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“They’re scared and some of them could be burned. They need you to keep them calm. Tell them that everything will be okay.”
And I need you to not get hurt.
Callie cast another worried glance at the barn. Her eyes were shining with tears but she held herself together despite the disaster unfurling right in front of her.
“Okay,” she rasped. “Hurry. Please.”
I took her hand and placed it on Applejack’s back. It was only the second time that I’d ever touched her. Callie’s skin was pleasantly cool beneath my fingertips and I wanted nothing more than to fold her into my arms, to protect her from the heat and the heartbreak she had to witness.
Instead, I tore myself away, rushing back into the barn.
When I reached Roadrunner and Tennyson, they bolted past me as soon as I released them from their stalls. Red-hot cinders rained down from the ceiling, stinging my shoulders and back like a thousand bees. I swatted at them, wheezing through the cloud of smoke that surrounded me. The fire was burning too hot, too fast. Flames engulfed the barn walls by now and the whole building gave a mighty groan, threatening to collapse at any moment.
Behind me, I heard a shout and glanced over my shoulder. Beau’s figure was barely visible through the haze of smoke and rippling fire. He frantically waved his arm, gesturing for me to move.
“Landon! Get the hell outta there!”
I couldn’t leave. Not yet. There was only one horse remaining. Hera’s screams pierced the air over the roar and rush of the flames, emanating from the last stall in the back of the barn.
My throat was stripped raw from the smoke, and my body felt like it was melting from the inside out. I forged a path to Hera anyway. She was wild with fear and her right flank had a searing red burn as long as my arm. A few burning boards were clustered on the floor after falling from the ceiling.
I wrenched the stall door open. Hera reared and bucked, tossing her head. I narrowly escaped a flailing hoof from connecting with my kneecap.
“Whoa! Whoa, sweetheart, it’s okay. I’m here, I’m here.”
She huffed and pressed up against me until I was pinned between her big, trembling body and the barn. Threading my fingers through her mane, I pulled myself up onto her back. Then Hera went flying out of the stall at a breakneck speed.
I held on for dear life, blinded by the smoke, trusting her to carry us to safety.
The next thing I knew, the wail of sirens filled the air. I squinted in the brightness of flashing red lights.
I slid off Hera’s back, knees shaky, chest aching as I fought for every breath.Why did my lungs feel so damn hot?
“I got you, buddy.”
Beau hooked his hands under my arms and dragged me away from the barn’s heat until the chilly night air washed over my skin. Gradually, my watery eyes focused enough to watch a firetruck pull up Callie’s driveway. Firefighters scurried out, dragging a hose, and a fountain of water was unleashed on the burning wreckage of the barn.
Chapter Five
Callie
It was the longest night of my life.
When the sun finally rose, the barn was nothing but a pile of smoldering cinders and thin tendrils of smoke curling up toward the pale-pink sky. My skin felt waxy with ashes and sweat.
My house was untouched though, and my horses were alive.
Thanks to Landon.
I couldn’t stop replaying the image of him plunging into my blazing barn, over and over. Guiding one horse out before diving back in to rescue another. The way he’d slid off Hera’s back, his breath rattling in his chest, weak and barely conscious…I thought he had one foot in the grave at that moment.
When the medics had arrived seconds after the firetruck, Landon tried to fight the oxygen they gave him. Beau manhandled him into submission, though, and he begrudgingly allowed a medic to settle the mask over his nose and mouth.
He sat in my kitchen now, elbows propped on his knees, looking like death warmed over. His face was drawn with exhaustion and blackened by soot. Livid red burns covered his bare back. He held the oxygen mask in place while a medic applied ointment to his burns and swathed him in bandages.
“We’ll need to take you to the hospital,” the medic said. “Some of those burns could get infected.”
“No,” Landon grunted. “I’ll be fine.”
