The Coppersmith Farmhouse

by Devney Perry

  It was the hardest thing I’d ever done.

  I stayed on autopilot until I was alone hours later, on one of the three worst days of my life.

  “What happened?” I whispered to Beau.

  We were sitting with our backs against a wall on the second floor of the hospital. My knees were bent and I had my arms wrapped around my shins. Beau was sitting next to me, his arms draped over the tops of his bent knees.

  “I don’t know. We were all walking up to the shack together. All three of us. The smell was so strong my throat was burning. So I told Milo and Jess that I’d grab us some bandanas from my truck. I was bent digging in the back seat and I heard Jess yell, “Stop.” I stood up, then all I saw was the explosion. A big propane tank by the shack just blew. Shot straight up into the air, flames were everywhere. Next thing I knew, I was on my back. Just like that,” he said, snapping his fingers.

  “It was like a heat wave pushed out from the fire and tossed me in the air. Knocked me straight onto my back. All of those trees by the tank, the trunks, they just broke. Like snapping a toothpick in half. When I got up and looked around, I saw Milo first.”

  Beau stopped for a minute to close his eyes and tip his head back against the wall. I didn’t prompt him or ask him to keep going. At this point, I wished he would stop. Just leave the next part unsaid. Because I knew what he was going to tell me and I didn’t want to hear it.

  But he continued, oblivious to my silent wishing. “Jess was coming to. He was on his back, looking up and over at me. He got thrown right into a fallen tree. Landed with such force that one of the old limbs was sticking out right through his side. We packed it with some snow and I helped Jess in the truck. I put as much snow as I could on Milo. I don’t know if it was enough . . .”

  I forced a breath and closed my eyes.

  “Drove as fast as I could. Panicked the whole time. Milo was still out in the back. Jess was cussing. He said that if Wes were still alive, he’d kill him for this. I was so focused on driving, Gigi, I didn’t notice when he stopped talking. But then right before we pulled up to the hospital, he said, ‘Love Georgia. She’s my light.’ Then that was it. He closed his eyes and fell against the door.”

  My eyes were leaking a steady stream of tears but I wasn’t crying out or sobbing. I didn’t have any of that left. The day had drained me completely. Emotionally and physically. All I had left were silent tears.

  “I should have gone to Jess first,” Beau said.

  “No,” I heard from above us.

  Everett was standing against the wall opposite us.

  “Milo was the right one to go to first. Packing snow on his burns was smart. If you hadn’t done that to take some of the heat out, they would have been ten times worse. You saved his life,” Everett said.

  Beau didn’t respond. He just lifted his head off the wall and turned to me. “Do you need a ride home?” he asked.

  “No,” I whispered. “It’s only eight. Rowen will still be awake and I can’t . . . I can’t explain all of this to her tonight.”

  How was I going to tell her about Jess? I couldn’t think about it. It was too much. Telling her would make this day all too real.

  “Right,” Beau said and stood up. He started walking down the hall but not before he stopped and stared down Everett. At least Everett had the intelligence to look at his feet and not stare back. With all Beau had been through today, a challenge from his sister’s ex-boyfriend would have pushed him over the edge. Not that Everett was the challenging type.

  “Let me know if you need anything, Gigi,” Everett said, pushing off the wall to leave.

  “Everett? Thank you. You saved their lives today. And I’ll always be grateful for what you and Dr. Peterson did for Jess. That he’s alive in there because of you,” I said, tipping my head toward Jess’s recovery room.

  “It’s my job, Gigi,” Everett said.

  “Thank you for doing your job,” I whispered, my voice cracking.

  “You’re welcome. Good night.”

  I needed a bit of alone time, some space to replay the day and get it sorted in my head. Tomorrow, I would need to tell Rowen about Jess’s injury. Noelle too.

  When Beau had brought in Milo and Jess, they had been in bad shape. Minutes away from death. I shuddered to think what would have happened if Beau hadn’t been able to get to the hospital so fast. If he had hit just one roadblock or delay, today would have ended much, much worse. And that was saying something because as it was, it was really effing bad.

