In the brilliant kaleidoscope, she barely registered the splash next to her, or the two strong arms that came around her, supporting her as flying pieces of burning debris hit the water all around them.
Aidan. My God, Aidan…That it was him boggled her mind. She tried to remind him that she could swim on her own, but the shock of the cold water sapped both her voice and the air in her lungs, and also hampered the working of her brain.
She’d never experienced anything like it. Never in her life had she been so hot and so frozen at the same time. The heat came from the flames, so high above them now that she was in the water, but no less terrifying. And yet, an icy cold had taken over her limbs, making movement all but impossible, weighing her down, sitting on her chest, sucking the last of the precious air from her overtaxed lungs.
Someone was screaming, and Kenzie envied their ability to draw air into their lungs because her own felt as constricted as if she had a boa slowly squeezing the life out of her.
The scream came again.
It sounded sort of like her.
And then she realized, as if from a great distance, that it
“Shh,” he was murmuring. “I’ve got you. It’s okay, Kenzie, it’s going to be okay…”
She was hurt, but not so hurt as to stop the memories bombarding her at the sound of his voice. How could she not have
He was the first man who’d ever broken her heart.
He’d ditched his helmet and she could see his face now. He didn’t look happy to see her, and honestly, on that point, if he hadn’t been saving her sorry ass, they’d have been perfectly in sync. “Aidan.” She could see the fire reflected in his eyes.
“I know.” His short, dark hair was plastered to his head. Water ran in rivulets down his face, which was starkly pale. His long, inky-black eyelashes were spiky, and he had a cut above one eyebrow that was oozing blood. In spite of all of that, she had the most ridiculous thought:
Aidan Donnelly, first real boyfriend. First…everything… She could hardly believe it, certainly couldn’t process it, so she craned her neck, staring at the boat that looked like one big firecracker. “It just blew, and I-”
“Kenzie-”
“-I mean one minute I’m sitting there missing my brother, and the next…”
He looked into her eyes, his cool and composed. “It’s going to be okay, but I need you to-”
“And it blew. I was just sitting there, surrounded by his things, missing him, and then
“Kenzie,” he said in a tone of authoritative calm. “I need you to listen to me now. Can you do that?”
She could take a gulp of air. But listening? The jury was still out on that one. Her ears were ringing. And the water was so damn cold. In fact, she was shaking and hadn’t even realized it, shudders that wracked her entire body and rattled her teeth.
“Hold onto me, Kenzie. That’s all you have to do, okay? Just hold onto me.”
Actually, there’d never been much sleeping involved between them, a thought which brought an avalanche of others. Him fresh out of the firefighters’ academy and possessing a body that had made her drool, not to mention the knowledge of how to use that body to make hers go wild…
But that had been what, six years ago? Hell, she could barely think, much else handle any math at the moment, so she couldn’t be sure.
He was towing her out, away from the boat and any danger of falling debris, while shouting something to two firefighters on the other side of the burning vessel, both of whom had hoses on the fire.
She’d been in a fire before. On the set of her soap opera,
She’d have loved a script right about now, with a happy ending, please.
At least she was still breathing.
Hard to beat that.
Neither had Blake. Oh, yeah,
Another chunk of burning debris fell from the still flaming boat, and she imagined it was something of Blake’s, something she’d never see again. Or maybe it was her own suitcase, or her laptop, which wasn’t a big loss in the scheme of things, but it held the scripts she’d been writing…
At least if she died, she would no longer be a freshly unemployed soap star.
It was so damn ironic-she’d never been able to come home when Blake had been alive because she’d been too busy working. Then days after he’d died, her soap had been cancelled. Now she could drive up all she wanted, and he was gone… Her first trip home in forever and it had been to see after his things, things that were now smoldering in the water around her.
“Don’t give up on me,” Aidan said. His eyes focused ahead on where he was swimming to, some point invisible to her. It was too dark to see their color clearly but she knew them to be a light brown with flecks of green that danced when he laughed.
He wasn’t laughing now.
He glanced at her, then resumed swimming straight and sure, moving them away from the flames, which also meant away from any warmth, while she did as he’d asked and just held on. She could do nothing but. Like old times…
Why did it have to be
Did
Did
Because that thought, and all the others that came with it, came close to defrosting her, she shoved them aside. The blessed numbness was working for her. She hadn’t come to Santa Rey in the past six years, but Blake had visited her in L.A. on the set, whenever he could, and on top of his visits, they’d been in frequent contact by e-mail, texting and phone calls, and had remained close despite their physical distance. He was the only family she’d had.
And now he was gone.
Forever gone.
“Kenzie? You still with me?” Aidan’s lean jaw was tight with tension and was scruffy, as if he hadn’t had time to shave in a day or two. Or four.
“Unfortunately.” She’d like to be anywhere but “with” him. She could feel his longer, stronger legs moving, bumping into hers, and it made her irrationally mad. She didn’t want help, not from him, but when she wriggled free to prove herself fine, she went down like a stone. Straight beneath the surface of the icy water, where she promptly did the stupid thing of opening her mouth to breathe and got a lungful of extremely cold salt water for her efforts.
Thankfully, she was immediately hauled back up again and pulled against a hard chest, one hand fisted in the back of her shirt, the other arm across the backs of her thighs in a grip that could have rivaled Superman’s.