Rescue Me: A Bad Boy Military Romance (15 page)

PRESENT DAY

The storm raging on and karaoke the furthest thing from my mind, we pull into Luke’s driveway. He screeches the truck to a halt and throws open the truck door into the wind. The rain has turned into pea-sized hail and it stings as it hits my skin. Luke grabs my arm to keep me from running for the front door.

“No!” he screams over the sound of the hail that’s increasing in size with every passing second. “Around the back!”

I don’t argue. I just run, water soaking my clothes. We run around the corner of the enormous stone house and I see two metal doors in the ground. Luke wrenches them open and shuffles me down the stairs. It’s pitch dark down here but I don’t even care. I just run down the steps and nearly break my leg when I hit the landing.

I hear the groan of metal as Luke shuts the doors behind me. “That hail’s gotta be the size of golf balls right now,” he announces, trotting down the stairs behind me. “Let me get the lights.”

I hear him flip a switch a few times. “Shit,” he hisses. “Power’s out.”

He fishes in his pocket and pulls out his phone. The glow lights up the space. It smells familiar down here. I expected it to be dusty and mildew-ridden, but it smells like new construction. “I haven’t had time to hook up a backup generator and even if I did, I don’t much like the thought of running back out there to crank it on.”

He walks past me and opens drawers, pulling things out. Another minute passes and the smell of sulfur fills the air. A candle blooms to life. One, then another, then another. Slowly the place is brought into full relief.

Fresh lumber studs cover the walls, and I see drywall panels going up. The room is filled with old furniture including an ornate four-poster bed that’s been half-painted white. An old, squashy armchair sits in the corner, lightly covered in drywall dust.

“What is this?” I ask him.

Luke continues to light candles; about a dozen. He takes a few pillars and sets them on the concrete floor in the corners to fully illuminate the place. “Tornado shelter, same as all the rest.”

“This is like a bedroom though,” I say.

Luke shrugs. “Yeah, well I thought it might be nice during tornado season to sleep down here. Then you wouldn’t have to worry about waking up and rushing out here. I put heavy new doors outside and everything. Before I got to it, it was just rotted wood and an old wire hanger keeping them shut.”

I open my mouth, my heart beating. “You?”

“Sorry?”

“You said
you
. You said ‘you wouldn’t have to worry about waking up.’”

Luke smiles, his face softening. “Yeah, I kind of built it for you. Maybe. One day, I thought maybe you could come down here and feel safe.”

I don’t know what to say to this, but tears are pulsing down my face and I can’t stop them from coming. A decade’s worth of saline pours out of me. My back heaves and my breath catches in my chest over and over and over again. I feel Luke’s arms around me and the words come tumbling out of my mouth. “This is just like that night eleven years ago.”

Luke rubs my shoulders. “It’s not. It’s not like that night.”

“Really? The two of us, back here in this place? My mom waiting for me at home, hoping I was okay?” I wipe my eyes. “They said at the community center that she kept standing by the windows to make sure I wasn’t trying to make it back home. I wasn’t answering my phone. I wasn’t returning her calls. I’m the reason she’s dead.”

Luke shushes me. “That’s ridiculous. That entire building came down. A few other people died in that same space. People who were tucked safely in the middle of the building.”

I feel another surge of tears and I blurt out the secret I’ve been carrying around with me. “I was
pregnant
.”

Luke lets go of me like I’ve suddenly turned into a rattlesnake. “What?” he says slowly.

I wipe my nose on my sleeve. “I was pregnant.”

Luke turns around and shoves his hands in his hair. His t-shirt raises up a bit and I see the tattoos on his back peeking out from the fabric. The wind howls through the gap in the metal doors and the hail pounds against the material. “I’m going to need you to say that more slowly. Again.”

I’m still crying. “I was pregnant when you left me at that bus stop. When you packed up your bag and headed off to basic training. Two months after my mom died. When you left me. I was pregnant.”

Luke clenches his fists at his waist. “When did you know?”

“I don’t-“

“When did you
know
, Ella!” he screams, barely controlling his rage.

“For about a week before you left. I didn’t want to tell you,” I say quietly.

He laughs darkly. “And what? Did you get rid of it?”

