Love Notes Read online

  Love Notes (The Wilder Books #3)

  Savannah Kade

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents are either a product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  * * *

  Published by Griffyn Ink

  www.griffynink.com

  Copyright © 2016 Griffyn Ink

  All rights reserved.

  * * *

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

  * * *

  For ordering information or special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Griffyn Ink at [email protected].

  Contents

  Join Savannah

  Also by Savannah Kade

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Preview of Music & Lyrics (Wilder - Book 4)

  About the Author

  Never miss a sale or a free book! Keep up with Savannah HERE.

  Novels by Savannah Kade:

  The WILDER Books:

  Our Song

  Heartstrings

  Love Notes

  Music & Lyrics

  The Wilder Complete Book Set

  That Night in Nashville

  Georgia Grace

  The TOUCH OF MAGICK Series:

  WishCraft

  DreamWalker

  LoveSpelled

  SoulFire

  ShadowKiss

  The Touch of Magick Series: Complete Set

  The AGAINST ALL ODDS Series:

  Steal My Heart

  Call Me Yours

  Ask Me to Stay

  Promise Me Always

  Against All Odds Complete Set

  The BREATHLESS Series:

  Gifted

  Perfect

  Ruined

  Rebel

  Lucky

  Charmed

  Saved

  Dreamer

  The DARK FALLS Series

  Dark Falls - Lori Ryan

  Dark Secrets - Savannah Kade

  Dark Legacy - Trish McCallan

  Dark Nightmares - Becca Jameson

  Dark Terror - Sandra Owens

  Dark Burning - Lori Ryan

  Dark Echoes - Savannah Kade

  Dark Memories - Sandra Owens

  Dark Rage - Becca Jameson

  Dark Tidings - Trish McCallan

  Dark Obsession - Lisa-Marie Cabrelli

  Dark Passion - Lori Ryan

  Thank you to my Daddy, who has always supported me, always loved me, and always been there for me.

  Chapter 1

  He ached everywhere. But mostly his head hurt. It felt like he was coming off the mother of all benders, his brain pounding out his punishment. TJ started to reach up to clamp his hands alongside his head, but his arms ached, too.

  He tried to squint so the light wouldn’t hurt so much and he could tug himself up and into the kitchen to get a little hair-of-the-dog. But squinting made him feel like someone had taken a baseball bat to his face. He didn’t go anywhere.

  “Ahhhhh.” He wasn’t much for complaining about what he did to himself, but this morning he just needed to moan a little of it out.

  “TJ?” The voice was soft and female, and contrary to what he expected, he recognized it.

  What he couldn’t figure out was why his brother’s wife was in his bedroom.

  “Hhhmmmmm?” He tried again to squint, and again was rewarded with a crank up on the headache-o-meter.

  “TJ. Oh, thank God.” Her fingers touched his, but he really didn’t want that. He pulled away. Lately his brother and his beautiful wife had begun to wear on his nerves.

  “Kelsey?” It sounded thick and slurred, even to him. But that was just another good reason for Kelsey not to be in here. From behind his eyelids he could tell that she had turned on the light. “Turn off the light and go, I’ll call you later.”

  “TJ. You need to wake up.”

  “No, I need to go back to sleep.” He tried to roll over, and when that didn’t work he just lay still, wondering where the hell what’s-her-face had gone to.

  “Dammit, TJ!”

  That voice he recognized, too. The gods were angry at him.

  “JD, get the hell out of my bedroom.”

  The gods always sent JD to him. JD was their favored son, and in exchange he was given the responsibility of telling TJ when he’d screwed up. The voice was still angry; the gods were still pissed. “TJ, open your eyes. You aren’t in your bedroom. You’re in the hospital.”

  Son of a bitch.

  He cracked his eyes, ready to face the daylight, if only to tell his brother to stuff it. But, when the pain of light hitting nerve endings receded, he saw that he was, in fact, in the hospital. Well, that explained a lot of the pain. “Shit.”

  “That’s all you have to say for yourself?”

  “Oh, God, spare me.” TJ actually managed to get a hand to his head this time.

  JD’s expression went grim. “He usually does. You’ve been charmed, little brother. You’ve escaped scrapes that I would never dream of trying out. I’m going to have to let the doctors explain this one, but God didn’t spare you this time.”

