Beckett
“I’m okay,”she says it again, knowing I need to hear it.
But I continue to hold her against me, needing to feel her heartbeat against my own.
Covered in mud, soaked through with lake water, the cold hasn’t quite caught up to me yet, the adrenaline still coursing through my blood.
“He-” her voice hitches, “He’s still in there.”
“Good.” I whisper back. Knowing exactly what it means that he hasn’t surfaced.
I caught enough glimpses of him through the back window while I was chasing after them that I was able to recognize the man as Mr. Olson. And fury thunders through my veins.
She starts to tremble, “He had a knife.”
I pull myself back just enough to look at her. Flashing lights of arriving emergency vehicles streak through the night, but it’s not enough to illuminate her face completely.
“Did he hurt you?”
She shakes her head.
“Elouise.”
Her trembling fingers reach up to touch the side of her neck, “Just a little bit.”
My teeth grind, and when she starts to cry again, I pull her back into my chest.
“It’s over now.” I glare at the lake. “It’s over now.”
The motherfucker is surely dead by now. And I don’t feel the least bit sorry. If he were to break through the surface of the water now, I’d swim out there and drown him myself for what he put Elouise through. For whatever he was planning to do.
I press my lips to the top of Elouise’s head.
The flashing lights are right on top of us now, and someone calls down from the road. After tucking Elouise’s head into my body, so I’m not shouting into her ear, I yell up to let them know we’re okay.
The slope is too steep and we’re too wet and muddy to climb up on our own. So I wrap my woman in my arms, giving her as much body heat as I can, while we wait for help.
When the first responders reach us, I have to force my arms to unlock from around Elouise so they can bring her up before me.
She tries to put up a fight when they tell her they’ll bring her up on the stretcher, but when I say please, she gives in.
The few minutes she’s out of my sight, my anxiety flares back to life.
Gripping the lowered safety rope with my frozen hands, I frantically scramble up the bank.
But I don’t have to search for Elouise. Because the stubborn woman is standing, arguing with a paramedic who is trying to get her into the back of an ambulance.
“Babe, you need to get checked out.”
Elouise turns at the sound of my voice and the look on her face breaks my heart all over again.
I open my arms and in two steps she’s colliding with my chest.
“I want to go home,” her words are quiet and I hug her tighter.
“I need you to get looked at. I won’t be able to settle down until you do.”
Her chest heaves against mine, and I know she’ll agree because I asked her.