I touched his arm in gratitude, thankful he hadn’t engaged my butthead big brother in an argument. In response, he reached out and caught hold of my knee. With his eyes closed, he began to rub my calf, from knee to ankle and back again. That seemed to enrage Noel even more though. His jaw hardened and eyes narrowed as he focused on nothing but the movement of Oren’s hand, his hand which wasn’t even going above my knee.
Needing a break from the tension, I grabbed Oren’s fingers, stopping him. “Let’s go to the waterfall.”
His lashes flickered open and he immediately sat upright. “Okay.” A warmth spread over me, reminding me what we’d done the last time we’d been there. But as we went to stand, Noel straightened in surprise.
“Where do you think you two are going?”
I sent him a scowl. “We’re going for a walk.”
Noel motioned with his hand. “Colton, why don’t you tag along with them?”
I set my fists on my hips. “Really?”
Noel glanced at me innocently. “What?”
“We don’t need a damn chaperone to keep us from going off somewhere to get kinky. You do realize I live with him now, right? We’re already—”
Oren slapped his hand over my mouth. “Come on, kid,” he called to Colton. “Want to see a waterfall?”
“Yeah!” Colton jumped up, excited.
“Be careful,” Noel cautioned immediately.
Oren sent him a withering glance. “Don’t worry, big brother. You’ll get both your siblings back, safe and sound.”
Leaving, him, and Aspen, and Brandt behind, the three of us strolled up the abandoned trail toward the waterfall. As Colton skipped ahead, I grasped Oren’s hand. “I am so sorry.”
He glanced over, his eyebrows lifted in surprise. “For what? You didn’t do anything wrong.”
I sighed and rested my cheek on his shoulder. “I should’ve known better than to expect you two to just…get along.”
Oren swept my hair out of my eyes. “If we’re ever going to get along again, we’re going to have to suffer through a couple of encounters like these first.” Then he kissed my temple. “Might as well get them out of the way now.”
I still hated watching them not get along because of me, though. “But—”
“Hey, don’t get too close to the edge!” Oren yelled above me.
I turned to find Colton ahead of us. He’d already reached the banks of the waterfall, and just as he glanced back at us, the ground under him gave way.
One second, he was there, grinning and waving, the next he was being sucked down into the earth. It happened so fast I could barely draw in a breath between what my eyes saw and what my brain realized had just happened.
Then I screamed. “Colton!” I sprang forward, but Oren was faster.
He reached the edge first and held up a hand, warding me away. “Stay back. This bastard is unsteady as fuck.”
I skidded to a halt, not wanting to add any more problems. But feeling helpless, I covered my mouth with both hands as tears filled my eyes. The roar of the waterfall was so loud Oren had to yell when he glanced back at me. “It’s okay. He’s right here. He didn’t fall in. He’s caught hold of some old tree root and is hanging on.”
“Oh thank God.” I pressed my hands to my heart, beyond relieved.
A light mist from the nearby water coated my arms and legs. I shivered and hugged myself, wishing I could do something as Oren inched closer to the edge, trying to keep one foot back on more solid ground.
He got down on his knees and stretched one arm over the side, where I hoped he was reaching for my little brother. The ground about five feet away crumbled and plummeted into the water. I gasped when I saw big clumps tumble downstream only a second later. The way it was battered around like a pinball made me pray even more fervently that Colton didn’t soon join it.
“Caroline,” Oren called, glancing back at me.
I could tell immediately from his gaze that something was seriously wrong.
“What?” I demanded. “Is he okay?”
Oren nodded, but he still looked…sick? Scared? Resigned? “I need…I need you to be prepared to catch him as soon I pull him up. Okay?”
“Okay.” I nodded, not understanding what that meant until Oren moved. With a strained grunt, he gritted his teeth and jerked his arm up. As Colton simultaneously came flying up over the ledge at me, the ground under Oren gave way.
