Breaking Point

I wasn’t even going to get to tell Chase good-bye.

I tried to hold on to what I could in my last moments. His rough, strong fingers intertwined with mine. His mouth tightening to hold back angry words, and the way his shoulders hunched when he’d gone too long without sleep. I knew the exact angle in which I had to lift my chin in order to kiss him, and what his laugh sounded like, and how a nightmare could make him, of all people, feel small.

I held his memories. Of when he’d gotten all As on his seventh-grade report card, and when he’d gotten grounded for fighting Jackson Pruitt in the sixth grade. Of how he fit into his family. Of how he fit into mine.

When I was gone, who would remember who he really was?

Stop, I told myself. I’ve lived through rehabilitation. I’ve escaped an MM base. I’ve survived a fire.

I am not dead yet.

“Help!” I whispered. And then my whispers turned louder, and louder, and my cry for help became his name. I shouted it twenty times. Thirty. All the while, I resumed my attack on that unmovable board.

My voice grew hoarse. My throat was on fire, closing with each frantic second. I would have sold my soul for some water.

I am not dead yet.

I summoned every fiber of strength in my entire body. I called upon every bit of determination within me. And I pushed.

The board tilted above me, and dust rained down on my face. I coughed and squeezed my eyes closed. My good arm had succeeded in dislodging the barrier. Now that I had enough room to move I added my knee. Every muscle in my abdominals and back contracted. Whispered screams of exertion belted through my locked jaw.

And then I heard something.

I held my breath, fighting off the sudden burst of faintness.

“…think someone’s down there!”

A frenzied state of urgency took me, and as the light filtered in from the window I’d loosened, I fought like an animal. Every thought cleared from my head. I had to get out of here now.

I shimmied out before my rescuer pulled the board all the way off of me. Sweating and exhausted, I stared into the face of a green-eyed ghost. Not a ghost. His flawless skin was covered with white concrete dust.

Not you, I thought. Anyone but you.

Tucker shined a flashlight into my face. I wasn’t ready for the brightness. It burned straight through to my brain.

“Help me up!” My mouth moved, but no sound came out.

“She’s alive!” he shouted to someone behind him.

I shoved to my knees and jerked up too quickly, stars exploding in my vision. Tucker grasped my waist for support.

My legs wobbled, but could still support my weight. There didn’t appear to be any real damage to them, but the bruises must have gone straight through; they throbbed to the marrow. My wrist was another story. It was contorted to the side, and nearly made me vomit to look at. Had it not been so numb, I was sure it would have been killing me.

“That table saved your life,” Tucker said. “Good thinking getting under it.”

There was an absent, distant feel to him. The kind Chase sometimes got when he’d been left alone too long with his thoughts.

I glanced down to where he pointed. The table from the supply room had been tossed aside. The legs were broken on one end: where my ankles had been trapped. I shuddered; not allowing myself to consider what might have happened should the opposite legs—those on either side of my head—have collapsed.

Our half of the room was still standing, but the cave-in had taken out most of the opposite wall. All that remained was a landslide of rock, some pieces bigger than my body.

The exit was wiped out.

A dozen people were close, assisting the injured or shoveling away the debris. Crying voices. Moaning. A scream. I didn’t know why they weren’t running.

“Chase,” I demanded. Please let him be alive.

He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

I spun, coming face-to-face with the boy with almond eyes from the supply room. He held a canteen, and taken by a force beyond my control, I snatched it from his hands.

I tried to drink only a little, but it soothed my aching throat, and I couldn’t stop. Soon more than half the canteen was gone. He didn’t seem to care that I gasped and sputtered, or that half the water dribbled down my shirt.

I grabbed his shoulder with my good hand and pulled myself close to his ear.

“Chase Jennings,” I whispered. “He came with me from Knoxville.”

The boy blinked.

“I haven’t seen him in the last hour, but he lived through the blast.”

Alive. But my stomach stayed knotted. I’d been down in that hole for more than an hour. Because of a blast. Had we been bombed?

“Where is he?” I mouthed.

“Sick bay.” He pointed in the direction of the airfield.

I shoved by him, still unsteady on my feet. I half walked, half ran through the gravel, tripping only once and then catching myself. I peered into every face, but no raven hair. No wolf eyes. My head was throbbing, and the lights from the hand-cranked lanterns and flashlights left comet trails across my vision.

The main tunnel was mostly empty, but I could see lights down the way where the train car with the medical supplies still stood. My eyes landed on someone thick, muscular: Truck.

I blinked, and kept moving toward them, pushing the St. Michael medallion that had saved my life into my pocket.

Truck was holding someone around the waist, struggling to contain him while his arms flailed. I recognized Sean off to the side. He looked so tired; his hands were on the knees of his dust-skinned pants and he was shaking his head.

And there, the person Truck was fighting. Chase.

Truck was hauling him away from the wreckage: the passage where the shower bags had hung had been consumed by a concrete avalanche.

“She’s not there!” I heard Truck yell.

Chase twisted and elbowed him in the side of the head.

“Chase!” Sean shouted. But he wasn’t looking at Chase, he was looking at me.

Chase turned. Our gazes locked. The voices, the crackling of rock, it all faded.

I ran forward, sobbing, limping, latching my busted wrist to my chest. He took three steps toward me and stumbled to his knees, as if his legs had lost their strength.

I collapsed before him, inches away. Blood was smeared across his cheek. Dirt and what looked like oil marked his clothes and skin. Sweat carved jagged lines down the dust coating his jaw. Until that moment I hadn’t thought what I must have looked like. I didn’t much care.

His hand lifted slowly toward my cheek, his eyes deep and afraid, his cracked lips open slightly. I longed for that touch, I craved it, knowing it would make me real again instead of some player in my waking nightmare. But he didn’t touch me. He couldn’t. When I glanced to the side, his bloodied hand was trembling, and he lowered it, wiping it on his jeans.

I could almost hear his thoughts. Or maybe they were mine.

Please be real.

With no more hesitation I grabbed that hand and kissed his palm and watched it dampen and fill with my tears. A strangled sob came from his throat, and then he grabbed me firmly by the waist and crushed me into his body so hard I gasped. Finally, finally I was back, locked within his sheltering arms, hidden within his bones.

“I thought you were dead.” His voice broke.

I closed my eyes for a moment, thankful to be alive.