by Gaelen Foley
“If you say so.” Still wiping drips off his face, Harry wasn’t sure if Finn really thought he had helped to keep them afloat or if he was just blowing smoke.
Either way, he was glad for the respite and relieved to hear this ungodly adventure was almost over.
“We’ll keep to river left on the Scrambler, you guys,” Finn said as they floated around a bend and into more whitewater.
Scrambler? The last rapid on the trip sounded threatening. So long, peaceful calm, Harry thought.
“My guy Carlos informs me there’s a strainer on river right, so we gotta clear that and then get back on our line,” Finn said.
“Oh, yeah. Reggie mentioned that at the pub the other night,” Jack murmured, “when the girls got back from their hike.”
Bea frowned and glanced back at the ex-marine just as Harry spotted Carlos, the riverbank scout. He hadn’t realized until then that the quiet, athletic guy had been hopping along from rock to rock with them the entire time.
He wore a backpack and held a tow rope in one hand, and he motioned some kind of signals to Finn with the other.
As they rounded the bend, Harry realized what the guide meant by “strainer.” It was an enormous downed tree with mud-caked roots exposed, creating a whole new rift in the river and blocking the boaters’ path.
It looked ominous just lying there, waiting to catch unsuspecting river travelers. Water recirculated back upstream around it, creating a treacherous undertow. If the raft drifted too close, Harry began to understand, they’d never be able to paddle away from it.
Hefty branches punched out from under the water. Tangled nests of leaves threatened to twist them up into the powerful current.
Harry’s heart pounded once more as Finn yelled out commands. This time, he knew it was not an act and no joke, but a serious situation.
They angled toward the inside of the river’s natural arc. Finn leaned back to rudder, Jack made curving J-motions in the water with his paddle, and Harry and Bea kept up their powerful forward strokes.
Harry’s paddle banged off rocks. Bea was nearly slammed into a boulder. Tree branches threatened to pierce them.
As they bounced through the Scrambler, Harry realized they were much farther to the left than Finn was used to navigating. He sensed the guide’s tension as water crashed over their bow.
They hit a rock head-on, bounced off it toward river left, and angled sideways into a churning wave.
Suddenly, as the raft rebounded into another boulder, it tipped, nearly bouncing the crew out. When it slammed back down to the surface of the water, Finn tried to steer, to get the vessel back under his control.
Military-grade obscenities poured from Jack’s mouth as he tried to recalibrate the boat. But the raft was careening sideways now. It blasted right into another boulder, and this time they were aiming directly into a thrusting, white-washed wave.
“Whiskey tango foxtrot!” Jack bellowed.
Finn hollered back, “Monster fucking hole!”
The raft took a nosedive; the front of it filled with water as the rear shot into the air. It hung there, vertical, for what felt like forever.
Harry gripped the raft’s handle, screamed inside for his life, and waited to be swallowed up.
But the raft banged down on the water with a gigantic splash.
By some stroke of fortune, they hadn’t capsized. They were drenched and exhausted, but still in the boat.
All except for Bea.
CHAPTER 6
“Where is she?” Harry bellowed as he scanned the water, panicked.
“Carlos!” Finn yelled to his scout. “Tow rope! Now!”
Jack muscled the raft, trying to ferry it toward Carlos, who had thrown one end of his rope toward them. Harry watched it flop in the river like a noodle, too far out of their reach to catch.
Just then, Harry spotted her and pointed. “There!”
Bea’s blue helmet, her long, snaking locks, her yellow life vest, bobbed along in the thunderous current. The men jolted into full rescue mode.
Not sure if she’d hit a rock and was unconscious, they called her name frantically as she headed right for the strainer.
At last, she threw a hand clumsily in the air, letting them know she was conscious, alive. But she struggled to stay afloat, to drift away from the strainer’s clawing branches. Harry had horrific visions of her being impaled on a spiky root or branch.
