Chapter 2
Simon
My day goes from daydream to nightmare in one heartbeat. I’ve spent the entire hike trying to start a conversation with the curvy tourist who flits around like a joyful butterfly and I’ve failed spectacularly.
The second I saw her lingering outside the tourist center in her cargo shorts and bright pink tank top I’ve been obsessed.
All it took for my bachelor life to promptly crash and burn was sunshine hair pulled into a purple scrunchie, a friendly laugh, and the cutest spread of dark brown freckles I’ve ever seen.
Her grin stretched her cheeks wide, highlighting her dimples, and I was hooked.
I tried not to go over the top. I kept the conversation casual, and tried like hell not to lose my mind when she blushed. I couldn’t pry more than five words out of Clover, but I’d be an idiot to miss the way she stares at me when she thinks I’m not looking.
Those pretty blue eyes drift down my body like a brand. She might be shy, but she can’t hide her attraction. The tension simmering between us is undeniable. I just needed to find a topic that would excite her enough to draw her into the conversation.
First comes flirting. Then comes marriage. With at least a few months of dating in-between. Relationships move fast in Crescent Ridge, but I doubt that my butterfly would say yes to a ring any faster.
I’d made Clover laugh and I was getting ready to ask her on a date when disaster struck.
“Are you a smokejumper?” One of the college kids in this tour group asked.
“No,” I replied.
Clover slipped away with her camera as the questions began to fly. She stayed within eyesight, so I was content.
“Do you really get calls to rescue cats out of trees?”
“All the time.” I laugh. “Betty Anderson’s calico thinks she’s a leopard.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Clover’s smile fade, and I was moving before I clocked what was wrong. She stumbles out of the tree line, every wobbly step adding to the panic building in my chest.
Her lips are swollen, one hand grabbing her throat and the other frantically patting her pockets. I zero in on the red dot on her arm just as she trips over a root.
Catching her before she hits the ground, her metallic bracelet catches the light. The blue six-pointed Star of Life jumps out at me, and I flip it over to read the engraving on the back.
ALLERGIC: BEE STINGS / ANAPHYLAXIS / USE EPIPEN
Using my radio I call dispatch, my voice remaining steady and calm, even as my entire being threatens to unravel.
Voices swarm around me, but I don’t listen as they slowly react to the emergency threatening the life of my woman.
“Please have it,” I mutter to myself as I start searching the pockets of her cargo shorts. “Please. Please. Please.”
I find the epinephrine injector in one of the thigh pockets and I could kiss it.
“Blue to the sky, orange to the thigh,” Toni, the tour group leader, recites as I administer the medicine.
Sirens blare in the distance, coming ever closer. The epinephrine will save Clover, but we’re not out of the woods yet. With one arm under her knees and the other under her back, I scoop her up and start heading for the closest access point.
“North side, campsite G,” I tell dispatch through the radio pinned to my shoulder.
“Is she going to be alright?” one student asks.
“Yes,” I reply.
The entire group follows me as I rush down a thin trail that leads to the campsite. I hear Toni trying to stop the group, but they remain hot on my heels.
“Is she breathing?” the teenage boy asks.
“Shut up, Dale!” his girlfriend yells.
“She’ll be fine,” Old Man Quincy reassures the group. He’s been a regular on these tours for years. “Simon has the situation handled.”
The ambulance beats us to the campsite. A shirtless man and a woman with mussed hair poke their heads out of a green tent as our motley crew marches past.
“We’ll check in with Gloria tomorrow,” Quincy adds, passing Clover’s backpack to me as Lola hops out the back of the ambulance. “Take good care of our girl.”
If I’ve gotten five words out of the cheerful blonde, he’s gotten two, but that’s the thing about a small town like ours. When we claim someone as one of us, we’re all in. Quincy’s recognized it. Toni too.
Clover might be here to make videos and do a social media blast, but I’d bet my last dollar she’s going to be one of the tourists that stays.
Lola helps me get her on the stretcher and she’s giving her an IV as soon as the doors close. This is her rig and I do my best to stay out of her way while she works.
All I can do is hold her hand and wait as Glenn drives this ambulance like he stole it.
I know the exact second Clover comes back to me.
Her fingers twitch in mine. Just one tiny movement, but it feels like an electric current, shocking me into motion.
I lean forward so fast my shoulder clips the metal cabinet behind me hard enough to leave a bruise.
“There you are,” I whisper and for a second, I don’t recognize my voice. It’s too low, raspy, and filled to the brim with panic.
Her lashes flutter, revealing her disoriented blue eyes and I can breathe again.
The ambulance rattles over the washboard road down toward Bramble, the suspension groaning every time Glenn takes a rut too hard.
The overhead fluorescents buzz faintly above us, washing everything in sterile white.
