Meant to Be Mine (A Porter Family Novel Book #2) (13 page)

Too late.

C
elia watched a few of the early riders in the Boise event, got impatient, and started fast forwarding the prerecorded show while scanning images. Her chest lifted on a sigh. She was sitting on her couch for the umpteenth Friday night in a row about to watch Ty Porter—her ex-husband who was only an ex in her heart, the man she’d once loved who’d rejected her outright—ride bulls.

This was not, perhaps, the most emotionally healthy of pastimes. One might suspect that some normal thirty-year-old women were out on dates tonight.

She spotted Ty. Pushed the Play button.

He looked as unforgivingly handsome as ever, she tried not to notice, in his black clothing and hat. He’d been paired with Meteor. Decent level bull, but not wicked difficult.

Meteor burst loose and the ride begin. As usual, Ty moved well and looked firmly in control—

He lost his grip. Just that suddenly, in the space between heartbeats. The bull’s upward thrust sent him into the air. Ty, an expert at landings, landed all wrong, dropping hard onto his side without breaking his own fall.

Celia bolted to her feet.

Meteor spun, bringing his hind legs terrifyingly close to Ty.

“No,” Celia gasped.

The rodeo clowns ran forward but were too far away to intercede. Meteor’s hooves punctured the dirt, then went up again, drawing nearer to Ty with inexorable and deadly precision. “No!”

Ty attempted to pull himself out of the way, but before he could, Meteor’s hooves crushed down on one of his legs. Ty’s face twisted with pain.

Celia’s hands jerked to cover her mouth. Her insides turned to water.

Lightning fast, the bull kicked both hind legs into Ty’s chest. The impact slammed Ty backward. His head careened into the ground with sickening force.

The clowns dashed between Ty and the bull, finally herding the animal away.

Ty’s body lay in the dirt, unmoving. Celia stared at the screen in horror, frozen except for the tears that rushed to fill her eyes. Several people ran forward and surrounded Ty.

This can’t be happening
. Celia waited for Ty to come back to consciousness.

He didn’t. Medical staff strapped him to a stretcher and lifted him into the back of an ambulance.
Oh my goodness, this can’t be
happening
.

The telecast replayed the accident a few times in slow motion, the commentators speaking in somber voices. Celia couldn’t stand to see it again and looked away.

How long ago had this happened? She checked to see when the program had begun recording. Boise and Corvallis shared the same time zone. He’d been injured maybe . . . maybe two hours ago?

Why hadn’t anyone called her? As soon as she had the thought, she recognized its idiocy. Ty’s one-time wife of twelve hours wouldn’t be high on anybody’s list of contacts.

She ran for her phone. Its screen told her that she’d missed two calls. Her heart sank. From Ty. The calls had come in two and a half hours ago. Her mind traveled back, trying to remember. She’d been giving Addie a bath then. She hadn’t heard her phone
ring. Though her phone didn’t alert her to a waiting voice mail, she double checked her messages just in case. Nothing. He hadn’t left a message.

For weeks she’d been giving him a hard time about calling her. Now she’d missed two calls she deeply wished she’d received. She dialed his number and waited while his phone rang, trying not to sob.

He’d been hurt badly, that much she knew based on the visual evidence alone. He might even be critically injured, a possibility that sent her feelings pinwheeling. There was a little girl in this house, sleeping just down the hall, who loved him.

No one answered Ty’s cell. She tried again and again, her fingers desperate on the keys of her phone, her heart hammering.

In her memory she kept seeing Meteor’s hooves landing on Ty’s leg, then striking him in the chest. This was all Ty’s fault for doing something so dangerous! And it was her fault for letting him back into their lives. And it was Addie’s fault for putting so much stock in Ty. And it was God’s fault for letting this happen.

With a furious groan, she tossed her phone on the kitchen counter. She needed to know the status of Ty’s condition. She turned up the TV’s volume, then powered up Addie’s tablet, which operated much faster than her ancient laptop. She went to work checking each website she could think of. No news.

Her thoughts traveled in ten different directions. Her worry rose jaggedly. Finally, overcome, she laced her fingers together and pressed her joined hands to her forehead.

Let him be all right
, she prayed. She hadn’t prayed for anything in years, but she did so now.

Fervently.

Ty regained consciousness at the hospital on the far side of surgery. The first thing he became aware of was a longing, deep and empty, angry and aching.

For Celia.

Where is Celia?

Gradually, he realized that someone was talking. He slit his eyes open. A nurse, around the same age as his mother.

“How’re you feeling, Mr. Porter?”

“Celia.” His voice sounded scratchy. “I want to talk to her.”

“First we’ll get you all fixed up, and then in just a few minutes, we’ll bring her back to see you.”

“She’s not here.” He remembered now where she was. In that bright apartment in Oregon that was always so far away. He regretted that she was so far away. Why had he let that happen? “I need to talk to her on the phone.”

“Certainly.” The nurse’s attention moved to the chart she held and then to the machines behind him.

“
Now
,” he growled, in no mood to be charming. “I need to talk to her now.”

The nurse stilled, looking at him over the top of her glasses. “There are a few things I have to do first. Won’t be long.” She started back to work, checking stuff, moving around. Clearly, she’d been doing this for decades. Long enough to know that she was the boss of this situation, and he was the sucker strapped to the bed.

It had been this same way when he’d come to in the ambulance earlier. Celia had filled his thoughts. He’d asked to talk to her then, too, but just like now they’d refused.

He groped around in his head, fighting to remember the events that had brought him here. The ambulance ride had been full of light, machines, medics. The sensation of movement. That blaring siren. And pain. Bitter pain. He’d had to set his teeth hard against it to keep from hissing curses.

