Chapter 57

CHAPTER 57

LOGAN

I woke up feeling like I had the mother of all hangovers. My head hurt so much that even trying to open my eyes was pretty fucking painful and my body ached all over. What the hell?

I groaned, still working on pushing past the pain of opening my eyes, and the voice of an angel spoke up from someplace close by. "Logan? Are you awake? Thank God. You scared me, baby. You scared me so badly."

Mira. She's here.

As I listened to the soothing sound of her voice, a faint memory of my own broke into my aching brain. I remembered calling for her. It was followed by more snippets of what had happened while Slate and I had been going at each other on the production platform.

The support beam fell. Mira was up there. Shit.

My eyes flew open. The light in the cabin made it feel like someone was sticking scalpels into my eyeballs, but I kept them open. Mira was sitting on the bunk with me, her fingers running gently through my hair as her gaze swept across my face.

"There you are," she murmured, a soft smile breaking out across her lips. "You have beautiful eyes, do you know that? "

"I think that's supposed to be my line," I croaked, surprised by how rough my voice sounded.

She flinched a little when she heard it, then leaned over and pressed the tenderest kiss to my chin. "Maybe you're right, but I'm still borrowing it because it's true. You really do have the most beautiful eyes. Especially when they open after I started wondering if I was ever going to be able to look into them again."

I recalled my panic when I hadn't known if she was okay, and even though a burst of pain shot through me when I did it, I pushed myself up a little bit and gave her a chaste kiss. "I'm okay, Mira. I hurt all over, but I'm okay. I promise."

"You scared the living hell out of me," she said, fluffing the pillow before motioning for me to lie back down. "You are okay, but our medic says you have a pretty serious concussion."

It was then that I remembered feeling like something was off. The confusion, the nausea, and everything else came back to me. I shut my eyes again and inhaled deeply as I tried to work my way through my jumbled memories.

"I was so worried about you," I whispered. "I was trying to get back up there to make sure you were okay, but then I got dizzy and…"

"You fell," she explained. "Slate was already on his way to you, so he managed to catch you before you hit your head again, but the medic is still concerned."

"It's just a concussion," I said, hoping I was reassuring her. If our situations had been reversed, I would've needed a lot of reassurance. Since she was looking at me like my existence was some kind of miracle, I assumed she needed the same thing right then. "I'll get checked out when I get back to the city."

"Yeah, you will. The chopper is already on its way here to take you to the hospital." She bent over and pressed her nose into my hair, breathing me in. "We're flying you out this afternoon."

"What? Why? I can wait a couple days. What about the storm?"

She chuckled quietly. "You're not waiting. Besides, it's done. The chopper will be here within the next few hours. It rained a bit earlier, but the storm mostly missed us. "

"Okay, but why do I need a hospital? I'd rather be here. If the medic says I'm fine, I'm fine."

"What the medic said is that he suspects a serious concussion, which already warrants closer supervision than we can provide here. He can't rule out something worse, though. It's not beyond the realm of possibility that you have swelling or bleeding in your brain. You need scans and to be checked out properly in order to determine that. All of which are things only a hospital can do. We just don't have the resources or the equipment." She squeezed my hand. "I'm coming with you."

"In that case, I'll go," I agreed, struggling to get comfortable. I hurt everywhere, inside and out.

Mira gave me a satisfied nod when I agreed, but she still seemed worried. I shifted slightly so I was more on one side, easing some of the pressure on my hip. Then I reached up and tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. "How's Slate? Is he okay?"

She smiled again. It was small, but at least it was there, which meant that he had to be mostly alright. "He'll be okay too. His injuries weren't nearly as bad as yours. He was in here with me, waiting for you to wake up, but he had to go get stitches real quick. I'm sure he'll be back soon."

"Stitches?" I frowned, wracking my brain until I found a vague memory of a cut. "That gash on his arm?"

"Yep. It's pretty deep, but he's excited about a sexy new scar."

"Let me guess, he said it's been too long since he's added one to his collection?"

She chuckled. "Exactly."

We both fell silent for a moment, just drinking each other in. She kept holding my hand in one of hers and brushing the other through my hair. "You're both just really freaking lucky to be alive. I'm really freaking lucky that you're both alive."

I breathed in deeply. "We're lucky you're alive too. You didn't get hurt, did you?"

"Not at all," she said. "Thanks to you both telling me to back down and stay out of it, the beam missed me by a lot. So did all the other bits and pieces that came down with it."

