Chapter 12 #2
“What are you doing?” But even as she’s objecting, her arms wrap around my neck. She’s just as sweaty as she was before, but it’s clammy now that we’ve stopped moving because it’s fucking cold out and her ankle’s hurt and it’s all her fault for stopping and I should just leave her.
Instead, I hold her closer and start to trot forward. “What does it look like I’m doing?”
“Kidnapping me.”
“I swear to God,” I growl into her ear, “everything with you is a fight.”
I didn’t think it was possible, but her body goes even more rigid in my arms. “I don’t know any other way to be with you.”
“Of course you don’t. I don’t either.”
She pushes against my chest. “Seriously, put me down. I’m too heavy for you.”
“You’re not.” I may not be a runner, but I’m strong. “The finish line is in sight, and we’re crossing it at the same time so you can’t accuse me of cheating, even though you’re the one who stopped in the street. Now shut up and get carried.”
As I slowly jog us down the street, her stiff limbs start to relax, and she curls into my chest.
“You should know that I’ve been compiling evidence against you for years,” she says against my shirt. “If I go missing, your backyard is the first place the police will dig.”
Even though I have no excess breath in my lungs, I bark out a laugh. I forgot how funny she is.
I made myself forget how funny she is.
“Almost there,” I tell her, although my running pace is really more of a walk now. I jostle her when I adjust my grip, and she whimpers.
“Sorry.” I stroke my thumb along the side of her leg in a soothing gesture that I immediately wish I could take back.
“You didn’t do it on purpose,” she murmurs. “It just—” There’s a pause, and she says in a tiny voice, “It really hurts.”
This gets me to pick up the pace, and I’m gasping by the time we cross the finish line.
The crowd parts when I veer off the course and set her down on the first open stretch of crunchy brown grass I can find.
As exhausted as I am, I take care to lower her gently before collapsing onto my back on the ground next to her, my chest billowing up and down.
“Y’know,” she says as I’m fighting for my life, “I technically won.”
“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.
“If you ladies would like to come with me?” Paramedic Good Hair says, and the group makes a quick, noisy departure, leaving me on the ground staring after them until Reese pointedly clears her throat.
“Are we done here?” she asks testily.
“Shit, yeah. Sorry. I… sorry. Let’s head home so I can shower before we eat.”
Her lips tighten. “Let’s. We have some things to talk about.”
“Yeah.” I scrub a tired hand through my hair. “We do.”