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She’d been freezing. A fireman had wrapped her in a Mylar blanket and carried her to the ambulance. She’d been so shaken that she let him. The rain refused to stop, streaking into her eyes and creeping under her clothes, as much a stranger to her as it had been before the accident.
Had she imagined that connection?
Was that what Chris felt, that link with the elements?
He’d held her so close—had she been feeling his power?
Now, in the hospital, she huddled on her stretcher, pulling the thin hospital blanket more tightly around her shoulders.
Her mom stuck her head through the curtain. “You all right, Bex?”
One of the best parts of her mom working the ER was that Becca didn’t have to wait long for anything.
One of the worst parts was that her mom was actually working the ER tonight. When Becca proved to be shaken but unharmed, her mom left her to sit alone in an eight-by-eight cubicle.
Someone moaned nearby. A baby screamed somewhere down the hall. The place was packed with victims from the storm. Becca kept hearing nurses speak in low voices about things like crushed femurs and compound fractures. Becca didn’t even have a concussion. She just wanted someone to hold her hand.
God, could she be more selfish? Becca sniffed back waiting tears and nodded. “I’m fine. Can we go home?”
“Your dad’s on his way, sweetie.” Her mom’s voice trailed after her as she rushed down the hall.
“What?”
“I can’t leave,” her mom called back, “and Quinn’s mom wasn’t home.”
Ugh. Her dad. Now Becca wished she did have a concussion.
Especially when he showed up in work clothes, his boots caked with mud. Dirt streaked across the khaki shirt he wore, and it looked like he’d been in a fight with a wild animal—his pants were torn, and dried blood trailed out of his shirtsleeve and across the back of his hand.
He came rushing into her cubicle, flinging the curtain to the side. He seemed to draw up short when his daughter obviously wasn’t dying. Just wet.
“Hi,” she said without enthusiasm. “What happened to you?”
“Becca.” He studied her, as if he must have missed some life-threatening injury. “Are you all right?”
Just great. They got me out of the car before it blew up.
She wanted to say it, to roll her eyes and push past him. But his eyes were dark with concern, his hands hovering halfway between his body and her own, as if he wanted to hug her but he just wasn’t sure how she’d take it.
Becca swallowed. She wished he’d jingle his keys and act like this was a hassle. It was hard to keep walls up against someone who truly gave a crap.
But maybe it was just the shock. Had Mom made it sound bad so he’d rush?
“I’m fine,” she said. Her voice sounded like she’d been swallowing gravel. “I just ... I want to go home.”
“We can go back to my place—”
“No!”
He flinched, and she shut her eyes. “No—just—I don’t have any clothes there. I want to go home.”
“You have keys?”
Her keys were in her car—and probably melted into a ball of steel by now. She shook her head. “Mom will give me hers.”
But her mom didn’t like that idea. “Becca, go home with your father. You’ve had a rough day, and you shouldn’t be alone—”
“I just want to get into some dry clothes and go to bed.” She shoved herself off the stretcher. A patient down the hallway started screaming, and Becca clamped her hands over her ears. “Please, just take me home. Please—”
