Page 83 of Ride Me Reckless
I stood too, catching her wrist before she could head for the bedroom. “Hey. You okay?”
“No,” she admitted. “But I will be. I have to be.”
There it was—Tessa shifting into fix-it mode. The woman who never flinched when life turned sideways. And just like always… I’d follow her there.
Every damn time.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Just Like Mama Said
Tessa
The sky had gone that dusky lavender color, the kind that slips over the mountains like a hush before night falls. Colt drove with one hand on the wheel, the other resting on the console between us, his fingers drumming a slow rhythm that matched the quiet tension in the cab.
I leaned my forehead against the cool window, watching the roadside blur past in a wash of pine trees and old wire fences. We hadn’t said much since pulling out of the driveway. The silence stretched long enough that my thoughts started to rise to the surface, like pebbles dropped in still water finally hitting bottom.
“What if she doesn’t remember the trailer?” I said softly, not turning my head.
Colt’s fingers paused mid-tap. “You mean the double-wide?”
“Yeah.” I straightened up and looked over at him. “I mean, it’s been years since she was there. And even then, her memory was already going. We changed everything—new furniture, new layout, new smell, even. What if it just... confuses her more?”
Colt glanced at me, his eyes thoughtful beneath the brim of his hat. “You don’t think it might comfort her? Being in a familiar place?”
I sighed. “Maybe. Maybe not. And what about the house? When do we tell her that it’s gone? What if she asks to go home?”
He didn’t answer right away. Just flicked the turn signal as we came up on the last stretch before the hospital road. The rhythmic clicking filled the truck cab.
“I keep running that moment over in my head,” I added, quieter now. “The fire. Seeing her like that. It’s like she’s already lost so much—how do we take more from her?”
Colt shifted in his seat, glancing at me again. “We don’t take anything, Tess. We tell her what she needs to know, in the kindest way we can. And if tonight’s not the night, then we wait.”
I nodded, grateful for his calm disposition when mine was all over the place.
“But you know evenings are harder,” I murmured. “Sundowning. It’s a real thing. She used to get so agitated when the light started to fade. Like her brain couldn’t sort out the pieces anymore.”
“Then we don’t expect too much,” he said. “We just bring her home.”
I looked down at my hands folded in my lap. My belly pressed tight against Colt’s old flannel shirt, which I’d pulled on before we left. It didn’t even feel like my body anymore—like I was watching all this from a step, looking through a window at myself.
“She might not even know who you are,” I whispered. “She used to love you, you know. Said you had the kindest eyes.”
Colt chuckled under his breath. “Let’s hope she still thinks so.”
I glanced at him, and in that moment, something settled. The way his jaw was set, the lines around his eyes soft in the twilight,reminded me of every reason I’d ever trusted him. Of every time I’d felt safe just because he was near.
He reached out and took my hand across the console, weaving his fingers through mine.
“Whatever happens,” he said, his voice low and sure, “we’ll face it together.”
And somehow, that was enough—for now.
The automatic doors slid open with a soft whoosh, and the sterile scent of floor cleaner and hand sanitizer hit me like a wall. I braced myself—emotionally, mentally, in every way a daughter can when she doesn’t know what kind of mother she’s going to get.
But then I spotted her.
There, parked at the front desk in a hospital-issued wheelchair, sat Mama—upright, alert, and dressed head-to-toe in one of the floral blouses and khaki pants I’d picked out for her last week at the outlet store. Her suitcase sat neatly by her side, zipped and ready to go. She had her hair combed; lipstick carefully applied in the way she always used to do it—just a touch of coral pink. And she looked... good. Really good.
