Free Getting Wound Up: A Sapphire Falls/Love Between the Bases Novel-- PART TWO by Erin Nicholas

she said calmly. “I realize we haven’t really talked about all of this and I’m sure you don’t want to think about the fact that you can’t do all the things you used to do, but I kind of thought this was an obvious one.”
    “What was kind of an obvious one?”
    “You spend thirty percent of your time in a wheelchair.”
    “Yes, that’s about right.”
    She looked at him for several seconds, but he didn’t go on. Okay. “I think that getting on a mechanical bull is a kind of stupid thing to do anyway, but I’m pretty sure that being in a wheelchair makes it an even stupider thing to do.”
    Bryan frowned, as if truly confused by that. “Why is that?”
    “Because you could fall off,” she said patiently, with the tone she used on the little kids who came into the Sweet Shop.
    “People who don’t spend any time in wheelchairs fall off of mechanical bulls all the time.”
    “Right. That’s part of the ‘stupid thing to do anyway.’”
    “So why shouldn’t I try it?”
    “You could get hurt!” God, he was infuriating. She was happy to help him. Happy to be there for him. But he wasn’t helping himself. “Your legs could not work the way they used to and you could fall off the damned thing and—”
    “Caitlyn.”
    She took a deep breath and looked up. Bryan had been lounging against his pillows, looking like he was sunning himself at the beach. He’d flirted with every nurse who’d come into the room. He already had a side table filled with flowers, balloons and what she thought might be a pair of women’s panties, but she hadn’t looked closely enough.
    Now he was sitting up, his usual cocky grin gone, a seriousness in his eyes that she hadn’t seen since long before he’d been tossed down a mountainside and come up with a partial spinal cord injury.
    “I did fall off the mechanical bull,” he said. “After two seconds. But I didn’t get hurt falling off the bull.”
    She crossed her arms. “Then how did you end up with a possible hip fracture and a concussion?”
    “I went to the bar for another drink.”
    She raised an eyebrow. “And?”
    “Without my chair.”
    She sighed. “Why without your chair?”
    “Because I can do that,” he said. “Usually.”
    “And tonight?”
    “Going over wasn’t so bad. There were tables and chairs between us and the bar and it was like twenty feet.”
    “But?”
    “Coming back, with a drink in hand, was a little less steady, and then—” He stopped.
    She narrowed her eyes. “What did you do?”
    “Stopped to talk to…someone. My leg got tired, I didn’t have anything to hang on to, and when I tried to take the next step I went down. I twisted my leg and whacked my head on a table on my way down.”
    Caitlyn winced but there was no need to go over how he should have known better.
    “Was she blond or brunette?” she asked.
    He grinned. “Brunette.”
    Wow, he really was…still Bryan.
    Her heart ached as she looked at her older brother. Bryan had always been her rock. And if she was the one in the wheelchair, no matter how fine she seemed or wanted him to believe she was, he would have insisted on taking care of her.
    Her eyes filled with tears.
    “Hey.” He pushed himself up even straighter. “I promise I flirt equally with all hair colors. I even bought a drink for one with purple hair.”
    Caitlyn started to respond but just then she heard the door open behind her.
    “Mr. Murray.”
    Caitlyn turned to see Bryan’s doctor coming through the door.
    “Dr. Perkins,” Bryan greeted.
    “We have your x-ray and MRI results back.” He crossed to the bed and pulled an x-ray from the envelope he carried. He held the film up to the overhead light.
    Caitlyn leaned in to see it as the doctor pointed.
    “You have a femoral neck fracture. A hip fracture.”
    “Dammit,” Bryan muttered.
    The doctor nodded. “I’m sorry. But the good news is that it’s a clean break. There’s no damage to the vessels and nerves.”
    “Will he need a