The whole rig smells like antiseptic wipes and plastic tubing and the sharp medicinal sting of bleach, but underneath it, I can still smell the mountain clinging to Clover.
Pine sap, sun-warmed skin, wildflowers crushed against denim, and dirt from the trail dusting her calves. It’s like summer followed her inside.
Lola’s securing gear in the cabinet behind me while Glenn drives like the devil himself is chasing us down the mountain. Cabinets rattle. A monitor beeps steadily beside Clover’s shoulder. Oxygen hisses softly into the mask, Lola’s placed over her mouth and nose.
Clover blinks up at the overhead lights, dazed. She turns toward me, brimming with questions. A devious part of me wonders if she’ll still be too shy to talk to me properly.
“How long was I out?” she rasps despite the blush that darkens her cheeks.
“Ten minutes.”
Her voice sounds scraped raw. She swallows and winces.
Lola checks her throat, finding that it’s still red from the swelling, but it’s already getting better.
So much better. Her oxygen saturation is climbing on the monitor, her chest rising and falling with good deep breaths.
Her lips are back to their normal color and size.
The angry flush blotching her chest is fading.
The epinephrine did its job.
“You scared the hell out of me,” I tell her. The words leave before I can stop them.
“Sorry,” she mumbles.
I shake my head immediately.
“No. Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Apologize.”
Even pale and exhausted she looks unfairly pretty resting on the stretcher with her freckles standing out against flushed skin.
“Okay.”
Lola checks Clover’s pulse ox, the monitor chirping softly as she adjusts the clip on her finger.
“Can you take a deep breath for me?” she asks, pulling out her stethoscope to listen to Clover’s lungs.
It’s a standard check. One I’ve done a thousand times, on patients we’ve rescued from burning structures and from remote trails. Even knowing that Lola is just doing her job, I’m impatient.
I want to be the one checking Clover’s stats. Lola catches my eye, with a knowing look.
I’m compromised and we both know it. I might work as a paramedic for the fire department but in Glenn and Lola’s rig that doesn’t mean shit.
“Any chest tightness?” she asks.
Clover shakes her head against the pillow.
“My throat’s just sore,” she says softly. “Did I die?”
“No.”
Clover nods once.
“Good.”
Like nearly dying was mildly inconvenient and she’s glad we’ve moved past it. I bark out a humorless laugh without meaning to.
The sound surprises all of us. Ten minutes ago, I was kneeling in the dirt with the woman of my dreams limp in my arms, pine needles stuck to my knees, adrenaline roaring in my ears while I wondered how I’d survive if she stopped breathing.
Now she’s casually cracking jokes in the back of an ambulance like she didn’t just scare the shit out of me.
Lola sits in the corner, pulling out her phone and giving us a modicum of privacy.
Clover’s fingers shift against my palm, her eyes dropping to where I’m still holding her hand.
I haven’t let go since we loaded her onto the stretcher.
Respecting Lola’s authority in this space, I stayed out of her way, but I couldn’t bring myself to relinquish the sole physical connection I had to Clover.
Acknowledging that I’ve been entirely too forward with a woman in the middle of a medical crisis, I start to let go. Her blue eyes flare with panic and she tightens her grip.
My heart damn near stops.
Her fingers squeeze mine, and with my pulse stuttering I squeeze back.
“I remember you carrying me.”
I smile despite myself.
“Yeah.”
“How embarrassing,” she mutters.
“You were unconscious.”
She gives me a dry look that makes me feel ashamed.
“I was focused on getting you help. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”
Her expression softens instantly.
“You didn’t.”
Warmth spreads through my chest so hard it aches.
“I liked it,” she confesses.
Every coherent thought leaves my body. Gone. Vanished into the mountain air.
Lola coughs into her fist and Clover winces. I’m leaning over her before I can think.
“What hurts?”
“My leg.”
“The injection site?”
She nods, then with a wry smile she says, “You’re hovering.”
“Yes.”
“Do you hover over everyone you rescue?”
“No.”
“Just me?”
“Yes.”
I don’t waste our time pretending otherwise.
“Why?”
A dozen answers spring to mind, every single one true.
Because I’ve been half in love with you since Gloria said your name. Because when you smiled at the visitor center, I forgot how to form complete sentences.
Because seeing you collapse took ten years off my life.
Instead, I say, “You almost died.”
She watches me for a beat.
Then quieter—
“You saved my life.”
The ambulance hits a sharp turn causing the stretcher to shift with the motion.
I brace one hand against the mattress beside her hip to steady it. My face ends up inches from hers. The scent of wildflowers and sunscreen steals my breath.
Her breath catches and for a second all I can see are freckles. The urge to kiss her hits me so hard it nearly knocks me stupid.
Lola looks up from her phone.
“Twenty minutes out.”
I don’t move. Neither does Clover.
Twenty minutes has never felt so damn long.