by M. Leighton
“Where are we going?”
“Just riding,” he responded.
The narrow back road we were on was a winding two-lane that led to Arlisle Preserve and, beyond that, to Southmoore.
“So, what did you do last night?” I tried to put my focus elsewhere. I hated this road because it’s the one Izzy wrecked on.
“Went to Josh’s to work on the Mustang.” His answer, like his attitude, was short and clipped.
I nodded. “Is it close to being finished?”
Drew sighed loudly. “Ridley, I don’t want to talk about a stupid car.”
“Then talk about something else.”
“Fine,” he snapped, shifting up into third to take a curve entirely too fast.
“Drew, slow down.”
“Don’t tell me how to drive, Ridley. You gave up that privilege.”
“Drew—”
“Don’t ‘Drew’ me,” he warned, accelerating through yet another curve. “The only thing I want to hear from you is the truth.”
“I told you the truth, Drew.”
“No, you didn’t. I want to hear you admit that this is about that freak, Bowman,” he spat.
“Drew, Bo has—”
“Don’t lie to me, Ridley,” he shouted, the tires squealing as he rounded a hair pin curve without even so much as tapping the brakes.
I gripped the edges of my seat tightly. “I’m not lying, Drew. Please slow down,” I begged.
“You’ve got a thing for the new guy and I want to hear you admit it,” Drew said, his voice booming inside the confines of the car.
As he took another corner at a dangerous speed, the back tires slipped off the road and we skidded in the gravel. The car fishtailed alarmingly and I felt my heart flopping fearfully in my throat.
My head was plastered to the head rest as I pushed my feet into the floorboard.
“Alright, Drew. I admit it. I have feelings for Bo,” I confessed.
“I knew it,” Drew hissed.
“But it had nothing to do with us. My feelings for Bo came after,” I continued. “I swear.”
And that was true. While I might have been intrigued by Bo, a bit taken with him, my feelings for him had been child’s play compared to what they are now.
Drew said nothing. I looked over at him to gauge his reaction, but I couldn’t read his expression. I was not inclined to believe that my confession had helped, however, when I saw the tight set of his lips.
“I never meant to hurt you, Drew,” I declared, putting as much truth and feeling into the statement as I possibly could. “I—”
My words were cut off when I saw the deer from the corner of my eye. A horrible and unwelcome sense of déjà vu swept over me. I’d been through this before and I knew I only had a fraction of a second to react before it jumped in front of us.
“Drew!”
My cry didn’t help. As if in slow motion, the deer leapt from the trees up onto the road. I heard Drew’s sharp inhalation right before he jerked the steering wheel with both hands to avoid the deer.
We began to spin and I squeezed my eyes shut and held onto the seat so tightly my fingers ached.
I felt it when the two wheels on the driver’s side left the pavement. It was as if the entire world tilted toward me for an instant before we started rolling. I braced myself as much as I could and held my breath.
As if the sounds played in my head from a distant recording, I heard the crunch of metal and the breaking of glass right before I felt a sharp pinch in my stomach just as the car came to a halt on its side in the woods. The reason I knew we were in the woods is that, when I opened my eyes, part of a tree branch was sticking through the windshield.
Shaken and confused, I looked around.
The car had come to rest on the passenger side. Drew was unconscious and dangling from his seatbelt, his arms lolling lifelessly toward me. If I unfastened his seatbelt, he would no doubt fall right on top of me.
“Drew,” I called. No response.
“Drew,” I said, more loudly this time. Still no response.
I tried to move, but something was holding me in my seat. The seatbelt strap was on the left side of my chest rather than my right, so I reached down to unbuckle it. When I did, I stared in confusion at the tree branch that was coming through the windshield. It seemed to disappear right into my body, into my left side.
At first I didn’t understand how that was possible. I thought maybe the branch had broken off and it was just pressed against my body, looking as if it disappeared inside me. I thought surely if I was impaled, it would hurt. Right? I’d probably be unconscious, too. Right?
When I tried to move out from around the branch, pain lanced through my back and side. Thinking I’d move the branch instead, I pulled at it in one sharp tug. Blood oozed out from around it.
Following the sight of that branch shifting inside my stomach, a surge of adrenaline flooded my body and burned away the fog that had settled over me. As the haze lifted, there was a moment—a single moment of perfect clarity—when I realized that the branch was indeed deeply imbedded in my abdomen and that if I didn’t find a way to get us some help, I was in serious, serious trouble.
