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He was probably delirious with pain when he said it and probably had no idea what he was saying, but Beth didn’t care.

“You’re caked in mud,” Carter reminded her as he and his partner connected the two halves of the metal stretcher-type thing beneath Eli’s back. “Looks like all those bikes tore the earth up pretty good.”

A horse whinnied nearby but was cloaked in darkness.

Beth sucked in a breath. “Midnight!”

She’d heard the revving of the motorcycle engine, a crash, and then the eerie silence that followed. She wasn’t sure what made her turn around and ride back toward the men who were chasing her. It could have been one of them who’d crashed. But somehow she knew, the same way she was sure that if she hadn’t come back tonight—despite Eli’s protestations—she might have lost them both. All she remembered was hopping out of the saddle and telling Midnight to stay, hoping like hell that she would.

And then the police were there, and Midnight was fine, but Eli…

“I’ll take care of the mare!” a male voice replied. Then out of the corner of her eye, Beth saw Boone leading her horse out of the dark. “And I’ll give the deputy as much information as I can, but she’s probably going to want to talk to you as well, Beth.”

Beth nodded. “Later, though, right?”

“Yeah,” Boone confirmed. “Later is good. Go take care of my brother, and when he wakes up, tell him he’s going to help me fix that bike.” He gave her a half smile.

Despite his attempt at levity, Beth could see the worry in Boone’s eyes.

“I’ll tell him,” she replied. “And, Boone, I’m sorry. I never meant for anything like this to happen.”

Carter and JT lifted Eli from the ground and onto the transport stretcher. The sudden absence of his head in her lap made her throat tighten.

“You saved the horse,” Boone told her. “That was all any of us were trying to do.”

“Yeah, but—”

He interrupted her by extending a hand and pulling her up from the muddy grass.

“You can’t change what’s been done,” Boone explained. “You can either learn from it and move on, or you can stay stuck in the ‘yeah, buts’ or what-ifs until you forget that moving on is even an option.”

His lip twitched into the promise of a grin.

All Beth could do was sniffle and nod as she wondered whether Boone’s advice was meant solely for her or if he was referring to his big brother as well…or even himself.

“You ready, Beth?” Carter called from over her shoulder.

Boone shooed her toward the ambulance that now had his brother closed inside.

“Thank you,” she told him. “For being here for Eli tonight.”

Then she spun toward the emergency vehicle and let Carter usher her to the passenger side door.

“I can’t ride with him?”

Carter shook his head. “JT’s driving, and I’ll be in back giving Eli everything he needs. I need room to work, and it’s safer for you up here, but I promise if he wakes up, the first thing I’ll tell him is that you’re right up front, okay?”

What was she going to do, tell Carter that she was terrified to have Eli out of her sight, that even though she had zero medical capabilities, she was so scared of not being directly by his side in case something happened? How was she supposed to just go through life from here on out not knowing at any given moment if Eli Murphy was okay?

And when Eli woke up—because of course he would wake up—how the hell would Beth explain that after her stunt with Midnight, she was on her way to New York in less than two weeks for the audition she wasn’t expecting to have until next spring?

All the questions made her head spin, so she lowered the ambulance window to suck in gulps of the cool Northern California night, to breathe in the scent of the place she’d never wanted to come to and was now devastated to leave.

Something tugged at her hair, and Beth yelped, bolting upright in…her bed? No. A chair? She squinted, eyes adjusting to the dim flicker of the fluorescent light above the hospital bed.

“Sorry,” Eli whispered groggily. “My fingers must have gotten tangled in your hair.”

Beth’s hands instinctively went to her head where clumps of her hair were still matted together with bits of mud. Then her eyes caught the small dark circle on the edge of Eli’s bedsheet where she’d been drooling while she slept!