Courtney Cole - Until We Fly

It’s pathetic, but true.

As the truck draws closer and I get a better view of the driver’s face, I almost gasp aloud.

It can’t be.

I peer closer, my eyes narrowed behind my sunglasses. The driver of the truck is also wearing sunglasses, which makes it harder to see for sure.

But that blond hair… honey blond hair that it looks like it has been kissed by the sun. The chiseled cheekbones, cleft in the chin, the strong jawline, the proud nose. I would recognize that profile anywhere, even through a heavily tinted windshield, even though the last time I’d seen it was almost ten years ago.

Brand Killien.

No way.

I realize that I’m holding my breath and I inhale, still staring at him.

He still looks like a Norse god, still like the boy I had fallen in love with so many years ago. He didn’t know, of course, because I’m four years younger. I was so not on his radar. But he was always on mine…for a couple of reasons.

One, because he’s always been the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

Two, and even more importantly, he makes me feel good. Safe and sound. Like when I’m with him, nothing can hurt me, nothing can touch me.

I fantasized about him every single summer, and then one year, I came back to Angel Bay after a long winter, only to find that Brand wasn’t here. He’d gone away to college and then joined the Army.

Every summer after that, I watched for him to come home.

Every summer after that, he wasn’t here.

People chattered, of course, because Angel Bay is so small and that’s what small town people do. In the tiny grocery, I heard that he became some badass special ops soldier, that he was in the Rangers in Afghanistan. In the café, I heard that something terrible happened to him there, that he’d come home after that.

But much to my disappointment, he never came back to Angel Bay.

Until now.

Butterflies explode in my stomach, their wings tickling my ribs, their writhing velvety bodies pressed against my diaphragm, making it hard to breathe. It’s like even they know the reverence of this moment, the absolute miracle that it is.

Brand Killien is here.

A farm truck pulling a flat-bed trailer lurches forward at the intersection, blocking my view momentarily. I lean forward, trying to subtly find Brand again, just to make sure he’s there, that I hadn’t just imagined him.

That’s when I see the problem, and even though it happens too quickly for me to even scream, it seems to happen in slow motion at the same time.

A dump truck barrels through the intersection from the other side, slamming into the ammonia tank on the farm truck’s trailer.

The explosion is immediate and severe.

I feel the intense rush of heat before I hear the boom. But when the boom comes, it splits apart the sky. It’s so loud that it reverberates in my chest, rattling each of my ribs and setting the butterflies free. Suddenly, I’m in the air. My legs dangle like a pitiful rag doll and the breeze is all around me. I’m in the breeze. I am the breeze.

Things come in visceral snippets now as I fly.

Heat.

Noise.

Screams.

Cracks.

Glass.

My flight is short and I slam into something hard, my head cracking against the floor. The floor?

Blackness.

Heat.

When I open my eyes, I’m not sure how much time has passed, only that my head feels heavy, a splitting pain coming from the back of it. With shaking fingers, I touch it, and my fingertips come back covered in blood.

I look up.

The heat is from fire. And the fire is all around.

I’m in a pile of rubble in what used to be the café. Boards and ceiling and tables are piled around me, and people are on the floor. Dust is everywhere and I can hardly see through it. But I can see the fire.

And I can see Brand.

Like some sort of magnificent and fierce angel, he strides through the dark smoke, and I see him pry the school bus doors open. He leaps inside, and a scant moment later, he emerges with a child in his muscled arms. He hands the child to someone, then goes back into the smoking, charred bus. Over and over, I watch this process.

Some of the children he carries out are bloody, some are limp. But he continues to make the trips.

Finally, he comes out empty handed.

He stands still for a moment, and I see how his shirt is ripped down the front. I can see a chiseled washboard behind the large tear. I see how soot is smeared across his cheeks, and the same soot has turned his hair black.

I see him take a deep breath, I see him look around at the carnage on the street, looking for someone else to save.

And then he sees me.

I do need saved. More than he’ll ever know.

