I wedged the spreader into the crack between the door and the frame while rain pelted my face. The bridge supports groaned again and my eyes flew to Skylar. My heart raced and an overwhelming sense of urgency filled me.

The compressor roared behind me. I held the spreader while it opened, loosening the driver’s side door from the bent metal frame of the car. Christian pulled on the door, helping free it.

“Can you get your legs out?” he asked Caroline.

She nodded. “Yes.”

A few more seconds and the door broke free. Christian and I lifted it off and set it next to the car. The bridge groaned again, and this time I felt it shudder. I glanced at Levi and he nodded. He’d felt it too.

Fuck.

I took Caroline’s hands and helped her out of the vehicle. Levi took over and I went back for Skylar.

She’d already climbed across to the driver’s side. I helped her out of the car and without a word, picked her up, one arm around her back, the other supporting her legs.

“I can walk.”

I didn’t reply. I knew she could walk, but I also knew I was going to lose my mind if I didn’t get her off this fucking bridge. Now.

Carrying her in my arms, I raced to the bridge entrance. The engine was on the opposite side, but we’d get someone over here to pick us up. There was no way I was hauling my ass back over that bridge, especially not with Skylar.

Levi was on his radio updating the crew and Christian rushed off the bridge just behind me. I set Skylar down next to her mom, and Caroline threw her arms around her.

“Are you okay?” I asked, feeling strangely frantic. “Are you injured?”

“No,” Skylar said, her voice breathless. “I don’t think so.”

A huge gust of wind roared through the trees, followed by an ear-splitting crunch. The bridge lurched to one side as the broken supports failed. Caroline’s car slid sideways down the bridge deck, getting tangled in the huge tree’s branches.

Like an inevitable chain reaction, more supports failed and the bridge deck cracked. With a crash, the end broke free and crumbled into the churning water below. Caroline’s car plunged into the river with the tree practically on top of it.

Skylar launched herself into my arms, one hand covering her mouth. “Oh my god. Oh my god, we were just… We could have been in there.”

Wrapping my arms around her, I held her tight against me.

Holy fuck. If we hadn’t gotten there in time…

I couldn’t even think it.

Chief pulled up out of nowhere, skidding to a stop, and flew out of his truck. His eyes were wild as he ran to his daughter and his ex-wife.

Reluctantly, I let go of Skylar so her dad could hug her. I felt dazed, like I couldn’t focus. My usual calmness under pressure seemed to have shattered, and now I couldn’t remember what I was supposed to be doing. All I could see was the image of Caroline’s car plunging into the freezing river.

If we’d gotten here minutes later, they would have been in there. They would have gone under.

Somehow we wrapped things up at the bridge and our crew was sent back to the station. I climbed out of the engine, not quite sure how I’d gotten here. I knew Chief had taken Caroline and Skylar with him after the paramedics had cleared them. And I knew that emergency crews had already blocked off the broken bridge from both sides. As for the rest, it was mostly a blur.

I went through the motions of taking off my gear and getting it ready for the next call. It was automatic, drilled into me so deeply that I didn’t have to think about what I was doing.

I didn’t know what the fuck was wrong with me. I’d been on scarier calls than that. Once I’d literally walked into a burning building minutes away from collapse to get someone out. I’d pulled people out of wrecked cars, stopped a guy from bleeding out, performed CPR. Yeah, today had been a close call, but that was part of the job. It had never bothered me before. I’d always come back feeling energized. Like I’d triumphed. I’d won.

Now, I had no idea what I was feeling. But it wasn’t triumph. It was something else. Something that made my chest feel like I had a hundred-pound weight sitting on top of it. Like my lungs were filled with icy cold river water and I was about to drown.

Somehow I made it through the rest of the day. I held it together and did my job. I was on duty until morning, but instead of hanging out with the guys and playing cards, I hit the bunks early.

My head was still swimming, my heart beating too hard.

What if I’d lost her today?

That thought was so awful, so soul-crushing, I almost couldn’t think it.

But I did, and then I started thinking about all the ways I could lose her. All the terrible things that could happen. She could get in another accident, or get sick, and there’d be nothing I could do.

I tossed and turned, trying to go to sleep. Trying to get this shit out of my head. But I couldn’t.

It wasn’t just the thought of Skylar dying that had my palms sweating and my shoulders clenched tight. There were other ways to lose someone.

Skylar wasn’t my girlfriend. We didn’t have a real commitment to each other. When whatever we were doing ran its course, she’d move on. She’d date someone else—someone who’d probably marry her. Because who wouldn’t? Her douchebag ex aside, what guy with a brain would date Skylar and not lock it down as soon as they could? She was smart and beautiful and talented and fun. She was quirky and shy and adorable. Sexy and so fucking incredible.

Wait.

I sat up in bed, almost hitting my forehead on the bunk above me.

Sparrow. Gram had called her Sparrow.

She knew.

Holy fuck, Gram knew before I did. But of course she did, Gram knew everything. That should have tipped me off, but like an idiot, I’d totally missed it.

Everything made sense now. And I knew exactly what I had to do.

36

Skylar

The morning after the bridge, I woke up sore. I didn’t have any major injuries, but my body felt the effects of almost being crushed by a tree and nearly drowning in a river. My back ached and my neck was painfully tight.

Dad did his best to keep me in bed all morning, bringing me coffee and breakfast, reading material, and my laptop. Anything to encourage me to lie down and rest. The accident had shaken him pretty badly.

It had shaken me too. But surprisingly, it hadn’t sent me into a tailspin of uncontrolled anxiety. I was sore and tired, but mentally calm. I even wrote the ending to a chapter because the perfect idea hit me.

I was about to get up and go downstairs—I didn’t really need to stay in bed all day—when Ginny called.

“Hey, Gin.”

“Were you really trapped in your mom’s car, and plunged into the river, and Gavin had to dive in and break the windshield with a rock to get you out before you drowned? Because when you texted me last night, you did not tell me any of those details.”

“What? No. That’s not what happened at all.”

She let out a relieved sigh. “Oh my god. Someone said the bridge broke right as you were driving over it and your mom’s car submerged in the river with you in it.”

“Haven’t you figured out that you can’t listen to people in this town? It hasn’t even been a day and they’re already exaggerating. No, I told you, a tree fell on the bridge and we hit it, or it hit us, I’m not entirely sure. We were trapped in Mom’s car, but the firefighters got us out. We were safely on land when the bridge collapsed. By the way, did you know that one out of every nine bridges in the US is structurally deficient?”