Colton banged into me, the force of his impact propelling me backward and onto my butt. I grabbed hold of him and held on tight, crab crawling backward away from the bank. Colton burrowed into me until we were a safe distance away. That’s when I pushed him aside and searched frantically for Oren…to find him nowhere.
“Oh my God. Oh my God. Go!” I grabbed Colton, jerked him to his feet, and then shoved him in the direction of our picnic. “Get Noel. Quick. Oren’s in trouble.”
As soon as he nodded and took off, I bit my knuckles and crept toward the ledge.
“Oren?” I screamed.
He’d known this was going to happen when he’d pulled Colton up. He’d known he’d get sucked down. Fearing I wouldn’t find him at all, I sobbed when I saw him, only to realized he’d been left in the same predicament Colton had been in, hanging from a root sticking out the side of the steep embankment with the rushing water of the rocky river a good thirty feet below him.
When he looked up and saw me, his eyes flared with panic. “No. Get back.”
But the root he was clinging to couldn’t support his weight as well it had been able to hold Colton’s. It started to slide down the embankment, and as he scrambled to hold on, I lurched forward on my stomach so most of my body was still on solid ground—and then I grabbed for him.
He fumbled for my hand, but when he finally got a good hold, I wasn’t prepared for how heavy he’d be, and I started skidding forward on my belly, dragged closer to the edge. Dirt and grass and rocks gouged into my belly and arms.
“You’re sliding,” he yelled. “No. Let go!”
But no way in hell was I letting go of him. I kicked off my sandals and dug my bare toes into the earth, digging them in and slowing my forward progress, but Oren was still so heavy and my arms screamed in agony.
In the distance, I heard Noel shouting my name. He was coming, running our way. Help was almost there. “Just a few more...” I couldn’t finish the sentence, too strained and out of breath to finish.
Oren gritted his teeth and tried to climb his way up, but each time his shoes dug into the soil, it crumbled away under him.
His face was red with strain, his eyes crazy with panic. Through clenched teeth, he shouted “You’re not falling in with me.”
I just smiled at him, even though tears of exhaustion and fear filled my eyes. “You jump, I jump, right, Jack?”
Grief filled his face. I thought he was going to cry, but he just shook his head, and an emotion that let me know just how he felt about me filled his face.
“God, I love you,” he said. Then he let go of my hand.
Even though I didn’t fall into the water, my stomach plummeted into my knees, and it felt as if everything in my entire world sank and drowned.
“No!” I lunged after Oren, trying to dive into the rushing river with him. But an arm wrapped around my waist and jerked me back to the safe part of the bank. I fought it, struggling to get back to Oren.
I’d seen him hit the white, frothy water and watched it swallow him whole. I didn’t get to see him resurface; I had to get back to the edge and see if he was okay, if he’d gotten his head back above water, if he could raise his hand, give me a thumbs-up.
But no, the damn arm around my waist was keeping me from my Oren. So I fought it. Noel’s voice called my name into my ear as he fought to keep me from plunging forward, but I kept struggling against him. Finally, I broke free enough to stand and peer back into the water, but Oren still hadn’t come up, so I looked farther downstream, and then a little farther down. A scream of denial ripped
from my lungs when I spotted him. What looked like a log from its immobility, but was clearly human-shaped swished through the currents, momentarily sucked under and then reappearing at the surface again, right before it slammed into a boulder and then was pulled along until I couldn’t see him anymore.
“Oh my God. Oh my God.”
My limbs went numb as my head went dizzy. I started to hyperventilate.
I wanted to race after him on my rubbery numb legs, but Noel caught my arm. “We can’t reach him from here.” He already had his phone pressed to his ear. As he spoke to a 911 operator in a calm, level voice, explaining what had happened, I burrowed into my big brother and hugged him hard. My head swam and my body shook. I couldn’t believe this was happening.
He hugged me back and kissed my hair. “It’s going to be okay,” he murmured into my hair, but the shock told me this could in no way be okay.
Noel continued to console me. I might’ve checked out for a while. All I knew was that Noel was there, always right there, holding on to me and staying strong. I clung to him, gripping his shirt and desperately needing his clarity, because I had none.
