I take it, my eyes drawn immediately to his right hand.
The knuckles are bruised. An angry, mottled purple and blue, the skin scraped raw in places.
“What happened?” I ask, nodding toward his hand.
He follows my gaze. He pulls his sleeve down, trying to hide it. “Oh. That. I... hurt myself yesterday. Caught my hand on a latch. It looks worse than it is.”
It doesn’t look like a latch injury. It looks like he punched something. Or someone. But I don’t push it. I have bigger things to worry about.
“I have to go see Willa,” I say, setting the coffee down on the table. “She texted me. I tried to call her, but she didn’t answer.”
Rhett frowns. “The roads must be bad with the rain we had last night. The creeks are high.”
“I don’t care,” I say, grabbing my coat from the rack. “I have to go. She’s alone. She’s... she’s going through hell, Rhett. I can’t just sit here drinking coffee while my friend is hurting.”
“It’s not safe to drive alone,” he says, his voice reasonable but firm. “And your truck might not make it through the mud on the access road.”
“I’ll walk if I have to.”
Just then, the front door opens. Boone walks in, followed by Knox. They smell of cold air, wet leather, and horse. Boone is stomping his boots to get the mud off.
“What’s going on?” Boone asks, looking between us. He looks at Rhett, then at me, his eyes narrowing. “You’re packing.”
“She wants to go to Willa’s,” Rhett explains.
Boone’s jaw tightens. “You can’t go anywhere. The power is still out. The lines are down along the highway. We’re isolated.”
“I have to try,” I say, my voice rising. “She texted me. She reached out. I can’t ignore that.”
Boone looks at me. He studies my face for a long second. He sees the desperation. He sees that I’m not going to back down.
He lets out a long breath, the air whistling through his teeth.
“I need to go into town anyway,” he says.
I blink. “You do?”
“Generators,” he says. “The well pump runs on electricity. We can’t go without water indefinitely, not with this many people and animals. I need to go to the hardware store, see if I can rent a couple of big portable units. Get the lights back on.”
He looks at Rhett. “Knox and I can take my truck. It has four-wheel drive. We can drop Saramaria at Willa’s on the way.”
Relief washes over me, so strong it makes my knees weak. “Really?”
“We aren’t letting you drive that rental truck in this mud,” Boone says. “You’d slide into a ditch before you hit the main road.”
“Thank you,” I say. I mean it.
Boone nods, not meeting my eyes. He turns to Knox. “Go grab the chains from the barn. Just in case.”
“On it,” Knox says, vanishing back out the door.
Boone looks at Rhett. “You stay here. Keep the fire going. Check on the horses. If the power comes back, flip the breakers.”
“Understood,” Rhett says.
Boone looks at me. “Five minutes. Grab whatever you need. And put on some dry boots. Yours are soaked.”
I look down at my feet. He’s right. My socks are wet.
