hit me as we watched him speed around, navigating steep jumps and obstacles with pinpoint precision. Dirt bikes had never been my thing, but it was easy to see why he got off on Motocross.
He lived on the edge, but it was fucking fishing at his own pond and a four-wheeler that had shoved him over it.
My heart sank as I opened the front door, the sounds of her off-pitch singing filled the entryway.
“Lex!” I yelled, marching toward her voice.
With a watering can in one hand, she stood in the kitchen, barefoot with her wild red hair piled on the top of her head, surrounded by her mother’s menagerie of prized succulents.
“Hey, Hud. What are you doing here?” She smiled so innocently that it felt like razor blades to my heart.
I took a second to memorize it before being forced to wipe it away, maybe forever. “Where the hell have you been?” I snapped too roughly given the situation, but my nerves were shot. “I’ve spent the last hour searching the entire city for you.”
Oblivious, she grinned. “I broke Mom’s cactus, so I had to hit the nursery and find an exact cacti-match so she didn’t cut me out of the will. What’s up? Why were you looking for me?” She propped a hand on her hip and teased, “Can’t find anyone else to insult you properly?”
“Why weren’t you answering your phone?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Uh, it’s dead.”
My chest ached as I stared at her. She had no idea what was coming. That was literally the last moment before I was forced to ruin her life. “We gotta go, Kid.”
Her smile melted as she placed the watering can on the table and took a slow step toward me. “What’s wrong?”
Shit, this was going to hurt.
“There’s been an accident. And we need to get to the hospital as quickly as we can. So I need you to grab your shoes and purse and get in my truck.”
She stood there blinking at me, her lashes fluttering as if they could bat away the words that hung in the air. Then, all at once, she burst into action, rushing past me to the sink to dump the watering can. With an edge of panic lacing her voice, she asked, “Is Jack okay?”
Life wasn’t fucking fair.
I was about to drop the weight of the world on her and she was worried about my son.
“Jack’s fine.” I rumbled, and my throat filled with shards of broken glass. “It’s…Brenden.”
Her face paled, and her lips tipped into a paper-thin smile. “Shut up. What are you talking about?”
If I had any chance of getting her to that hospital in time to see Brenden while he was still alive, I needed her to get in the damn truck. “He flipped the four-wheeler, Kid. I got a call from his dad when they couldn’t reach you.”
She shook her head, her green eyes filling with tears even as she fell into a pit of denial. “Is this a joke? Did he put you up to this? He’s such a shit. This is probably payback for me telling him to release anything he caught. We just don’t have the freezer space anymore.”
I closed the distance between us, hooking my arm through hers. “I’m not fucking around. Please just get in the truck.”
She peered up at me for a long beat, her chin quivering as she tried to make sense of the unfathomable.
Then I lost her.
Lex snatched her arm away and spun all at once. She was a tornado touching down with deafening lulls and violent whirls.
“Where’s my phone?!” she shrieked at a soul-crushing octave. “Where’s my fucking phone! I’ll call him. I’ll prove he’s fine.” With wild eyes, she darted around her parents’ kitchen, looking for a phone that she’d told me only minutes ago was dead.
I followed after her, my heart in my throat, the seconds on the clock ticking away at an agonizing speed. “We gotta go, Lex.”
With trembling hands, she found her purse on the island and dumped it out, the contents rolling off the counter, crashing to the floor right along with her heart. “This is bullshit. He knows how to ride a four-wheeler, Hudson. He wouldn’t fucking flip it.”
She pushed past me, but I caught her by the arm. It would be years before I forgave myself for the way I jerked her against me and shouted, “I wouldn’t lie about this! Please, fuck, we need to go.” It was louder than I’d intended, but it momentarily snapped