  Milo had been treated for burns and a concussion. The burns were so severe that Dr. Peterson and Everett had sedated him so he wouldn’t wake up. Then they’d called Mercy Flight to airlift Milo to Spokane’s burn unit.

  It was likely he’d be there for months and even when he was healed, it was doubtful he’d ever look the same again. His arms and torso had sustained the worst burns. He could cover those up with clothing. But there were still burns on his face that would scar.

  Jess had lost a lot of blood. The puncture wound from the tree had gone through his body, leaving a hole about the size of a golf ball from front to back. Because he’d lost so much blood, his heart had stopped beating just before Beau had arrived at the hospital. Dr. Peterson suspected he’d gone only a minute without oxygen to his brain and they’d been able to revive him before taking him into surgery.

  Six hours. Jess had been in surgery for six hours, getting a tear to his liver repaired and the other internal bleeding stopped. When the doctors came out of the operating room, they told me Jess had been extraordinarily lucky. If that branch had been an inch closer to the center of his body, it would have severed his spinal cord, leaving him paralyzed. As it was, he was now stabilized and would eventually make a full recovery. All he’d have to deal with were some scars.

  He was off of the sedation drugs but hadn’t woken up yet. Since I wanted to be here when he did, I’d asked Maisy if she could pick up Rowen and take her home. She’d been more than happy to help and had offered to spend the night at the farmhouse so I could stay with Jess.

  Beau had stayed by my side all day, waiting to hear that his friends were going to live and giving me silent support. I didn’t know him well, but after today, I would be eternally grateful. The Holts were good people. The best. And I was glad I was here in Prescott where they could be a part of my life.

  I wasn’t alone anymore.

  Standing up from the floor, I walked into Jess’s room.

  He was in a white hospital gown underneath a dull blue blanket. He looked smaller, lying in the hospital bed. His large body still took up most of the space and his feet were hanging off the end, but still, he looked smaller. Smaller than my Jess, who towered over me and picked me up like I weighed no more than a feather.

  It hurt to look at him. The ache in my chest was crippling.

  I scooted a chair up to his bed and took one of his hands in both of mine. “I’m here, Jess. Whenever you wake up. I’m here. Just wake up, honey. Please, wake up soon. I don’t want to lose you. I can’t lose you. Rowen can’t lose you. We need you. So come back to us. Come back to me,” I whispered.

  I laid my head next to his thigh but kept his hand clutched tightly in both of mine. No matter how long it took, I was going to be the first thing Jess saw when he woke up from today’s nightmare.

  Jess’s eyes fluttered open and searched the room. He turned his head and brilliant ice blue met my gaze.

  “Hi, honey,” I whispered.

  Finally, he was finally awake. It felt like I had waited a year to see those beautiful eyes open.

  It was five o’clock in the morning the day after the explosion. I’d stayed awake all night long, sitting next to Jess’s side, holding his hand and thinking about all of the reasons why he was so special to me. How I would work every day for the rest of my life to make sure he knew it.

  “Hey, baby,” he whispered back.

  His voice was rough and scratchy. It sounded nothing like his normal deep rumbl
e.

  But it was perfect.

  “Georgia,” Jess called from the bedroom door.

  “Closet!” I was hanging up his shirts and putting away a basket of laundry.

  It had been almost a month since the explosion. Jess had spent a grumpy week in the hospital followed by a grumpy week at home. But once he could start moving around again, his spirits had lifted and he’d spent the next two weeks designing our addition.

  Today, he had gone back to work, antsy to get up to speed, though I wasn’t sure why he’d felt out of the loop. His deputies had been over constantly.

  He hit the closet door and snapped, “What the fuck is this?”

  “What the eff is what?” I turned.

  He held out a postcard and I leaned in to read it.

  “Well, you’re the cop, but this looks like a birthday postcard from my dentist, Sheriff,” I said.

  “Want to tell me why it says your birthday was last Wednesday?”

  “Ah . . . because it was.”

  “There a reason why you didn’t tell me?” he asked.

  “I didn’t want a birthday this year.”

