Rhys used all his willpower to overcome an illogical drive to throw himself into the Mirabella and swim to Jenna’s rescue. The waters were too fast for that. He’d need tools to save her. So, he did the counter-intuitive thing and diverted his instincts to collecting equipment and making calls.
With Harlow being a remote and sprawling town, backup wouldn’t arrive for some time. He would be her only help. Now, he kicked open his truck door and grabbed some tools in the tray, the first sound to hit him being his name, once again.
“Rhys?”
Her thin cry cut him to the core, like she’d heard him roll up, and her desperation grew. At least she still spoke, and he’d soon reach her side to assess the damage.
Don’t let it be bad. Please don’t let it be bad.
So many nights of wind and rain had softened the ground, toppling the giant maple and leaving its gnarled roots reaching high into the air. Jenna likely lay pinned under one of its mighty branches.
He’d tended enough crushing incidents to know some people only lived long enough for him to free them, the release of pressure on major organs and arteries quick to tank their blood supply.
Torch in hand, he picked up speed and fought the slippery conditions down her path, desperate to see her and, hopefully, not for the last time. The porch’s rumble was worse up close, and Jenna lay on her back, her leg pinned beneath a thick branch.
At least it’s not her torso.
Still, enough major arteries ran through legs. She wasn’t safe yet. He scrambled in closer, careful not to move or add weight to the branches touching her. “Tell me what hurts.”
The white dots of thin rain cut through the torch’s pale light, and her wide gaze held through a twisting expression, like all her strength cracked at seeing him. “My shoulder. I fell trying to run, and then the branch caught my leg on the way down. I think my shoulder’s dislocated and the pain in my leg—”
Her lower lip trembled, and whatever she’d meant to say faded. He took her hand, as he’d done before with countless others, only this was more than some vague emergency.
This was Jenna.
He leaned over and ignored the voice warning him not to fail, his energy best spent inspecting her leg. The awkward angle suggested a possible broken femur, a fracture if she were truly lucky, and thick, red blood poured from the wound.
“I’m going back to the truck.” He let go of her hand, and she whimpered for him not to. “I’m not leaving, okay? I’ll be right back. I’ll get you out.”
He didn’t like making promises he maybe couldn’t keep, but seeing her like that… wounded. In pain. Helpless. Well, raw emotion overrode professionalism.
Still, he accepted her shaky nod and turned away, bolting for his truck where he pushed on work gloves and collected his dad’s chainsaw. A small jack sat in the passenger seat, not the ideal kind, but all he’d found abandoned in the shed.
He raced back to Jenna, stopping to assess the tree and what he’d do next. He couldn’t cut the branch, not without potentially crushing her further. He’d need the jack to first hold the branch’s weight.
The broken porch didn’t offer much level space to anchor the jack, so a wide edge of exposed framework would have to do.
“Holding up okay?” He crouched down beside her, speaking for the sake of keeping her talking.
“Still in pain. Still trapped.” She gave a weak laugh. “If that’s what you mean.”
He tried not to frown, not to worry her further, and slipped back to get to work. “I’ll have you out soon.”
But every time he jammed the jack under the branch and cranked it higher, the porch’s slippery timber spat the entire thing right back out again. Nothing here, from the cold rain and slippery conditions to Jenna’s horrific predicament, was comfortable.
A proper timber jack would have navigated this mess, but there was no telling where his dad had stashed his before kicking off to the afterlife.
Yet another regret.
If only Rhys had called more often, maybe visited from time to time. He’d spent so much effort avoiding this town. Avoiding Jenna. Now that avoidance might cost her a leg.
A manic sort of chuckle broke from him. At his history with Jenna. At his dad. At this god-awful situation. All the god-awful emergencies he’d attended with the results being so much worse than a potential lost limb.
He couldn’t let Jenna lose anything. Especially not because he, in a roundabout way, had fucked things up for her.
“Hey”—her voice shot out with an edge of gravel, the subtext of that sound unexpectedly hard and demanding—“get your shit together, okay?”
He frowned at her, momentarily pissed, only for her usual abrasiveness to add a hint of familiarity and relief. The slow-growing softness in her eyes said she’d seen the ghosts of rescues past haunting him. Those ghosts more frightening because he’d thought his rescue days behind him.
“I’m sorry.” He repositioned the jack and kept his gaze from her. “I’ve always had a fear of disappointing you, and now look at you. Look at me.”
He raised his focus to her exhausted expression, waning rain still falling about her and a ragged laugh slipping loose.
“Is that what all these years were about? Not disappointing me?”
His heart clenched at her question, and he turned, using his need to pull a hefty rock from her front path as a channel for his next bit of honesty. “I could see what you wanted. Stable and predictable. And I… something inside me wouldn’t settle until I got out of this town long enough to know what I was missing out on. I couldn’t be what you wanted, so—”
“So, you disappointed me, anyway? Kind of ironic.”
He dumped the rock as a bolster against the deficient jack, evading her some more, evading any proof of just how good he was at falling short. Not just in her past. Her literal present too.
Clutching at his best shot at reversing his losing streak, he turned for yet more rocks. “I can’t pretend I was the king of rational thinking back then.”
“Oh, God.” She flopped her head back, panicked tears pouring down her cheeks. “Not what I want to hear from someone doing whatever the fuck you’re doing right now, to get me out.”
Not about to admit to having his own doubts, he lowered another rock, and set about stoking her joy of ragging on him. “You know, I could always leave…”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “You won’t. Not this time, anyway. It goes against your very nature to pass up a chance to play the hero.”
He stilled at her hidden meaning. That he liked being the hero. Just not when it mattered most. To her. Not in all the smaller ways a man could shine… being present. Making promises and damn-well keeping them.
The shame of it all was that she was painfully right.
“Fine.” He jammed the final rock in place and picked up the chainsaw, timing his next words for a second before he pulled the cord because, he too, could speak in hidden meanings. “I’ll stay.”