Between the two of us, we manage to get the dog to safety. But his last push to get out sends me off balance, and with the shifting of my weight, the rung I’m standing on breaks free. I find myself on my ass at the bottom of the well, like I’m in an old spaghetti western.
“This is fucking ridiculous,” I moan.
I pat around my coat pockets and find that, like an intelligent human, I managed to keep my cell phone. But when I go to try to make a call, there’s no service. So much for 5G. A small amount of worry starts to creep in. It’s late November in Wyoming, and it will get cold as shit soon.
“Hey, Saramaria, does your cell work?”
A pause where I assume she’s checking it. “No. My cell’s not getting service,” she calls down.
Double shit.
“But there’s a landline at the cabin,” she says.
“Can you go and call the clinic? Let them know the situation. They can send someone with proper equipment.” It would have to be a dog in a well, wouldn’t it? A cat in a tree, I could have figured out.
Maybe I can scale the sides, like they do in movies. It’s not that far, so I try to use pieces of the old ladder to make a kind of scaffolding—to no avail. I just slip on the damp wood that won’t hold me, and the rest breaks.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine. Just embarrassed. Go.”
She disappears, and I’m left sitting in a dry well, feeling like an absolute idiot. This is exactly the kind of thing that wouldhappen to me. I’m trying to think of a funny way to spin this so I don’t look like a total rookie when I hear a voice.
“Anyone here?” The voice sounds familiar.
“Hello?” I call up. “Saramaria?”
A face appears over the edge of the well. One that is definitely not the tense Omega from earlier.
Jake Dillon.
Lovely. Just exactly what this moment needed—an audience. And of course it would be one of them.
His eyes go wide as he peers down at me, and he starts laughing so hard he disappears from the edge of the well rim, and I have to assume he fell right on his ass.
“All right, Dillon,” I huff, crossing my arms. “I’m pretty sure that’s sufficient—it’s not that funny.”
His head pops back over the side of the well, and he’s caught in another wave of belly laughter. Then he grins down at me, wide and boyish.
“Willa James. It absolutely is that funny. What the hell are you doing down there?”
“Oh, you know. Just hanging out. Thought I’d explore some wells today.”
He grins, that golden retriever energy radiating off him even from up there. “Only you would end up stuck in a well. What are you even doing out here?”
“It’s a new clinic service—old well inspections. Yep, still a well. And now I’m done. So help me out.” I pat the side of the wall like it’s an old truck, fighting the flush creeping over my cheeks.
He studies me for a long moment, idly scratching his jaw. “What’ll you give me if I help you out?”
“Give you? How about the satisfaction of doing a good deed?”
“Nope. Don’t need that. What else you got?”
“A sincere thank-you?”
“Nope.”
“Coffee at Tessa’s place?”
