Page 89 of Wedding or Not

I fumble with my phone until I can dial 911 and share the situation and our location with the operator as I stare out the window at Wes.

He’s used the crowbar to clear broken glass from the windshield, and it looks like he’s talking to whoever is inside.

Thank goodness.

Maybe they aren’t dead.

I wait in the passenger seat when I finish with 911 because Wes told me to. I’m not good in an emergency, so it makes sense to do what I was told.

But then the Buick catches on fire. I see the flames from the front end where the engine is.

And Wes isn’t getting away from it.

He’s trying to pull someone out.

Terrified that the car might actually explode and take Wes with it, I clamber out of the SUV and run down to where the car is, almost falling when my shoes slide in some mud. “Wes! Wes, be careful!”

“I need to get her out,” he calls, glancing over as I approach. “She’s trapped, and she’ll be burned to death before help comes.”

He’s right. Even a quick glance tells me he’s right. The car might not explode like I feared—maybe that mostly happens in movies—but that fire is strong and getting stronger. The air is already filled with smoke. “What can I do?”

“Stay back, baby. I’m not letting you get hurt.”

I might have objected had I not seen just then that he’s pried more space in the opening and now has a good hold on an older woman. He pulls her out with surprising strength (likely fueled by adrenaline) and then carries her a safe distance from the burning car.

I stay with him as he lays the woman down on the grass, and then I kneel down beside her body. “Are you okay? What hurts?”

The woman coughs and keeps coughing. “I don’t know. I don’t know what happened. I blacked out and my car crashed into a tree.”

That would definitely explain what we saw. The woman looks like she’s in her eighties. The cause of her blackout could be anything.

I reach for her hand and hold it as she coughs. She’s bleeding in several places, but it looks mostly superficial. She’s breathing, and her heart is beating, so there’s no CPR that needs doing. For anything else, we need to wait for the ambulance.

I can hear a siren in the distance.

“Thank you, dear,” the woman rasps. “You’re so pretty, and you have a very brave and kind young man.”

Wes is standing over us, looking toward the road and the approaching EMT truck. But he hears what the woman said. He turns to look down at us, slightly startled.

I swallow hard. “Yes, I do.”

CHAPTER 30

We stay long enough for the ambulance to take the woman, whose name is Carla, away and for a police officer to take our reports on what happened, and then we’re allowed to leave the accident scene.

After a brief discussion, we agree to continue to the concert.

I’m more rattled than ever, and part of me wants to collapse in bed with the covers over my head, but that’s not the kind of thing to admit out loud.

We lost less than an hour, and we were both looking forward to this concert.

It would be a shame to miss it even though Wes says it’s fine if I don’t feel up to going now.

I tell him I’m fine and we should still go.

So that’s what we do.

We arrive after the opening act has started, but that’s not any problem. We get our seats, and I’m relieved it’s not a very large venue, and it’s a fairly laid-back crowd, so we won’t have to be mobbed by an intensity of screaming the whole time.