Chapter 3 #3
She shook her head. “No. I didn’t. It’s just my ankle.” She took in a shaking breath. “I hurt myself.” Her voice sounded so small and sad, and she felt so sorry for herself.
“What happened?”
“There was a landslide on the trail.”
“You shouldn’t have been out here by yourself, idiot woman.”
“Hey,” she snapped. “I’m injured.” She sniffed. “And my ankle hurts. And I’m cold. And this is a path that was supposed to be really easy. It was supposed to be easy enough for tourists.”
“Come here,” he said, his voice gruff. He opened up his jacket and wrapped it around her, bringing her into his warmth.
He was so warm and strong.
She leaned her forehead against his chest. It was a solid wall of muscle. She had never felt anything like it.
She inhaled a deep breath. He was all woodsmoke and something a little bit spicy.
She burrowed deeper into the cocoon that he’d made for her.
“We’ve got to get you to a hospital.”
“I don’t need to go to the hospital,” she said.
“You do need to get to a hospital,” he said. He moved away from her, and she protested. Then he took his jacket off and wrapped it around her shoulders.
“I liked it better when you held me,” she said, her voice small.
If this was a hallucination, then she didn’t have to be embarrassed that she said that.
But the fearsome look on his face jolted her out of that fantasy.
Yeah. This was real.
It was real. She had been saved.
She started to cry again, great piteous sobs.
She felt small and useless and ridiculous, and also just so damn grateful.
Zane had his phone up to his ear. “I’ve got her. She’s all right. She’s talking, anyway. But I think she needs to go to the hospital. Just to get checked out. I’m going to put her back on the horse and ride back to the barn.”
“Why didn’t you drive a truck?” She mumbled as he lifted her up from the ground like she didn’t weigh anything.
Her heart was pounding extra hard at the idea of being put on the back of the horse. She could hardly enjoy the sensation of being in his arms.
But she could enjoy it a little bit.
But when he began to hoist them both onto the back of the horse, her heart nearly left her chest. She clung to him, and he positioned her in front of him on the horse, his arm wrapped securely around her waist, keeping her held in place.
She forgot to be afraid.
Because she was at least with Zane now. So nothing terrible was going to happen to her. All of this was just being uncomfortable. That was a world of difference from being stranded, stuck, and all alone out in the wilderness.
She ended up relaxing against him, fully trusting him to keep her seated on the horse, because she was completely out of strength.
When they arrived back at Cody’s house, Marlowe was standing there, and ran to the horse like she could help lift Cara down. Like she was a child.
She felt like a child at the moment. But Zane didn’t turn any of the work over to tomorrow. Instead, he swept Cara down off the horse in his capable arms and then leaned down and whispered in her ear. “Can you stand?”
“I think so,” she said.
He put her down gingerly, and when she put weight on her left ankle, she buckled. “No,” she said, climbing onto his chest, and keeping herself from sliding down all the way to the ground.
He lifted her up beneath the armpits, then picked her back up again. “I’ll put her in the truck,” he said.
“I’m so sorry,” Marlowe said. “I don’t know what happened. Your text came in really late. At least, I’m assuming that it was well after you sent it, because I know you didn’t go out after dark. By the time I got it, I was in bed. I only saw it because I got up to go to the bathroom.”
Cara wasn’t really listening to Marlowe’s impassioned apology, mainly because she didn’t blame her sister-in-law at all. Zane put her into the truck and buckled her seatbelt. Marlowe climbed into the backseat, and Cody got into the driver’s seat.
“Thank you,” Cody said.
Cara nodded, hoping that it was enough, because she didn’t have words.
She felt small and silly because she was okay.
She was.
She didn’t start crying again until she got into the ER, and they began to clean the wounds in her legs. She actually did have some gravel embedded in her skin. And she felt very sorry for herself.
They told her she had a grade two ankle sprain, and she got a tight wrap for it, and was told where she could get a brace. They were in the ER for hours, much longer than she would’ve thought was needed for somebody who really was okay.
By the time they emerged into the bright light of day, she had lost all sense of time or space, and she was on crutches.
“How am I supposed to work?”
“How about you take some time off?”
Marlowe had to be kidding. “I guess I could sit down and use a table.”
She was told to expect swelling and pain for at least the next week, and beyond that, it would take a little more than three weeks to heal.
Though they had been talking about her resuming strenuous physical activity, and Cara didn’t really do strenuous physical activity. She was on her feet a lot, though, which was going to be an issue.
“I know that it was stupid,” she said as they loaded up into the truck.
“It wasn’t stupid. It was perfectly reasonable to think you could go out walking on that hiking trail. What a liability. Who knew that a rainstorm could cause that kind of an issue?”
Cody looked upset. “I should’ve known,” he said.
“The water does rush down the sides of the hills, but I hadn’t seen a slide like that.
I think it’s the combination of all the dry weather we had, making it so the ground didn’t absorb the water, and how hard it was raining.
Still, this is the kind of thing we need to make sure that guests know about.
Because it is a serious safety issue, and we’re just lucky that you’re all right. ”
“I believe my thirst for adventure has been quenched,” she said dryly.
“Well, I hope not,” Marlowe said. “Because that would be sad.”
“It is kind of sad,” Cara agreed. “My one and only attempt at being adventurous, and I find myself buried in the mud. And sprained.”
She leaned her head against the strap of her seatbelt and looked out the window. She went back to Zane. The way that he had come riding up on his horse. The way that he had saved her.
It made her body feel warm.
Made her feel like it had almost been worth it.
Or maybe she was delirious because she had taken a pain pill. Though, it was just an ibuprofen, so she supposed that was all her.
They dropped her off at home, and she was going to get her car later. She crawled into bed, feeling dizzy. She got texts from her employees promising that they were going to make sure that things were running okay at the bakery, so that she could rest for a day.
But she drifted off into sleep, and it was not dreamless. Because she was thinking about Zane, and when she drifted off, he was there too.