  That got his eyeballs all the way open. Taking in a quick perusal of the bed, he saw that all four limbs remained intact, and he heaved a great sigh of relief.

  “By the way,”

  Uh-oh. From that tone, something horrible he’d done was about to get thrown at him. He just hadn’t decided yet if he cared.

  “The girl who was with you, Marcia Winters, was fine.”

  “Good to know.” Although whether it was good to know she was fine, or just to finally know her name, he wasn’t sure.

  His brother grabbed his hand and squeezed it. “We’re going to go. The doctors will be by in just a few minutes to talk to you.”


  He squeezed the hand back.

  Kelsey came right up beside the bed, placing her hand on his shoulder. “I love you, TJ.”

  He didn’t want to say it back, but he had to. “I love you, too, Kelsey.”

  He had to love her. She had handed Wilder everything they needed to break out of the un-signed rut they’d been in six years ago. She’d also given his brother the sun and the moon, the way JD told it. But, damn, if she wasn’t the one focal point of how JD was still the gods’ favorite. The beautiful wife who greeted his brother at the end of every tour with open arms and a warm bed. A very warm bed, if the three children they’d cranked out since they’d married were any indication. As they left the room hand in hand, TJ realized it was a good thing he didn’t want anything like that, because he was certain the gods would deny him.

  When the room was blessedly empty, he attempted to roll his head from side to side. Some joint limbering was part of his usual after-indulgence routine. This time it didn’t work and the pounding in his head combined with his presence in the hospital seemed like a good sign that he shouldn’t be doing it.

  He blinked a few times, orienting himself in the private room. The bed jutted out into the middle of the room. Machines and poles lined one side of the bed, and if he followed the wires and tubes he could see that several were connected to him. Something dripped from a clear bag into his arm, and another machine pulsed a green line in time with his heartbeat. He was no doctor, but it looked pretty good.

  On the other side of him was a moveable table, pushed to hang partway over the bed, with a pitcher of ice water and a pink plastic cup. He reached out for it, only to realize that he had died and gone to hell. The water was just beyond his reach. He laughed a hollow sound at himself. Normally, Glenlivet was his drink of choice on mornings like these, but now, even the stupid water was out of range.

  He grabbed at the wires and was contemplating yanking them and just sitting up when the doctors came in.

  “Oh, no. Don’t pull on those.” The oldest doctor was trailed by two younger ones.

  TJ looked at all of them warily. “I don’t really need this. I can feel that my heart is beating just fine. So I’ll just get a drink and be going.”

  He reached again for the wires.

  The doctor placed his own hand over TJ’s, again stopping him. This time the hand seemed far more grandfather than dictator. “Let’s talk first.”

  TJ just nodded or tried to.

  “I’m Doctor Sanbourne.” He held out the weathered hand, and reluctantly TJ shook it, though the ache of his hangover had made even his arms sluggish. He proceeded to listen through the introduction of the two other doctors, one dark and Indian, the other female and shy-looking. TJ dismissed them mentally and promptly forgot their names.

  Dr. Sanbourne pulled up a swivel stool and seated himself, while his lackeys just hung back and watched. “Do you remember the accident?”

  TJ blinked. Accident?

  He shook his head as a little memory filtered back. “I really just remember that there was one. A semi rear-ended me, right?” In his head he could see it, in the rearview mirror, orange and large . . . and getting larger by the second. But that was all that came through.

  The doctor nodded. “Luckily, you have good airbags. They saved your life and that of your passenger.”

  TJ didn’t take the prompt. Didn’t ask after whatever her name had been.

  Dr. Sanbourne continued. “Unfortunately, you were in a convertible and you didn’t have your seatbelt on.”

  TJ raised his eyebrows. Tell me something I don’t know, but he didn’t say it.

  “You suffered a crushing blow to the base of your neck. The C-6 vertebrae,” he pointed it out on his own spine, “was cracked.”

  TJ frowned and reached up to his own neck. He was shocked to find it encased in a hard collar. Well, that explained why his head wouldn’t turn. His brain cranked through the possibilities. He flexed his fingers in front of his face.

  “You’ve already had a surgery to put pins in to hold the pieces of bone together. The pins will remain for the rest of your life, but the collar will come off shortly, and the bone will heal.”

