a medic. Beau had his hands on his hips, his face tense. Claire’s eyes were shining with unshed tears.
My heart plummeted at the sight of them looking so worried.
Then Weston rolled past on a gurney, and they didn’t matter anymore. He was unconscious with a neck brace on, his skin pale and clammy. I rushed towards him, but got snatched back by another rough arm.
“No!” I fought against their grip, trying to go to the ambulance before they left.
“Hey, hey,” Beau rasped, turning me to face him. His eyes were blue like Weston’s. But they were the wrong blue. Beau’s were light like the sky, while Weston’s were dark, deep like the ocean. And they didn’t see me, they didn’t settle me like Weston’s always had.
“I need to go with him. Let me go with him. Please, Beau,” I wept. So much for them never knowing about us. My heart was on full display, and the only thing that could settle it was getting put in an ambulance.
Beau set his hands on my shoulders, giving them a squeeze. “Savannah, you need to take a deep breath.” He said it just like he had when Mom died and Claire was losing it. I must’ve been losing it, too, then.
He was right. I needed to get a grip. This wasn’t me. I wasn’t the girl who got hysterical. I was calm, collected, controlled. I kept my hysteria on the inside, buried under structure, routines, and a Xanax prescription.
I inhaled shakily and let it out, nodding at him despite the quiver in my chin.
“He’s gonna be okay. They’re pretty sure he broke his left shoulder, and he has a severe concussion. That’s why he’s unconscious. They’ll know more when they do scans at the hospital, but he’ll probably need surgery and could have a brain bleed.”
I bent over and threw up on his boots.
So much for control. But then again, I’d never had it. Not when it came to Weston.
I wasn’t much betterat the hospital. “You’re gonna wear out the floor, Savvy,” Emmett said after the tenth time I passed him.
“I’ll stop pacing when they give us answers,” I replied as if that would actually work.
But I couldn’t sit still in silent worry like Colt. Or stare at the ground like Beau and Emmett. Or stress snack like Delilah and Claire. Or talk just to fill the silence like Anna and Brittany. Or read to escape like Tess.
If it were anyone else, I’d stay calm. I’d try to comfort everyone and get answers from the staff, but it was Weston, so I paced.
We were all here, waiting for more news and occupying half the waiting room. It had been three hours already. First, they needed to do scans on his head to make sure his brain wasn’t bleeding. It wasn’t, thank fucking God. But they said he had a grade three concussion, the worst one before it became truly dangerous and life-threatening. He could wake up with amnesia, be sensitive to light and sound, have nausea, and headaches for weeks. And now he was getting surgery on his shoulder. They said it was some kind of tear in a joint that connected his collarbone and shoulder.
“I wish they’d just hurry the hell up already,” Delilah said with a sigh, slouching in her chair and stress-eating Cheetos. “It’s bullshit they won’t even come out here and tell us anything.”
Claire looked over at the information desk with a determined glare. She set her sleeve of powdered donuts down in Beau’s lap and strode over to the poor girl at the desk we hadn’t left alone all night.
My sister plastered a smile on her face that did nothing to hide how desperate we all were for even a scrap of something. “Hi, can you give us an update on Weston Tate, please?”
“There aren’t any updates since you asked last time,” the information girl said apologetically, but with a slight hint of annoyance. “Someone from the surgical team will come out as soon as there’s news.”
It was the fifth time I heard that scripted response, and I was pretty certain if I heard it again, I’d lose my shit on her.
I forced myself to sit down, wedged between Tess and Delilah. My knee bounced as I stared a hole into the doors leading to the operating rooms. Tess had Luke in her arms while she read on her Kindle. She seemed to be the calmest out of all of us, but then again, she had been gone and isolated from us for the last eight years, so she probably didn’t really care all that much.
