Other than filling out the paperwork for Cass, I didn’t move, and I didn’t speak. I just stood there staring at the doors, willing them to open with Cassidy’s doctor behind them.

CASSIDY

I WOKE UP and blinked quickly at the bright lights. What on earth? I went to shield my eyes from the light and something tugged on the inside of my arm. I looked down and saw an IV coming out and let my head hit the pillow. What was I doing in the hospital?! Looking to the other side, I saw Gage asleep on a chair, one hand lightly holding mine, the other wrapped around his broad chest.

“Gage.” My voice came out barely above a whisper, but his eyes shot open. “What’s going on?”

“Oh thank God.” He stood and bent over the bed to cup my cheeks, and his hands trailed down my throat and chest in an awkward pattern before separating and grabbing my wrists. “How are you?”

“What are you doing, and why am I in a hospital?”

“Cassidy,” he breathed, and the name sounded so happy on his lips, it almost came out as a laugh. “Darlin’, you’ve got to stop scaring the shit outta me like this. We’ve had enough trips to the ER this year, all right?”

I nodded; I’d forgotten about getting pneumonia. “But why am I here?”

“You had a severe allergic reaction to the scorpion sting. Scared the hell out of me. You passed out in the bathroom, your eyes were rolled back, and you were barely breathing. You only came to for a second before we met up with the ambulance, and then again when we got here, but other than that you wouldn’t wake up and your heart rate was so slow—” He stopped and had to force down a swallow. “Cass, it was like it wasn’t there at all. Your chest wasn’t even moving.”

I gasped softly as I watched the nightmare play out over his face again.

“When we were in the ambulance, they kept saying ‘anaphylactic shock,’ and a part of me knew that couldn’t be it since you hadn’t seen a scorpion before then, but with how you’d been over those last twenty or thirty minutes, baby, I thought I was going to lose you if they didn’t do something soon.”

Fat tears were falling from Gage’s eyes, and I let my fingers brush them away from one cheek before curling them around his neck.

“You weren’t going into anaphylactic shock, you just had a really bad allergic reaction. Your doctor said with already being weak and having a shot immune system from having the flu, it just made your allergic reaction that much worse for you and your body shut down to protect itself from the reaction.”

“I don’t remember anything after you put me back in bed after getting stung.”

Gage nodded and planted his forehead into the crook of my neck, inhaling deeply. “You haven’t woken up long enough to say anything; I figured you wouldn’t.”

“How long ago did this happen?”

He looked over at the clock for a few seconds before turning his face back toward my neck. “Almost seventeen hours ago.”

Oh my God. I tried to swallow but my throat was really dry, and just as I was about to say I needed a drink, I felt Gage’s body shudder. “Hey, it’s okay, I’m okay.”

“You weren’t, Cassidy. You weren’t. I’ve—I’ve never been more scared in my life.” He admitted softly, “Your chest wasn’t moving; you don’t know what that was like. And half the time I thought I was making myself believe I was feeling a heartbeat.” As he spoke, one of his hands came back up to my throat, then trailed down to my chest and ended at my wrist. All of it was soft as a feather, and very practiced, and now made sense. “I’ve thought you left me before . . . but not like this, never like this. I thought you were—” He choked out a shaky breath and didn’t speak again.

“I’m never leaving you again, I told you.” I tried to laugh, but it sounded wrong. I couldn’t imagine what he’d gone through, but I knew it would kill me to see him the same way. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“Sorry? Cass, I almost lost you! Why the hell are you sorry? You had nothing to do with it, and I—I just laughed about the damn thing. I had no idea; none of us have ever had reactions to a sting. God, Cass, I didn’t know. All of this is my fault.”

“Gage—” I tried to pull his head back so I could look at him, but he just kept talking softly, almost as if to himself.

“I never take care of you. With the pneumonia, I should have called an ambulance as soon as I opened my door and found you like that. Last night I should have been there when you woke up the first time so you wouldn’t have gotten stung, and I shouldn’t have fallen back asleep after you did. I should have been watching you.”

“Stop, please—”

“I’ve hated Tyler for almost letting you die, but, Cassidy, I could’ve killed you by being careless.”

