Page 69 of Wild About You
“Thank you so much!” I call as I walk backward toward the checkpoint and my two new best friends continue in the other direction, laughing and waving over their shoulders. It’s only the twelfth time I’ve said those words to them. “I’ll never forget you! Love you!”
Finn, a few feet ahead of me as he’s begun our final push to the finish with significant speed, lets out a funny combination of a laugh and a cough. “Wow,” he says, clearing his throat while I return to facing forward and speed-hike up to his side. “Should I have given you three some space?”
I sigh dreamily through my quickening breaths. “No, no. If it’s meant to be, we’ll find our way back to each other. And I need you around for the money we’re about to win!”
And it’s that single sentence that curses us. It must be, because not even half a second later, mid-laugh, Finn goes pitching forward, landing on all fours with a ground-shaking thud. I gasp as he rolls to his side, reaching toward his left foot then seeming to think better of it.
“Finn!” I drop to my knees beside him, gut twisting at the look of pain on his face. “Are you okay? What happened?”
“I”—he sucks in a sharp breath as he tries to bend his foot forward—“tripped on something. Think I hurt my ankle.”
I look back as our crew rushes closer. The producer starts asking him about pain levels from one to ten and if she needs to call medical backup. I’m frantic, replaying the last couple minutes in my head like I can roll them back and get a redo.
“I jinxed us!” I cry when the producer steps away to make a call on her sat phone. “The words ‘about to win’ had no business crossing my lips until we got to the checkpoint!”
He grimaces. “No, it’s obviously my fault. I should have watched where I was walking.”
“Well, I was distracting you by talking,” I argue.
“Uh, yeah, because I was talking too? We always are?”
How dare he insist on absolving both of us of guilt in this freak incident? If we’re about to lose the whole competition over this, I want something other than bad luck to blame.
“So is this it?” I say meekly. The producer has stepped away with her satellite phone to her ear, presumably to call for that elusive medical backup team.
But to my surprise, Finn sits up. “No way.”
“What?” I squeak. “How?”
Very carefully, almost in slow motion, he starts to stand. I make a bunch of incoherent noises of half-hearted protest, even as hope blooms inside me. Then he goes to put weight on his injured ankle and almost falls over, letting out a pained yelp.
Hope crashes to the ground, bursting into flames on impact.
“Nope, sit your sweet ass back down,” I command, even as it hurts like a sprained ankle.
“No,” he says, sharper than he’s been with me all day. Than ever, maybe. Softening his voice, he takes my chin to make me meet his serious gaze. “We’re ahead of Zeke and Alli, got rid of all our s’mores. We can’t give up, not when we’ve made it this far. All we’ve gotta do is hoof it to the finish line.”
“Yeah, with one busted hoof!” I retort.
Finn puts both hands on my shoulders, melting my insides with his molten chocolate stare. “What did Renée do when Wilder was losing consciousness from a snake bite, and the bad guys were closing in?”
My eyes widen. “What did who and who do when what?”
“Hot on Her Trail!” He snaps his fingers in front of my face and realization dawns. I’ve created a monster. “Keep up. Desperate to outrun their evil pursuers and get him to a doctor because, you know, snake bite, she found her inner strength to haul his mostly incapacitated body in a firefighter’s carry. Just in time, they made it to the safe house that happened to belong to a hot doctor–slash–Navy SEAL, who administered antivenin and kept them hidden from the bad guys until Wilder regained consciousness and could fight alongside him. They really set up Doctor SEAL as a future romantic hero, by the way—is the next book in the series about him?” Before I can answer, or really catch up to these ramblings, Finn shakes his head. “Not important right now. What is is that we don’t give up. Find that inner strength like Renée. Or like the you who was hauling logs twice your body weight like it was nothing. Help me hobble my way to the end of this thing.” He shrugs. “You never know when a surprise safe house is gonna appear.”
I can only look at him slack-jawed for a moment. But when he gives my shoulders a gentle shake and widens his pleading eyes, I feel his urgency and it moves me to action. “Okay, sexy forest ranger. Give me your pack.”
It’s the slowest race to a finish line Wild Adventures has ever seen. Or that any race has ever seen, really, except perhaps for that fabled tortoise-and-hare situation where slow and steady won. We are highly unsteady. With two packs strapped to my shoulders and hips like the most abstract, unwieldy butterfly costume ever made, I’m already top-heavy. Add my giant partner using me as his crutch, sending me swaying with every hop-step he takes, we’re a barely walking threat to public safety.
“At least this’ll be funny to watch back,” I offer, trying to lift my own spirits. I won’t let the full weight of this failure, this crushing loss, sink in until it’s official. But probably best to start easing into the impending letdown.
Finn squeezes my shoulders. “I’m telling you. The snake bite hasn’t killed me yet. Hot Dr. Forrester could be just around the corner.”
I laugh because the only other thing to do is cry, and I don’t want Finn to feel bad.
I feel fate catching up with us—or Zeke and Enemi, at the very least. I try to keep focusing on the good that’s come from this journey as we hop-step along. For example, Finn discovering his love of romance novels. I’ll have so much to share with him as he enters this exciting new chapter in his reading life.
It’s as I’ve started mentally crafting him a reading list that a few things happen at once. First, I hear them. Voices behind us, and not from the film crew.