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“Well, if you’d just let me stay in here, we wouldn’t have this problem, Nurse Ratched,” I heard Austin say.
I’d been awake moments ago, but had drifted off to sleep again. I opened my eyes to see Austin crutching himself into my hospital room, his leg in a cast.
“There’s my beautiful girl,” he grinned. He parked his crutches against the wall, and sat himself on the edge of my bed. “Hey, there,” he said, taking my hand. “How you feeling today?”
I forced a nod. “Fine. Tired, but fine.”
He leaned forward and kissed my head. “Your nurse is a pain in my ass,” he said quietly.
“I heard that,” Patty snapped playfully. “And if he calls me Nurse Ratched one more time, I’m gonna start living up to it.”
I was getting used to the two of them going back and forth with each other, but even though Patty was a stickler for rules, she’d taken care of me well. I’d received surgery to reconstruct the skin on my shoulder, and thankfully, my doctors thought that was going to be enough. The damage wasn’t as bad as it first appeared, and I was very grateful for that.
“How is everything going at the ranch?” I asked. “Did they find the rest of the horses yet?”
It had been three days since the fire, and four horses were still missing.
Austin frowned when he shook his head. “Not all of them. The neighbors down the road caught Rolls Royce. Still missing the other three.”
Miraculously, not a single horse had died in the fire. Because the men had acted so quickly and got to them as fast as they did, every one of them was spared. A few had burns that were healing—like Need for Speed—and one other had injuries from running into a fence. But not a single one suffered something they couldn’t recover from.
It was a miracle.
“And what is the verdict? Do they really think it was arson?”
Austin nodded somberly. “Yeah, afraid so. We’re the third ranch that’s been hit in the past six months. It’s pretty sick, if you ask me. Who would want to hurt innocent animals?”
I shook my head with disgust. It really was sad, and I hoped they caught the person before they hurt anyone else.
“On a brighter note, you get to come home tomorrow,” Austin told me with a smile. “I just talked to Dr. Bennett and he said everything looks great. He also said the scarring will be barely visible in a few years.”
I nodded. He’d told me the same thing, and although there were worse things that could have happened that night, I was thankful to only come out with a few scars on my shoulder and an unexpected haircut. More than that, I was grateful everyone else had come out okay, and that most of the animals were safe.
Austin took my hand and pressed it against his lips. “You and I need to have a little talk about what ‘stay in the house’ means.”
I cracked a smile, even though I knew he was serious. “There’s no way I would have stayed in the house, Austin.”
“You could have at least stayed out of the barn.”
“Without knowing you were okay? Absolutely not.”
He seemed to think about that for a moment until he slowly nodded his head. “Actually...you saved my life, Nova. My dad thought I was with you, and Ben didn’t know we were still in the barn until he saw you.”
“I don’t want to think about that,” I said quietly, tears pricking my eyes. “I went in to make sure my horse was out, and then I heard you. I knew you were still trying to get them all out.”
“There were only six more. I just couldn’t leave ‘em, babe.”
“I know. I wouldn’t have been able to, either.”
He laid his head against me. “What a crazy thing this is,” he sighed.
“What thing?”
“Love.”
I lightly laughed but had to agree. “Yeah, it’s crazy. But I’m crazy about you.”
He sat up and shook his head regretfully. “Everything was perfect and in one night...”
“And in one night we learned a few things. Everything is still perfect as long as I have you, Austin. I never want that to change.”
He paused, seemingly pensive. “I agree. Which is why I was going to ask you to marry me, Nova. When I planned on taking you out to the property the next day, I was going to ask you to marry me.”
I could only stare at him. Did he actually say what I thought he said?
“And I know this is a really pathetic way to propose to a girl, so I’m not going to. Not here. But I want you to know that the property, and the house, and a ring... It’s all for you. All of it. Because I love you, and I want to marry you, and I want you to know that now. I don’t want you to wonder. I don’t want to wait. There’s no need to wait. Life should be enjoyed when you can enjoy it, and that’s what I want for us. Okay?”
I nodded, still stuck on the fact that he was ready to marry me.
“Sorry,” he smiled. “I know this is not the greatest scene for a memorable moment—”
“I don’t even care, Austin. It’s the moment itself that’s memorable, not where we’re at. This is all I’ve ever wanted. Honestly.”
“Me groveling for you like a fucking fool?”
“You’re groveling?”
He grinned. “I will if I need to. If you need me to say how selfish I’ve been by not—”
“We’re making choices, and doing the best we can. We’ve had ups and downs, but now we know all the ups and downs are better when we’re together. That’s what matters.”
“I hope I can always make you happy, and if I don’t, then I hope we can talk about whatever it is we need to fix. I’ll try not to be stubborn. Can’t promise I won’t be, but I’ll try.”
“You know what? I’ll let you have stubborn.” I nodded with a chuckle. “I can live with that. It’s part of who you are, and that determination is useful in other ways. But I know you love me, and we’ll both do what we can to appreciate each other’s personalities.”
He seemed deep in thought before he kissed my cheek. “Time to live in the present and look forward to the future.”
A week later, we were sitting together on our future home site. It was the middle of January and barely sixty degrees, but bundled up with Austin in a blanket was the warmest place on earth. We’d had a picnic lunch and decided on a home design together, and now we were discussing the possibilities while I continued to stare at the diamond ring on my finger.
“I can only imagine what our kids are going to do with a double dose of willpower,” Austin said out of the blue.
I laughed. “Wow, I’m not sure if I want to consider that.”
“Between my arrogance and stubbornness and your tenacity to go for what you want?”
“I’ve already gotten a glimpse from the stories your mom has told me. You were a little hellion.”
“Hey, I was a busy kid.”
“You were a daredevil, and indomitable. You still are.”
“I’m confident and ambitious.”
“That, too.”
“I’m toning it down a bit.”
“Oh?”
“Well, if you can conquer my heart, I’m apparently not as unbreakable as I thought.”
That made me smile.
“And I’m shifting my priorities. I’m more interested in you and whatever family we have. My endeavors will always include you, no matter what.”
“Well, then I see us going anywhere we want to go. The sky’s the limit.”
“Or...maybe just the racetrack,” he smiled slyly. He laid me on my back and kissed me. “I love you, Nova. Even more than racing.”
Most girls would scoff at such a comment, but my heart literally melted. The man had devoted his life to two entirely different things, and even though I would never make him choose between them, if he ever had to, I knew with every fiber of my being which it would be.
He loved me more.
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The End