“H-how exactly do you… do you figure that?” I gasp out.
She swipes her arm across her sweaty forehead. “You were carrying me. Clearly, my body passed the finish line first.”
I can’t help it. I look up at the bright-blue winter sky and laugh. “God, you just don’t quit, do you?”
I turn my head and find her grinning back.
“I don’t have it in me.” Then she shifts, and her mouth twists in pain.
My grin vanishes too, and I ask, “What now? Can I give you a ride somewhere? Or help you to the medical tent?” I weakly flop my arm to the right of us. “I think it’s over there somewhere.”
“Oh. No, I’m?—”
“Wyatt! There you are.”
Reese’s sharp gaze doesn’t miss a thing when CJ and I leap apart. Well, I’m still flat on my back, and she’s curled into my side, so we both sort of rock away from each other.
“I’ve been waiting for you at the car.”
“Sorry.” I haul myself to a sitting position and swipe at my face with the hem of my shirt. “We had an accident a little ways back.”
“CJ,” my fiancée says in a dangerously even tone. “Of course it’s you.”
CJ scoots farther away from me, wincing as she does it. “Ha. Yeah. Me.”
“Are you okay?” Reese asks me.
“I’m fine,” I say. “But CJ needs?—“
“Good. We have reservations in two hours.”
I frown at her, unaware that we had lunch plans but too tired to argue about it. Instead of pulling myself to my feet, I glance at CJ.
“I’m good,” she says from her sprawled position on the ground. “My friends will be along any minute.”
“What a relief,” Reese says, her voice making it clear that it’s anything but. “In that case, we need to get a move on.”
I’m about to tell Reese that there’s no way I’m leaving a woman—even my worst enemy—on the ground with a bad ankle when a gaggle of women sweeps in to envelope CJ in a flurry of shrieks and hugs and “oh my god!”s. One of them darts away and returns almost immediately with a tall man in a navy-blue paramedic’s uniform.
“Hi there.” He flashes her a smile that gleams against his dark-brown skin. “You’re CJ?”
She nods and fights through what I’m assuming is considerable pain to smile back.
“Your friends tell me you had an accident,” he says.
“A collision.” She shoots me a glare, and I honestly don’t know if she’s teasing me or picturing my death. “It’s my ankle.”
“It was—” I start, but the paramedic waves me off and rests his fingers on top of her shoe.
“Mind if I check you out?”
At her nod, he brushes a douchey swoop of hair off his forehead and bends forward to gently twist and squeeze and rotate her ankle, his eyes darting up to her face as he works. “Very likely a bad sprain,” he eventually announces, giving her another Crest White Strips smile. “Let’s get you to the medical tent to patch you up.”
“That’s what I said,” I grumble, but everyone ignores me.
CJ sighs in relief as this fucker, who didn’t just run a 5K, swoops her into his arms and rises in one smooth, rolling motion.
I bet he smells fresh as a mountain stream, too.
