Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 72154 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 361(@200wpm)___ 289(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72154 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 361(@200wpm)___ 289(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
My heart started to pound as I hurried in their direction.
I couldn’t see the kid, and I couldn’t see the dog.
What I could see were people looking around, trying to figure out why Parker was flat out running like he was toward the pond.
He ran into the water like he was at the beach and not a frozen lake in the middle of winter.
The first step he took, his foot fell through the ice.
Then the second.
And the third.
When he was up to mid-chest, he started to crack the ice with his elbows.
Meanwhile, on shore, everyone started to panic.
“Why is he in there?”
“Oh my God. There’s a dog over there on the ice!”
“There’s someone in there. Look at that red hat floating on top of the water. Do you think somebody fell through?”
I somehow had my phone out of my pocket and in my hand, with my fingers dialing 9-1-1 as I watched Parker go further and further in disbelief.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
“A little boy just fell through the ice next to my hotel. We’re in a park right next to it. Ummm, Luxury Suites,” I said, mostly because I had no freakin’ clue where we were, and I couldn’t tell her something I didn’t know.
“Yes, ma’am. Can you see the little boy?”
“No,” I answered. “But my boyfriend went in after him. He’s in the pond, too.”
“Tell him to get out.”
I laughed then. “Yeah, right.”
Then I put the phone into my pocket without hanging up and ran up to the side of the pond.
Watching, waiting, and feeling so freakin’ helpless that I was crying tears of frustration.
Then, Parker dove.
He disappeared, and then my heart really did stick in my throat.
Three more times he did that, and three more times he came up empty-handed.
On the fourth, he came back up with his hand buried in the little boy’s hair.
***
“We’d like to take you in to get checked out, sir.” The paramedic eyed Parker worriedly.
Parker waved him away, then glanced down at the paramedic’s arm. “SEAL?”
The paramedic grinned. “Yeah.”
Parker lifted his wet shirt and showed him his side where his own tattoo was, very similar to the paramedics.
Something passed between them, and the medic nodded. “All right, I’ll leave you to it then.”
Moments later, the medic walked off and took the passenger seat of the ambulance.
I looked over at Parker, who even soaking wet in the freezing cold, still wasn’t shaking.
“Are you human?”
He looks down at me. “Let’s go back to the hotel so you don’t catch a cold.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re worried about me getting a cold while I’m worried about you getting frostbite and hypothermia.”
He shrugged. “BUD/S training, paired with quite a few missions where it was much colder than this, and I was in it for longer, has really let me experience cold. Though it is cold right now, I have about another, I’d say, twenty to thirty minutes before it starts to become a nuisance.”
Before it starts to become a nuisance. I would’ve laughed had I not seen that he was a hundred percent serious.
“Well, okay,” I said. “Let’s go.”
I was giddy. I was excited. I was fucking floored that he’d charged out into that icy pond and saved that kid.
But, then again, I was also mad.
And I didn’t know why.
I mean, I’d have done the same thing, or at least I would have tried to. So why was I so upset that he had done it?
I shouldn’t be.
I really shouldn’t.
But I was.
He kept glancing over at me as if he was waiting for something, but I never gave whatever he was waiting for to him.
We rode up the elevator in silence. Then he put the keycard into the slot and pushed opened the door, holding it for me.
I walked under his arm, but before I could so much as pass him, he curled his arm around my belly and twisted.
I found myself pinned up against the hotel room door, staring angrily at him.
“Spit it out already.”
“Spit what out?” I asked.
His eye twitched.
“Tell me why you’re so mad.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it.
I wasn’t sure what he wanted me to say.
I was glad that he found the kid, yes. But I was pissed that he took that risk.
It made me sound like a real asshole, but I couldn’t help it.
Seriously, it was a really shitty situation.
“Kayla…”
“I’m just pissed, okay?”
His wet clothes were starting to seep into my own clothes at this point, so I pushed him away.
Or tried to.
He didn’t so much as budge.
“I’m not going to sit on the sidelines while there’s a problem I can fix,” he said evenly.
His nonchalance at what he’d done was seriously pissing me off. Did he not see that he could’ve freakin’ died?
“Whatever.”
His eyes narrowed. “You can’t change me. I’m set in my ways and have been for a really long time. If you can’t handle who I am…maybe we shouldn’t do this anymore.”