  The sound was dull and dry even in his own head, where he left it. Whoo hoo.

  “However,”

  Oh, shit.

  “There was damage to the nerves themselves. Nothing appears to be completely severed, but we can’t be sure. Your responses prior to surgery were lacking.”

  He found his voice, “What do you mean, lacking?”

  “You were missing basic reflexes in your legs. There was no response. We had hoped that after surgery, after we relieved whatever pressure the cracked bone was placing on the spinal cord, you would regain sensation. It doesn’t appear that you have.”

  What?

  He felt fine. TJ flexed his toes, looking just beyond the little table, but nothing happened.

  He flexed again. Nothing.

  It had to be the water table blocking his view.

  He gave it a good shove, sending it toppling. The two attendant doctors flinched. Sanbourne did nothing of the sort. He simply watched.

  TJ felt his ribcage constrict. He couldn’t breathe either. He couldn’t bend his knees or curl his toes. After a few tries he decided that it was his brain that was broken, even just thinking about moving his leg felt wrong.

  Sanbourne nodded. “Your brain works, son. It’s your legs that aren’t responding.”

  TJ pulled back, then realized that he must be having a perfectly normal response to finding out that your legs don’t work. Sanbourne wasn’t a mind reader. He was a doctor.

  And TJ was an invalid.

  JD’s words came back to haunt him, God didn’t spare you this time.

  His breathing increased rate while the room closed in on him. His hands clutched at the sheet clumsily, gathering fistfuls and squeezing without his usual strength. At least driving his fingernails into his palms would have offered some measure of relief, but it looked like that wouldn’t happen either.

  Sanbourne stood closer, getting his face into TJ’s. “Let’s do a few tests and see what the damage is. We’ll know how to proceed from there.”

  How to proceed?

  But the blunt statement worked. TJ managed to find air and bring it into his lungs. He nodded as well as he could in the collar.

  Dr. Sanbourne turned to his assistant who shook her shy head at him.

  No, what?

  But Sanbourne didn’t tell TJ.

  He did run his pen up the sole of TJ’s foot.

  At least it looked like he did. TJ saw the sheet pinch from the pressure. Saw the pen disappear behind his foot. But he didn’t feel anything. He thought for a moment that the doctor was playing a cruel trick, but then remembered that he hadn’t been able to make it move himself. He saw the doctor try again, and realized that he should have at least been able to feel the sheet pull and tug, because he could sure see that it was moving.

  Sanbourne tested various spots on both legs. The doctor tried different pressures, from obviously poking him to running the pen along the leg.

  Nothing.

  “Let’s try your hands.”

  “My hands are fine.” TJ was thanking God for small favors.

  “C-6 injuries often involve fine motor control of the hands.”

  TJ flexed all his fingers, grateful that something worked. “Just fine.”

  “Good.” The doctor held out two fingers. “Squeeze.”

  TJ squeezed.

  “Hard as you can.”

  He added extra force, but didn’t feel any difference.

  The expression on Sanbourne’s face wasn’t good.

  “Now do this.” Sanbourne held up both hands, then touched his first fingers to his thumbs.

  TJ did the same, somehow managing a cocky expression at that.

  The expression slipped as Sanbourne demonstrated touching each finger in turn, and none of his others worked individually. Either they all w
ent or none did. TJ discovered that he could move his thumbs to touch each fingertip, but couldn’t make the fingertips go to the thumb.

  “All right.” That was all the doctor said.

  “What does that mean?” TJ wasn’t sure he really wanted the answer.

  “There’s some loss of fine motor control in the hands.” Sanbourne pulled back the sheet revealing the traitorous legs that no longer looked like they belonged to him. They certainly bore a striking resemblance to his own, but they couldn’t be his. “Let’s do one more test.”

  He and the other two doctors carefully positioned TJ upright. Since he didn’t have a clue what they were doing, he let them. They moved his legs and dangled them off the bed, then asked if he could stay there by himself.

  He managed it, although he had to brace his hands out because his body wanted to slide over.

  Sanbourne watched, then pulled his rubber mallet out of his pocket. He whacked at both knees, but TJ couldn’t watch.

  “That’s good news.” Sanbourne perked up.

  “What?” He needed any good news he could get his less-than-functioning hands on.