Page 78 of Careless Hope
“Walker!” I screamed, diving to his side. His eyelids fluttered, fighting to stay open, a testament to his sheer willpower. But even cowboys have their limits, and as his consciousness slipped away, a cold shiver ran down my spine. This man—who’d just shown the heart of a lion—lay vulnerable, his life bleeding out onto my office floor.
“Stay with me, Walker. Fight!” I pleaded, though I knew the real battle had only just begun. It wasn’t just about saving Lily anymore. It was about saving Walker too. Saving the man whose laughter could light up a room, whose dreams were finally within reach, the man I loved—if only he could hold on.
My hands, once steady and sure in the most delicate ofsurgeries, now trembled like aspen leaves in a storm. I fumbled with Walker’s shirt, ripping it open to reveal the angry wound that marred his once flawless abdomen. Blood soaked through the fabric of his favorite black t-shirt—a stark contrast to the bright crimson that smeared across my fingers.
I pressed down harder, trying to stem the tide that threatened to take Walker from us. His breaths, shallow and ragged, were the most terrifying sounds I’d ever heard in the quiet sterility of my office. My vision blurred with tears as I looked at him lying there—so large, so full of life, now so still.
“Stay with me, cowboy,” I whispered, my voice breaking. The words felt foreign on my tongue, a desperate incantation I never thought I’d need to utter.
With one hand still clamped firmly over Walker’s wound, I reached for Lily with the other. She lay just three feet away, her own crisis momentarily shadowed by the chaos of another gunshot.
“Please, don’t let go,” I pleaded.
The room filled with the scent of blood and antiseptic, and beneath it all, the earthy hint of hay and leather that always seemed to follow Walker. It was a reminder of the ranch, of home, of all the things that made this town what it was. And in that moment, as I battled for their lives, it became the symbol of everything we stood to lose.
Blood seeped through the makeshift bandage, a stark red against white. “I’m so sorry,” I murmured, my voice barely audible over the thundering of my own heartbeat. Guilt clawed at my insides, each pulse a reminder of all the moments I let slip by.
“God, Walker, why didn’t I tell you?” The words tumbled out in a rush of regret and self-reproach. All the times I’d caught his light blue gaze across a crowded room, or laughed a little toolong at his jokes, I never had the courage to say it. To say that he mattered more to me than anyone else, that his casual smiles could lift the weight of the world off my shoulders. And now, as his blood warmed my hands, I feared it might be too late.
“Please don’t do this to me, Walker. Don’t you dare leave without knowing . . . without knowing that you’re . . . ” The admission caught in my throat. “That you’re everything.”
As his breathing slowed, the magnitude of what we stood to lose pressed down on me. The future of the ranch, the heart of our small community, the man who was everything to me.
“Please,” I whispered, tears stinging my eyes as I pressed my hands firmly against the wound, “Don’t let this be where your story ends.”
My eyes stung, tears mixing with sweat as I worked to stem the bleeding. I leaned in closer, my whisper for him alone. “I love you, Walker Anderson.”
27
Walker
The world swamback to me in fragments—beeping monitors playing a relentless symphony, a dull ache throbbing through my body, and the smell of antiseptic biting at my nostrils. My eyelids fluttered open to the sterile white of a hospital room that seemed to pulse with each beat of my heart. I shifted slightly, wincing as pain lanced through me, reminding me that I wasn’t waking up from some bad dream after a night of too many beers.
“Hey, cowboy, easy now,” a voice grumbled from somewhere to my left. Gray. His presence was like a boulder; solid, unmovable. I turned my head, catching sight of my older brother perched on one of those uncomfortable hospital chairs that looked like it was designed for anyone but a man used to saddle leather and wide-open spaces.
“Gray?” My voice was a hoarse whisper, as if it had been dragged over gravel roads.
“Shh, don’t try to talk too much. You gave us quite the scare, Walk.” His blue eyes were clouded with concern, a storm brewing behind them that he rarely let anyone see. Gray was thekind of man who kept his worries fenced in, like the horses we worked so tirelessly to tame.
“Where’s Caroline? She okay?” I heard the beeping get faster and realized my heart rate increased, the anxiety of not seeing Caroline here taking hold.
“Hey, settle down. She’s alright.”
I took a deep breath of relief, but winced when it caused pain in my side.
“There were some complications,” Gray said, scrubbing a hand over his stubbled jaw. “Surgery didn’t go as smooth as the surgeon hoped. Some internal bleeding they had to fix up.” The word ‘bleeding’ echoed in my mind, painting pictures I didn’t want to see.
I tried to piece together memories, but they slipped away like shadows at high noon. “How bad is it?” I managed to ask, thinking about the ranch, the work piling up, and the responsibilities I had yet to prove I could shoulder.
“Bad enough to keep you off a horse for a while,” Gray replied, his attempt at humor falling flat in the antiseptic air. “But you’re gonna be alright. You just gotta take it slow, which I reckon is gonna be harder for you than the actual getting better part.”
“Guess this isn’t the best time to start a new division of the ranch, huh?” I tried to laugh, but it came out as a strained cough.
“Damn straight, it’s not.” He shook his head, but there was a hint of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “You focus on healing. We’ll handle everything else.”
“Everything else” sounded like a mountain of work that I knew Gray already shouldered. The ranch was more than land and animals; it was our legacy, and lately, I’d been feeling the weight of it more than ever.
“Promise me you’ll take it easy, Walker,” Gray said, standingup and casting a long shadow across my bed. “You’re no good to the ranch—or yourself—broken.”
