“Fuck! Goddamit, Tanner.” I cast a desperate glance down the trail. One of the environmentalists—Steven—is headed my way. He jumps over a displaced tree trunk and lands beside me. “It’s Jerry,” he blurts. “He came looking for us when we were late back. The fall hit him and Tanner Reid. He said to tell you it’s Tanner.”
“I know it’s Tanner,” I growl. “He’s lost a ton of blood, and I can’t wake him up. We need help. Did you get cell service down there?”
“No. But Jerry brought a satellite phone. We’ve called it in. Help’s coming.”
Relief floods me, but as I turn back to Tanner, it’s a hollow victory. He’s getting paler by the second. His lips are turning blue. If help doesn’t come soon, he’ll die on the trails he swore blind he’d never tread again. A vow he broke to come looking for me.No.I can’t let that happen. Tanner’s not dying for me.
I’m still gripping his shoulder, holding his injured arm in place. The blood flow has slowed, but it’s enough to make me weak at the knees. “Get my bag from my back,” I bark at Steven. “We need to cut his coat off his arm and anchor that branch.”
Steven moves fast and retrieves the Swiss Army knife I have in my bag. He deftly cuts Tanner’s coat free and the blood-soaked strips fall away.
The branch is stuck in his arm, right where his artery is. Blood oozes from the wound. I can only pray the branch is slowing the flow enough to keep him alive. We wrap the arm, securing the branch. Then Steven holds it still while I squeeze Tanner’s good hand in mine and call his name over and over, as if I can will him awake.
Time passes. I’m not sure how much or how fast. Tanner doesn’t move or speak. I’m scared he’s already gone. That he’s died on the icy ground. Then I hear the shouts of rescuers and feel the beat of activity on the hillside.
Somehow Tanner hears it too. He groans and his eyes wrench open. He stares at me, and there’s a spark in his deep gaze, a fear that matches mine. He rips his hand free and makes a clumsy swipe for my knee. “I’m gonna be sick.”
I grip his face and hold it firm. “You’re going into shock. Do whatever you need to do. I’ve got you.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Jax
Tanner doesn’t throw up. He falls unconscious and stays that way, so he doesn’t see the men who scale the hillside to rescue him, or feel my hands slip from him as they push me out of their way.
The next two hours are a blur. Vermont becomes a haze. Black Claw becomes a busy ER, and loose rock has turned into a hard plastic chair.
I’m alone. I have no idea what happened to Steven and the other environmentalist. Or Jerry, though he was conscious when they took him. I heard him shouting Tanner’s name. Or maybe it was me shouting.
Damn.
My head throbs. Time ticks by. Numbness wars with a fear I’ve never felt before. It’s paralyzing. Consuming. I’m frozen in place, as if I so much as move my eyeballs, I’ll shatter into a million pieces.
All I’ve done is call Eve. She didn’t answer. Her voicemail kicked in, but I didn’t leave a message. Couldn’t. At some point, I’ll have to resurrect myself and call her again, but…not yet. Maybe I won’t have to. Gabriel is Tanner’s next of kin. He’ll call her when the hospital reaches him.
Yeah, in fucking Texas, or wherever the hell he is. It’s gonna take him forever to get here and the doctors aren’t going to tell you shit until he does.
More fear licks my heart. Logic tells me Tanner was taken straight to the OR to free his arm from the impaled branch and repair the damage it’s left behind—the seeping hole that was leaking his blood into the earth. So much blood. I close my eyes and try to picture my own instead. Reclaim the gory photos my ex thrust into my face like a fucking trophy from whatever pit of my soul I’ve buried them.
It’s a poor attempt at comfort. I survived because a British Army medic plugged my artery with his goddamn fingers. I found out later he was a trauma consultant in the NHS and it was inexplicable luck he’d been on the same beach as me on the wrong side of the Atlantic Ocean. Tanner hadn’t had luck on his side, he’d only had me and the rudimentary straps I’d wound around the branch that was trying to kill him. My flailing hands and blind panic. As if it wasn’t enough that he’d only been out there in the first place to come looking for me.
Shivering, I bury my face in my cold hands. I need to call Eve again. I need to take my boots off and change out of my wet clothes before I get fucking pneumonia. But I don’t move. I keep my eyes squeezed shut, breathe in and out, and pray Tanner is doing the same.
A heavy hand lands on my shoulder sometime later. Perhaps I did fall asleep, cos there’s no way the bearded dude staring down at me is real. Broad shoulders. Dark hair and molten eyes. For a moment, my heart leaps, then the lack of sensation where the hand clasps me registers. No tingling. No warmth. No live-wire connection running between us.
It’s not Tanner, real or otherwise. It’s Gabriel.
“Fuck.” I lurch upright, new terror seizing my gut. If Gabriel’s here, thenhourshave passed. Hours that Tanner has been sick, injured, and alone, if he even made it through the fucking surgery. For all I know, he didn’t, and Gabriel has come to tell me. “I—”
Gabriel pushes me down. “Easy. No news. He’s still in surgery.”
“What? How? I mean, how the fuck is that true if you’re here? I thought you were in Texas.”
“I was. But I came home yesterday. Chill, Jax. Take a breath.”
I take his advice, and shake my head to clear it, but I’m so cold, nothing happens. Gabriel says something I don’t hear, then he drops into the chair beside me and wraps a strong arm around my shoulders.
“Jesus. You’re in shock. Didn’t anyone bring you a fucking blanket?”
