7. Sara
7
SARA
M y vision is cloudy, like a film has been pulled over my eyes.
A dull ache swells at my ankle.
And oh, my head.
Why is my head pounding like there’s a tiny marching band parading through my skull? The moment I attempt to move, I spy an enormous, blurry thing towering over me.
I blink several times to focus. The blur begins to take shape, and I see that it’s not a blur at all, but a person. A man.
Messy uncombed hair, dark stubbly beard, huge shoulders. Huge everything, really. And I suppose quite attractive?—
Wait. Swollen ankle, headache, man standing above me. Swollen ankle, headache… Man. Standing. Above. Me.
I can’t control the noise that rips from my throat, a piercing scream that echoes and rings in my ears, making my head thump harder. I don’t care though because if it scares off this creep, then I’ll gladly hold on to this migraine for the rest of the day .
The man retreats several steps, hands flying to cover his temples like he’s the one with the headache.
I push up from the gravel, sliding in the dirt as I stagger to my feet. Dizziness consumes me.
“Who the hell are you?” My head jerks down at my bare foot that touches the dirt. “Ew, where’s my other shoe?” I scan my new surroundings, searching for the Jeep which is the last thing I remember. “What did you do to me?”
The man sighs. “Lady, I haven’t done anything to you. I was trying to help.” He looks frustrated. “And you should sit down before you pass out again.”
I look around, then up… way up at the side of a very steep cliff that looks familiar but obviously isn’t because there’s no way I could have fallen from that.
My hand lifts to my mouth, my stomach turns hollow. Tears threaten to surface as my voice cracks. “Pass out? What just happened?”
The man surveys me with caution. “My guess is you crashed, spun your car off the side of that mountain up there”—he points behind me— “and now here you are. Entirely ungrateful that I just pulled you from a car wreck before it rolled”—he points down the mountain— “down there. And come on, would you just sit down?” It’s more an order than a question.
I ignore his request as I eye him suspiciously, before edging over to the side of the ridge. I keep my eyes pinned on him before peeking over the verge. It’s steep, with too much foliage and underbrush to see anything past ten feet.
Then everything connects, flooding back like a regression hypnosis session gone horribly wrong. The car crashing into something solid, the spinning…the bug spray.
My hand shoots up to my mouth as I inhale a slow, tragic breath .
“That stupid bee,” I whisper, too low for the man to hear.
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing,” I say as I brush debris from my back. “You said you pulled me out of the car?”
The man nods.
“Oh. Right. Okay. Well…thank you,” I say, even though I get the feeling I’ve just become the biggest inconvenience to this man’s day.
He reaches for his enormous backpack, tossing it across his broad shoulders.
“Don’t thank me yet, the car rolled before I could get your things out. Your bag, phone, everything, is gone. If you’re hurt, it’s a two-hour hike that way.” He points in the opposite direction than the one he’s currently walking in.
I make a quick assessment of my injuries, surveying my arms and legs before calling after him, “And what if I’m not hurt? What’s that way?” I point to where he’s going.
“More of this.” He gestures around us with both arms. I look above my head, peering at the canopy of trees and dense wilderness that wraps around the small nook we’re occupying. I chew my bottom lip, considering my options. My head hurts, and my ankle’s beginning to throb, but apart from that, I think I’m okay.
He stops me before I reach a decision. “Look, you won’t make it on this trail because it isn’t a trail.”
Indeed, he makes a good point. There’s no path, no signs, and no clear way of telling which direction anyone should be headed in.
“You have no equipment and one shoe. That’s going to hold you back, which means it’ll hold me back.” He makes a disgusted face.
Ah. So he’s pissed I’ve messed up his precious solo hike .
“Okay, I get it.” I roll my eyes. “But it’ll be dark in a couple hours. And like you said, with the shoe issue it’ll take me a lot longer than that to get help. And not to point out the obvious, but I’m sure being knocked unconscious because I fell from a cliff calls for immediate rescue?” The man casts a weak glance at his pocket before I add, “Or can’t we just go back up there? Back to the road? I can flag down help?”
“Back up there?” He drawls out the words. “Sure, let me go grab my climbing gear.” His mouth forms a straight line as he glares at me. “You want to get back to the road, you have to go around first. Best I can do is radio for help when signal comes back.” He flashes a radio from his pocket. “I’m sorry, but that’s your only option.”
I consider it. Going around. Whatever that means. If it means getting back to civilization faster, then maybe it’s my only option. God, who am I kidding? I won’t last five minutes out here.
“Listen,” I take a step closer to him, noting the way his dark brown hair falls across his forehead and how his eyes are a bright shade of blue. Those eyes… “I can’t be out here. This wasn’t the plan. I just…don’t do well in…places like this.”
He studies me, the act causing his dark brows to pull together tightly.
