“Thank you,” I said, twisting my forehead into his sweaty, sooty neck. It was peaceful, this brief moment, this second stolen in time. For one beat of a heart, I experienced a peace I hadn’t felt before.
That peace evaporated when Cole’s body tensed as he studied the trees in front of us. Like he could see something in those trees I wasn’t able to.
“Cole?” I said hesitantly. “What is it?”
He sighed. “The fire’s in front of us, too,” he said, glaring into the trees in front of us. Now, if I looked really hard, I could see the bright orange and red glow morphing and shifting in the distance.
I stopped breathing.
“We’re trapped,” he said.
Trapped. A fire in front of us. A fire behind us. We were up against a rock and a hard place. We had nowhere to go, no way to escape the blaze.
I looked up, I looked down. I looked to the right, I looked to the left.
I looked to the left . . .
“Cole!” I shouted, feeling hope take hold. “The river’s not far from here. Maybe only a half mile.”
Cole glanced back at me before looking in the direction I was pointing. He looked at the forest like I just had when I was trying to see something he could see that I couldn’t. But I saw it. We were close to the river. So close I could almost feel it.
“The shoe tree!” I pointed a way’s down to the left. “I can see it. My parents and I used to stop and take pictures of it before we went down to the river. If we can get there, the river is only a few hundred yards from there.” I knew it was a good distance to cover considering the speed the fire was moving. I knew we’d need something of a miracle to do it, too, but I’d take running towards a river any day over waiting for the fire to reach us.
Cole didn’t ask any questions. He didn’t ask if I was sure or how I knew. All he did was nod, readjust his hold on me, and charge in the direction I’d pointed him.
“Damn,” Cole panted as we drew closer to the shoe tree, “that thing is downright freaky.”
I smiled as he gave an over-exaggerated shudder. The fire that had been behind us was now creeping so close to us my side felt like it was on fire and the fire that had been almost invisible in front of us was now a wall of flames on our other side. We were in the Red Sea of fire and could still manage to smile and talk like it was any old day.
“Turn right here!” I shouted as we passed the familiar tree.
Over the years, I’d seen the sandals, sneakers, boots, and flip flops expand up the trunk of the old maple tree, until almost every branch that could be reached from standing up on the cab of a truck was also covered. I’d grown up with the tree, taking pictures of it and with it. It had become as familiar as the rest of my life and it was going to burn. I’d never have the shoe tree down by the river to look forward to again.
As Cole thundered down the trail leading down to the river, he didn’t stumble once. He was so steady and sure footed over every obstacle of the technical trail you would have thought he was strolling around the park.
“How much farther, Elle?” He was back to screaming because the fire, once again at our backs, was closer than ever. I scooted my hair over my shoulder to keep it from catching on fire, that was how close the fire was getting.
“Not far! Maybe another hundred feet!” I could tell because the bushes and grass were getting thick and started to slow us down. That didn’t make for the best combination. The fire getting dangerously close to igniting our clothes and the brush we were charging through slowing us down. The sharp branches whipped across my face, drawing blood, but I couldn’t feel the pain. I couldn’t feel anything but Cole’s body and the heat of the fire.
“Hold on tight, baby!” he yelled back before charging faster down towards the river. It was like Cole had a whole other gear. We’d just gone from insane fast to stupid fast, but still, it wasn’t fast enough.
I could see the river, it was less than twenty feet away, but it might as well have been twenty miles because the flames ripped towards us. The brush on either side of us was consumed by a wave of fire and it was impossible to breathe. I don’t know how Cole was able to keep moving without oxygen, but he’d already proven he could when he parachuted into the heart of a fire to save me. He was more superhero than man.
I felt the back of my fleece coat ignite and was just folding myself over Cole, trying to shield him from the relentless flames, when he lunged into the air. In the course of trying to outrun a fire, Cole had veered away from the trail and we’d ended up on a ledge above the river. It was a small ledge, only a couple body lengths, but it felt like we fell through the air so long we could have just leapt from the heavens.
The flames eating at my jacket intensified as we sailed through the air and I held my breath. Just in time too, because a moment later, Cole and I crashed through the surface of the river. Cole had leapt far enough that we landed in water above our necks.
I unwound myself from him and could have died a happy woman right there. The cool water rushing over my skin felt like a healing balm. Cole’s hand grabbed mine, and he tugged me farther out into the river. I didn’t have to surface for a breath yet and I knew that if ever all those sinking rituals in the swimming hole would pay off, now would be it. We swam sideways into the current, kicking hard. Cole seemed to be heading somewhere and I just let him lead me.
When we reached a large boulder sticking out of the middle of the water, we both surfaced. Just enough to take a breath and take in the scene around us. With one hand, Cole grabbed onto a handhold cut into the rock. With his other hand, he kept firm hold of me, drawing me close until his arm wound the entire way around my waist.
