That tear was like another baseball bat slammed into my back.
“No hospitals. They’re sick of me anyways even if I actually needed one. Which I don’t.” She looked like she was about to start screaming for an ambulance. “Just get me back, get me to bed, and I’ll wake up tomorrow good as new.” Nothing I was saying was calming her down. If anything, every word seemed to be working her up more. Gritting my teeth, I sat up so I could be face to face with her. Maybe that would reassure her I wasn’t about to be drug off to hell after taking my last breath. “Look at me, Josie. In the eyes.”
She sniffed and shook her head. “I can’t. They’re swelling shut.” She choked on another sob but managed to keep the rest of them back.
That explained why I couldn’t see anything more than a sliver of her. “Hey, hey,” I said, trying to soothe her with my words, my hands, with anything. “Where’s that brave girl who just issued the slap heard around the country? Where’s my strong girl who just took a swing at a guy twice her size?”
She fretted with my shirt, laying the rips and tears back together, buttoning the buttons that had come undone. “A lot of good me being brave and strong did to save you.”
I adjusted my head until the sliver I saw of her was her eyes. Mine might have been swelling shut, but she could still stare back at me. “You have no idea how much good you’ve done to save me, Josie Gibson. Don’t you ever doubt that.”
Josie let those words simmer for a moment, then she rolled her shoulders back, wiped her eyes, and wove her arm through mine. “Let me help you up.”
“Thanks”—I shoved off the ground, letting her guide me up—“because I don’t think I’m capable of doing it on my own.”
When I was up, Josie wrapped one arm around my waist and lifted my arm over her shoulders. “Was that you admitting you need help and actually accepting it?”
“It just might have been,” I admitted, shuffling beside her as we made our way to my truck. Being vertical and moving doubled the pain, but Josie’s arm around me, supporting me the whole way, dulled it somewhat. When we made it to the passenger door, she opened it and guided me inside. After shutting the door, she hurried around to the driver’s side and leapt inside.
Firing the engine to life, she glanced over at me with an expectant look. “Buckle up, buttercup.” That made me laugh. Which made me wince. “I’m serious. I’m not putting this truck into drive until you put your seatbelt on. We didn’t make it this far for you to die all because you refused to buckle up.”
If she wasn’t so dead serious, I might have laughed again. I reached for the belt and snapped it into place. I attempted something that was meant to be a Happy? expression, but given my face probably looked like a team of plastic surgeons had gone to town on me, I don’t know what I managed. It made Josie smile. So fuck the rest. Making her smile, that was my new life calling because really, what else mattered?
“Thank you.” Shifting the truck into drive, she peered over at me. “Buttercup.”
I snorted. “After taking that beating from the Masons, I feel like a damn buttercup.” God damn, where was a morphine drip when I needed one?
“I’m sorry, Garth. I should have seen that coming. I shouldn’t have been so stupid. I know what those boys can be like when they get together. Then mix alcohol . . . and you into the tornado, and that’s like the perfect storm right there.” Josie pulled out onto the highway slowly, carefully. The last time she’d driven slowly was when she was never. She really was worried fate was about to deal us an unfair hand.
“Don’t apologize for them. If you spend your whole life apologizing for other people’s actions, you’re going to wake up and realize you didn’t get to do anything on your own to apologize for. Live your life. Don’t waste it apologizing for others.”
Josie glanced at me from the corners of her eyes, keeping both hands firmly on the ten and two position on the steering wheel. It was kind of cute how careful she was being. Concerned. There was that word again. “You just took a few hits to the head, and you’re capable of that kind of profoundness?”
“Was that profound?” One of the few serious questions I’d asked in twenty-one years.
“Deeply.”
“For me, right? Deeply profound for Garth Black, who is known for being so deep he dries up the instant the temperature rises above eighty.”
Josie rested her hand above my knee. Gently. “Deeply profound for anyone. I know you want to deny it, but I know there’s a whole lot more to you than a big, black hat and an even bigger ego.”
“I don’t know, Joze.” I covered my hand with hers, but when I noticed it was caked with both dried and fresh blood, I pulled it back. I’d made a big enough mess already.
“But I do.”
“Yeah, you sure do,” I whispered, twisting in my seat to stare at her. My eyes were swollen, my body wrecked, my brain weary, but in that moment, I needed to do only one thing. One thing I needed to say. I knew that even if I wanted to keep it back, I couldn’t. Besides, I’d been holding it back for long enough. “Josie?” I cleared my throat and reached for her hand again. Yes, I might cover it in blood, but I’d clean it for her later. I’d fix my mess.
“Yeah?” she asked, her eyes focusing on something in the distance. I was opening my mouth to finish what I’d been meaning to say for years when she groaned. “Ah, crap. The lights are all still on.” She looked at me. “My parents are up.”
The disappointment of biting back what had literally just been on the tip of my tongue was painful, but how could I follow My parents are up with what I needed to say? Yeah, I couldn’t. I had to close my eyes to focus and shift gears. Josie’s parents. Up. Late. Me. Her. Blood. “Do you want me to sneak in or something? I could just wait outside until you all go to bed and then sneak in.”
“What? No. Way.” She snapped her head back and forth, slowing the truck a bit as she headed up the driveway. “I’ve got to get you inside, cleaned up, fixed up, pain reliever’ed up, and to bed. That’s the priority, not evading my parents and their questions.”
I took a breath. I hadn’t been planning on explaining any of the night to the Gibsons. The drive-in earlier or the gas station parking lot later. “What do you want to tell them?”
Josie’s hand reached for mine. “The truth.”
I smiled right before I frowned. “I’m not sure telling your parents that you and I are together right after I walk through the door looking like a herd of cattle ran me over is the best timing.”
“I want to tell them. I’m sure now.” As we approached the Gibsons’, she parked right outside the front door to give the newest member of the gimp club a break.
“You’re sure of me now?”
“I’m sure of us now.”
That right there was all the fix I needed. Josie looking me in the eyes and admitting she trusted me enough to give us a chance. I’d been waiting for that moment for a while. It left me speechless. Josie opened her door and rushed over to help me get out, but I clenched my jaw and slid out on my own. I didn’t want the minute before Josie told her parents that I was her man to involve her having to wait hand and foot on me because I’d taken a serious beating.
Instead of draping my arm around Josie for support, I grabbed her hand. “Let’s not tell them it was the Masons. Let’s just tell them I got jumped and go with that.”
“What? Why in the heck don’t you want to tell them it was the Masons?”
“Because I don’t want anyone getting in trouble. At least not the sheriff kind of trouble.” Me on the other hand? I would be happy to show them plenty of trouble for a long, long time.
Josie gave me a look, knowing there was something else. “And?”