Total pages in book: 196
Estimated words: 186555 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 933(@200wpm)___ 746(@250wpm)___ 622(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 186555 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 933(@200wpm)___ 746(@250wpm)___ 622(@300wpm)
I was taking care of myself.
There was a small first aid kit in my emergency roadside bag, I remembered when I was nearly done with my other hand. I’d bought it when I got my bear spray. It didn’t have a whole lot, but it had something. Band-Aids to help me survive the entire two-and-a-half-hour drive home, on top of the time it would take to hike back out.
Oh my God, I was going to cry again.
But I could do it while I dug out rocks from my elbows, I figured, and that was what I did.
* * *
Three and a half hours and a lot of curse words and tears later, my hands still ached, my elbows did too, and every step I took hurt the joints in my knees and the painfully stretched skin covering them. If I didn’t have black pants on, I was sure I’d look like I’d gotten into a fight with a bear cub and lost. Bad.
Feeling defeated but trying my best not to, I sucked in one breath after another, forcing my feet to keep fucking going until I made it to the stupid-ass parking lot.
I’d gone through periods of pure rage toward everything on the way down. Over the trail in the first place. Over doing this. Over the sun being out. At my mom for bamboozling me. I’d even been pissed off at my boots and would have taken them off and thrown them into the trees, but that was considered littering and there were too many rocks.
It was the boots’ fault for being slippery, the sons of bitches. I was donating them the first chance I got, I’d decided at least ten times. Maybe I’d burn them.
Okay, I wouldn’t because it was bad for the environment and there was still a fire ban in effect, but whatever.
Pieces of shit.
I growled just as I turned on a switchback and came to a sudden stop.
Because coming toward me, head down, backpack straps clinging to broad shoulders, breathing steadily in through his nose and out through his mouth, was a body I recognized for about ten different reasons.
I knew the silver hair peeking out from under a red ball cap.
That tan skin.
The uniform.
The man looked up then, blinked once, and stopped too. A frown took over a face that solidified I knew the man on his way up. And I definitely recognized the raspy voice that asked, “Are you crying?”
I swallowed and croaked, “A little bit.”
Those gray eyes widened just a little and Rhodes stood up even straighter. “Why?” he asked very, very slowly as his gaze swept over me from my face down to my toes before going back up. Then those eyes flicked down to my knees and stayed there as he asked, “What happened? How bad are you hurt?”
I took a step that was more like a limp forward and said, “I fell.” I sniffled. “The only thing broken is my spirit.” I wiped at my face with my sweaty forearms and tried to smile but failed at that too. “Fancy seeing you here.”
His gaze went back to my knees. “Tell me what happened.”
“I slipped along the ridge and thought I was going to die, lost half my pride along the way too,” I told him, wiping at my face again. I was so fed up. Beyond fed up. I just wanted to get home.
His shoulders seemed to relax a little with every word out of my mouth, and then he was moving again, setting down two trekking poles I hadn’t noticed he’d been holding along the side of the trail and slipping his backpack off too before he stopped in front of me and kneeled. His palm went around the back of the knee with the ripped pant leg, and he gently lifted it. I let him, too surprised to do anything other than stand there trying to balance as he whistled under his breath, inspecting the skin there.
Rhodes glanced up from under those thick, curly lashes. He set my leg back down and touched the back of my other calf. “This one too?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I answered, hearing the sulkiness I was trying to hide in my voice. “And my hands.” I sniffled again. “And my elbows.”
Rhodes kept kneeling as he reached for one of my hands and flipped it, instantly wincing. “Jesus Christ, how far did you fall?”
“Not that far,” I said, letting him look at my palms. His eyebrows knit together in a pained expression before he took my other hand and inspected it too.
“You didn’t clean it?” he asked as he lifted that arm up a bit, grimacing again. I’d taken my UPF shirt off not even thirty minutes before falling. My skin might have been more protected if I’d left it on. Too late now.