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“It’s at home.”
“My...ring?”
“I have it,” Bruce told her after he dropped a quick kiss on her forehead. “I have your wedding ring.”
* * *
Retrograde amnesia secondary to traumatic brain injury and stroke. Bottom line, according to Savannah’s neurologist: Savannah had lost large swaths of her memory. With time and patience, some, or even all, of her memories could return. Until then...
“What are you suggesting that I do, Carol?” Bruce asked his mother-in-law in a lowered voice. “Move her back to the ranch?”
“We’ve all tried to talk her into coming home with us, but she wants to be with her husband.” Carol’s eyes were wide with concern. “She wants to be with you.”
Bruce held up his left hand to show Carol his wedding ring. “All she’s been talking about for the last two days is getting back into her own bed.”
Savannah had been moved to a regular hospital room soon after she had regained consciousness. Her appetite was healthy, she was laughing and talking. Her speech was still a little slurred from the dysarthria, her right hand was a little weak after the ministroke she had sustained, and of course, there was the memory loss. But even with all that, the doctors were getting ready to discharge her and continue with her care as an outpatient. Considering her near-death experience, Savannah was making a quick recovery.
“I know it. I know it.” Carol’s brows furrowed worriedly. “It’s gonna break her sweet heart when she finds out the truth.”
They had all hoped that Savannah’s memory would return on its own; none of them, including him, wanted to be the one to bring her up to speed on her failed marriage. But her discharge date was barreling toward them with no sign that she had any inkling that they were a signature away from being divorced.
Carol seemed to have something on her mind that she had been skirting ever since he had arrived at the hospital. He had a feeling he knew exactly what his mother-in-law was thinking.
“Would it be such a horrible thing if Savannah moved back to Sugar Creek with you?” she asked him after a couple of silent moments.
Bruce knew it was only a matter of time before Carol asked this question. It was a question that had crossed his own mind a time or two. But it wasn’t that simple. Savannah hadn’t lived at the ranch with him for a long while. And although he hadn’t changed much since she had left, she didn’t have clothing or personal items at the ranch.
“Maybe this could be a second chance for the two of you,” Carol added.
Carol had always wanted their marriage to work, and had always advocated for spending their attorneys’ fees on more marriage counseling.
“You still love her. Even after all that’s happened.” His mother-in-law looked up into his face hopefully. “Don’t you?”
“I’ll always love her,” he admitted because it was true. And even as angry as he had been with Savannah after all of the fighting and money wasted on attorneys fees, seeing her unconscious in critical care slammed home the truth for him: he still loved her.
Carol’s eyes welled with tears. She put her hands on his arm. “And she loves you.”
Savannah did love him. Again. It felt bizarre to walk into her hospital room and be greeted with that sweet, welcoming smile he’d first fallen in love with, her hazel-green eyes filled with love and her arms outstretched for a hug. In an odd twist of fate, Savannah was back to being the woman he had married. In an odd twist of fate, Savannah was back in his life.
“Now,” Bruce reminded Carol. “She loves me now. What happens when her memory comes back and she remembers that she doesn’t love me anymore?”
* * *
“I just want to go home,” Savannah complained to her husband. “I’m so tired of being here. All night long, people are barging into my room, taking my blood pressure, pumping me full of fluids! How can they expect anyone to get better in this place if they won’t let us sleep? I’m exhausted, and it’s all their fault.”
When Bruce arrived at the hospital after giving directions to his crew of cowboys at the ranch, Savannah was sitting up in a chair next to her bed.
“Can’t you bust me out of this place? I want to sleep in my own bed, with my own pillows.” His wife pointed to the small, rectangle pillow on the hospital bed. “That horrible thing is a brick disguised as a pillow.”
Every time he came to see Savannah in the hospital, she said something that made him laugh. Perhaps that was one of the initial qualities he had liked about her the first time he’d really taken notice of her. She was funny—funnier than any female he’d ever known. And although they had gone to school together virtually all of their lives, they hadn’t moved in the same cliques. Savannah had been on the honor roll and sang in the choir and was heavily involved with the school paper and the Beta Club for high achievers.
He’d been the captain of the football team, the popular kid, who happened to be going steady with Kerri Mahoney, the head of the cheerleading squad. He could barely remember seeing her in the halls at school when, as a junior at Montana University conducting research for a bachelor’s thesis, Savannah came out to Sugar Creek Ranch looking to study the grazing patterns of their cows. He would never forget how she looked that day—so serious with her round-rimmed glasses, loaded down with an overstuffed computer bag, and the ivory skin of her face devoid of makeup. Savannah hadn’t been the least bit interested in him. All of her focus was on his cattle. It had been a rare blow to his ego.
“Let’s get you out of this room. Go for a walk.”
With one hand, Savannah held on to the rolling stand that held her IV drip, and with the other hand, she held on to his arm. He had to cut his stride in half to make sure that he didn’t push her to go faster than her body could handle.
“I feel a breeze on my left butt cheek,” Savannah told him. “Take a peek back there for me, will you, and make sure my altogether is altogether covered.”
