Page 38 of Serious Cowboy

She pressed her hands to her own eyes, which had started to stream. Oh, no.

“I’m sorry,” he told her. “Did I say something wrong?”

Callie smiled through her tears. “No, you said something very right. The rightest.”

He smiled back at her, choking up for a whole other reason. Zeke stifled that, too. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

But he needed to be certain he understood. He’d misread the signs before. “So, we’re no longer split up?”

“What?” There was a discernible glimmer of lightness in her gaze. “You think I’d hang out like this for just anyone?”

“Maybe.” She was an extremely caring soul.

“Well, let me make things clear, then. I’ve been doing this because it’s you. And I care about you.”

Zeke reached for her hand, held it in his. “I care about you, too.” Even though it terrified him. Yet if Callie was willing to take that chance—particularly considering what had just happened—the least he could do was the same.

The least he could do.

Three dayslater and after more extensive testing, they released him with several standing appointments for physical therapy to occur in his home. Walking in a boot with crutches—an absolute necessity—was a total drag, but the allure of convalescing in the familiarity of his own home made such considerations a small price to pay.

Callie had gone back to her job in Tim’s office, but she still came by every evening to check on him. It felt so nice to know that he had her visit to look forward to. His first PT session had been brutal, and it’d taken him an hour after the guy left before Zeke felt capable of moving from his chair. But Callie calling out, “Zeke, it’s me,” had been a great motivation.

“It’s open,” he hollered back.

Struggling to put his body in a standing position on his crutches again to greet her, he did it only to realize how parched he was once upright. He reached for the glass of water he’d poured for himself earlier, planning to grab a quick drink, when he misjudged his weight distribution. He lost his balance, tumbling cast first right into the end table where his drink resided, knocking the glass, the table, and the lamp sitting on top of it to the floor.

Worse, as he fell, he couldn’t control where he landed, and he just happened to wind up with his uninjured leg slamming onto the glass, breaking it.

He shouted out a curse from the wicked jolt of pain that the glass slicing into the meat of his upper thigh caused as well as jarring his broken leg. That’s how Callie found him. Face down on his floor, his sweatpant-clad leg wet from both the water and the blood now seeping out of it.

Just his rotten luck.

“Zeke,” Callie shrieked as she rushed toward him. Maybe due to the fact that this was his fault, the embarrassment of her finding him in such a precarious circumstance, or the variety of throbbing he now felt in each leg, he snapped at her.

“Back up. I need some space.”

She did, but the space didn’t help him in the process of regaining his footing. In fact, he couldn’t seem to regain his footing at all.

“Let me help you, Zeke.”

Scowling at the necessity of it, he begrudgingly allowed her to assist him back to his chair. Only then did the degree of the damage become clear. He was bleeding like a stuck pig. Maybe that glass had cut him worse than he’d originally thought.

“My gosh, you’re a mess,” Callie exclaimed. “I’m calling an ambulance.”

“No,” he growled at her, upset for more reasons that he could count. “I’m not going back to the hospital for something so stupid. Just give me some band aids. I’ll be fine.”

“Zeke Knight, those are deep cuts. And you might’ve reinjured your other leg, cast or no cast. I’m not taking that chance.”

“No ambulance,” he insisted, trying to stand, but it was no use. He couldn’t do so under his own power, but going back to that hospital after being there so long already would be tantamount to torture.

She huffed out a breath, seeming as exasperated with him as he felt with the entire debacle. “I’m calling Tim, then. That’s the only compromise I’ll make.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Why Zeke was being stubbornabout this, Callie had no clue, but she refused to give in about this. He was too fragile to go untreated, and that wasn’t even mentioning that if he hit an artery or something during that tumble, he could literally bleed out and die.