Chapter Thirty

Charlotte

It had been a rough twenty-four hours.

The second I came into the room, my heart sank at the sight of Jesse in the bed. He was clearly in a lot of pain, and his face was swollen where he was bruised. His lips were cut, and a deep purple bruise below his eye looked like someone had painted a garish eyeshadow there. The faintest trace of red stains on his skin near his neck were apparently from an open wound on the back of his head that had been stitched up.

I wanted to hold him. To kiss him and tell him that he would be okay. That I was there and I wasn’t leaving. That I had chosen him and always would.

But Amber stopped me, telling me how serious the situation was. How I needed to let him rest. I needed to let him recover. How close he’d come to not being here.

His bandmate Kevin had found him, in a stroke of luck that could only be fate. He had been coming back to Foley to have an intervention with Jesse over his troubles with the Andersons and how it was risking the band’s livelihood. Kevin and his girlfriend had gone to spend the night at the ranch, Luke offering them his room as he planned on being with Jesse and Amber all night.

Collin had taken the lead on reporting the crime, and when I got there, he was just leaving, having given a statement to the state troopers and learning that Oland had disappeared, as had Lacey Banks. I was ushered into a room to talk to them as well and gave my statement on the strange call, itching to get back to the room with Jesse the entire time. I didn’t want him waking up and not seeing me.

Logan and Owen had essentially acted as gophers, going out for food and supplies and taking people back to the ranch to get some real rest in an actual bed. Logan took time off work, and Owen went back to the ranch in the morning to take care of the animals so everything could keep running smoothly. Collin was supposed to join him later.

That left me, Tamara, who came a couple hours after I did with some extra clothes and things for me, and Amber, who was almost exclusively working with Jesse when she was on shift, and then hanging out with him and Luke when she wasn’t. I admired her so much seeing how dedicated she was to taking care of him and continuing to do her work in the hospital as well. She was also doing extra duty keeping Luke sane. He wanted to go rip the Andersons limb from limb.

I watched all these things happen as I waited for Jesse to wake up. I knew the drugs would keep him down for a long while, but it was possible he would come out of it early, and I wanted to be there for him if he did. I scooted a chair close to his bed and slept with my head near his legs for a while. Eventually, Amber brought in a small cot, which I was able to line up against the end of his bed and nap in and not keep the nurses from being able to around to the sides.

It was scary to be there, to feel that tension as we all waited to find out just how badly he was hurt. Amber kept reassuring us that she thought he was going to be okay, but that they needed the surgeon and the head doctor to give their reports. The surgeon had come in from Odessa to be part of the initial reconstruction, which I wasn’t there for. The fact that he was needed at all meant it was worse than just split skin and a concussion.

Sitting in a chair and playing a word puzzle game on my phone, I waited for him to wake up. There were several false starts, where he looked awake but then drifted back to sleep. Eventually, Collin returned, taking a seat in the corner and zonking out. Tamara decided to head back not long after, and I gave her a big hug to send her on her way. As soon as she was out of the door, he shifted behind me.

The elation I felt when his eyes opened and I saw recognition in them was beyond compare. I ran to him, kissing his forehead and silently thanking whatever was looking out for him that they brought him at least this far through.

“Hey, you,” I said. “Welcome back.”

“Hey,” he was able to force out.

“You don’t have to talk,” I said. “I know your mouth must hurt a lot.”

He tried to shake his head, barely moving it enough to say no.

“I want to talk,” he said, his voice airy and raspy. “My throat hurts.”

“Oh, here,” I said, bringing the water to his lips and letting him drink. “Amber said you can drink now, as much as you want, whenever you’re awake.”

“Good,” he said after almost draining the entire cup. “My throat is very dry.”

“I bet,” I said. “How do you feel? I mean, I know terrible, but… you know.”

“I feel okay,” he said, smiling as much as his lips would allow. “Terrible, but okay.”

“I know what happened to you,” I said. “At least as much as Kevin knew.”

“Did they get him?”

I pursed my lips and nodded.

“They arrested him just a little bit ago,” I said, relaying the information Collin had when he came back. “Lacey too. They had run off to New Mexico, but they got caught using his ID.”

“Good,” he said. “Idiots.”

“Jesse, you almost died,” I said, trying to control the emotion in my voice. “They tried to kill you.”

“I know,” he said. “What about Graham?”

I was confused for a moment, temporarily unsure of what he meant. Then it hit me. The last time he saw me, I was leaving for Paris.

“I broke it off with him. For good. I chose you.”

He smiled again, closing his eyes. “I knew you would.”

I leaned forward and kissed his forehead again, and as I pulled away, I heard the low, soft breathing that told me he’d fallen back to sleep.

I sat there, half on the bed for a long time, waiting to see if he would come back to me. Eventually, Amber came back into the room, and I turned to smile at her. She didn’t return the expression.

“He wake up?” she asked.

I nodded. “Just for a minute. But he was lucid.”

“That’s good,” she said. “Very good.”

“Is everything okay?” I asked. “You look upset.”

She paced for a moment, looking at the sleeping Collin and then back to me.

“Look, I know you two are a … a thing, right?” she said. I nodded. “I’m not supposed to say anything about his condition unless one of the brothers is listening, but I’ve talked about things in front of you and they didn’t seem to mind. Luke said you were as good as family. So I’m going to tell you what I know, but you can’t let anyone know that you heard it, okay?”

“Sure,” I said. “What’s going on?”

She sighed heavily and sat down on one of the empty chairs that lined the room.

“Come over here,” she said. I did as I was asked and sat next to her. When she spoke again, she kept her voice calm but low. “I am trying to figure out how to tell Luke. He’s going to want blood. Essentially, they cracked his skull. Whatever they hit him with, I believe Kevin said that he told them it was a gun? Whatever it was, it had the force of a baseball bat to the skull. It hit him right above the spinal cord. A fraction of an inch lower and the impact would have either killed him immediately or would have damaged his spine.”

“Oh my God,” I said, gasping.

“Now the good news is, the doctors think he will make a full recovery. Probably pretty quickly at that. He’s in terrific shape, and we had some very talented hands working on him. But the damage to the skull was intense. Whatever Oland hit him with, he intended on killing him. He almost did.”

“He thought he had,” I said. “According to what he told Kevin, they thought he was dead when they left him.”

“They were almost right,” she said. “The thing is, even if he does recover, there is a significant chance he won’t recover fully. We don’t really know a lot about the brain, you know? And injuries like this… they can change people. You should know that right now. The Jesse that walks out of this hospital may not be the same one you knew before he got hurt.”

“I understand,” I said.

“Will he still be able to play?”

The voice came from the doorway, and we both looked up. A man was standing in the doorway, tall and skinny with black hair swooped to one side and dark-rimmed glasses with a name brand on the temple piece sliding down his nose. He pushed them up and acknowledged us both with a small wave.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Flynn Moody,” he said. “I manage the Jesse James Galloway Band.” He gave a small smile, but it faded almost instantly into a defeated look. “Or at least, I used to. Right now, I’m not sure about the future of the band.”