From the bank, Carlos quickly reeled his rope in and threw it back to the boat. This time, Jack tossed his paddle down and tried desperately to catch the line, but Finn held him back. “Do not drop your paddle,” he commanded, eyeing the tree ferociously.
Jack obeyed, retrieved his paddle, and began powering forward again while Finn attempted to steer.
But Harry didn’t hesitate. Bea was about to die, and he could either paddle in vain or snatch her out of the water. He launched himself over the side of the raft and dangled there with barely one foot still in the boat. He stretched out his arm as far as he could and extended his paddle toward her.
Finn yanked him by the ankle to keep him from falling out, too.
Bea flailed, fought against the current, tried to swim, tough as she was, but the water carried her too quickly. He had to get to her now.
Harry wriggled free from Finn’s grasp and leaned over the gunwale even farther. Jack plied his paddle ferociously, doing all he could to move the raft toward her while Finn resumed ruddering.
Finally, she swam, the little fighter.
Come on, come on, Harry thought, ignoring his own safety and the tons of water pouring noisily past him every second. At last, Bea shot her trembling hand out of the water and grasped the tip of Harry’s paddle.
He dragged her in close until finally he could get his hands on her, first her wrist, then her elbow, then her waist. And with one strong, scooping motion, he picked her up and gently laid her down in the boat. “I’ve got you,” he whispered gruffly.
“Is she wounded?” Jack cried, keeping his paddle planted in the water.
“I don’t see any blood,” Harry answered, numb.
Bea started coughing.
“There you go. Atta girl.” Finn quivered visibly as he steered them through the final, smaller rapids of the Scrambler.
Harry bent over Bea to assess her injuries. She just lay there for a long, tense moment. On his knees now, he hovered over her, pleading inside.
As he wrapped his hand around her limp, ice-cold wrist, Harry gave Jack and Finn a quick thumbs-up, detecting her throbbing pulse.
When her honey-brown eyes finally flicked open, Harry melted with relief.
At last, she managed to rasp, “That almost sucked.”
Jack and Finn exchanged a glance and let out shaky laughs, but Harry didn’t get it, still beside himself over her safety.
The mountains leveled out, and as the Onatah River settled into a long, gentle ripple, he assisted her up to a sitting position. He helped her unlatch her helmet, his own fingers still shaking. She spat water out and rested her head back on the raft’s rubbery sidewall.
When she’d finally seemed to gain equilibrium, Jack kept Harry in the loop, and explained that the smart-alecky phrase Bea had croaked out was a favorite slogan amongst the adventurous gang of friends.
“That almost sucked” was used any time one of them flew over the handles of a mountain bike and face-planted into a pile of logs, tumbled sideways down a run of black diamond moguls, or lost footing on the side of a cliff they were trying to scale.
“You’re a bunch of crazy people,” Harry mumbled, hearing this.
“Sometimes,” said Jack.
“Damn, girl,” Finn said, shaking his head at her.
Jack dragged a hand over his short-cropped hair. “That’s our Honey-Bea.”
Harry simply managed to exhale.
He couldn’t process how the first words out of this woman’s mouth after a brush with death could be a joke. “You sure you’re okay?” he asked her softly.<
br />
When she nodded with sincerity, wide-eyed, he saw something flash across her face that caught him right in the heart. Was it gratitude? Humility? But those pretty eyes were just barely fighting back tears, and when he noticed that, something in him crumbled.
The moment hung on the air between them as he held her gaze. And all in a blinding flash, Harry saw with stark clarity how screwed up his priorities had become. How empty his high-powered, hard-driving life actually was.
For what?
Seeing this beautiful, passionate, vibrant young woman nearly die in front of him had woken him up like a bucket of water in the face when he hadn’t even realized he’d been sleeping. What the hell was the point? Somehow he dropped his gaze from hers, shaken by the baffling revelation.
For once, the answer man had no ready solutions on the tip of his tongue. He recalled his malfunctioning GPS that had led him right to her, and it hit him that he was still kind of lost.