“Are you all right?” he shouted.
I nodded and dunked my head back into the water for a second. It was scorching hot around us. I don’t know how Cole could continue to hold onto the rock. The heat alone radiating from it made me uncomfortable.
“Are you?” I asked, inspecting his face and arm since that was all I could see. I could only imagine how torn up my face was from the sprint through the brush, but Cole’s face had to be at least twice as bad. There were more red, open areas than tan skin.
“Yeah, I’m good!” he said, grimacing a bit as he adjusted his hold on the rock. “Just hold on to me, okay? Don’t let go, Elle. We’re going to be all right, we’re going to make it.”
I curled closer to him as I surveyed the fire storm around us. That’s just what it was: a storm. The entire side of the river we’d just ran from was totally engulfed by the fire now, but the flames licking out from the brush and trees from that side were reaching out and extending across the river.
I’d heard of fires jumping rivers, but to hear about one and see one was an entirely different thing. As the fire continued to jump the river and spread, it was like being surrounded by a canopy of flames. It was on either side of us and above us. Those kinds of moments, one realized just how small and insignificant we really were.
When I couldn’t look at the flames destroying the landscape I’d grown up with any longer, I glanced back at Cole. His head bobbed above the surface, watching me like he was afraid I’d disappear, and holding on to that rock like it was a lifeboat.
That rock . . .
Haven Rock.
My hands would have clamped over my mouth if I wasn’t holding on to Cole for my dear life. In the course of veering off the trail and being towed a ways downstream after we’d jumped in the river, Cole and I wound up at Haven Rock. The place saving our lives was the place that had taken my mother’s.
When Dad and I had hiked the shoe tree trail after Mom died, we were always careful to stay out of view of Haven Rock. It was like some silent agreement we’d struck. We didn’t talk about it, we didn’t look at it, and we stayed a few hundred yards upstream from it. Yet here I was, clinging to the man who was clinging to it.
It seemed the ironies of my life never ran out. This was the final and most heart-wrenching confirmation.
“What is it?” Cole’s eyes filled with concern as he scanned my body as best he could.
I wanted to glare at the rock. I wanted to punch it, and hate it, and wanted it to catch on fire and be forever destroyed. Just as it had destroyed my mom. The knowledge that that rock would be all that remained of the landscape at the end of the day seemed impossibly unfair.
“This was where my mom died,” I said. “This is the exact place where she died.”
I would have cried if I hadn’t run out of tears a ways back.
Cole’s face softened before he nodded. “That explains it then.”
“Explains what?” I asked, wanting to close my eyes so I wouldn’t have to stare at it any longer.
“Why you and I are going to make it through this thing, Elle. I’ve been in some scary ass situations before, but even if you were to add all those up, they’d still look like a speck against what’s going on around us.”
A tree exploded on the other side of the shore, reminding me just what was going on around us. When I gazed back at Cole, he was watching me, waiting for me.
“Your mom is right here with us, Elle. Her spirit’s here giving my exhausted arm strength to keep hanging on. She’s keeping the current from whipping us all to hell. She’s keeping the tree shrapnel from getting anywhere near us.” A small smile formed. “She’s keeping us alive.”
So maybe I hadn’t totally run out of tears. The lump in my throat was so big I could barely breathe and, as much as I wanted to say he was full of it, I knew he was right, too. Mom’s spirit was right here with us. With me. The water gliding over me was as gentle as her arms were when pulling me into a hug. The rock shielding and protecting us was as strong and unwavering as she’d been. She was in everything. She was everywhere.
“I need to tell you something. You know, now that I’ve got you alone and you’re not going anywhere,” he said, winking. “Something I was trying to tell you earlier before I acted like a total a**hole.”
“Was this during the time I was acting like a total pain in the butt, too?” I replied.
His almost smile was enough of an answer.
“So what were you trying to tell me before we both behaved like idiots?”
Cole’s eyes didn’t leave mine. They looked like they never might. “I might kinda, sorta, really, truly love you.”
Once I got past the shock of the word, I felt a million different things at once. Every one of those things pointed towards one thing. Curling my fingers into the back of his neck, I kissed him lightly. “And I might kinda, sorta, really, truly love you, too.”
Cole’s grin spread. “Why don’t you kinda get over here and kiss me then?” His eyes scanned the enflamed area around us. “Since it doesn’t look like we’ll be going anywhere for a while.”
When I kissed him again, it was not light. In fact, it was so not light that somewhere in the midst of it, I forgot all about the storm circling us.
Chapter Fourteen
When you come literally a hair away from death, it gives life a whole new meaning. You stop anguishing over what you should and shouldn’t do, how you should do it, when you should do it . . . and you just do it. It might be morbid, but holding hands with death gives almost an entirely new meaning to life.