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hasn’t moved from that bed in months. They tried physical therapy early on, but he refused to cooperate and as far as anyone can tell he hasn’t made any effort toward rehabilitation, not that they expect he’ll be able to regain use of his arms or legs. How could he possibly be involved? I mean, no one has called or visited him since he left the hospital for residential care.”
    No one had called or visited Colt in the last nine months? Stunned, Gage cast a sharp look in Riley’s direction, his heart drumming in his chest. Riley had dumped him on Colt’s insistence. Because Colt knew Gage had driven the truck that ripped his world to shreds and shattered his dreams. Because she said she had no choice. She owed it to Colt. Family loyalty. A broken heart.
    All the reasons she’d set Gage free. Kept him out of jail, ordered him out of her life. Let him live, even though he knew damn well she had died inside.
    But to abandon Colt? He’d like to hear about that. Apparently Gage wasn’t the only one with secrets. But he could deal with her secrets. What he couldn’t live with was knowing his lies could have cost Riley her life.
    Or that they might have led to murder.

Chapter Six
    “I need to know what’s going on with you and Colt.”
    Startled, Riley looked up to see Gage filling the doorway. His head tipped so his hair fell forward across his face, giving her the kind of view that made a girl think of sex. Or remember it. Tingles shot through her with the phantom feel of his hair brushing her face, of her fingers clutching the strands as they drifted between her thighs.
    But if he shared her thoughts, there was nothing to indicate it. He leaned against the doorframe without expression, his brooding demeanor stealing half the square footage from the room.
    She sighed. “You want to sit down? All of that hulking isn’t conducive to conversation.”
    He snorted. “And you think me joining you on a bed will be?”
    She didn’t bother admitting he had a point. She was camped out for the night at Maverick’s in a room that might have been a hallway in a former life. Scarcely wider than the twin bed running its length, the space lacked everything but a place to sleep and a shelving unit. But despite outward appearances, the walls weren’t falling around her, and for that she was grateful.
    For the lack of seating, less so.
    She tried to swallow the bitterness in her throat, but it only seemed to spread. “What do you want to know?”
    “We can start with why you haven’t been to visit him in over nine months.”
    She traced an abstract line across the bed covering. “More like eleven,” she said, her voice low.
    Gage shifted, but didn’t speak.
    Most of the fight left in her fled. His life had changed almost as much as hers had, and he deserved to know the truth. “Where do you want me to begin?”
    She raised an eyebrow, allowing a second for the response she knew wasn’t coming. “Colt fell into a coma after the accident, but not before Elizabeth dumped him.” Riley paused, still grappling with the ice-cold nerve of the woman who claimed to love her brother. Elizabeth left before he was even out of surgery. She told Riley to have Colt call her when he was back on his feet, but Riley hadn’t bothered to pass along the message. “He was devastated. He begged me to stay with him because I was all he had left.”
    The moment wasn’t an easy one to relive, especially once she realized she’d never confided in anyone before. No one knew the whole story—until now, the tale existed in the bits and pieces delivered by doctors and nurses. She’d lost touch with her friends when she dropped everything to follow Colt to a trauma center outside of Barefoot and then to the hospital in Tehcotah. No one seemed to know what to say to her. Her life had been ripped from normalcy and tossed into the world of sterile halls and sympathetic looks from one medical team after another. She hadn’t blinked at the