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Two
LIAM
“Quick, turn right!”
Duncan jerked the wheel so fast it felt like we might go up on two tires. Which, considering the way he drove, was not entirely impossible.
“Come on man, you’re losing sight of it!”
The ambulance had turned way ahead of us, a few blocks up. I wasn’t sure how far Southampton hospital was, but that’s definitely what the emergency vehicle had written all over the side.
“Will you shut up already?” Julius snapped from the back seat. “He knows where he’s going!”
“Yes, but—”
“Besides,” Julius interjected, “we shouldn’t go any faster. We’ve got kids in the car, remember?”
I glanced into the back seat, where Jace and Courtney were sitting quietly. They looked more disappointed than upset, especially since we’d left so quickly. Jace looked more rattled by missing the sea lion show than he did from his near-death experience.
Near-death. Holy fucking shit!
I couldn’t believe how lucky we were, or how careless we’d been! Jace could’ve been killed, or at least very seriously hurt. It had all happened so fast! The whole thing, occurring within the span of just seconds…
If that woman didn’t happen to be there…
I shuddered to even thinkabout completing the thought. And yet that womanhadbeen there. That amazing, awesome, lightning-fast woman with just enough maternal instinct to prevent an unthinkable tragedy.
“Two seconds,” Duncan muttered to himself. “We looked away from him for two seconds.”
“Two seconds is all it takes,” Julius grunted.
“You weren’t eventhere,” I shot back. “You were getting hot dogs.”
My friend grunted again, unwilling or maybe even unable to defend himself as he sat between the kids. Courtney was just about asleep. Jace had gone on to entertain himself by fidgeting with the buckles of his childseat’s harness.
At least he’s okay,I thought to myself.He won’t even remember this.
But my God, I sure as hell would.
“He ran so fast,” I murmured. “I mean one second we were tickling Courtney, and the next…”
The next Jace was flying through the open part of the railing, spinning off into the emptiness on one side of the concrete bleachers.
And thenshewas flying there right alongside him.
Thank GOD.
The woman had fallen, twisting her body to protect Jace as they fell. She’d hit the concrete with a THUD I would never forget for as long as I lived, and then suddenly Duncan was pulling Jace from her protective grip. The crowd formed quickly, as we did everything we could to keep her conscious. But the landing had knocked the wind from her lungs. Unable to breathe, and still woozy from possibly hitting her head, she’d passed out in my arms.
From there it was five minutes of pure chaos, as Julius returned from the upstairs snack area. He’d dropped the tray of hot dogs and sprinted in, as I slipped my leather jacket beneath her head to keep it off the cold concrete. But before any of us could do CPR, the ambulance crew was already there. A full two sets of EMT’s materialized out of nowhere, working together to get her strapped to a gurney and taken away.
“There! It’s pulling in!”
We followed the ambulance straight down the emergency ramp, where we were quickly waved away. Two security officers pointed us in the direction of the civilian parking area, and within minutes we were at the emergency room desk, dragging the kids in tow.
“There’s this woman you just brought in,” breathed Duncan hurriedly. “She… she saved our son from—”
“Name?”