“Gage, stop!” I finally moved his head back and stared into his dark green eyes, tears still falling steadily from them. “None of what has ever happened is on you; all you’ve ever done is take care of me. Even when you hardly knew me, Gage, that’s all you’ve done. When I would sleep on the couch, you’d move me to your bed, and you didn’t even know me then. You woke up early to drive me to work every morning so I wouldn’t have to walk. I would have gotten pneumonia either way, and that’s not on you or Tyler, it’s on me. I’m the one who walked to your place, but you? You threw me in a shower and made sure I warmed up, bought a new thermometer just for me, and took me to the hospital the next day.”

He started shaking his head, so I kept talking before he could.

“And tonight—last night, is not your fault. How you’re even able to twist it around so that it is is just beyond me. But obviously it was some freak accident, and from what you’re saying, I’m alive because of you.”

“Cassidy, you don’t know what you mean to me. I can’t—I can’t lose you.” He tried to clench his jaw shut, but his lips and jaw were still quivering. “I can’t.”

“I know,” I whispered softly, and kissed his trembling lips. “Losing you would kill me too.”

Gage exhaled deeply and laid his head on my chest, his fingertips on my throat, not saying anything else. I scooted over and after a minute he awkwardly climbed onto the hospital bed with me; his fingertips went right back to my throat, but this time his head rested on the mattress next to mine and we just stared at each other. His hand wasn’t uncomfortable—in fact I barely felt it—but for some reason having it there was a new lifeline for Gage, and he was clinging to it. Hard.

Chapter Twenty

CASSIDY

IT’D BEEN ALMOST a month since the scorpion sting, and thank God things were back to normal—well, mostly. I’d had to spend the rest of that weekend in the hospital, and when I’d gone back to the ranch, Gage had two different exterminators that specialize in scorpions come out to give bids. He didn’t care about the money; he cared about which one he thought “wasn’t full of shit.” Apparently scorpions were hard to get rid of, but he and the exterminator were confident they’d done all they could. After I was informed how wrong I’d been about scorpions in Texas, I realized they were going overboard, but I let him do what he needed, same as with his pulse checks.

I don’t know if Gage knew he was still doing it, if it was just second nature now, or if he thought I didn’t realize what he was doing, but every time he came up to me, his fingers ended up on my throat or wrists somehow. He’d actually gotten really good at it, to the point where if I didn’t know what he was doing, I would think he was holding me sweetly. When he would pull me toward him, it was almost always done by my wrist; sometimes when he kissed me he would pin my arms behind my back and hold my hands there, but his index finger would always be on a pulse point. Others, he would go to cup my cheeks, but would cup behind my neck instead, which I loved, and I loved the way he trailed his thumb down my throat even more, but like I said, I knew what he was doing.

And although it’d been a month, and I thought he should be able to see me without having to reassure himself that I was breathing, I wasn’t about to say a word to him. After all, I wasn’t the one who’d seen his chest not moving. I wasn’t the one who’d had to search for his pulse.

We were starting to get ready for Thanksgiving, which was a little over a week away, and I was kind of excited and nervous about it. I’d made parts of Thanksgiving for the guys the last two years, but I would be cooking with Tessa and Amanda this year, and from what I’d been told, this meal was their specialty. I’d asked why we were doing a Thanksgiving lunch instead of a Thanksgiving dinner, and Gage had just shrugged while saying, “It’s Texas,” like that should be the only explanation I needed. I’d just raised an eyebrow at him and waited until he sighed and gave his version of an explanation.

“Everyone spends the day with their family, but it’s the UT–A & M game, darlin’, that takes up the night for us.”

My response when I saw his mom and dad look at me like I should understand this by now? “Ah.”

If cooking a Thanksgiving meal with Tessa wasn’t enough to be nervous about, it didn’t help that I’d been having some issues the last week that had my nerves skyrocketing. I called my doctor, and he’d said especially after the shock of the sting and the allergic reaction, I shouldn’t worry about it. But I was worried about it; in fact it was all I was thinking about. So I told Gage I had to run in to town to grab some things for his mom and would be back before dinner—all true, just not the whole truth. He was already dealing with enough as it was; I didn’t need to worry him with how I’d been feeling off . . . and other random things.

With another look at the doctor’s office door, then the clock on the dashboard, I grabbed my purse and hopped out of my SUV. It was time to find out exactly what this scorpion sting had done to me.