Love Is Crazy (Love Is… #1) (14 page)

I
’ve swallowed fire
. It sears through my veins, ravaging my body. Rushes through my bloodstream and settles in my head. My skin.

My foot.

Dear God!

My foot!

I am fire. Consumed. Open my eyes to the sky and let them roll back in my head. It’s better in the dark.

There’s whirring. What is it? Another snake? No. It’s a fan. Huge blades circulating and whipping the air around my wounded body. Leaves and dust battering my skin, stealing my breath.

Hands on me. Soothing words wrapped in urgent voices and the crackling of a radio interrupts it all.

“Hold on,” they say and I try to tell them I can’t, but then I’m wrenched into the air and screaming without sound. More hands. Something firm underneath me. I’m flying. A bird set free, flying away from it all.

Something cold and wet touches my lips. A hand on my hair. And then I close my eyes again because even now, it’s better in the dark.

* * *

M
y eyes
open without being asked. I don’t even know I’m awake until I realize that I’m staring at a newscaster on a TV hooked to the wall. My throat is made of broken glass. I try to sit up and the world tilts on its axis so I drop my head back into my pillow with a groan.

IV’s in my hand. A cast on my foot. A thin, coarse blanket covering my body. I blink slowly. Open my eyes to find the newscaster replaced by a sitcom.

Dominic is asleep in a chair beside me. He’s got it pulled away from the wall so it’s right next to the bed. His hand is on mine. His head rolled off to the side. His five o’clock shadow is now mostly a beard and somehow, he looks all the more handsome for it. Rugged. Wild. Untamed. I try to sit up and pain slices through my body. I groan and Dominic jerks awake.

“Hey,” he says, leaning forward, relief and anxiety swimming in his eyes.

I swallow and try a smile. “Hey.” I cough. Speaking sets my throat on fire.

“Don’t you worry about talking.” He grabs a cup with a straw from the table beside me and holds it to my lips. I drink, cautiously at first and then with more gusto as the water goes to work beating back the flames.

“Do you remember anything?” he asks?

I close my eyes. Nod my head, then shrug and shake it, flaring my hands in confusion. I remember blips. Nothing that makes much sense.

“You fell. Remember?”

I nod yes. See the snake and hear the evidence of my reaction as the beeps on the heartrate monitor speed up.

Dominic takes my hand. “You were very lucky. You fell far, but landed on the one outcropping of rock that could support your weight. If you’d gone down anywhere else…” He takes a deep breath and misery and concern dance a slow tango across his face.

I look at my foot, wondering if the snake got me. “What happened?” I manage and the world spins out of focus.

“It’s broken. It’s bad, but they say it could have been worse. And you’ve got one hell of a concussion. That’s why you’re so loopy.”

I nod.

“I couldn’t reach you. And I didn’t have cell service. I had to run back to the ranger station at the campsite. Ran the whole way. Didn’t even think to put down my pack. They brought in a helicopter to get you out.”

I want to know more. I want him to keep talking. I need him to keep talking. I just plain need him. I try to tell him. Try to ask him not to leave me. To stay. But the world swims again and everything goes dark.

* * *

T
he next time
I wake up, Dominic is already awake, staring at me from his place in the chair near the bed. He’s the first thing I see when I open my eyes and it makes me smile. Which makes him smile.

“How ya feeling?” he asks.

“Better,” I say, glad to find my voice working again.”

“You look better.”

I laugh. “Doubt that.” My hair and skin feel greasy. My mouth tastes nasty. I have never felt more unappealing.

“I didn’t say you look good, just that you look better.”

I laugh because it’s funny, but I so so so want a mirror and some time with a brush. I guess that’s a good sign. “How long have we been here?”

Dominic takes my hand and kisses each of my fingertips. I smile at him and lay my head back, this wonderful, swooning exhaustion making my eyelids heavy. I want to ask him what we do now. I want to ask him what we’re going to do with about the way we feel about each other because nothing in our lives has changed. He still travels the world and I’m still stuck in Townsbury and how do we survive the pull of our gravity without being pulled apart at the seams?

The cold reality of it is that the hospital isn’t ready to release me in time for Dominic to leave for Vegas. Given the concussion and the severity of the break in my foot, they want me to stay for observation. All I hear is that not only do I have to miss out on the second part of my adventure, but I have to say goodbye to Dominic earlier than I want to.