Once they’d arrived at the hospital, details blurred. There had been doctors and people wheeling him around fast, the fluorescent lights on the ceiling whipping by. The X-ray machine. And then they’d taken him to the operating room.

That was it. That was all he could recall.

It looked like they had him in some lame recovery area with several other patients, all of them divided by curtains that pulled
along tracks in the ceiling. The place sounded of quiet conversations and footsteps. It smelled like artificially warmed sheets.

He glanced down at himself. Most of the pain that had dogged him earlier had been chased away by anesthesia and drugs. A dull headache remained. Also, it hurt to breathe deeply. They’d raised his upper body into a reclining position, and beneath the sheet that covered him, it looked like they’d wrapped his swollen left leg in gauze and immobilized it.

His knee. His knee was wrecked.

The certainty of it cut into him as surely as the surgeon’s knife just had. A few hours ago he’d been completely fine and whole. But he already knew that tonight had changed everything.
God, what’s happened
to me? Help me.
This injury would mean the end of so much—too much to deal with right now.

He needed Celia. When could he talk to her?

The nurse invited him to drink juice or eat crackers. He refused both. She kept her smile in place, asked him questions and summarized his condition, then disappeared. When she came back, she was leading his two closest friends from the BRPC, both fellow riders. The guys wore those pitying expressions people put on around the sick. Reassuring smiles and understanding eyes.

“How’re you feeling, man?” one asked.

“I’m going to be fine,” Ty answered.

“Just so you know, we’ve been talking to your mom and dad all evening, keeping them up-to-date.”

“Thanks. How long has it been? Since the accident?”

“About five hours.”

“Then it’s late.”

“Close to midnight.”

“Do either of you have your phone with you?”

“I do.” His buddy pulled a smartphone from his pocket and passed it over.

“I’m going to make a call.”

“Sure, man.” They nodded, hung around.

“A private call.” Ty motioned with his head for them to leave.

Their faces showed surprise, but after a pause they moved toward the waiting room.

It took him a minute of hard thinking to pull Celia’s number out of the grogginess in his brain. Once he’d managed it, the phone only rang once before she answered.

“Ty?” she demanded.

At the sound of her voice, he let his eyes sink closed with relief. He relaxed into the support of the bed. “Yes.”

“
Thank goodness!
Are you all right?”

“Depends on how you define all right.”

“Will you live?”

Blast it all if he didn’t smile. “Do you want me to?”

“Yes.”

“Were you worried that I wouldn’t?”

“Of course I was. I saw what happened on TV.”

“Did it look bad?”

“It looked
really
bad. I’ve been trying to dig up information on your condition for hours, and I’ve read different reports. What do the doctors say?”

“Mild concussion for starters. That part’s no big deal.”

“Um . . . your head got slammed into the ground, Ty.”

“Maybe, but the dirt on the arena floor is soft and my head’s hard.”

“Well,” she said wryly, “that part I believe.”

“I’ve also got bruised ribs.”

“But none are broken?”

“No. I was wearing a protective vest.”

“And your leg?”

He paused.

“Your leg?” she prodded.

“An artery got nicked, so they had to fix that first. They told me that the bull came down on my knee and shattered it. Before they put me under they said the ACL and PCL were busted and they’d have to replace the kneecap with an artificial one.”

He could hear the slow exhale of her breath.

“I just got out of surgery.”

“Are you in a lot of pain?”

“Not anymore. Addie didn’t see me fall, did she?”

“No, and she won’t see it. But I will have to tell her what happened in the morning because she’ll ask to watch you ride the minute she wakes up.”

“Yeah.” Quiet drifted between them, and Ty held on to it. The only medicine he needed right now was listening to her, even listening to her silence, across the miles. “I miss you, Celia.”

A beat passed. “You’re high on pain meds.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “So anything I say now can’t be held against me later.”

She chuckled ruefully, like he was a lost cause.

Which he might be.
Tawny
was the one for him. His thoughts were swimming, but he was pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to feel anything for Celia—except kindly. “There’s something about you that gets to me.”

“Like mosquitoes get to skin?”

“No. Like alcohol to my head. You’re beautiful.”

“Ty Porter! If you think I’m going to sit here and listen to you compliment me and sweet-talk me—”

“You have the prettiest green eyes,” he said. “They’re crazy pretty.”

“I’m not some groupie that you can charm—”

“Your hair is sexy. And you have a good heart even though you pretend to be mean. And I like that little necklace you wear with the
C
on it—”

“Stop it this instant! Getting stomped on by a bull does not give you permission to—”

“You’re smart. You make me laugh. I don’t know hardly any women who make me laugh. You smell like lemons.” He whistled. “I love the way you smell.”

“Your concussion has scrambled your brain. We can hope that you won’t remember this in the morning and that we’ll both be able to return to insulting each other.”

He grinned. “Sweet one.”

“Showboat!”

He laughed, and in that moment—despite the leg and the hospital and his dark future—everything felt perfectly fine with his world. “I really hate that nickname,” he lied.

“Too bad.”

“Tell me how glad you are that I survived.”

“I’m glad for Addie’s sake.”

“And for your own?”

“I’m . . . marginally pleased. Now no one will come and repossess my Prius.”

“That’s not very nice.”

“No, I’m not very nice. I’m coldhearted. Vindictive. Anyway, since I’m sure they’re about to plump your pillows or shoot you with morphine or let your fans in to dote on you, I’d better go.”

He wasn’t about to let that happen. “No.”

“What do you mean, no?”

“Your day might have been a piece of cake, but my day has been a pain in the butt. I only want one thing, and that’s to lie here and listen to you talk for a while longer. So if it’s not too much trouble, keep talking.”