Page 16 of Before You Can Blink (Rust Canyon #4)

I grunted in annoyance, being nowhere near ready to face the day. As I extended my arm to hit snooze, a pain sliced through my upper chest, causing an unfiltered scream to roll up my raw throat.

What the actual fuck?

Gritting my teeth, I forced myself to breathe through the waves of agony until they slowed enough to become more of a steady ripple.

Licking my dry, chapped lips, I attempted a swallow, my nose wrinkling when my mouth felt as though it was stuffed with cotton. My head ached; the pressure mounted behind my sealed eyelids enough to make me groan.

Did I get drunk last night? If so, this was hands down the worst hangover I’d ever experienced.

Inhaling through my nose, I cracked one eye open to find I was not in my motel room.

My surroundings were stark white—well, kinda; the walls were in definite need of a fresh coat of paint—and when I scanned the space, I found the source of the beeping.

A screen set to my right measured the steady rhythm of my heart.

Then, my gaze dipped down to find I was lying flat on a narrow gurney, bare-chested, with a sling keeping my left arm immobile.

That’s when it clicked, and bits and pieces of the night before filtered back to my memory.

The ride last night had been an absolute disaster. Not only had I landed my ass in the dirt, but I’d gotten my brain rattled, fucked up my collarbone so bad I needed surgery, and had been dealt a punctured lung.

I vaguely recalled asking the woman wheeling me back to surgery how long before I could ride again, but deep in my gut, I already knew it wouldn’t be this season. Swear to God, every damn year something got in my way. When was it finally going to be my turn?

A soft sniffle caught my attention, and my eyes lifted to the open doorway of the hospital room.

At the sight of my wife’s trembling form on the threshold, clutching the strap of her purse like a lifeline as her eyes spilled over with tears, any frustration I felt over the postponement in my quest for glory seeped right out of me.

I might be the one injured, but my girl was hurting. And it killed me to know I was to blame.

“Daze,” I croaked out. “Come here.”

Weakly, Daisy shook her head. “You’re hurt.” Lower lip wobbling, she added, “Really bad.”

There was no sugar coating this. “Yeah.”

“I-I should have—” A sob burst free from her chest, and she clamped a hand over her mouth to try and stifle it. Eyes squeezing shut like it was almost too painful to look at me, she whispered, “I should have been there.”

“No, baby. I’m glad you weren’t.” If she was this wrecked seeing the aftermath, watching me get thrown and trampled on would likely have been enough to give her nightmares.

Those damn dark circles under her eyes were more prominent than ever, and she looked dead on her feet.

“Come here, sweetheart.” This time, it was more of a command than a request.

Shuffling across the polished floor, Daisy moved closer at a snail’s pace. My fingers twitched, desperate in my need to touch her, to comfort her.

My wife stopped at the edge of my hospital bed, shaking like a leaf.

I patted the thin mattress. “Get on up here.”

She shook her head. “I don’t want to cause you any more pain.”

“Well, you’re breaking my heart by not letting me hold you close while you’re suffering at my expense.”

Daisy let out a stuttered exhale but finally climbed into bed with me, careful to stay on my good side .

My fingers tangled in her long brown tresses. “See? That’s better.”

With her face pressed to the bare skin of my right pec, she whispered, “When Layla came beating at the door last night, I thought . . .” When her words trailed off and she shuddered in my arms, I knew she’d feared the worst.

The wetness from her tears slid down the side of my chest. “I can’t lose you, Jett. We can’t lose you.”

“I’m okay and on the mend, Daze. You and Ma don’t have to worry.”

Voice soft, she said, “I wasn’t talking about your mother.”

My brows drew down. “Then who’s ‘we’?”

A movement caught the corner of my eye, and I watched as Daisy placed one hand on her lower abdomen.

My entire world came to a screeching halt, and I wasn’t sure if my struggle to breathe had more to do with the collapsed lung I’d suffered or the bomb my wife just dropped.

I knew something was going on with her, but the idea that she might be pregnant had never crossed my mind.

Daisy’s tear-streaked face lifted off my chest, and she began to sob uncontrollably.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know how it happened.

It was just that one time, and I truly thought we were in the clear.