At one point, I remember Aspen, and Brandt, and Colton, so we must’ve returned to the picnic, or maybe they’d come to the banks of the water. Colton sobbed hysterically all over Aspen, and Brandt looked as if he’d peed his pants. I just wanted to get back to the river and look for Oren. We had to find Oren.
I grew disoriented. Though everyone seemed to rush around me, everything moved way too slow for my taste. I must’ve tried to return to the waterfall, the last place I’d seen Oren—where he’d looked into my eyes and told me he loved me before letting go of my hand to save me. And I must’ve tried more than once, because Noel finally grasped my shoulders and gave me a hard shake as he yelled my name into my face.
“We can’t go back yet. We need help finding him.”
That’s when I finally heard the distant wail of sirens. It still took the freaking police, ambulance, and rescue workers way too long to arrive. And then it took an extra inordinate amount of time to organize everyone and set them loose on their tasks.
Noel and I ascended on the first police cruiser that pulled into the park. We confused the hell out of the poor guy, both talking and trying to lead him to the place where Oren had fallen in. Finally, he stopped in his tracks, lifted his hands and said, “Now stop. One at a time. First of all, what’s the name of the victim?”
The word victim rattled through me. Oren had become a victim. It didn’t even seem possible.
“Oren Tenning,” Noel answered, a split second before I blurted, “My husband.”
Noel glanced at me, but said nothing. The officer got onto his radio and began to relay information as we fed it to him. “Six foot two. White male. Twenty-two years old. He fell in at the waterfall at Rainly. Embankment collapsed. Search and rescue requested immediately.”
Hearing it relayed in that calm, monotone voice rattled me more than anything. It made Oren sound like a statistic, like a generic case number in a long list of other “victims” who’d fallen into a rushing river, as if he wasn’t going to get any special treatment at all, as if no one cared that my entire world had just turned upside down, and the love of my life was in immediate fatal trouble.
When we reached the spot where I’d last seen him, the cop gazed into the water below with a grimace. “The way this current’s moving, he could’ve already been dragged a mile downstream. Damn.” He murmured the last part under his breath, so I don’t think we were meant to hear it, but the word echoed through my head.
Damn.
Damn.
Damn.
As if Oren was already a lost cause.
I flipped out all over again, and Noel had to once again pull me to him and deal with my hysteria.
They found Oren half an hour later. He actually hadn’t gone too far downstream. Maybe about a hundred yards before he became tangled in a piece of driftwood that had gotten lodged between two boulders, which in essence trapped Oren in one spot and somehow miraculously kept his head above water, while the current beat over the rest of his body.
It took them another forty-five minutes to get someone down to him and call up to us that Oren was still alive but unconscious, and then another hour and a half after that to get him out of the water and onto dry land.
I dashed to him, but about half a dozen uniforms blocked my path and held me back, telling me the paramedics needed to tend to him...and that I wouldn’t want to see him like this, anyway.
“Don’t want to see him like what?” I demanded. Just how bad off was he? Was he really alive? Why wouldn’t they even let me see him?
And so...I lost it. Yeah, again.
Noel scooped me up and carried me to Oren’s truck, where he drove me to the hospital. We damn near trailed the ambulance there, but I still didn’t get a peek at Oren once we made it and he was being wheeled inside. Too many freaking medical personnel crowded around him. That didn’t calm my worries at all.
Once we were settled into a waiting room, where I paced and Noel talked quietly on his phone, I had a five-minute lull to panic and worry before a nurse came in with a clipboard and asked me, “Mrs. Tenning?”
That was the first time I’d ever been addressed as such. It made tears sprout in my eyes. “Yes?” I sobbed, wiping at my cheeks with both hands.
She sent me a sympathetic smile and held out the clipboard along with a pen. “Do you think you could fill out this information for your husband?”
