Tequila

by Rebecca Sharp

  I had to fly.

  The difference this time was I wanted to come back to him—my safe place to land.

  “Anything yet?”

  I paced the command center that the National Guard had set up for communication with all helos and high-water vehicles earlier in the week.

  To watch Shay climb into that helicopter almost an hour ago had been the most gut-twisting moment of my life.

  Ripped apart by admiration and anger, I stood on the pavement paralyzed while the chopper whipped the already tempestuous air around me.

  They hadn’t been wrong to ground their planes from flying in this storm.

  But she’d been right to insist on taking one.

  It was a violent, vicious thing that the sense of duty that made me love her even more was also the thing that ripped her from my arms where I knew she was safe.

  We’d been so close. So close to coming out of this more than just alive… Together.

  There was no choosing between duty and love.

  She’d never forgive me—never love me—if I forced that decision from her. And I’d never forgive myself.

  “Nothing yet, Logan,” Rodgers said.

  We’d all been staring at their equipment like the images on the screen would change.

  We’d lost all communication with her thirty minutes ago when she’d been approaching the house. But just because that was expected, didn’t mean it made these minutes any fucking easier.

  “Can you call the hospital again?” I asked impatiently.

  I watched the other man’s shoulders dip. “I told them to call me as soon as they knew our helo was landing.”

  I swallowed down my bitter, unjustified and completely emotional response, and crossed my arms before I pulled out all my hair.

  I needed to know she was okay.

  Even if she never comes back, I prayed. Just let me know she’s alive.

  Minutes ticked by in intense silence between all the men.

  I heard a shuffle over my shoulder and when I turned, I saw most, if not all of the emergency crew and volunteers, except for those still out helping, standing behind me.

  It was almost an hour after the shift had ended for most of these people. Men and women Shay and I had worked beside for days on end in horrible conditions and seeing the very worst that nature’s wrath had wrecked on the community.

  They were all still here. Waiting.

  I saw Bruce move through the group to come stand next to me.

  “What’s going on?” I rasped.

  He gave me a half-smile. “Word got out that Shay went to save the little girl.” He nodded to the hall filled with people. “No one wants to leave until they know she’s okay.”

  My jaw tensed and my eyes stung trying to hold back the well of emotion inside me.

  I turned back to the computer screens, barely holding it together.

  And then Rodgers’ SAT phone rang and I could hear every heartbeat in the room pause as he reached for it.

  “This is Rodgers. Do you have our helo?”

  He went silent listening to the report on the other end of the line, nodding in a way that could easily mean good news but my brain interpreted as bad until told otherwise.

  “I see.”

  Another pause.

  “Thanks for the update. We’ll be in touch.”

  He hung up and stood from his command, addressing the group but only looking at me.

  “Ladies and gentlemen. I’ve just been informed that Captain Covington arrived at the hospital with the Brown family a few minutes ago. The girl, Megan, has been taken into the ICU for emergency treatment and isn’t out of the woods yet, however, I was told that without the insulin the Captain brought, she wouldn’t have made it through the night.”

  The volunteers, weary and exhausted, erupted into cries and waves of applause.

  Meanwhile, I cupped my hands over my face and thanked God for keeping her safe—and thanked Bruce for putting his arm around me to keep me steady.

  “I’ve also been told that during the rescue attempt, Captain Covington was injured and is now being taken to the emergency room to be assessed,” he went on and just as quickly as my heart restarted, it stopped again. “That is all the information I have. Let’s keep them both along with all of the other victims of this tragedy in our thoughts.”

  Injured.

  Shay was injured, and I wasn’t there.

  She was injured, but alive.

  My thoughts spiraled as I was swarmed with friends and colleagues, strangers that had become like family through this last week.

  I smiled and hugged them all, accepting their reassurances that she was going to be okay and their admiration for her heroic effort. But the whole time, there was still an emptiness eating inside me.

  “She’s going to be okay?” I pulled Rodgers aside and asked him.

  His sympathetic expression stuck me. “All they could tell me was that she’d been injured but it’s my impression it wasn’t severe.”

  My lips thinned, and I nodded my thanks.

  “Go home. Get some rest, Logan,” he advised. “She’s not coming back tonight.”

  Tonight wasn’t my concern.

  She’d come here for a day and been trapped for a week. She’d never planned on staying in town long-term. She’d never planned on running into me. She’d never planned on any of this.

  Why come back to a place she’d never planned on staying in the first place?

  Shay had nothing to come back to except a destroyed pair of clothes.

  And my whole fucking heart.

  Three days later

  I stared out obliviously onto the horizon ripped jaggedly with mountain peaks.

  Most of the major roadways had finally opened back up yesterday, allowing more relief into the town and setting those without homes free from its confines.

  A sense of normalcy was finally starting to return to Estes Park, and with it, a sense of real life.

  The only thing that hadn’t returned was Shay.

  I’d called the hospital several times over the last few days, asking about her condition. But because I wasn’t family, they couldn’t give me any information. They couldn’t even tell me if she was still a patient or if she’d been discharged.