His words hit me like a grand piano falling from a skyscraper. It’s a blow I wasn’t expecting. The syllables shock the tears right back into my head. I’m not crying now. “How dare you. How fucking
dare
you, Luke Davis. There was nothing I could say to keep you here. You had signed up at that point. You signed those papers a week after my mom’s funeral. You knew I needed you, but you left me anyway.” I’m shaking now and pacing. The words are coming out of me the same way the tears were moments ago. “You left me here with our baby inside of me. I didn’t do anything to stop the pregnancy. I was five months along when I went into labor. When I had to
drive myself
to Dallas, alone, because I didn’t want anyone to know. I lost the baby.
I
was there for that. Alone.”

Luke’s face softens and he walks towards me, holding his hands out. I step away, refusing to let him touch me. “I didn’t know. If I had known, I would have stayed.”

“Would you? Because my mom dying wasn’t enough to make you stay. My mom being taken away from me by God, by nature, by whatever-” I’m sobbing again. I can’t finish my sentence. “That.
That
wasn’t enough to make you stay. My pain wasn’t enough to make you stay. There was nothing to keep you here. I couldn’t tell you about our baby and have you go away right after that. It wouldn’t have mattered. I couldn’t have been an army wife.”

Luke slams his hand against the fresh drywall and particles cascade down it. “I had to join. I
had
to go. There was nothing for me to do here, no way for me to make money. Dammit, Ella. I wanted to make something for us. I needed money. Joining was my only option.” He walks away from me, pulling his hair with his fingers. “And what exactly was
your
plan, Ella? Raise the baby on your own while you went to college? Never tell me?”

I sniffle and shake, trying to catch my breath. My eyes are painful and puffy. The storm kicks up again and I can barely hear myself over the thud of the metal doors echoing around the unfinished space. “I don’t know. I was going to tell you when you got out of basic, I think.” I rub my hands over my eyes. But now I’m angry. “You left, Luke. You left me. You left me all alone. I didn’t think you loved me anymore.”

Luke crosses the room in three steps, wrapping his hands around my forearms and pushing me against the wall. His face is inches from mine, his beautiful green eyes boring into me. “Don’t you ever fucking say that. Don’t you let those words come out of your mouth. Do you hear me? I loved you. I
love
you. Right now. At this minute. I never fucking stopped loving you Ella Hanover.”

He reaches down and presses his lips into mine, and it’s like he’s trying to take my pain away. I wrap my legs around his waist and he lifts me up, grabbing me, tearing at my clothes like a wild animal. His kisses are hot down my neck, and I scramble to pull off my shirt, to get it off my head.

I need him. I want him on me, over me, inside of me. Every inch of his skin pressing up against my own. I want to feel him wrap himself around me.

He carries me to the bare mattress on the four poster bed and rips his own shirt off, unbuckling his pants and pulling down his underwear. His nakedness in this golden candlelight takes my breath away. He cups his hands around my breasts and then tears off my bra, pulling down my sweatpants and underwear in one single motion.

His lips find my delicate places, and he runs his tongue all around them, drinking me into him. I gasp and moan as he explores me, coming endlessly at his touch. When I think I can’t take anymore, he slips into me and fills me up the way I remember.

But this is a little different.

This is sadness and rage and pent up frustration.

And it’s love.

It’s all the love he says he’s saved for me. I can feel it pulsing out of him, as he pushes and leaves and returns and fills me up over and over again.

The storm rages on outside, but I barely hear it. This, this thing between us, is more of a storm than any I’ve ever ridden in my life.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

LUKE

I crawl out of bed as quietly as I can. I wish I had a blanket down here to wrap Ella up in. It’s a little chilly. I turn my phone on; after Ella fell asleep last night, I blew out all the candles and curled myself around her body. I fell asleep watching her breathe.

I climb up the stairs and push open the metal doors.

They don’t budge.

Not even a little.

I pound on them and I hear Ella call out in the dark. “Luke?”

“We’re stuck,” I say, groaning as I push my shoulder against the door. “Tree branch must have fallen onto the doors.” I dial Tim’s phone number. He picks up on the second ring.

“Hey,” he says. He sounds groggy. “Just fell asleep, sorry.”

