“Come on, Cash, you have to leave. You can’t stay here.” She tugged at his hands harder.
Cash attempted to get to his feet, but the sharp pain in his back hurt, forcing him back down.
“Wait. Rachel, it hurts like hell.”
“It’s going to hurt a lot worse if you don’t get up!” Giving in, Cash used what strength he had to get to his feet with her help. As she braced him with her weight, Cash was able to stand—barely—with her support.
“You have to do this, Cash. I can’t hold you much longer. Move!”
Cash placed one foot in front of the other, taking one step after another.
“Where are we going?”
“You’re going back to the life you’ve left behind, Cash. All your friends are waiting for you.” Rachel kept him walking inexorably forward. “See the sun, Cash? Keep moving in that direction.”
With each step, it became easier to walk, but he didn’t take his weight away from Rachel, not wanting her to run away again. Suddenly, he felt a threshold, an invisible line he knew he had to cross.
“Hurry, Cash. I can’t hold you much longer,” she pleaded.
“Are you going to run away again if I go through?”
She remained silent.
“Promise me you’ll stay.”
“Go, Cash!” Her scream hurt his head, but he refused to let her go. He looked down at her face and realized he was hurting her. Straightening up, he took his weight off her, releasing her. She began to waver and dissipate before his eyes.
“Rachel!”
“Go, Cash. You don’t need me anymore.” Her sad eyes weren’t something he would ever forget.
Cash frantically looked around for her, but she was gone; she had run away from him again. Cash took another step toward the light, hoping she would be on the other side.
He opened his eyes, blinking as he attempted to focus his eyes in the bright room. Carefully, he looked around the blindingly white room. It held no trace that she had ever been there, but Cash knew she had. He still felt the tingles of energy on his skin, and the feel of her palm placed directly over his heart.
Chapter 13
“He’s coming home today.” Rachel didn’t look up from watering her plants at Mag’s voice.
“That’s good.” She moved on to the next set of plants, carefully tending the buds just breaking the soil.
“He’s walking.”
“I’m glad.”
“You going to go see him?” Cash’s grandmother wasn’t going to be ignored.
Rachel put down the watering can. “No. I’m sure he’ll have a big enough welcoming committee without me there.”
The old woman gave her a harassed look. “You go from spending every day with him when he’s in the ICU to not seeing him at all for four months. Why?”
“I only stayed with him while he needed my help. He didn’t need me after they moved him to rehab.”
“Girl, he needs you. He has for a long time.”
Rachel laughed. “Cash doesn’t need or want me. I’m just another woman in town who made a fool of herself over him. He’s fine now; he’s walking. Shade told you the doctors are amazed at his recovery.”
“Thanks to you.”
Rachel shook her head. “I didn’t do anything. The only thing I did was nudge him awake. Cash worked his ass off in physical therapy. He refused to come back to the clubhouse because he didn’t want the others to have to help him the way they did Winter. He’s done it all on his own.”
Mag turned her wheelchair around in a sharp turn. “You’re still being pissy because you’re mad at him. I went through the same thing with his father; he always had some woman pissed off at him. Cash is just like his father, Rachel.”
“I know,” she responded, making the old woman suddenly start laughing.
“I’m going to go cook some breakfast. You want anything?”
“No, thanks. If I don’t stop eating your breakfasts, I’ll be the one in the hospital with a coronary.”
“A fried egg never killed anyone.”
“It does when you add a half a pack of bacon, biscuits, and gravy. You use enough lard to sink a boat.”
“A good breakfast keeps you going all day,” she argued.
“Your breakfast will put me in the ER by nine,” Rachel told her as Mag wheeled herself out of the sunroom.
Rachel could only shake her head at the woman who refused to listen to the diet restrictions her doctor had given her. How the woman had lived to be eighty-eight, eating the way she did, was a miracle. Rachel understood the woman loved to cook, but there were healthier versions she could fix besides the cholesterol-loaded food she was determined to get Rachel to eat. If her ass got any bigger, she was going to have to buy Cash’s grandmother new chairs.
The smell of frying bacon teased her nostrils. Rachel was determined to ignore the tantalizing aroma as she continued to work, though. She heard a knock on the door and Cash’s grandmother’s voice as she answered it.
Her next-door neighbor came over every morning to check on her and drink a cup of coffee. Sometimes her son, Jason, would come and check, making sure she didn’t need any work done around the house. Mag told her he used to come over once a week, but now it was almost daily. Rachel was glad she had resisted the lure of breakfast; it would keep her from being trapped in his presence for the next hour.
When the door opened and closed again, Rachel decided to grab a piece of fruit on her way into town to work at the church store.
Going through the house, she stopped at the bathroom to get washed and dressed for work, sliding on a dark navy skirt with a pretty, rose-colored sweater.
Deciding she needed caffeine to face Brooke first thing in the morning, she stopped by the kitchen on the way out the door.
She came to an abrupt stop in the doorway when she saw the room filled with The Last Riders. The small table was filled with them eating the coronary-inducing breakfast she had denied herself. She tried to edge out of the room before anyone saw her.
“Rachel, come on in and fix yourself a plate.” The darn woman had the entire room’s attention on her as she stood in the doorway.
Refusing to make a fool of herself in front of them, she walked farther into the room, going to the coffee pot to pour herself a cup of coffee.
“You going to eat?” Mag demanded.
“Don’t have time. I don’t want to be late opening the store.” Forcing herself to face the man staring her down, she said, “It’s good to see you out of the hospital, Cash.”
“Thanks, Rachel.” His voice had lost none of its
rough timber. His appearance was a shock, but she couldn’t help noticing how well he looked. The only difference was the amount of weight he had lost and the pallor to his skin.
“I better be going; I don’t want to keep the customers waiting.” Rachel didn’t run from the room, exiting calmly without a backward glance. She was proud of the way she had handled seeing him again. She had proven to herself that any feelings she had held for him had died, and she was more than ready to move on with the plans she had for her life.
The door closing behind her was like a chapter closing in her life and a new one starting.
* * *
“That girl is pissed at you.”
Cash made a face at his grandmother’s remark. He didn’t have to be told; the frostbitten glaze had come across in her eyes well enough to tell him that piece of information.
He had been watching the doorway for her and hadn’t expected a tearful reunion, but neither had he been expecting the void of emotion that had been present. He had hoped she would show some emotions when she saw him, yet there had been complete indifference as she’d walked in, just like there had been the last four months of his recovery. It seemed as if she hadn’t cared if he lived or died in that accident.
Cash stared down into the inky darkness of his coffee. “Yeah, she is, but Rachel isn’t the first and certainly won’t the last.” His friends cast him commiserating looks at his grandmother’s barb.
“You were lucky to seduce that girl once; she’s not going to be stupid enough to give you a chance to do it twice.” Mag smiled at him pitilessly. “That girl is done with you. I’ve seen that look too many times on women’s faces when they finally decided they’re done having their hearts stomped on.”
Cash straightened in his chair, wincing at the abrupt movement. “I didn’t stomp on her heart. I embarrassed her and hurt her feelings.”
“You’re sitting in my house, lying, Cash. You’re lying to yourself if you think that girl would have slept with you and not cared about you. You’ve been born and raised in these hills, went to the same church as her. She might not have been expecting a ring from you, but she sure as hell didn’t expect what she got.”