“You don’t want me to call anyone?” I tried my best not to shriek.
His fingers jerked in mine, and I barely heard him, but I managed to catch just enough to hear him whisper, “No.” His throat bobbed. He gasped, then groaned. “In-inside….”
Inside?My house?
This was the last thing I needed. The absolute last thing. There wasthelast thing, and this would have come after that.
The Defender let out another rattling breath; it was the most pained sound I’d ever heard.
Focus, Gracie. Focus.
I could go back in and let him deal with his situation on his own. Technically, this wasn’t my responsibility… but that wasn’t the kind of person I wanted to be. It was the opposite of the kind of person I wanted to be. Okay,okay. Don’t panic.
He didn’t want me to call 911, and he wanted to go inside. I could do that much.
I had to.
Lifting my hand off his and sounding almost calm, even though part of me wanted to cry, I said, “Okay, okay. There’s no way I can carry you. I think I have a wheelchair, but I need to get it. I’ll be right back, okay?” I couldn’t believe this shit was happening.
What might be the strongest person in the world—it was widely debatable among the Trinity—groaned again, and I took that as an okay. It wasn’t like we had another choice. There was no way I could carry him, and I wasn’t positive what he could manage. Not much from the look or sound of it.
He also didn’t want to be out here for a reason, and I had to fight the urge to look toward the sky again. If there was something up there…. Fuck, I didn’t want to know.
Fuck, fuck,fuckkkk.
Okay,calm down,we’d figure it out.Iwould figure it out.
I jumped up, and even though my legs were worn out, I ran as fast as I could toward the outbuilding where the owner had left some things stored. I pushed in the code to the keypad and waited for the lock to turn. It was easy to find the wheelchair in the corner; I hadn’t put anything new in the shed. Covered in dust and spiderwebs, I pulled it out anyway, figuring a little spider bite wouldn’t do shit to a man who was immune to radiation. I was going to have to gamble it, but that was the least of my worries. It might be a blessing to get bit by a brown recluse right now. It’d be an excuse to get the hell out of here without feeling like a total piece of shit. I hated how much of a coward that made me, but it was the truth.
Picking it up and out the door, I set it down outside. Spreading it, I tipped it backward and pushed it all the way back around the house. I was panting by the time I made it to those damn dwindling purple fires. Then I stopped.
Because The Defender wasn’t where I’d left him.
He was on his hands and knees. The man who was so much more than a man, who could break my neck just as easily as a twig, wascrawling. Even in the dark and at a short distance, I could tell his entire half-naked body was shaking.
The sight of it stunned me.
I had never seen any of the Trinity even stumble before. Never, ever, ever. Hadn’t I seen him carrying a fully loaded tanker?
Yet here he was, letting out these bone-rattling breaths as he struggled to move one knee, then the other, one hand, then the next, in front of him. Over and over like it was the single most difficult thing he’d ever done. Alarm pierced through my chest and skull and even my freaking soul as I watched him struggle before I snapped out of it and pushed the wheelchair the rest of the way to him.
The Defender dropped his head, panting shallowly, his fingers digging into the dirt.
“How can I…?”Get it together. Get it together.“Tell me what I can do to help you,” I told him breathlessly in the weirdest voice of my life.
I was panicking, okay. I was panicking.
One of the greatest powers on the planet, and more than likely in the universe, couldn’t walk, and he’d fallen from the fucking sky like an asteroid inArmageddon, and there were a handful of small, purple fires smoldering around us.
And this shit was taking place in myyard.
How the hell were these fires purple?
This wasn’t supposed to be happening.
He didn’t answer, but he did manage to put another hand in front of the other until he slapped one onto a footrest, groaning so deep in his throat I was surprised the ground didn’t shake.
Knowing this wasn’t the time to hesitate and figuring the worst that would happen would be that I’d fall face-first on the ground or just, you know, break my back, I ducked under the arm that was on the footrest. “Let’s get you up,” I told him.