I fought against the hysteria that welled up inside me, knowing it was imperative that I keep my wits about me. We could die if I didn’t. I knew from experience. Sort of.
I closed my eyes and took a deep, cleansing breath, deep enough to make my side start to hurt again. I cringed in pain. When I reopened my eyes, it was to see a pale face hovering over the hood of the car. In it was a hauntingly familiar pair of eyes, eyes I’d seen in a similar circumstance three years ago. Only today, I recognized them. They were Bo’s.
A flash of relief was followed by even more confusion. I thought to myself that it couldn’t have been Bo’s eyes I’d seen that night so long ago. It just couldn’t have been.
“Stay still,” he cautioned.
I nodded, fending off a surreal sense of disorientation that was threatening to swallow me up.
Bo crept carefully up to the car and looked in to assess me. His face was a tight mask, but I thought I probably knew why. The sight and smell of my blood was likely very hard for him to tolerate.
“How did you find me?”
“Google maps.” Obviously, he felt the need to lighten the mood. Why, I don’t know.
Turning his attention to Drew, Bo reached through the broken windshield and checked his pulse.
“Is he alive?”
“Yeah,” Bo confirmed. “Just at a glance, I don’t think his injuries are that severe. Probably hit his head after the airbag went off, when you rolled. Yours must’ve been punctured by the tree,” he concluded.
Backing away from the car, Bo disappeared for a few seconds. I heard the rustle of leaves and gravel as he moved around. When he reappeared, his expression was grave.
“Ridley, I’m going to get you out, but you’re gonna to have to trust me, ok?”
I nodded.
“The branch is still attached to the tree. I have to break it off so I can pull it out of you, ok?”
Again, I nodded.
“It’s gonna hurt,” he warned.
I looked out at the piece of wood protruding from my left side and I felt my heartbeat speed up in fear and dread.
“Ridley, look at me.” When I looked up into the eyes that plagued me day and night, I felt a strange sense of calm permeate me, body and mind. “You’re going to be fine. I promise.”
I nodded again, believing his words despite what my eyes saw as a life-threatening injury and an impossible situation.
Once more, Bo disappeared. I heard some crackling and then a loud snap followed by a jarring to my side that felt like it was pulling my guts out. My head swam dizzily, the pain was so incredible. I bit my lip to keep from crying out.
When Bo popped up in front of the windshield again, the air he stirred cooled the clammy sheen that was covering my face.
Bo’s brow was furrowed in obviou
s worry. He reached in and cupped my cheek.
“Hang in there. It’s almost over,” he said softly.
He dropped his hand and I saw him wrap his fingers around the branch up close to where it entered my body. I took a deep breath, trying to steel myself against what was coming. Bo looked at me and I nodded, giving him a silent go-ahead.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered, closing his eyes.
Then, with a quick and violent jerk, Bo yanked the huge stick from my side. It hurt, but no worse than it had when he’d broken the branch from the other end. I looked down to make sure it was gone and what I saw made my stomach churn nauseously.
Dark red blood was gushing from the hole in my side. I felt the warm wetness of it all down my hip and stomach and between my legs where it pooled. Strictly from the amount of blood I was losing, I knew the tree had pierced something important, either an artery or my spleen. Not surprisingly, at that moment I was not very successful at retrieving information from my anatomy class.
I looked up at Bo and he was staring at the blood, his face looking paler, his skin thinner than usual. Right before my eyes, it seemed to become more and more translucent. I wanted to touch it, but I was finding it increasingly difficult just to focus on his face, much less touch it. It was already blurring before my eyes. My head was growing lighter by the second, as if someone was lowering a dimmer switch on my consciousness and I was slowly fading into darkness.
“Bo,” I whispered, short of breath, too.
Bo’s abnormally pale green eyes flickered up to mine and through my wavy vision, I could see the instant that he returned to me from whatever hungered state he’d been in, like he was seeing me for the first time. As I watched, I saw the color seep back into his irises, assuring me he was Bo once again.
“Hold on,” he said, reaching in to release my seatbelt and snatch me from the car.
Even if I hadn’t been hovering between consciousness and oblivion, I doubt I would’ve been able to keep up with where we were going. Bo carried me deep into the woods, whipping through the trees and across the uneven terrain at a speed I knew wasn’t humanly possible.
