Hnghhh. I’m suffocating. I yank at her arm and suck in a breath.
“You came for me?” she asks.
She’s attached to me—painfully, yes, but attached—so I make my way toward the front door. Every second we stay here, the water only rises higher. “Of course I came for you. Did you think I wouldn’t?”
She pulls back to look at me. “Did you get my texts?”
“No. Service is down. You’re going to have to walk, Joss, okay?”
She nods and allows me to set her on her feet. At her front porch, I pause.
Hmm. Right. Quite dire, this is. Not sure what to do, honestly. Rushing gray waters. Floating debris.
“This is insanity,” she says.
I can barely hear it above the wind.
Her hand snakes into mine. “We can’t go out in this. People drown in smaller floods than this.”
“My truck is at the entrance to your neighborhood. I made it here. We can make it back.”
“I’m a lot shorter than you.” Her bottom lip pulls between her teeth. “This is how my parents died.”
I turn back to the house, considering our options. A twenty-foot surge will submerge this home. I didn’t come all the way over here just to drown with her.
“Get on my back.” I step down onto her porch stairs.
“What?”
“I’ll carry you to higher ground, and we can run to the truck.”
“Asher—”
“Now, Jocelyn.”
A fun fact I wish I hadn’t learned the hard way—trying to beat rising floods is like racing a cheetah. The water is at my ribs by the time I make it to the street. Joss’s arms around me hold tight, her limbs trembling. It’s approximately seventeen times harder to walk with her weight on me, but these waters would take her shaking body for their own.
Won’t let her go. Not sure I’ll ever be able to let her go again.
Once the road starts to rise, she says she can walk, but I wait until I’m in a mere foot of water. She slides down my back to unsteady legs, and we race toward the mouth of her neighborhood. My truck still sits at the entrance, though it slid several feet backward. Again, the wind tries its best to tear the door away, but I get both of us settled in our seats without injuring anything.
And then I breathe. My heart slams painfully in my throat, clogging my airway, but I suck in oxygen and stare unseeingly through the windshield. It’s only in this moment—the momentafter—that I realize I didn’t think I’d make it. Such an absurd thing to do. Life-threatening. Suicidal, even. I could have died.Shecould have died.
But I did it. I saved her.
Holy shit.
With shaking hands, I peel off my sopping, freezing, bloody-armed shirt and throw it in the back. “Put your seat belt on, please.”
She obeys, still shivering, her stare riveted to my face.
I start the engine. “I can’t believe you stayed there. You don’t even have hurricane shutters.”
“I can’t believe you came for me,” she whispers.
I keep a towel somewhere... Oh. I grab it from the back floorboard and hand it to her, then blast the heat. As I start onto the street, grip tight on the steering wheel, she dries herself. The center console keeps us separated, but when she finishes with the towel, her body leans as far toward me as possible. Cold hands slide over my shoulder and stomach.
Not suggestive. Giving reassurance. Taking comfort.
