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THIRTEEN
HAYDEN
Lana. I found her.
The beating of my heart drowned out the crack of thunder above us. I found her.
The kiss was too short, but I had to make the moment real. I would not lose her again. She was mine and I would protect her. Even from the rage of nature.
When I held her in my arms once again, it felt like a fever dream brought on by the icy rain in the raging summer storm. She was here, and I found her. She shivered in the cold, skin cool to my touch. The rain beating down around us growing more vicious by the moment.
I knew these storms. I had lived through many - and each one was a testament to the honest brutality of Yosemite.
“Run!” I called to her, my hand gripping hers, her small hiking pack slung across my shoulder. “My truck is this way!” My voice strained against the howling wind and pellets of rain bouncing down across the trail.
We would be safer in the truck than running around in the trees. Not the best place, but better than being out beneath the pines.
She kept up behind me with her fingers locked within mine. The trail was coming to a sharp left turn, and I pulled her to the right, off the trail and into the sharp incline of bushes. I could feel her hesitation, her hand squeezing my own with a gentle pull.
“Wait, but the trail goes this way!” Lana called through the onslaught of rain and thunder.
“There is a service road this way. It’s the pathway to the summit of the mountain.” I turned to see her, her dark locks plastered to the soft features of her face. Oh, how I wanted to kiss those lips again and steal away her fear.
She seemed nervous, eyes darting from the darkness of the trees to the trail leading in the opposite direction.
Thunder boomed ahead, not long after the bright flashes of lightning. I paused, caressing her rain streaked face. “My love, do you trust me?” Her breath caught, as did my own. The words were strange to my tongue, but so, so right.
Lana stood taller, her brow furrowed in the cutest way, proving her pure determination. My woman was brave. It made my desire for her burn as bright as the surrounding lightning. “Yes, I trust you.”
“This way, we need to hurry.” She followed close, our hands parting for only a moment as we worked our way up the steep slope to the road. “The lightning is getting closer. The sooner to the truck, the sooner we can get off this mountain.”
As we hit a rough point, we had to press our hands to the mud and grip at sharp branches for support. A booming explosion of trees sounded out in the storm’s darkness. But we pressed on and with tired hands and icy bodies, we crested over the small hillside and to the barely visible service road.
Reaching down, I helped Lana the last bit. Pulling her from the edge, we stood, mud caking to our hiking boots and streams of water pouring down our faces.
“Is that your truck?” She asked, as we both stared.
Crashed through the roof of the truck was a massive pine that had uprooted in the storm. It stretched across the road, pinning the vehicle in its place. The cab smashed into itself as if it were a can of soda smashed in a fist.
“Well,” I said, approaching as the wind whipped up around us, catching my cold skin and sending ice into my bones. I wiped the rain from my eyes and breathed out hard, feeling out of options. “Itwasmy truck.”
The wind stung, and Lana was struggling with the chill, her teeth chattering. Without getting dry and warm, we would both suffer hypothermia.
If we did not get struck by lightning first.
“We cannot stay here.” I looked back to the edge of the short hillside cliff where we had just climbed up. The safest thing to do now was to get further into the valley where the trees were thickest and hide until the storm cleared.
A sudden flash of lightning lit the valley, then the sharp crack and boom of thunder.
“Hayden, what’s that?” Lana called through the deafening thunder as another flash streaked across the sky. “Is that the lookout tower?”
Lit up from behind was the fire lookout tower. A dark spot on the mountain peak. Newly built with updated lightning protection, the fire lookout tower was also freshly stocked, close enough, and I still had a set of the keys. We could reach it. We had to.
It was a stupid, stupid idea. Nothing about their situation was protocol lightning safety.
We had to try. We had to get out of this rain and storm.
I grabbed Lana’s hand and gave it one hard squeeze, hoping to feed my courage and bravery into her very veins. Now or never, as the wind tore at our skin and the cold seeped into every cloth and curve.
We shared a look of emotion, her eyes locking with mine. We would make it.
“Go,” I said, pulling her to my chest, then pushing her forward into the darkness. “Go to the lookout,go!”
