Series: Fever Falls Series by Riley Hart
Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 81272 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 325(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81272 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 325(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
Maybe that too was what love was. Feeling better just by having the other person there. Who the hell knew. I was still trying to figure that shit out. The only thing I did recognize was that I was in it with him. “I’m kind of special that way,” I replied, knowing we had more to discuss, but wanting to do it when it was just the two of us.
When we parted, I hugged Kathy and Jude, and they gave me an update on what was going on. They were still waiting for him to wake up. He’d had some swelling in his brain, but they thought he would recover.
Rush yawned, and for the first time, I noticed the dark circles under his puffy eyes. The redness and the way his whole body seemed to sag. Had he left at all? Slept at all?
“Rush…why don’t you let Lincoln take you home and get some sleep,” Kathy said.
He began to shake his head, but I reached out and took his hand. “You need sleep, baby, otherwise you’re going to find yourself in the hospital too.”
To my surprise, he nodded, and the two of us went out to my rental car. He gave me the address to his parents’ house—his dad’s house?—I wasn’t sure what to call it, but it took us a good forty-five minutes to get there.
It was a modest three-bedroom ranch-style home, with pictures of Rush nearly everywhere you looked. Most were him on dirt bikes, but there were also articles and magazine covers with him on it.
“Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.” I took his hand and led him down the hallway, Rush handing control over to me. When I found the bathroom, we stepped inside. I went straight to the tub and started the shower, then turned back to him and reached for his shirt.
“I’m sorry, Red,” he said softly.
“Shh. We’ll talk later.”
Rush let me undress him, and then I took care of myself before stepping into the shower with him. I cleaned him and washed his hair. His shoulders still sagged, and he kept his eyes closed most of the time, his exhaustion evident in everything he did.
Before I knew it, we were in what I assumed was a spare bedroom, naked under the blankets.
“I need to sleep, but I just wanna look at you and know you’re here.” He pulled me to him, wrapping his arms around me and burying his face in my neck again.
“I’m not going anywhere, baby. I’ll be right here when you wake up.”
I smiled when I felt Rush kiss my neck, lick my collarbone, then root his nose around in my hair. “I missed you,” he said.
“I missed you too…but you didn’t have to miss me, ya know?”
“Yeah…I do.” Rush pulled back. We were both lying on our sides, facing each other.
“What happened?”
“I don’t really know,” he replied. “I was just… Christ, I was flying so high after that race. It felt like everything was finally coming together. I was back after my injury. I knew I had you… And then you told me about my dad, and it was as if everything crashed on me at once. My loss of the season and what could have been, what happened with my parents, Jude and his struggles. It felt like I’d finally let all that out, but then pulsing through all that pain and anger…was regret and guilt. I realized at that moment that Dad could have died and that Mom was right—I would have regretted never speaking to him. He is so twined in my career, my dreams, and all I could think was that I hadn’t thanked him at the end of the race. What if he had been hurrying home to watch me when it happened?”
My heart broke for him—Rush, who pushed through. Rush, who was always steady, always there for everyone. It made sense that he sort of broke. I’d been waiting to screw up. The whole time I’d been waiting to mess up, because Beau was right. I had seen Rush as perfect. Rush was invincible in my eyes, but still, he was just a man, like the rest of us.
“It’s hard for me. I just wanted to push through. Believe he would be okay, tell myself I didn’t need anyone, because I only needed someone if things were going to go wrong.”
I brushed my fingers through his hair, cupped his cheek. “You do realize you’re a hypocrite, don’t you? You’re always telling me that one day I would trust you, to let you in, to lean on you, and the first time you really truly needed me, you ran. And maybe it’s partially my fault. I’ve always seen you as the steady one; you always have it together, and I don’t think I let myself really see that you can’t be steady all the time. You’re not perfect.”