And we don’t have plans on how or when we’re going to see each other again. He’s booked for the next month and a half of travel. And me? I don’t have the kind of savings account that will let me follow him around the world. He stays with me at the hospital as long as he can, talks about calling the resort and canceling but I talk him right out of that. This is his job. And this resort is a big deal, one of the better paying gigs he’s had in a while. There’s no way around it. He has to take it.

And so, with promises of phone calls and texts and video calls, Dominic kisses me goodbye. And damn if there wasn’t a whole lot of goodbye in his kiss. As he walks out of my hospital room, my heart in his hand, my lips quiver. I fight it until he’s out of sight and then, the moment he’s around the corner, I bury my head in my pillow and I sob.

* * *

T
he hospital releases
me a few days later. Apparently, a flight home could exasperate my concussion symptoms, or it could be absolutely just fine and I’ll have absolutely zero problems at all. The headaches have been pretty fucking terrible, so in all honesty, I’m not at all anxious to get on a plane, rolling the dice on making it worse. Besides, this is my first big adventure, my first time to see anything that isn’t Ohio, green fields and rolling hills and stretches of cornfields, punctuated with the acrid scent of cow poo.

And how did I spend it? I got one jet-lagged night staring out over the canyon and one headachy day hiking and the rest I spent in a hospital room. That so isn’t going to work for me.

The day the hospital releases me, I take a cab back out to the North Rim—cringe a little when I pay the cabbie—and crutch my ass to the general store to pick up a notebook and a pen and hobble out to a benches on one of the many scenic overlooks. Sure I get plenty of weird looks. Who brings crutches to the Grand Canyon?

I do. That’s who.

A girl who isn’t going to let anything stop me from living this part of my dream.

I sit on that bench and I write. I write about the view. The people. The sense of vastness and how tiny I feel in comparison. But how that tiny feeling grows into something huge and connected and how, in this one place, I feel like I’m on the verge of understanding how we all are part of one great big community. How, even though the world is huge, and the human race is so divided, that we are really all connected by the same basic desires.

To love.

To be loved.

To help and be helped.

To see and be seen.

My pen flies over the paper, the words flowing out of me like they used to back when I was young enough to believe that I could really be anything I wanted in the whole wide world. Back when I actually thought that all I had to do was dream it and it was mine. Back when I believed that I could grow up and travel the world, writing about my experiences.

I pause.

My eyes fill with tears. The scene in front of me wavers.

Because right now, in this very instant, that’s what I’m doing. I have traveled across the country and have parked my happy ass out in front of the wild wilderness and am writing about my experience. I may not be making any money. In fact, the cost of the cab here and then back to the airport is a huge chunk of change, but I am sitting here doing the thing little Dakota London always said she would do.

How fucking cool is that?

Well, my head hurts, and this cast on my foot isn’t a walk in the park. There’s a big, Dominic sized hole in my heart and I don’t know how that’s going to play out. But, all that notwithstanding this is the best, most wonderful day of my whole life. I check my phone and wouldn’t you know it? I’ve got service. I type out a text to Dominic, the screen blurred and watery.

I hit send without thinking twice. Wipe my face and pick up my pen. Pour my heart—the part that isn’t with Dominic—out onto the page. When I have no more words in me. When I’ve written enough to fill most of the small notebook. I take one last look at the Grand Canyon. Try to memorize the way I feel right now. Take a picture that won’t do it justice. Then I call for a cab to take me to the airport.

When I get there, I realize that I don’t have a souvenir. Well, I guess the cast on my leg counts, but it’s not exactly the kind of souvenir I wanted to bring home with me. I stop in the gift shop at the airport and grab a magnet with a picture that doesn’t do the Canyon justice and a shot glass and overpay for them both. Next time, I’ll remember to get a better souvenir. I’ll fill my apartment with memories of my travels.

Next time.

Ha.

I say that like there actually will be a next time and I’m not going home to reinsert myself into my rut.

My phone buzzes as I’m waiting for boarding, reading through what I wrote and daydreaming about Dominic. First, I see a text from him.

My heart does a victory lap and I smile like an idiot. He wants to see me again. Maybe I’m not going back to Townsbury to pick up where I left off. Maybe I’m just going back to wait until my next adventure with Dominic.