Finn let them drift through the last mellow ripple and steered the raft into a safe eddy. “We’ll take out here,” he told them in a dark tone as he gathered up their gear, tossed it into a pile on the river’s edge.
Harry sensed Finn beating himself up, taking the blame for the messy ending to their run. There was no trace of his usual smile, but Harry didn’t see how a downed tree could be his fault.
Panting, running, Carlos, the agile, black-haired scout, caught up with Finn on the riverbank, and the two took a walk into the woods to discuss what the hell just happened.
Jack patted Bea on the back gently. “Time for lunch, kid. You good to go?”
Bea nodded and finally made it up onto her knees. “Sir, yes, sir,” she told the ex-military man in another halfhearted attempt at humor.
“Well…” Jack paused. “Guess you got another story to tell the girls.” He gave Harry a piercing stare for a moment. “We owe you one,” he said. “You saved her life.”
Harry didn’t know what to say to that, glib as he usually was. Jack didn’t seem to care that it was only partly true. Harry had pulled her out of the water, but he never would’ve gotten close enough to reach her if it weren’t for Finn’s steering through the chaos and the marine powering them forward.
“Teamwork,” Harry finally managed.
Jack clapped him on the back with what felt like a huge and permanent stamp of approval. Then he climbed out onto the shore.
Harry turned to Bea and offered his hand to steady her. Somehow he was surprised when she actually accepted, stubborn as she was, but she gave him a soulful stare and clasped onto his hand. He could feel her shaking as he helped her up and out of the boat without a word; his heart clenched as she clung to him.
From that moment forward, everything inside him wanted only to protect her. It was overwhelming, instinctual.
And he didn’t care what it cost him.
# # #
You saved me, Bea thought, disoriented by him, by the threat of tears she was keeping back, and more shaken up than she cared to let on.
That almost sucked, indeed. She was well aware that she could’ve ended up as a shish-kebab back there, impaled on one of the strainer’s wicked spikes.
Drowning would’ve been pleasant compared to that mode of death, but she did her best to hide how much it had freaked her out. She didn’t want the guys to baby her.
Harry didn’t seem fooled at all. He scanned and assessed her, still bristling with fierce protectiveness. He looked angry and distraught over what had nearly happened to her, but his intense solicitude both comforted and confused her. For once in her life, she let herself lean on someone else without questioning.
Slopping ankle-deep through sandy water, they finally made it to dry land, Bea still clasping Harry’s hand.
She didn’t want to let go of it.
It was a funny thing. She spent so much time trying to coax her fragile sprouts and seedlings, chicks and lambs and calves and even barn kittens to live and grow, she strove to protect them from everything that could harm them—blights, pests, predators, unexpected turns in the weather—that the sudden reminder of her own mortality took her aback.
Gasping for air and headed into the strainer’s gnarled clutches, the strangest thought had raced through her mind: she had thought of her compost pile, of all things, and the rain barrels she’d set up around the farm.
An organic grower understood the value of every natural resource, and hated to waste anything. And yet, with death staring her in the face, Bea had realized she had been wasting the most precious thing anybody had.
Time.
The chance to find someone she could love and share her life with. She knew the reason she’d avoided it, as well. Because failing at that would be even worse than failing in her work. She was afraid to start because then she couldn’t be disappointed. Her heart sank, but it was time to face the truth.
All those hours she put in… Was any sort of labor, even working toward a dream, really worth the price of ending up alone?
Grandma Jean had often teased her about finding a husband, starting a family. Though she usually fled from those conversations, Bea knew her wise old grandmother spoke from experience, married, as she’d been for over fifty years, to a man who’d never budged from her side.
Gram’s gentle warning echoed in her ears: “The only thing harder than the farming life, Honey-Bea, is farming alone. Your pap and I have each other. That’s the only way we got through the hard times.”
