AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I blink.
The man who saved my life is a grown-up version of the boy who broke my heart.
Chapter Two
Emmy
It’s a hallucination. I’m hallucinating. The flames from my house leapt over my back fence and caught the neighbor’s son’s secret weed stash on fire, and this is the result.
“Owen?”
Is my mind conjuring him? Some smoke-induced delusion?
A cruel reminder of my foolish youth, more like.
“Hey, Em. You okay?” He’s got his helmet tucked under his arm, and he’s looking at me so intently, I might as well be a wet blob of clay on a potter’s wheel, his hands shaping me, molding me, caressing. . .
That’s enough, Emaline!
“Sir, I really need to check you out.” The paramedic at Owen’s side is dwarfed by Owen’s flickering shadow.
“I’m fine,” Owen says, waving the man off like a gnat that won’t go away. He looks at the female paramedic. “Is she okay?”
He’s asking about me? Why does he look so concerned? Did they forget to tell me that I’m dying or something?
“She’ll be fine,” my paramedic says. “But will you let Nate check you out? Please?”
He huffs. “Fine.”
My mind is a jumble of questions. When did he get back to Harvest Hollow? Why didn’t his sister tell me he was back? When did he grow facial hair? Does he workout every day or just most days? Does he look at everyone that intensely?
He better not be some Latvian earl, I swear.
Does he remember the day I was the one saving him?
I guess we’re even now. . .
Hardly. My “saving him” turned into sheer and utter humiliation. My face flushes at the memory, and I look away.
I wish I had a Tardis or a DeLorean or a hot tub that could transport me away from this place.
Time travel is not a huge trope in romance, but I see the benefits.
“Larrabee—” the male paramedic—Nate—ushers him over to the back of the ambulance, where he sits, looking every bit the rebel he always was.
“You know him?” My paramedic asks.
“Yes. I mean. . .Kind of.” I drop my head back onto the small pillow. “No, not anymore.”
It hurts a little to say that. Still.
There was a time when I could’ve answered that question quite differently.
Per usual, though, the whole relationship was decidedly one-sided.
My friendship with Owen was never for public consumption. That probably should’ve been my first clue.
“He just started a few days ago,” she says. “Guess saving your life is a good way to make a first impression.”
