Page 126 of Burning for You
Levi
“You can’t get to her from here!” Jesse insists. I don’t know what the hell happened to him in that library. He looks okay, but not okay. And if Carolyn dies, I won’t forgive him. Ever!
Jesse clutches me and takes my jacket off. “She’ll need this when she gets to dry land,” he says, clipping my jacket in his elbow. He hauls me about sixty or eighty yards downstream—ahead of Carolyn, who seems to be swirling around the same spot, not far from where she fell in.
My brother stands in front of the clearing, saying, “She needs you in the water.”
I look at him, reading his intention. Nobody knows this river better than Jesse Holt.
“Jump, Levi!”
As Jesse swings me around to face the river, I catch the look of a loving brother with urgency and determination. He’s right—there was no way I could get to Carolyn from that steep, unstable drop without hurting myself or her. With not much supporting her, I couldn’t have pulled her out in time anyway.
With purpose and control, I jump into the water and land as close to Carolyn as possible. She’s rushing toward me like a stray kayak, and I put everything into catching and securing her.
There’s blood. I’m hoping it’s coming from Rupert’s dead body, which the river had claimed earlier, but I know it isn’t. Carolyn is injured—or worse, the baby might be hurt, too.
Carolyn trembles as I put my arms around her. The current tugs her the other way, but I hold her with all my might and drag her closer to the shore.
“We have to keep to this side, okay?” I tell Carolyn.
She nods and we both keep swimming to stay as close as possible to the bank, even though the river insists on sweeping us across the other way.
There are many reasons people don’t mess with rivers in Montana. Drowning is not a rare occurrence, even for the most experienced daredevils. I need to make sure we’re not adding ourselves to the statistics.
Carolyn starts to pant, her face grimacing. “I can’t do this.”
“You can! Jesse will pull us up, just around the bend.” I keep Carolyn against my chest, like an otter protecting her young. When her legs bob up, I can see a gashing wound on her left calf with a piece of wood clinging to it. I guess that’s where the blood is coming from.
On top of the riverbank, Jesse runs alongside us, clutching his side. While he looked reasonably okay earlier, this time I’m sure he’s hurt. “Keep to this side, Levi!” he shouts.
My brother was absolutely right. Carolyn needs me in the water. There’s no way she can keep herself alive in this river all by herself. The other side is peppered with dangerous rocks; the force of the water could easily thrash her against them.
As the river flows violently around the bend, a sudden jet stream slaps us to the middle. We both desperately try to swim back to where Jesse is, but our bodies are soon sucked down, and then propelled up, repeatedly.
“No! No! No!” Jesse shouts at the top of his lungs. “Over here, man. Here!”
We’re really at the mercy of the water now. It must be an eddy, and somewhere near, there’s likely to be a whirlpool.
“Come on, we can do this,” I say to Carolyn as we both desperately kick ourselves out of the trap.
“I’m sorry, Levi,” Carolyn says.
Carolyn doesn’t say sorry for nothing. I know, on top of the wound in her calf, she’s probably cramping up now.
Another force pulls us down. We’re submerged, and right then I can feel her letting go of me. But I cage her in my embrace; I don’t care if we both go down together. My hands will never relent, even though the rope-burn wounds on my palms start to tear and my right forearm has swollen like a giant eggplant, with my tattoos stretched and distorted, thanks to Josh.
After bobbing up and down a few times, we emerge like a couple of buoys. But our ordeal is far from over. We can feel a downward force coming to claim us again from a different spot.
Choking on water, she says, “Just let me go.”
“Never! Never.” My voice flutters. “We can do this. The two of us.”
I look at her beautiful face. She’s never left me, not even when I thought she had. How stupid was I to think that she would lie to me and fall in love with Anton Mendez?
But this time her eyes tell me she is ready to depart.
“The three of us,” I say desperately.