But then I missed my period, and Layla bought me a test. When it came back positive, she told me to keep it quiet until the end of the season so it wouldn’t steal your focus and be a distraction.

I wanted to tell you; it twisted me up inside keeping this secret from you.

” When I merely stared at her, struck mute, she continued to fill the silence with her nervous rambling.

“I know this wasn’t planned or something that you ever wanted.

But what’s done is done, and I won’t lie to you, Jett.

I’m so happy about this little life we’ve created.

It’s a piece of you and a piece of me, and already, I love it so much. ”

All I could do was blink at her as my mind raced, trying to process this life-altering news. In the span of one breath, everything had changed.

At my continued non-response, her face fell, and she scrambled off the bed, backing away until she stood against the far wall of the room. Arms hugging her middle, she curled in on herself.

“You’re angry; I get it. But the least you could do is say something. You owe me that much.”

Clearing my throat wasn’t enough to keep my words from coming out rough. “I’m a lot of things—too many to name—but I can honestly say I’m not angry. Certainly not with you. And as you pointed out, the odds were against it, but somehow, it happened anyway.”

Slowly—so fucking slowly—it began to sink in that I was going to become someone’s father.

The thought scared the living daylights out of me because I didn’t know how to be nurturing or patient, and as of right now, I was out of a job.

By all rights, I had no business starting a family I couldn’t support financially.

That poor kid had pulled the short straw, but there wasn’t much that could be done about it now.

I extended my arm toward her. “Daze, honey, come back over here.” When she hesitated, I begged softly, “Please.”

Lifting her eyes to the ceiling, she blinked furiously while brushing the tears away from her face. Then her chest lifted on a deep inhale, and she lowered her gaze to meet mine as she crossed the room, perching on the edge of the bed.

I grasped her hand, running my thumb over her engagement and wedding rings. “A baby, huh?” God, that was strange to say out loud, knowing it wasn’t just any baby; it was my baby .

She brought our clasped hands to rest over her still-soft belly. Nodding, she whispered, “Yeah, and if it’s all right with you, I’d really like its father to live long enough to see it born.”

Guilt slammed into my chest with the force of a sledgehammer.

And suddenly, the realization hit me that if my fall had been worse, I’d have left Daisy with nothing more than the baby I’d put in her belly.

At least when my pop had passed, there had been life insurance money to secure a future for my ma, for me until I turned eighteen.

I had nothing set up for the future because I couldn’t see past the next rodeo, the next win.

The news that I was going to become a father created a seismic shift, forcing my priorities to change in an instant.

No longer could I allow my ambitions to be my driving force.

My wife and child deserved to be put first, and that’s what I was going to do.

September

The heavy-duty pain meds usually knocked me out so that I slept like the dead, but the sudden dip of the mattress and bare feet slapping against the hardwood had me stirring from my dreamless slumber. Then, violent retching reached my ears, and my eyes snapped open.

Fuck. Daisy.

Rolling out of bed, I groaned when the motion pulled at my bad shoulder. I shuffled toward the bathroom, and my heart about damn near broke at the sight of my wife hunched over the toilet, her entire body trembling as she heaved the contents of her stomach into the porcelain bowl .

Snatching up a clip left near the sink, I made a weak attempt at pulling the hair away from her face one-handed and securing as much as I could atop her head.

My wife let out a low moan between bouts of vomiting. “You’re hurt. Go back to bed.”

Yeah, no way in hell that was happening.

Pressing my back to the wall, I slid down it, barely suppressing a pained grunt when my ass landed on the tiled floor, sending a shockwave through my injured chest.

“Even if I could sleep with all the noise, darlin’, I wouldn’t want to. We’re in this together, even if I’m forced to watch on from the sidelines for the next few months while you’re forced to carry the brunt of the burden.”

Spitting into the toilet, Daisy draped an arm over the seat, her head lolling onto her shoulder, almost as if she didn’t have the strength to move. And from the looks of her, she didn’t. My girl’s skin was pale, coated in a thin sheen of sweat, and her usually bright eyes were dull and unfocused.

“Honey, you can’t go to school tomorrow.”

A deep sigh echoed in the small space. “The world doesn’t stop because I have morning sickness, and I can’t afford to take days off right now. Not with only one of us bringing home a paycheck.”