Bruce smiled as he ducked his head back to check out her posterior parts. “You’re good.”
Halfway down the hall, the pallor of Savannah’s oval face turned pasty-white. She swayed against him, and he wrapped his arm around her shoulders.
“Whoa—we’ve gone far enough for today.”
She didn’t put up a fight when he helped her make a U-turn so he could take her back to her room. He didn’t want to wear her out completely; he still needed to have a serious talk with Savannah. Her doctors were ready to discharge her, and she was ready to leave. If she still wanted to go home to Sugar Creek after he told her the truth about the divorce, he was willing to take her back to the ranch with him. But she had to know the truth. It was her right to know.
He’d already discussed the best way to tell Savannah about the divorce with her doctors and her family. They all agreed that he could tell her privately, but that Carol and John would be on standby in case Savannah needed their emotional support. Bruce had never dreaded a conversation like he dreaded the one he was about to have with his wife. He didn’t want to hurt her—even when he had been at his angriest with her, he’d never wanted to hurt her.
After he got her settled back in bed, and the nurses had taken her vital signs and administered medication, Bruce pulled a chair up next to Savannah. He took her hand in his, and it surprised him how easy it was to fall right back into the habit of holding her hand.
“What’s bothering you?” Savannah asked him.
Bruce ran his finger over the diamond encrusted platinum wedding band that he had just recently slipped back onto her finger. Savannah didn’t remember the day she had taken that ring off and put it on the kitchen counter before she left their home for good. That memory was burned into his brain. He only wished he could erase it. After she’d left, he’d held that ring in his hand for hours, plotting its demise. He thought to throw it away, crush it in the garbage disposal, flush it, melt it down or pawn it. But in the end, he’d thrown it into a dresser drawer, mostly forgotten, until the early-morning hour when Savannah asked about it.
“You’ve lost a lot of time, Savannah.” Bruce started in the only way he knew how.
Fear, fleeting but undeniable, swept over her face. She was scared—scared about the memories she’d lost—and scared that they weren’t going to come back.
“Once I get back to my own home, surrounded by all of the things that I love, I really think that it’ll all come back.” Savannah had an expectant look on her face. “Don’t you?”
He wanted to reassure her, but he wasn’t as optimistic. She’d lost so much in the accident—it was hard for him to believe that Savannah would ever be exactly as she once was.
“I’d like to think.” Bruce tried to take the long way around.
“I just need to go home,” she restated. “That’s all. I just need to go home.”
Still holding on to her hand, Bruce cleared his throat. “Well—that’s what I’d like to talk to you about.”
With her head resting on the pillow, her dark brown hair fanned out around her face, her eyes intent on him, Savannah waited for him to continue.
“There’s a lot that’s gone on between us, Savannah. A lot that you don’t remember.”
Savannah’s fingers tightened around his fingers, that look of fear and discomfort back in her eyes. “You’re scaring me.”
He didn’t want to scare her—and he told her as much.
“Just tell me what’s on your mind, Bruce.”
Her entreaty was faint and laced with uneasiness. Savannah had always been a “pull the Band-Aid off quick” kind of person. She didn’t like to draw things out.
Bruce had spent the last two years fighting like cats and dogs with this woman, and now all he wanted to do was protect her from the pain they had willingly caused each other. He dropped his head for a moment and shook it. The only way out was forward.
“For the last couple of years, we’ve been going through a divorce,” Bruce finally mustered the guts to tell her. The sound of her sharp intake of breath brought his eyes back to hers. The look in her eyes could only be described as stunned.
Savannah looked down at their hands, at their wedding rings. She swallowed several times, her eyes filling with unshed tears, before she asked, “You weren’t wearing your ring. When I first saw you. You weren’t wearing it. Are we even...married?”
He held on to her hand even though it seemed as if she were already trying to pull it away. How many times had he wished for a second chance with Savannah? He hadn’t wanted it this way—never this way—but he would be a fool to let her slip away from him a second time without putting up one heck of a fight.
“We’re still married,” he reassured her. It wasn’t important, right at this moment, for Savannah to know just how close they had come to ending their marriage.
“I don’t remember...” Savannah stopped midsentence, tears slipping unchecked onto her cheeks.
“It’s going to be okay, Savannah.” He felt impotent to console her. There weren’t words that could make this right for her.
Savannah stared at him hard, with a look of distrust in her eyes. “How can you say that? We’ve split up, but it’s going to be fine? Why would you want a divorce? What happened to us?”
When he didn’t answer right away, she tugged her fingers loose from his hold.
“Tell me why.”
How could he explain the last several years of their marriage in a sentence or two? There were things that they had all agreed that Savannah didn’t need to know right now.
“I didn’t file for divorce, Savannah. You did.”
Bewildered, she stared into his eyes, seeming to be searching for answers. “I did? Why? Why would I do that?”
“We had a lot of problems we just couldn’t seem to work out,” he told her honestly.
Savannah covered her face with her hands. In a muffled voice, she said, “I just want to go home.”