  “You didn’t want a birthday.”

  “Yes. I didn’t want a birthday,” I said.

  “That’s not really your choice.”

  “I disagree, since it was my birthday. All I wanted was for it to pass just like any other day,” I said.

  “Fine. No birthday. How about instead you tell me why you’ve been acting strange since the explosion?”

  “What? I haven’t been acting strange,” I lied.

  I had been acting strange. I knew it. He knew it.

  I just couldn’t help it.

  Every day I struggled to push back the fears swirling in my head, fears that had been haunting me for the last month.

  Every time I looked at Jess, all I could see was his body covered in blood. When he talked to me, I heard the flatline beeping of the heart-rate monitor.

  “You have been acting strange since the explosion. Don’t fucking lie to me. I live here. I see it. So what’s going on?”

  “Nothing. I’m fine,” I lied again.

  “Georgia.”

  I didn’t answer. I just went back to the laundry because I wasn’t going to tell him. He could badger me all he wanted, but I wasn’t ready to talk about it yet.

  “Fine,” he clipped.

  I bent to pick up a stack of his T-shirts but right as my fingers brushed the cotton, I was pulled backward and sent flying through the air, Jess’s arms wrapped around my belly, my hands and legs flailing.

  “Jess! Be careful! You’ll hurt yourself!” I yelled.

  He ignored me and kept moving. When we reached the bed, he tossed me down onto my back.

  “What are you doing?” I sat up on my elbows.

  He grabbed the hem of his black T-shirt with both hands and yanked it up and over his head. Then he unbuttoned his jeans and stripped them off along with his briefs.

  We hadn’t had sex since the morning of the explosion and my body instantly heated at the sight of a naked Jess standing over me. Even though he’d missed a month of workouts, his muscles were still bulging. His cock was starting to get hard as my eyes traveled up and down his body.

  I missed sex.

  He grabbed my ankles and pulled me to the edge of the bed, his fingers going straight to the button on my jeans. In a flash they were gone, along with my panties. Next was my top and bra.

  Jess came down on me hard, his mouth attaching to mine as his fingers frantically moved over my entire body. He started at the top, feeling his way from my shoulders to my breasts. He gave my nipples each a hard tug and kept going down.

  His hands spanned my ribs and then glided over my stomach to rest on my hips. They slid down my thighs until they reached the backs of my knees, where he bent them up and around his waist. My ankles latched together on his back.

  His mouth never left mine as his hands rubbed and pressed into my body. It was rough and hard, his touch almost bruising as he worked his hands and fingers over my skin.

  “Jess,” I gasped, aching for him.

  “Gonna fuck you hard, baby. Hard and deep. So rough you’ll feel me all day tomorrow. Then you’re gonna tell me what the fuck is going on in your head. Why the fuck you’re shutting me out.”

  I couldn’t respond. All I could do was moan. I loved it when he said stuff like that to me, when he told me how he was going to fuck me before he did just that. I loved it so much my whole body shivered.

  “Jess, please,” I begged.

  He lined his cock up with my entrance and pushed in an inch.

  “Jess, now.”

  “You’re gonna tell me what I want to know, baby. Say it,” he ordered.

  I shook my head. I wasn’t going to tell him.

  He pushed in another painful inch, his cock teasing me. It wasn’t enough to help ease the ache. I needed all of him.

  “Say it, Georgia.”

  “Okay,” I breathed.

  The second the word left my lips, he drove his hips forward hard and buried his cock to the hilt.

  I moaned into his neck as my head jerked up and collided with his shoulder. I kept moaning as he fucked me just like he said he would: hard and deep. His hands moved roughly over my body as his cock thrust in and out with no restraint.

  My legs started to tremble behind his back and a rush of heat poured over me as I came hard and fast.

  “Fuck. So fuckin’ tight. Missed your pussy, baby,” Jess said into my ear.

  He picked up his pace, pounding into me, over and over again.

  “Jess, it’s too much,” I whispered.

  “Take it, Georgia. Just let go,” he ordered, not slowing down.