“I’ll try.” I took the forms with shaking hands and sank into the nearest chair. At first, the words blurred in front of me. But after a few deep breaths, I forced my brain to calm. Name, address, and birthday were easy to fill out without any hiccups. By the time Noel sat beside me to either help out or just continue being the supportive big brother, I was digging out my wallet to fetch my new insurance card, under my husband’s name, and see if I could find anything with his social security number on it.
Noel caught sight of my new driver’s license and gasped before he jerked it close for a detailed inspection. “Holy shit. This...You’re... I thought you were just...” He shook his head and gaped at me. “You weren’t lying just to get close to him, were you? This is...” He jabbed his finger at my license. “This is really real?”
I had no patience or stomach for a lecture from my brother, so I grabbed my license back and jammed it into my wallet. Then I gave the short bark of an answer. “Yeah, it’s real.”
He continued to stare at me with wide eyes as I carefully entered Oren’s insurance information. When I finished filling out the form to the best of my ability, I drew out a breath and finally turned to Noel. “We got married in Lake Tahoe.”
“Lake Tahoe?” His mouth fell open. “He took you to Lake Tahoe with him?”
“We didn’t want to tell you—no, I didn’t want to tell you because you seemed to be having a hard enough time dealing with the fact I was even seeing him. The wedding wasn’t planned...or even remembered until he found the marriage license in our luggage after we got home.”
Noel closed his eyes and groaned. “Oh God. You got drunk and went to one of those insta-wedding chapel things?”
I lifted my chin proudly and narrowed my eyes. “And I don’t regret it at all.” Standing, I cleared my throat. “Excuse me. I need to return this to the nurse.”
When I returned, Noel was resting his elbows on his spread knees and cradling his face in his hands. He watched me from dark, troubled eyes as I sat in a chair across the room but facing him.
He didn’t say anything. We stared at each other for about thirty seconds. I’m sure my gaze was as defensive as his was disappointed.
His phone rang; he popped to his feet to answer it.
“Hey, baby. No. No word yet.” He walked from the waiting room and into the hall so I couldn’t listen in on any more of his conversation. But with him gone, and no reason for me to keep playing the obstinate little sister, my worries ret
urned.
Just how badly had Oren been hurt? Why wasn’t anyone telling us what was going on? Was he still alive or not?
Right about the point where the panic mounted and I didn’t think I could contain myself a second longer, Noel returned. He sat beside me without a word and wrapped me in his arms. I turned to him and buried my face in his neck to weep.
“I should be pissed at you,” I sobbed as I clung to him harder. “The way you’ve been treating Oren lately, the asshole thing you did at the bar to trap him, the fact that you stopped going to the coffee shop on Saturday mornings and he still does, waiting for you to show. I should hate you right now.”
Noel sucked in a breath. “He still goes to the coffee shop?”
I nodded. “Every fucking Saturday.”
“Shit.” He closed his eyes and shuddered out a breath. “I’ve been a stupid, stubborn, blind ass. I know that. I knew it while I was doing and saying all the shit I did, but I just couldn’t stop myself. He made me so mad. I didn’t think he’d ever go behind my back like that. I...it hurt.”
“That’s no excuse for—”
He lifted his hand and shook his head. “I know. I...damn it, Caroline. I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. I made myself focus on everything bad he’d ever done, and I just let it fester.”
“I love him,” I said simply. “And he loves me. He’s good to me, too. No one’s ever been as good to me as he is.”
Noel kissed my forehead. “I see that...now.” Now that it could be too late, he didn’t add, but seemed to relay with his tortured gaze.
Closing my eyes, I turned my head to the side. “You haven’t said anything about our marriage.” I don’t know why I pushed that subject. Maybe because it kept me focused on something besides my fear.
Noel blew out a long breath. “That’s because I don’t know what to say. You’re just so young, but...I’m not scared. Not for you. Because I...honestly, there’s no one else I would trust with you more than him. I lost sight of why he was my friend for a while. But he is, and there’s a damn good reason for it. He’s always had my back, and now I know he has yours, which is so much more precious to me than him having mine.” Taking my hands, he looked deep into my eyes, begging. “Do you think you can ever forgive me?”