Bruce moved to her side; sitting on the edge of the bed, he pulled her hands down from her face and tugged her gently into his arms so he could comfort her in the only way he knew how. He ran his hand over the back of her hair, the way she always liked him to do, and was relieved that, instead of drawing away from him, Savannah leaned against him and rested her head on his shoulder.
“Come home to me, Savannah.” Bruce hugged his wife, his eyes closed.
Savannah broke the embrace and studied his face, looking directly into his eyes again when she asked him, “Do you still love me?”
The cowboy answered firmly and without any hesitation, “Yes, Beautiful. Yes, I do.”
Chapter Two (#ud8f01039-7dcf-54c7-b406-718b5a999281)
“So, this is over.” Kerri had been sitting across from him at her small kitchen table, not saying a word, arms crossed in front of her body.
Bruce sat stiffly in the chair opposite Kerri. He’d never felt truly comfortable at Kerri’s table—the chairs were too small, the table too low. Today, he felt uncomfortable for a whole new set of reasons.
“I’m sorry.” He apologized for the second time. His apology may have sounded hollow to Kerri’s ears, but it was sincere. If he’d known that he had even a fraction of a shot of winning Savannah back, he’d never have rekindled his old high school romance with Kerri. He wasn’t in the business of breaking hearts for the fun of it.
“You’re sorry.” Kerri made a little sarcastic laugh as she looked out the kitchen window. “Well, that makes it all better then, doesn’t it?”
Bruce stared at the woman he’d cared about for most of his life. Her forgiveness could be a long time coming.
Bruce stood up and grabbed his hat off the table. “I’d better go.”
Kerri didn’t look at him. She gave a small, annoyed shake of her head, but she refused to look at him even as he opened the door to leave.
“If you ever need me, I’m just a phone call away.” Bruce paused in the entranceway, the door half-open.
Kerri hadn’t said a word, hadn’t looked his way once, and there were tears flowing freely onto her cheek.
“Take care of yourself,” Bruce said before he ducked out of the door, choked up at the sight of Kerri’s tears. He cared an awful lot about Kerri. He always had. But Savannah was his heart.
* * *
“Home!” Savannah exclaimed as she walked through the back door of the modest log cabin they had designed and built together. “I’m finally home!”
Bruce had never thought to hear those words come out of his wife’s mouth again. He followed her into the mudroom, carrying in each hand two heavy suitcases packed by her family. They were greeted by three dogs, mutts all, tails wagging, barking excitedly. Savannah immediately fell to her knees and hugged the large dogs around their necks, calling two of the dogs by name, and laughing as the rescue mutts knocked her backward while fighting for the chance to lick her on the face.
Bruce dropped the suitcases with a loud thud so he could intervene. “Whoa, sit, boys!”
“I’m okay.” Savannah reassured him, now sitting cross-legged on the wood floor, her arms still wrapped around Buckley’s furry neck. “I’ve missed you guys so much!”
Savannah had never shied away from the dogs giving her a tongue bath on her face, not since the first day she had come out to Sugar Creek. Bruce decided to join in on the reunion instead of trying to control it. He rubbed Buckley between the ears, his favorite spot, while Savannah showed some individual love and attention to Murphy.
With a happy laugh, Savannah turned her attention to the dog he had rescued off the side of the road. “And who are you?”
“That’s Hound Dog.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Hound Dog.” His wife smiled at the tan-and-black dog with long floppy ears before she turned her eyes his way. “How long have we had him?”
Bruce stood up and held out his hand to help his wife onto her feet.
“I haven’t had him for all that long. Six months, maybe. Found him on the side of I-90, dehydrated, half-starved. An infection in one of his paws so bad the vet thought we might have to amputate.”
Bruce rubbed Hound Dog’s head. “It shows you what a little love can do.”
Savannah gazed up at him with an appreciative look in her eyes. She tucked her hand under his arm and leaned into his side. “You’ve never been able to ignore an animal in need.”
Instinctively, his body tensed. Yes, he had become used to holding Savannah’s hand in the hospital, and, yes, he still loved her. But he was having a difficult time accepting all of those little intimate touches that were a part of married life. It had been years since Savannah wanted to touch him; post-accident, Savannah seemed to want to touch him all the time, like she had when they were first married. It was unnerving.
Bruce tried not to be obvious when he took a step away from her. “Let’s get you settled.”
Once in the master bedroom, he hoisted the two suitcases, one at a time, onto their queen bed. Savannah had opened the door to the cedar-lined walk-in closet and strode inside. He found her standing in the center of the closet, quietly staring at all of the empty rods and shoe racks on what had been her side of the closet.
“Everything okay?”
The color had drained from her face; her arms were crossed tightly in front of her body. Her slender shoulders were slumped forward, and she seemed to be emotionally swallowed up much in the same way her torso was swallowed up by the sweatshirt she had insisted on wearing home. “I really left.”
It was a statement, even though there was a question in her voice. She wanted to know what had happened—she wanted to know why she had left. But they had all agreed—her doctors, her family—that it would be better on Savannah to wait a couple of weeks before that subject was broached.