As I thought back to that moment when I first saw the beam starting to fall, my brow furrowed. "What happened, anyway? How the hell does a whole part of the support structure come loose?"

She sighed. "We don't know. Some of the crew members are already trying to figure out what went wrong, but it looks like it came free where someone had tried reinforcing it. It happens sometimes."

"So someone fucked up?" The pounding in my head got worse and I groaned. "That sounds like a legal nightmare waiting to happen."

Mira shook her head. "As far as we can tell, there was no negligence. No fuck-up. Just a weakness in the repair they made. Like I said, it happens sometimes. Accidents happen."

"That was one hell of an accident." I released a heavy breath, my bones suddenly seeming to weigh a thousand pounds more than usual. "You're sure Slate is okay?"

"A hundred percent sure," she said. "The medic and everyone else on this thing with any first-aid training, which is pretty much everyone, has checked him out."

That gave me pause. "The crew really loves him, huh?"

"They do." She gave me a sad smile. "I can't believe you guys went over that railing. Scared me half to death. Don't do that again, okay?"

I cracked a small smile. "What was I supposed to do? Your brother didn't give me much choice. Not that I'm complaining. He just came out of nowhere like a superhero."

Mira laughed softly. "You guys took ten years off my life, but at least we're all here." She pressed a kiss to my lips, her mouth moving against mine when she spoke again. "Thank you for not dying. I'm glad your reckless behavior paid off."

"My reckless behavior?" I wound my free hand around the back of her neck to hold her in place. "It's not like I asked for that beam to come down or for your brother to take me over the edge."

She let out a quiet sigh. "I was talking about when you refused to sit on your ass and wait for Slate to get to you. He said you just kept trying to climb up the damn stairs. "

"You were at the top of those stairs," I murmured, looking right into her eyes. "I was trying to get to you. I didn't know if you were okay and it felt like I was dying, not knowing if you'd ended up under that beam."

"I know the feeling," she replied. "I meant it when I said you scared me half to death, Logan. It was terrible. When I saw you lying there…" Her voice cracked and she trailed off, obviously not willing to say the rest out loud.

I understood, though. "Slate saved my life. Even after everything, he did. He saved me."

She grinned and nodded. "See? He can't hate you that much, huh? Maybe there's hope for you two yet."

"I need to go talk to him." I suddenly couldn't think about anything else. Slate had saved my life despite the way he felt about my relationship with his sister. Not that I thought he'd have let anyone die just because he was pissed at them, but still.

He hadn't hesitated and I owed him a thank you. At the very least, I had to shake his hand and thank him for what he'd done. He'd put his own ass on the line doing it, too.

It probably hadn't changed how he felt about me, but I had to man up and try to talk to him. The guy was like a brother to me, and I had to try. I just had to.

I made to sit up, but Mira put her hands on my shoulders. Understanding softened her eyes, but she still shook her head at me. "You're not allowed to get out of bed just yet, baby. The medic said you had to stay here at least until the chopper arrives. I'm sorry, but I can't let you take any chances. I've already almost lost you once today. I'm not letting it happen again."

"Slate can't be that far. I need to talk to him. I'll take it slow. I'll?—"

"Nope," she said firmly, lifting up one foot to start undoing the laces of her boots. "I can't let you do that. If you get dizzy again or if anything else happens, you could hit your head again. That wouldn't be good and I wouldn't be able to catch you if you just passed out, big fella. Slate will be back here soon. I'm sure of it. You just have to wait."

I groaned. "I'm not very good at that. "

"I know." She kicked off the boots once she'd untied them. "You need to rest, though. When the chopper arrives, we'll have a team help you onto it. Then you and I will fly into the sunset, but until then, you're staying right here."

Before I could ask what she was doing, she stood up and climbed into the tiny bed beside me. As she snuggled into my side, I rested my cheek on her head and breathed through the urge to go after my friend. As long as she was here with me, there was no place else I'd rather be anyway.

"I'll be fine," I whispered into her hair. "I'll thank him later then, I guess, but I will be fine, Mira. Even if I got out of this bed right now, I would still be fine. As long as I have you, I'll be okay. Always."

I couldn't believe I was talking that way, but as my memories of the accident had started coming back, so did all those realizations I'd had about how I felt about her. None of that knowledge was any less true now.

I was in love with Mira Spiers, and soon, probably just as soon as she wouldn't think it was the head injury talking, I was going to tell her.