His eyes are a blue so bright that I can’t even name it. Sapphire, maybe? They shine through the soot, through the flames. He focuses on me, then with long steps, he comes to me. Straight to me. Through the chaos, through the havoc.

“Miss, are you alright?” his voice is husky, probably from the smoke. I can’t move.

“I’m stuck,” I manage to tell him. “My legs.”

My legs are beneath splintered boards, boards that used to be a café wall. As I glance up at Brand, I see my parents on the street, standing with an EMT. I can see my mother’s frantic arm movements, and I can read her lips.

My daughter.

I take a breath, but there’s no way she’d hear me if I called. She’ll have to wait.

Brand draws my attention back to him, back to his brilliant blue eyes, by speaking.

“I’m going to get this stuff off of you. I’ll try not to hurt you,” he tells me calmly. With muscular arms, he lifts the jagged boards off of me, one by one. True to his word, he doesn’t hurt me.

When he’s finished, when I’m free, he doesn’t help me stand.

He bends and scoops me up instead.

My head rests against his chest and I can hear his heart as he carries me effortlessly through the mayhem.

Ba-bump.

Ba-bump.

His heart is as strong as he is.

I focus on that, on the strong beats, instead of looking at the people on the floor. Instead of looking at the blood, or smelling the smoke, or having a panic attack.

“Are you okay?” Brand asks me, looking down at me. His face is confident, his voice calm. “You’re going to be all right.”

I nod because I believe him, because how could I not trust a voice that sure of itself?

But then it doesn’t matter.

Because out of nowhere, I hear a nauseatingly loud crack, and all of a sudden, the wall next to us comes down in a mass of metallic shrieks and groans and shards.

It shears my arm, and I can smell the blood.

I’m knocked free from Brand’s safe grasp, yanked from his arms, and I’m falling, falling, falling.

Then it all goes black and stays that way.

Brand

Fucking son-of-a-bitch.

White hot pain rips through me, from my hip to my ankle. I grimace, trying to pull myself out of the wreckage, to no avail. I’m the one who is stuck now, firmly and painfully in a mountain of broken wood and cinder.

The smoke surrounding me brings back instant memories of Afghanistan, of bombs and blood. But I shake those images away. I’m not there. I’m here. And I’ve got to keep my wits.

The girl.

The girl I was carrying, the girl with the dark red hair and big blue eyes. She trusted me. I saw it on her face.

I twist to find her, scanning everything around me. And then I see her thin arm, sticking out of a pile of rubble. I know it’s hers because of the turquoise bracelet on her small wrist.

“Help!” I call out to the EMTs who are now on the scene. One hears me, and rushes my way, but I wave him toward the girl.

“Get her first!” I tell him. “She’s under that shit. Get her first. It’s crushing her.”

He does as I ask, and it takes two of them to dig her out. I watch them carry her out, I watch how her eyes are still closed, I watch them stretch her limp body onto a waiting gurney before they come back for me.

Fuck.

“Thank you,” I tell them sincerely. They gingerly move the wood and the drywall and the twisted metal that is holding me down, before they roll me onto a stretcher.

“I’m fine,” I try and tell them, as I attempt to get up.

But I can’t get up. My left leg is twisted beneath me, my foot turned an unnatural way. I stare at it, aghast and astonished, noticing the way my knee is turned out, while my ankle is turned in.

Fuck.

I don’t feel the pain, so I know I’m in shock. I drop back against the stretcher, as they wheel me toward a waiting ambulance.

My leg was shattered in Afghanistan. I had multiple surgeries, months of physical therapy and I was only just starting to walk without a limp. And for what? To have it annihilated again? Here in fucking Angel Bay?

Fucking hell.

They load me up and close the door and I stare at the white metal for a second before I close my eyes. This can’t be happening. This isn’t real.

But it’s real.

The sirens, loud and wailing, tell me that.

Numbly, I wait. Then something occurs to me. Why are they using the siren for a broken leg?

I barely have the thought before my fingers grow cold, and my thoughts begin to get fuzzy, muddled.

What the hell?