“Hospital,” I managed breathlessly. I knew I needed serious medical attention.
Finally Bo stopped and lowered me gently to the ground. His face doubled in front of my eyes and I blinked to bring him back into focus.
“Ridley, you need to drink from me. If you don’t, you’ll die before I can get you help,” he said, sounding like he was a million miles away.
“Then we can be together,” I whispered.
I felt my lips pull up into a weak smile at the thought of being with Bo somewhere, anywhere, for eternity.
“Ridley,” he barked. “Stop it! You’re not dying. You’re not leaving me.”
I blinked my heavy lids, trying to keep them open long enough to look into Bo’s one last time.
“It’s alright,” I said.
“No, it’s not. Open your mouth,” he ordered, sinking his teeth into his bare forearm.
With every passing second, I was exponentially more exhausted. I didn’t think I could open my mouth like he wanted me to. I tried, but my jaw just wouldn’t work.
“Ridley!”
I felt rough fingers at my cheeks, pinching them together to force my lips open.
A drop of tepid liquid hit my tongue and the taste of it, both salty and sweet, was the most amazing thing I could ever remember tasting, though it did seem vaguely familiar. I smacked my dry lips together and managed to open my mouth the tiniest bit, feeling a ravenous thirst for more of the thick fluid.
Several drops hit my tongue and I closed my mouth to swallow. I felt something cool press against my lips and I opened my eyes a crack. Bo was holding his forearm over my mouth, a panicked expression on his handsome face.
“Drink,” he said simply.
I opened my lips and wrapped them around his skin and sucked, drawing a pool of his blood onto my tongue. It made my mouth feel warm and tingly, and my throat as well, as it traveled down.
I’m not sure how long he fed me that way. I’m pretty sure that I passed out at least twice, maybe more. Little snatches of time were lost to me, but the one thing that never changed, never left me, was Bo. I could hear his shallow breathing. I could taste him on my tongue. I could feel him inside my veins, as if I’d taken in some living part of him that was now a part of me.
Little by little, I felt energy, feeling, life, return to my body, but as it did, an overwhelming need to sleep began to drag at my eyelids. I fought it, wanting to stay with Bo, to spend every available second with him, staring into his eyes.
I knew when I’d lost the battle. Like drawing the curtains across a window, my lids fell and blocked Bo from my view. Just before I drifted off, I heard him whisper, “Rest.” And then there was nothing.
********
Some time later, a cold hand to my face and Bo’s voice woke me. I opened my eyes and looked around. Though my eyes told me I was alone, my body told me Bo was near.
“Bo?”
“I’m here,” he said, taking my hand in his.
The sun was setting and the forest floor was dappled with the golden light of a dying day. To my right, where Bo’s voice and touch was coming from, I saw the tall, gilded trees shimmer, like I was looking at them through the distorting waves of heat you see coming off of hot pavement.
I sat up and looked more closely. Raising my other hand, I reached toward it. I jerked a little when I made contact with something solid and cool, but then I realized it was skin I felt. I rubbed my hand over it, feeling the crinkly tickle of hair against my palm.
As I sculpted the curves and dips, I realized that I was touching Bo’s chest. His naked chest. I paused and laid my spread fingers flat over his left pectoral. I could feel the excited patter of his heart.
“Ridley,” he groaned, part in warning, part in pleasure.
The sound of my name on his lips, with that hint of need in it so clear and plain, sent a surge of desire rippling through my core.
Slowly, I let my palm trail across his chest and down his belly. I jumped when his icy hand grabbed my wrist.
“Stop,” he ground out. His voice was notably strained.
“Sorry,” I muttered, pulling my hand away. The only thing I was honestly sorry about, though, was that I had to stop. “Where is your shirt?”
“You’re wearing it.”
I looked down and, sure enough, Bo had slipped his rugby shirt on over my own. When I inhaled, my nostrils were filled with his scent and I thought I might never give his shirt back.
“Oh.” I looked back up and “through” Bo and I could see that a pile of clothes lay just behind him in the leaves. “Whose are those?”
“Mine,” he answered.
“You’re not wearing any clothes?” A flush of heat stung my cheeks. Although I was a little embarrassed, the red stain had much more to do with the other things I was feeling.
“How would it look when the ambulance gets here if they see jeans and a rugby shirt walking around without a person inside them?”