Page 119 of Saving the Rain

That’s all it takes. I see him cast his attention toward the interior of the barn. I catch his focus wandering for a split second, and I burst forward.

It happens in the blink of an eye but stretches on and on, dragging out into slow motion.

As I rush him, cannoning into his torso, I wrap my arms to pin his at his sides. Tackling him to the ground.

I don’t register the kick of the gun.

I barely hear the shot go off. The echoing pop sounds far, far away.

I hardly feel the white-hot, searing pain.

Adrenaline blasts a path through my limbs. Undiluted blind rage, a brutal fury, grants me the ability to overpower him. It’s rapid fire. The act of wrestling the gun from his hands and slamming the blunt end into his nose over and over and over. Then crashing the butt into the side of his head.

With a roar, I twist sideways to jam the barrel against his kneecap. I don’t pause, letting off two rounds in quick succession.

Red mist coats my vision.

My father’s screams of agony are deafened by the thundering pulse in my ears.

His face is pulverized into a mess of red and split skin as he garbles in pain. I don’t fucking care. I spit straight in his fucking face.

Words won’t form. Everything grows heavy. Lead weights pull my limbs toward the center of the earth.

Hands are on me. Grabbing my shoulders, tilting my jaw.

Kayce’s face swims in front of my eyes.

I can’t hold myself upright anymore.

It’s too hard to fight it. Slumping over, I clutch one side.

Warmth oozes, a track of something liquid seeps from my stomach. When I bring one hand up in front of my face, there’s bright red glistening all over my fingers.

It’s not his blood. It’s mine.

My blood.

Chapter 48

If hell had an image, it would surely be reflected in my bloodshot eyes. It would live in the burn that lines the back of my throat.

This place is nothing but a prison, a hellscape I’m trapped in because there’s no way I won’t stay by his side. Not when he’s lying in that bed covered in tubes and equipment, and I don’t fucking know if he’s going to make it back to me.

Machines beep, and fluorescent lighting burns my retinas, while Raine remains in that terrifying post-surgery void where even the doctors simplydon’t know.

Abdominal trauma. Risk of sepsis. No exit wound.

I’ve hardly been able to concentrate on anything other than studying his slack features. Searching for a flicker of an indication that he’s gonna wake up. There’s hardly any capacity to take in the information doctors give me during their rotations through the wards. They talk to me like I’m a child. Attempting to spell it out for me in the simplest terms possible, I can tell.

“He’s stable, Mr. Wilder. However, a projectile from a firearm can damage anything in its path. The severity of a gunshot wound like Mr. Rainer suffered may vary according to bullet caliber or the trajectory of the object. Below the skin, those layers of tissue can be inflicted with trauma that is harder for us to identify.”

Then there are other snatches of conversation that I honestly feel like I’m gonna hurl every time I hear their whispers.Rapid response time. Blood transfusion. CPR administered en route.And possibly the worst of all...Luck.

The fate of the man I love beyond all reason cannot fall to luck. There’s no way that someone as strong as him, who walks this earth like he’s my goddamn steadfast, solid rock, could be lingering in a place where onlyluckis gonna successfully bring him out the other side.

Squeezing my fists into balls, I dig them into my eye sockets and lean forward on my knees. Sitting here, I feel more useless than ever, clinging onto hope with all the desperation of every bronc I’ve ever ridden, rolled into one. Raine is my rope, and I’m doing everything I can to keep him secure inside my grasp. All while stuck in this stupid chair at his bedside. Watching him, waiting for him to find a way to return to me, while we linger in this holding pen of doom. I feel like I’ve been pacing the same three feet of linoleum for endless tortured hours.

Waiting.