  And it was the not knowing that wearied me, unfazed by the relief that this disaster had ended.

  And the constant bombardment by the news only made things worse.

  Now that electricity and cable was being restored to the canyon, it seemed everywhere I looked was one report or news story after another about various miraculous rescues, but always culminating in the tale of charismatic Shay Covington—the exceptional, but disgraced fighter pilot turned hero.

  It seemed everywhere I looked, I saw her… but nowhere did I actually see her.

  Two more days, I told myself.

  I had two more days as part of the emergency team before I was free to go to Fort Collins and find her.

  Before I was free to go tell Shay how much I loved her.

  But there were still people unaccounted for. Families fearing the worst of their loved ones. And I had that obligation to fulfill first.

  “Logan!” My head whipped around to see Bruce jogging out from the Ranger Station.

  We’d spent the afternoon in the park assessing the damage not only to the protected environment but also to the campgrounds, trails, and to Trail Ridge Road.

  There was a whole different mess to clean up inside park boundaries, and it would take time.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked immediately, seeing the concern on his face.

  “Someone’s trying to make it over the pass on Trail Ridge Road. We just got the call inside that they’re stranded.”

  “Jesus,” I swore under my breath.

  And then there were those people so frantic to escape Estes Park that they did dumb things, like try to drive over a road that was still closed off due to snow and debris.

  “I can go, but I thought—”
>
  “I’ll do it,” I told him, knowing our shift was over for the day and that, out of the two of us, I was the one who dreaded going home at night anymore.

  Home to silence.

  Home to solitude.

  Home to sadness.

  Home to everything but Shay.

  “You sure—”

  “Go home, Bruce,” I instructed. “My truck has already made it up there once today, I’ll take care of it.”

  “Thanks, man. Report said they were stuck just past Rainbow Curve,” he told me, slapping my shoulder in gratitude and heading back to the station.

  The climb was slow. Trees and debris cluttered the road most of the way up the mountain.

  I began to wonder how a car had even made it up here. The road into the park was still marked as closed, but I guess some people didn’t care about abiding by the rules.

  At least it wasn’t raining.

  Carefully navigating around Rainbow Curve, I passed all the empty parking spots normally overflowing with tourists, and then came up short when I saw a small Hyundai parked underneath a fallen tree.

  Letting out a muffled curse, I pulled to the side and threw my truck in park. Figuring the foolish person had come around the corner too quickly to see the tree, they’d driven their hood straight under the trunk.

  Throwing the door open, I jumped down and jogged to the vehicle, searching for any signs of smoke in the air and scanning for the driver or any passengers inside.

  My steps slowed when I reached the side of the car.

  It hadn’t run into the tree.

  “What the hell?” I mumbled, peering inside the driver’s window and seeing no one and nothing inside.

  Had the driver decided to walk back down to the base?

  I shook my head. Unlikely. Bruce had told whoever it was that they were sending help.

  But as I continued to look around, I grew even more confused.

  The car was just parked very, very close to the fallen tree, but as far as I could tell there wasn’t even a minor scratch of damage on the hood.

  “Hello?” I called out, scanning around the area.

  Pulling out my radio from my pocket, I called back down to Bruce.

  “Bruce, you sure someone is still up here?”

  I waited a second for him to respond, walking closer to the tree, suddenly wondering if the driver had decided to walk to the other side of it, maybe with the idea to head to the Alpine station several miles farther up.

  “Yeah. That’s what they said.” The radio beeped.

  “I don’t see anyone.”

  “Last I heard they were waiting for help.” Another beep.

  I ducked down. It looked like there were a few broken branches hanging from the tree. It could’ve been from the storm or the fall—or it could’ve been from someone squeezing underneath.

  “Did they say what was wrong with the car?”

  I tried to peer through the branches but the tree was too big and the foliage too thick to see.

  “No. Didn’t give details.” Beep.

  I grunted, grabbing the broken branches and ripping them from the tree. “Alright, I’ll keep looking.”

  I crouched and maneuvered underneath the trunk, swearing a sea of expletives when I reached the other side only to still see no sign of the driver of the vehicle.

  “Hello?” I bellowed, hearing only the echo of my own voice.

  Nothing.

  Whoever was here, wasn’t anymore.

  They must have decided to head back to the base.

  It was the only logical assumption, though I hadn’t seen anyone on the drive. Then again, I hadn’t been looking.

  “Shit.”

  I turned back to the tree and jumped when I heard a horn beep.

  Not just any horn.

  My truck horn.

  Cursing, I winced and dodged the rapier branches as I scrambled underneath the tree again.

  If someone was fucking stealing my truck, I was going to—

  Throwing a branch off my shoulder, I rose up and froze in my tracks.

  “Shay?”

  I blinked several times, wondering if the woman wearing jeans and a Warhawks tee, sitting on the hood of my truck was real or finally the figment who’d escaped my imagination. Her hair was down, sunshine waves spilling over her shoulder and resting on the sling that held her left arm in a cast.

  She had to be real.