“I…” I begin again, but trail off, because I can’t stop staring at him. That hair, those eyes…
My neck cranes, and my body takes an involuntary step closer to him. His shoulders are massive, his chest huge. He definitely works out, or chops several dozen blocks of wood every hour, on the hour, which doesn’t make sense…because that’s not the way I remember…
Wait. Why do I remember him ?
He’s eyeing me cautiously, like he wants to take a step back. He keeps his position, however, reluctantly allowing me to inspect him.
“Don’t I…know you?” I ask, my eyes raking over his features as I attempt to connect the dots.
“No,” he replies without missing a beat. Then he pinches the bridge of his nose. “Great, you’re concussed. Okay fine, we’ll hike a few miles this way. We should hit a tower, and by then, we should get some signal. There’s a downpour coming, but you’ll be fine to rest up in the tower until they?—”
“Jack?” I say as the slow realization turns me dizzy.
He freezes in his tracks, like a taser victim fighting the sting. He twists on his heel, pinning me with a razor-sharp glare. “What did you just call me?”
“Jack,” I repeat. This time confirming it to myself. “Jack Baker. It is you.”
It’s my turn to feel the need to withdraw, because a thousand feelings engulf me, and not a single one of them is pleasant.
He shakes his head. “I don’t go by that name anymore.”
“You.” The word comes from an absent part of my brain. Then I’m pointing a shaky, deranged finger at him. “You’re the reason I don’t do well in places like this.”
Jack glares at me from under a heavy-set brow, sheer bewilderment in his eyes. “What? Who are you?”
He doesn’t remember. The last time we saw each other, I was eight. I’ve changed a lot since then. But he was older, by what? Four, five years? He’d grown up of course but everything’s still there. His strong features, solid build, and obviously, his inability to behave any way other than with arrogance.
I have no doubt that the same arrogance is the thing stopping him from recalling who I am, our last meeting erased from his memory. Me being scooped from a slime-infested swamp by my dad because my legs had frozen in terror beneath me. The Baker siblings watching from nearby, laughing hysterically as an entire colony of ants, fire ants —yes, there’s a shocking difference—took up residence in every crevice of my body.
Of course he didn’t recognize me, he’d probably forgotten all about me the moment I fled his property that dreadful day. Our parents, once close friends, had argued and apologized, then argued some more, but in the end, we’d never seen them again.
That single experience is the reason I moved to New York, to be amongst traffic and pollution and moisture-absorbing concrete.
“Sara,” I say through ground teeth. “Sara Kirby.”
He narrows his gaze. His head tilts from one side, then slowly to the other. His mouth opens as if to ask a question but stops short. I can practically see the cogs in his brain turning, grinding, until… click .
“Maybe,” he says weakly.
I wait for the rest as blood blisters beneath my surface, and the memories I’ve repressed for seventeen years seep in.
When he crosses his arms over his chest and simply nods, I drift manically toward self-combustion. Either I remove myself from this man’s presence or I’m going to implode to cinder on the spot. After all this time, a “maybe” simply isn’t going to cut it.
I spin, breaking into a limp-march as I charge off into the wilderness, ignoring the vines grazing my arms and glasslike gravel poking into my freezing, shoeless foot as I stomp-hobble off.
“What are you doing?” Jack calls after me reluctantly. “ You’re going the wrong way. That way isn’t even an option. You’re going to get lost.”
“I don’t care,” I hiss as I slap at a low hanging branch that ends up bouncing straight back up to smack me under my chin.
“Hey,” he calls after me again, followed by a long, low growl. “Could you just be careful over there, it’s uneven.”
I spin, my back hunched over like that damned witch who gives Snow White the apple. “You’re asking me to be careful? You have no idea the trauma you inflicted on me back then. You and your brother and sister. Do you know what you did to me? I moved to New York so I’d never have to be close to another swamp as long as I live.”
Jack rakes a hand through his hair. “Come on, that swamp was only three feet deep. You could sit down and still have your head above water.”
“Water!” I yell. “Water never existed in that swamp, Jack. There was only ever slime and mud and things that should never come into contact with skin.” I curse at the memory, taking a long stride back while listing off all the terrible things I encountered that day.
“Okay, calm down.” Jack holds out an open palm. “And would you stop moving? I’m serious, one wrong step and you’ll end up down there with your car.”
“Like you care. A second ago, you wanted me to hike alone in the dark with my injuries.” I take another step into the distance, ignoring the crunching under my feet. “Well, you know what, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Because I’d rather impale my bare foot on every sharp object in this forest than spend another second with the man responsible for more than just my childhood therapy bill?—”
I stop abruptly because dread pools in my stomach as the ground beneath me starts to give .
“Sara!”
“Jack!” I screech as the ground disappears. And for the second time in my life, I’m falling backward, my arms flailing, and this man is the reason.
The last thing I see is his body lunging for me, two hulking arms reaching over the edge of the hidden cliffside.
But it’s too late, I’m already gone.