Bea felt sick with the lack that her brush with death had forced her to confront. She was usually quite good at ignoring it, keeping busy, busy, busy.
But now, along came Harry.
The guy she had feared would ruin her life had just saved it.
Dilemma. Great, now she was even more confused.
“You sure you’re okay?” he asked, turning to her as they reached a grassy spot a few feet up from the riverbank.
Bea nodded. “Yeah.”
He frowned, unconvinced, and watched her with shadows in the depths of his blue eyes, as though nothing else in the world mattered to him in this moment but her. The man looked positively shaken for her sake.
Bea swallowed hard and finally released her death grip on his hand, more aware of herself now. Her throat was a little tight, her knees still a bit wobbly, but she told herself she’d be fine.
Still, it began to settle over her mind that she owed Harry, big time. His valiant rescue of her changed things. How, was the question.
“Hey, guys! Carlos is going to get the van,” Finn hollered over to them from a few yards up the trail that stretched along the Onatah’s bank.
The scout handed Finn his waterproof backpack, then jogged off upriver.
“He’ll bring your lunches and give us a lift back to town,” Finn explained as he marched back to them.
Harry gave Bea one last steadying look and then left her to collect herself.
Rejoining them, Finn reached into the backpack and began doling out towels and fleece jackets for them to wear, water bottles and energy bars to snack on.
Harry and Jack freed their soaked heads from their helmets and unclipped their life vests from around their chests. They immediately tore into their snacks, but as Finn came over to deliver hers, Bea’s stomach was still too queasy to eat.
She declined the offered energy bar, but accepted the towel gratefully.
Finn gazed at her, obviously still upset as she dried off. “Bea, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to say—”
“Hey, it’s not your fault,” she said, laying a hand on his muscled biceps. “We both know whitewater can be unpredictable. Otherwise, what fun would it be?”
“Yeah, but…” He frowned at the river he knew so well.
“It’s okay.”
He looked like a kid who had innocently lost his team the big baseball game. “I’d feel a lot better if you’d punch me in the face.”
“Tempting.” She laughed warmly at her friend. “But not necessary. I’m fine. No harm done.
I’m tough, remember?”
The guys couldn’t disagree. They mumbled assent through their mouthfuls and nodded in unison.
Finn gave her a rueful half-smile. “What is it Reg calls you? A little veggie-growin’ badass?”
“That’s me.”
“Come here.” Finn pulled her in for a hug.
Bea snuggled into his brotherly embrace, then stepped back and smiled at her friend. “Maybe I could take a rain check on that punch in the face, in case I need it someday. Or is it transferable? Because, speaking of Reggie, I bet I could sell it to her for a lot of money.”
“That girl.” Finn laughed, but before he let Bea go, he stared deeply into her eyes for a moment. “So, we’re cool?”
“Of course. I’m fine, Patrick.” She patted his cheek. “Never a dull moment with you.”
He sighed. “Guess not.”
“Thank God for Harry, though,” Bea added sincerely, glancing at him.
“Amen, brother,” Jack chimed in.
“Yeah, because you two were useless out there,” she said, determined to put her pals at ease with a joke.
Finn and Jack huffed and hollered, taking dramatized offense and feigning outrage at her teasing accusation. Finally starting to relax again after the crisis, they all laughed.
“Here,” Finn said, offering her the energy bar again, “for when your appetite returns.”
She took it to mollify him, though she still didn’t think she could eat. Instead, she wrapped herself in a fleece and tried to stop shivering.
As the guys peeled their drenched t-shirts off and began to wring them out, the sight of Harrison Riley shirtless definitely helped to warm her up. She gulped at this illicit glimpse of his powerful arms, his muscled chest still trickling with water, and his chiseled abs, damp and gleaming in the sun.
Good golly, Miss Molly. Now she could see how he had so easily plucked her out of the raging river—but she tore her gaze away before he noticed her gawking. Whew, she thought. Well, that certainly helped cheer a girl up.