“I need to see her.”
“Ms. Lane is still resting.” Duncan, Easton’s nurse, paused in his work to make a tick mark on the hospital room’s white board, the way he did every time Easton asked. “Which is what you should be doing.”
Duncan hit Easton with a look that he was sure normally worked well on other patients. But no matter how good Duncan was at his job, Easton had no intention of sitting there, waiting for people who didn’t know her to decide if it was okay for her to have visitors.
“Listen to him, Son.” From the recliner in the corner of the room, Joshua never once looked up from his magazine.
“I don’t want River to wake up alone.” Easton pushed aside one of the many blankets they’d used to warm him up, frowning at the IV in his hand.
“Why do they always pair me with the difficult patients?” Duncan grabbed the IV fluid bag attached to Easton’s bed. “You’re going to spurt everywhere if you pull that out.”
This time, Duncan’s look was enough to make Easton pause…at least until the other man hung his fluids on a mobile IV stand.
“I didn’t tell you this.” Duncan talked as he worked to get a blanket wrapped around Easton’s shoulders. “She’s going to be fine, but Ms. Lane’s being treated for exhaustion and frostbite on her foot.”
Easton grimaced. “How bad of frostbite?”
“Let’s hope you don’t have a foot fetish. You, in contrast, needed some fluids, some warming up, and—for the hundredth time—some rest. Which you won’t get worrying about her, so we’re going over to her room. You’re a lucky guy, but even lucky guys can crack their skulls open if they collapse in a hospital hallway. Unless you want to see what a second concussion on top of a first can do, then you’ll start listening to me.”
“Her friends are with my sister,” Easton said, tired of repeating himself. “Which means she’s all alone.”
Solitude was something Easton had been lucky enough not to experience. When the National Park Service airlifted River and Easton to the small building that served as the Moose Springs hospital, not only had Easton’s family been waiting for him, but Graham and Zoey had been there too. Despite his reluctance at being separated from River, he’d understood the physicians’ need to evaluate them both. And even if he hadn’t, Ash and Joshua would have personally dragged him into imaging, where they ran test after test on him to make sure he wasn’t bleeding internally—cranial or otherwise—from his fall.
Duncan disappeared into the hallway outside his room, then returned, pushing a wheelchair.
“Nope.” No way. Never in a million years.
“Wheelchair or nothing.”
“I think he’s got you there, Son.”
“Dad, you’re really not helping.”
The magazine lowered enough for Joshua to aim a smug look at him. “It sucks being in love, doesn’t it?”
Refusing to respond to that, Easton dropped down in the wheelchair.
“She really dragged you down a mountainside?” Duncan whistled in appreciation as they left the room. “I can barely push you down the hall.”
Annoyed beyond belief, Easton said lightly. “I’m happy to walk.”
“Not worth my job.” Turning at the end of the hallway, Duncan paused at the first room on the right. “Okay, lover boy. Here she is.”
Duncan pushed Easton inside the hospital room, then closed the door to give them privacy.
The lights had been turned down low, leaving only the soft illumination of the machines monitoring River’s vitals and one strip of lighting behind the hospital bed. Without layers of thick protective clothing, River looked so small in the hospital bed that had felt so confining to Easton. Since River’s back was turned to him, Easton rolled to the far side of the hospital bed so he could see her face.
Easton ran a thumb gently over her arm, grateful to be able to touch her again.
“That tickles.” With a sleepy noise, she leaned into his hand.
He’d missed her voice so much in the few hours they’d been separated. He’d missed the feel of her beneath his hands even more. The tight band of pressure squeezing his heart into his feet finally loosened now that he could see her for himself.
River opened one heavy-lidded eye.
“What’s wrong? You have Easton face.” Both eyes popped open as she took him in. “And why are you in a wheelchair?”
Easton twisted in his wheelchair and grabbed a regular chair from behind him. He shifted from the wheelchair to the other chair, then he draped his arm around her waist, the way he had when they slept on the mountain.
“I hate to disappoint you,” he murmured, “but I was born with Easton face. Ash tried to scrape it off a few times, but it kind of stuck.”
She snuggled up to him as well as the IV in her hand would allow. “So that’s why you covered it with a beard.”
“I’m actually very attractive,” he promised her. “It’s not fair to the other men.”
“I bet it isn’t.” Her fingertips touched his arm. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
Running his hand over her hair, Easton gave in and slid his arm beneath her head. He couldn’t help himself. He needed to hold her. “I’m fine. I just wanted to see you.”
“I’m okay.” River buried her nose against the inside of his elbow. “Are Jessie and Bree—”
“They’ll live. Bree had two broken ribs. They treated Jessie for dehydration and sent everyone home to rest at my place a couple of hours ago. Right now, everyone’s worried about you.”
“I’m definitely feeling less than spectacular,” she admitted. “The Old Man tried to take us down, didn’t he?”
Easton brushed a strand of hair away from her eyes. “The Old Man has nothing on you. River, did they talk to you about your toe?”
A flash of pain crossed her features. “I was kind of hoping that part would magically go away. Maybe we can talk about something else?”
“At least it isn’t your nipples.”
Her snicker was a balm to his soul. Since they’d come this far and she had her fingers wrapped around his heart and his wrist, Easton allowed himself a question he’d wanted the answer to since they’d left the mountain.
“River? What’s your real name?”
Her words were soft, almost inaudible. “What makes you think River Lane isn’t my real name?”
Easton’s voice softened too. “Only a hunch. Or maybe I remember you saying you didn’t want to die on the top of a mountain, thousands of miles from home with a man who didn’t even know your name.”