I check the clock on my phone. “It’s eleven in the morning.”

“Yeah, I’ve been up all night knocking on doors with my mom,” he says. “Checking on the elderly and people with kids. You survive the storm alright? It’s a mess out there, Luke, let me tell you.”

“Yeah, about that. I think you’re gonna need to get out here. And bring a winch and your tractor or maybe about half a dozen people.” I hang up the phone and start lighting candles again. Ella is totally naked, sitting upright.

“What’s up?” she asks, her curly hair sticking out all around her face adorably. She looks like a lion.

“Tree branch over the doors. Tim’s coming to rescue us though.” I reach down and pull on my clothes.

“Wait. Tim’s coming here? But he’ll see us, here, together…” she starts getting dressed as this thought dawns over her.

I laugh and zip my zipper. “Ella, I think the whole town already knows about us after karaoke and that kiss.” I reach down and kiss her lips. She sighs and relaxes into me. “If you were worried about people talking, you probably shouldn’t have sung that song.”

She grins. “It was the beer. What can I say?”

“Told you that you can’t hold your liquor,” I retort.

Tim shows up half an hour later and I hear the roar of the tractor. He makes quick work of whatever’s blocking the doors and a few minutes later, the doors groan and sunlight pours into the basement. “Morning, Ella,” Tim says without even stepping downstairs.

She sighs resignedly. “Morning, Tim.” She’s blushing. I lift her off the bed and she shrieks. I carry her in my arms up the stairs.

“Damsel in distress here,” I say to Tim, nodding at Ella.

“Put me down,” she says, slapping my arms. I set her onto the grass and she’s instantly up to her sneakers in mud.

I look around and I stop laughing. “Holy-“

Trees are down everywhere, tossed like match sticks all over my property. The powerlines to the house have been felled by a hundred-year-old oak tree.

“Amazing that it’s such a beautiful day considering everything going on, huh?” Tim says.

“How bad is it out west?” I ask, thinking of the flat plains with worry.

“You two in the mood to help out today? We could use as many hands as we can possibly get.”

Ella immediately switches into doctor mode. “Are people hurt?”

Tim nods. “Hospital’s taking care of most of them, but there are some far out farms we haven’t been able to get out to yet.”

“Let’s go,” Ella says, marching toward my truck. She stops and yells back.

“What’s that?” I ask her. Then I step around the house and start laughing at what Ella’s looking at.

“How is it even possible that trees flew everywhere and somehow missed your truck?” Ella asks.

“Hand of God,” I say with a grin.

***

We drive as fast as we can over mud-covered roads, only stopping to buy Ella a pair of rubber work boots at the hardware store and to swing by her house so she can pick up her medical kit. She puts the boots on; they clash magnificently with her sweatpants and t-shirt. “I thought about changing, but I figure there isn’t much of a point, is there?”

I look her up and down and run my hand up her thigh. “You look incredible. As usual. But I gotta say I’m looking forward to watching you get down and dirty.”

She blushes. “Stop it,” she says. But she’s smiling.

We drive past fallen trees and power lines and people washing mud off of their windows. Everyone waves as we pass. We make our way to the outskirts of town and out into the farmland. There are wide swathes of earth carved out of the ground.

“Jesus,” Ella whispers under her breath.

We stop at the first farm we reach, where there’s a big red barn facing the road.

I knock on the front door of the old farmhouse as loudly as I can manage. “Anybody home? Anybody hurt?” I step back from the door. “Two trucks here. Somebody’s gotta be home.”

Ella’s not responding. I turn to look where she’s staring and realize why she’s gone silent. I put my hand on her shoulder, but she shrugs it off, tears coming to her eyes. Then she’s off at a run, her medical kit banging against her thigh.

I tear after her, squishing through mud and cow patties through the pasture. The barn looked intact from the viewpoint of the road. But in reality, the back half of it is missing. I glance out into the far fields and see horses running. Then I hear the dog barking.

“Ella, wait!” I yell.

She stops at the edge of what used to be the basement ceiling. We peer down into the hole where the dog barks are coming from. Shattered two-by-fours hang from the former ceiling, pieces of barn wood flooring torn out completely, leaving only nails behind. Ella glances around.