  My steps fell hesitantly in her direction, watching that warm, confident smirk spread over her face.

  “Know any good bars around here?” she hollered. “I’m in need of a stiff shot of tequila.”

  Sound.

  Sound was the second sense that proved she was real—that she’d come back.

  I cleared my throat. “I might know of one.” I nodded to the abandoned car as I passed by it. “What happened to your car?”

  Her lips thinned as though she were puzzling my question.

  “You know, I can’t really say,” she paused, and I caught the pink that bloomed in her cheeks as I closed the distance between us. “It just stopped,” she went on a little more breathlessly. “Almost like it couldn’t bear the thought of leaving.”

  My heart constricted as I stepped in front of her, shuddering as her thighs brushed against my waist. Planting my hands on either side of her legs, I bent forward and dragged in a breath. She smelled like honey and cinnamon, sweet with a sting.

  “You came back,” I rasped over the thick ball of fear in my throat.

  Her tongue dipped out along her lower lip, enticing me painfully with a single swipe.

  “I came for you.”

  Growling, I crushed my lips to hers.

  Too long.

  Too long without the taste of her.

  Too long wondering if I’d ever see her again.

  Her free arm reached up around my neck, curling against my scalp and pulling my mouth down harder on hers while my hands scooped around her waist and pulled her body flush to mine, careful not to jostle the hard bar of her cast between us.

  I sank my tongue into the warm, welcoming depths of her mouth, feeling for the first time in days as though I could breathe again.

  Shay moaned, her tongue skating along the sides of mine, stroking me, encouraging me to take more from her—to take what I needed.

  A strained groan ripped from my chest as I forced myself to pull back and find her gaze.

  My arms slid around her like a man-made cage, afraid she might vanish if I didn’t hold her tight enough.

  “Fuck, I missed you.”

  Her pleasure-drunk smile made my cock swell.

  “I missed you, too.”

  I kissed her hard again, our breaths turning into heavy rushes of warm air clouding the space between us.

  “What happened? What are you doing here?”

  Her eyes flicked down to her injured arm. “I broke some things rescuing the girl. She started to slip in the mud trying to get to the helicopter because there wasn’t really a good place to land, and then when I reached for her, she went down and yanked on my arm and took it in a way the bone doesn’t bend,” she said with a slight shrug like a broken bone was just a flesh wound. “So, now I’ve got this thing for a few weeks, but it was a clean break, so no surgery required. I’ll be clear to fly again once everything is healed.”

  “That’s good…” I nodded even as the first sting of pain shot up my spine.

  “Logan.” Her hand at my neck slid down to rest on my chest, over my heart. “I love you. I’m here because I love you.”

  My jaw ticked. “I thought you weren’t coming back.” I groaned and shuddered. “Fuck, I thought you weren’t coming back, and I love you so fucking much.”

  Her head shook frantically. “I was stuck at the hospital and then dealing with all the evac stuff. Then I was calling my CO to let him know what happened.” She sighed. “There was just a lot. I wanted to come back yesterday, but because of the road damage they’re only letting so many cars go throug
h… and after what happened to my last rental car…”

  I laughed. “I’m surprised they gave you another one.”

  “Well…” she winced. “I had to pull some strings.”

  I pushed her hair back from her face and kissed her again. God, she was just like tequila—one taste was never enough.

  “I should’ve told you I loved you before you got on the helo,” I confessed.

  “You didn’t have to,” she whispered back. “I already knew.”

  My grip tightened. “Then you should know I’m not letting you go this time.”

  “Oh yeah?” she teased.

  I hummed. “I’m grounding you.”

  She shuddered against me.

  “I think I’m okay with that.”

  My lips sank back down onto hers, sealing in all the promises I’d eventually find the time to say, but for right now, all I wanted was to hold her and never let her go.

  This flood. Disaster. Loss.

  They make you stronger. But they also leave you with a bone-deep weight of appreciation for everything that you have and how easily it can be taken from you. They leave you with a soul-soothing calm that lets you filter out the noise of the world and focus in on the things that truly matter.

  Like love.

  And a life with her.

  “Let’s get back down this mountain so I can take you home,” I growled, forcing myself back and lifting her off my hood and onto the ground.

  I went to turn and walk her to her rental when her hand on my arm stopped me.

  “Logan.”

  I turned to face her. Damn, she looked so beautiful like this.

  Just kissed.

  At twilight.

  Underneath the sun and stars.

  The fact she was wearing clothes that actually belonged to and fit her was also a change—one that my body was going to have to become accustomed to.

  “What’s wrong?” My brow creased.

  Her eyes flicked down my body like the hottest blowtorch leaving a dark trail of desire in its wake.

  “Don’t even pretend like you don’t have a bag full of blankets back there, Mountain Man,” she drawled with a sultry tone, nodding to my truck. “I want eleven-thousand feet tonight. After everything we’ve been through, I want to watch the sunrise with you to start what I never should’ve left six years ago.” Her small smile hit me right in the gut. “I’m making a different decision this time around; I’m choosing to land.”