  I blanked my mind and let go, coming again so powerfully my body split in two.

  “Fuck,” Jess groaned into my hair as he let go too. I felt his release hot inside me. He planted his cock deep to keep our connection after he finished coming.

  With his weight on top of mine, I let my hands wander across his muscled back. I had missed him so much this last month, missed feeling his heavy weight on top of me, like he was keeping me anchored to him. Anchored to us.

  And I’d missed feeling his body linked with mine. Even though what we’d just had was fucking, pure and simple, it was also him making love to me. Showing me with his hands, his mouth and his cock that I was his love.

  My hands wandered up and down his back and then down his sides. My fingers froze when they hit his scar. I couldn’t see it but I didn’t need to. I knew exactly what it looked like. It was rough and jagged. The skin was still raised and hot pink.

  I traced the line where his stitches had been just three days ago, lightly going back and forth over the mark on his beautiful back. A mark he would have forever. A reminder that he’d almost lost his life and that I had almost lost him in mine.

  My chin quivered. Time was up. There was no keeping my breakdown at bay any longer. Jess wouldn’t need to coax it out of me because it was already pouring out through the tears in my eyes.

  “Let it go, baby.” He rolled onto his back, pulling me on top of him.

  “I almost lost you,” I sobbed into his neck. “All I can see is the blood, Jess. I can’t stop seeing it. Seeing you on that stretcher with blood dripping to the floor. Seeing Dr. Peterson restart your heart, your body jolting off the stretcher when he shocked you. I can’t stop seeing it.”

  He didn’t say anything. He just wrapped his arms around my back and held me tight.

  “What if that happens again? What would we do if it were worse? I don’t know if I can survive it. Losing you. I don’t want to be like Ben. Wandering around, living a life without a life. I am so scared it’s paralyzing me. If I don’t keep myself distracted and exhausted, it comes back. I just can’t stop seeing it and wondering when it will happen again.”

  “Baby, you can’t think like that,” Jess whispered.

  “You weren’t there, Jess. You didn’t see it.
See how bad it was.”

  “I wish it hadn’t happened, that you hadn’t been there. But it did and you were. We have to move past it. Get back to where we were. You gotta reengage with us. Stop pulling away from me.”

  “I don’t know how,” I whispered.

  “Yes you do,” he said, giving me a little shake. “All you gotta do is let me in there. Let me show you the way out so we don’t live a life in fear, scared that with every move it’ll be over. It could happen again, Georgia. You know that. None of us know when it’s our time.”

  I nodded.

  He was absolutely right. And it wasn’t like I hadn’t known it before. Lives could be cut short, but that didn’t mean it still wasn’t terrifying.

  “I don’t want to lose you. All my life I’ve been losing people. My dad before I even got to know him. My mom way before it was time. Ben. And I survived all of those. Somehow I made it through. And each time, I knew I was strong enough to make it. But I don’t know if I could survive if I lost you, Jess. I don’t think I’m strong enough,” I said quietly.

  “You’re stronger than any person, man or woman, I’ve ever known, Georgia. I don’t want you to have to survive me but if you have to, you’ll do it. Because you’ll have to for Rowen. And I want you to be happy, even if I’m not here to share that with you.”

  His words brought on a whole new batch of tears. I hated to think of life without him. I wouldn’t be happy, I couldn’t be, if he wasn’t here.

  “But it’s not gonna happen,” he said. “I’m okay. Gonna be okay. We’re gonna live it good while we can. And my living it good is with you. With Roe. We finally get to be happy. So I need you to be with me, not letting your fears drive you away.”

  “Okay,” I breathed. It was a deep breath, my shoulders sagging forward, releasing all of the tension I’d been holding in them for the past month.

  “Roll off me. I need to see your face,” he ordered. “We need to talk about this birthday thing,” he said once I was on my back.

  “It’s not a big deal, honey. I haven’t really celebrated my birthday since my mom died.”

  “Big deal to me, Georgia. Birthdays. Holidays. My chance to make it special for you. Tough for me to do that when I don’t even know when it’s your birthday.”