Jake’s POV
I'm already moving before my brain catches up.
My heels dig into my horse's flanks, spurring him toward Adison's panicking mare. The distance between us stretches impossibly—twenty feet that might as well be twenty miles.
"Adison!" Her name tears from my throat, raw and desperate.
But distance betrays me. Time betrays me. Everything I've ever counted on betrays me in the span of three heartbeats.
She falls.
Her body leaves the saddle in slow motion, limbs cartwheeling against the dappled sunlight. I watch her head strike the ground with a sound that will haunt me forever—a sickening finality that empties the air from my lungs.
She doesn't move.
I'm off my horse before it fully stops, boots hitting dirt as I run toward her crumpled form. Zachary dismounts nearly as fast, already reaching for his phone, but this is ranch country. Ambulances don't materialize on command out here. Help is thirty minutes away on a good day.
"Don't move her spine." Zachary's voice cuts through my panic, sharp and clinical. "Check for fractures first."
I want to tell him to shut up. Want to remind him he's not in charge here. But my hands are already running down Adison's arms, her legs, pressing gently against her ribs. Searching for breaks. Finding none.
My fingers won't stop trembling.
"She's breathing." I gather her against my chest, cradling her head in the crook of my arm. Her face is pale. Too pale. A bruise already blooming at her temple where she struck the ground. "She's breathing, but she won't wake up."
"Tommy." Zachary points toward the trail head, his phone already pressed to his ear. "Ride ahead. Get the car to the main road. Now."
Tommy doesn't hesitate. He's gone in a thunder of hooves, dust rising behind him.
"I need the nearest hospital." Zachary speaks into his phone with terrifying calm. "Trauma center if possible. We have a head injury, possible concussion, twenty-eight-year-old female, unconscious at the scene."
I can only hold her and pray.
Her body feels too light in my arms. Too still. The weight of her—the familiar shape I've memorized through countless nights—feels wrong now. Fragile in ways she's never been before.
"Stay with me." I press my lips to her hair, whispering words she can't hear. "You don't get to leave like this. You hear me? You don't get to leave."
The ride to the main road blurs into fragments. Zachary's voice issuing commands. Violet's stunned silence somewhere behind us. Paige's quiet tears. The jarring rhythm of my horse's gait that I try to absorb with my body so Adison doesn't feel it.
Tommy waits at the trailhead with the car running.
"Back seat." I slide in, keeping Adison pressed against my chest. Her head lolls against my shoulder, and I adjust her carefully, supporting her neck. "Drive fast. Don't stop for anything."
Tommy's jaw sets. He doesn't need to be told twice.
Zachary climbs into the passenger seat, phone still glued to his ear. "I need to speak with your chief administrator. This is Zachary Cooper, representing Ward Enterprises. We're bringing in Adison Ward—yes, that Ward—and I need your best neurologist available upon arrival."
His efficiency grates against my nerves. The way he commands attention, resources, respect. Everything I can't do right now because my hands are full of the woman I love and my voice has abandoned me entirely.
"Twenty minutes." Tommy glances in the rearview mirror. "Maybe fifteen if I push it."
"Push it." The words scrape past my teeth.
Adison's fingers twitch against my chest. I hold my breath, waiting, hoping—but her eyes stay closed. Her body stays limp.
"We'll need imaging immediately." Zachary continues his conversation like he's ordering coffee. "CT scan, possibly MRI. And I need assurance that all attending physicians are briefed on patient confidentiality. Any leaks to media will result in legal action."
I press my palm against Adison's cheek. Her skin feels cold despite the Texas heat.
"Come on, sweetheart." I murmur it against her temple. "Wake up for me."
She doesn't.
The hospital appears through the windshield like a mirage—white walls and glass doors and people in scrubs rushing toward the emergency entrance. Tommy pulls up hard, tires squealing.
"I've got her." I'm already moving, carrying Adison through the automatic doors as staff swarm around us.
"What happened?" A nurse takes charge, guiding me toward a gurney.
"The horse threw her." I lower Adison onto the mattress, my arms immediately feeling empty. Wrong. "She hit her head. Won't wake up."
"How long has she been unconscious?"
"About half an hour." I calculate the time through the fog in my brain.
They wheel her toward the trauma bay, and I try to follow, but a hand stops me at the door.
"Family only beyond this point." The nurse's voice is kind but firm. "Are you—"
"I want to stay with her." The growl escapes before I can soften it.
Zachary appears at my elbow, smooth and composed in ways that make me want to put my fist through a wall.
"There's something the medical team needs to know." He addresses the nurse with that calm authority I'm learning to hate. "The patient is pregnant. Any medications or procedures must account for both patients."
The words land like physical blows.
Pregnant. Both patients.
I stare as the doctors wheel Adison through the trauma bay doors. My mind struggles to process what I just heard.
Pregnant. She's pregnant. With my child. And she never told me.
The nurse nods, making rapid notes on her tablet. "Thank you for that information. We'll adjust our protocols accordingly."
Then she's gone, following Adison into a place I can't reach.
I stand in the middle of the emergency room, people flowing around me like water around a stone. My hands still tremble at my sides. My heart still pounds against my ribs.
Pregnant.
Zachary returns from wherever he vanished to, his expression carefully neutral. He knows exactly what bomb he just detonated.
"I assume you have questions." He says it like he's offering to explain a budget report.
Tommy shifts beside me, clearly uncomfortable. "I'll, uh... I'll go check on the car. This isn't my business."
"Stay." The word comes out rough. Broken.
Tommy freezes. Looks at my face. Stays.
Zachary waits, hands clasped behind his back. Patient. Infuriatingly patient.
And I stand there, staring at the doors that swallowed the woman carrying my child, trying to remember how to breathe.