A light came into Holden’s eyes. A light Chance hadn’t seen in a long, long time. “Cordy’s sticking with you? And the baby?”
“I’m gonna do my best to keep her, yes.”
He’d realized that sometime in the long hours waiting to hear about Holden. Chance had been an idiot for telling her she should get the keys to Reed’s house. An idiot almost as big as his father had been, but at least Chance had time to fix his mistake.
“Finally,” Holden said. “You’re a Kessal—you can’t live without her.”
No, Chance couldn’t. The old man was finally speaking sense.
“Tell you what,” Chance said, “I’ll do my best to keep Cordy and the baby here if you promise to do everything the doctors tell you.”
Holden considered that.
“You’d better take that deal,” Quint warned. “Or else we’ll doctor you whether you cooperate or not.”
“I guess I have to, then.” But Holden sounded pleased.
“That’s right,” Rye said. “Your only job is to get better.”
“You boys need to get home and see to the stock.” Holden’s voice was stronger than it had been in years. “No point waiting around here.”
As if they’d been fucking around in the waiting room this entire time and not going out of their damn minds.
But all Chance said was, “All right. We’ll see you tomorrow.”
As soon as they were in the hallway, Quint grabbed Chance’s arm. “So it’s your baby now?”
“Well, mine and Reed’s, but yeah—Cordy and Madeleine are mine.” Chance rubbed the back of his neck. “I’ve got to go tell her that. I might have screwed things up some this morning.”
He might have ruined them entirely. Shit, he needed to explain to Cordy what she meant to him before she started packing. If she got started on leaving, she might not stop—she was too good at it.
“Rye and I will deal with the stock then. You run home and tell her how you feel.”
“Thank you.” Chance clasped Quint’s arm, not sure what else to say.
Rye slapped Chance’s shoulder. “Good luck.”
“I’ll need it.”
The drive home seemed to take forever. The speedometer kept creeping past the limit, and Chance would have to force himself to slow down. No point getting into a wreck or getting pulled over.
He breathed a sigh of relief when he came to the turn-off for the ranch. Finally, he was almost there.
Another car was pulling out of the road and onto the highway. At the last moment, Chance recognized it as Jaycee and Gareth’s.
They were going too fast for Jaycee to do more than wave at him from the passenger seat. But Chance caught the flash of sympathy on her face.
And then he saw the boxes piled up in the back of their minivan. Cordy’s name was on them.
He knew those boxes. He’d helped Cordy move them into his house a few weeks earlier.
What the hell was going on? Why did Jaycee have Cordy’s moving boxes?
Was Cordy leaving him?
Chance’s heart jumped like he’d been hit with a cattle prod. He might already be too late. Christ, if he’d screwed up the best thing that had happened to him, run off the woman he needed more than air…
As he rushed home, he let the speedometer run as high as he could, never once touching the brakes.
