When I heard the engine cut out fully, I grabbed my crutches and hauled myself down the hallway as fast as I could. “Beau!” I shouted. “Beau, you still here?”

My brother was MIA. I felt a flutter of helpless outrage, an impotent anger at how fucking helpless I was right now. Before my accident, I was fast enough, strong enough, to be out the door and checking on her already. But now I had to deal with these crutches and these stupid fucking boots when I just wanted to see that my girl was okay. 

My girl. 

I paused to let those words float in front of my brain for a moment before I batted them aside. Regardless of how I felt about her, I still had no idea how she felt about me. In between those flashes of warmth that made my face hurt from smiling, she was cool, detached, and skeptical. Her single-minded focus on her schooling seemed to leave no room for any distractions, and I was fairly certain that was how she viewed me—as a distraction. If I showed up right now, who knew if she’d accept my help. There was always the risk that she’d slap me in the face for invading her space.

What can I say? I like taking risks.

I placed the crutches carefully as I hopped down the stairs. She’d kick my ass if she knew I was doing this without help and for some reason that made me all the more determined to go find her and show her. “See? I can come find your ass, stop being a pain in mine.”

There was no sound outside except the persistent patter of raindrops on the newly budded leaves. The rush of water in the creek was the loudest I had ever heard, loud enough even to drown out my ragged breath as I picked my way over the uneven terrain and down to the narrow bridge where I’d spotted her car. It sat there hulking like a shadow, the matte black exterior absorbing the light like a vehicular black hole. And next to it, standing stock still like she’d been frozen into place, was Everly. 

She was slumped, fallen back against the side of the car, her face turned to the heavens in some kind of silent supplication. The rain was pattering relentlessly against her face, but she didn’t seem to notice. She might even have been asleep, here in the middle of the road. But her eyes snapped open when she saw me drawing near.

I opened my mouth to greet her, but any snarky comment I wanted to say fled when I looked into her eyes. Those pretty eyes of hers, the ones that showed everything she thought she was hiding, looked completely lost. She was staring at me, glaring even, but there was no focus to them. She looked like she’d lost something she knew she’d never find again. “Everly?” I asked and it was a question I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer to.

I expected her to burst into tears. I certainly thought she was about to by the way her eyes looked, opened wide and shining impossibly bright like that.

But she took a deep breath. She stumbled slightly—was she drunk?

And then I jumped because she started laughing. Full-on belly-laughing tinged with acute hysteria. I shuffled my crutches around to get closer to her and she stumbled again. I reflexively shot out my arm to catch her even though I was still shaky on my feet. She caught herself against it, bracing her feet and then slumping against the side of the car again in another fit of helpless, frightening laughter. “It died,” she managed to gasp.

“What? Who died?” I demanded.

”It died today.” She hiccuped and clapped her hand to her mouth, looking like she was about to vomit, then shook her head in wonder. “So many times it could have died,” she breathed in a soft, helpless voice utterly unlike the one I was used to hearing come from her mouth. “But it chose today. Today...”

Goosebumps crawled across my rain-soaked skin. I was starting to feel genuinely freaked out. She lurched to the side again and this time I grabbed her and yanked her up, stumbling as I did so that we both fell against each other. Her eyes were wild now, looking everywhere but at me, and I could see her hands fluttering at her sides. Frustrated, I braced myself against my crutches and grabbed her face, turning her to me. “What happened?” I shouted, panicked now. “Are you okay?”

She couldn’t seem to get a full breath. Gasping, she struggled to form words as tears slipped from her eyes and mixed with the rain on her cheeks. 

I knew this. I had seen it in rehab. A panic attack. She was working herself up into a panic attack. Her eyes darted over my face and without really thinking about it, I reached down and grabbed her hand, holding it tight in mine. I cupped her cheek with my other hand then brushed it back, smoothing the fuzz of hairs that had escaped her no-nonsense ponytail. 

Her eyes snapped to mine. I nodded. “That’s it,” I said. “Breathe when I breathe, okay? Slow down, just slow down, watch my face, okay? In and out. Slower. In and out. Okay? Good. Again. In and out. You’re fine, Everly. You’re safe and I’m right here.”

“I can’t,” she moaned with each breath. “I can’t, I can’t...”

“You can. I’m here to help you, okay? I’m the nurse and you’re the patient and I’m going to take care of you. In and out. You’re doing so good.” I smoothed her hair again and again, feeling the way her overheated skin was already cooling. “Good girl. You are doing so good, okay? Keep doing that. In and out.”

Her bright blue eyes met mine and filled with tears. I smoothed her hair and smiled at her. “Hey there,” I said. “You’re back.”

She reddened and her breath caught again. “No,” I told her firmly. “Don’t. Keep your breath nice and even. Don’t try to talk yet.”

She shook her head, but pressed her lips together dutifully and took another deep breath. “That’s right.” She looked down. The rain was caught in her dark lashes and fuck, why did she look so fucking beautiful to me right now? “Everly, come in out of the rain, okay?”

“My car,” she started to say.

But I held up a hand. “My Dad’s a car guy. You already knew that. If I text him and let him know there’s a car stalled out in the middle of our road, he and his buddies will be out here and under the hood in no time flat. You don’t have to worry about that. Just come inside and out of the rain, okay?”

I could see panic working its way back up into her eyes. “Let me help you,” I urged. 

“Why are you being so sweet to me?” she breathed, suspicion clouding her eyes. 

“Because,” I said. “I know what it’s like.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“Feeling like life is shitting on you for fun. Feeling like you can’t catch a fucking break even though you’re doing everything you’re supposed to.” And as I said it, I knew I was telling the truth. “We’re kindred spirits.”

She widened her eyes.

I laughed at her incredulous expression. “It’s true. I know it doesn’t seem like we have a thing in common, but we have everything important in common. Just look at me and tell me what happened. I can help you, Everly. Just tell me how to help you.” 

The cords in her neck stood out in sudden anguish. She took a deep breath and let out a sob. “I missed my boards!”

“Oh,” I breathed. I felt like she’d punched me in the gut, so I couldn’t even imagine how she was feeling. “Oh Jesus Christ, baby, I am so fucking sorry.”

I didn’t know what to do. She looked so fucking sad, so devastated and alone that it was tearing me up inside.

I did the only thing that felt right. 

I kissed her.

It was an accident, I will swear it to my dying day. And hell, if you pressed me, I might even blather some nonsense about it being a friendly kiss, something to buck up her spirits after such terrible news. 

It might have been an accident when I started kissing her, but continuing to kiss her was completely on purpose. Because there was something there, something that stirred a memory. Distant and fuzzy, as if half-remembered in a dream. It made no sense that I should “remember” kissing Everly. But when I felt it, I kissed her harder, hoping to jog that memory loose from where it was stuck in the back of my brain and make sense of it. And fuck, kissing her was pretty nice, too. Her lips were warm and soft and she tasted sweeter than made sense. 

At first she held her mouth tightly closed. As I brushed my hand up to the back of her neck, her body was stiff and unyielding. The rush of desire I’d felt started to ebb when I felt how she wasn’t into it, and the tendrils of memory started to slip through my fingers. I made to pull back and apologize, ready to let that memory slip past me as just some kind of weird deja vu.

Then she flung her arms around me and fuck, she kissed me back.

For all of her tightly held emotions, she kissed with a wild desperation. She was like a hungry animal the way she devoured my mouth and battled my tongue with hers. I was shocked, and then I was more turned on than I ever had been in my life to feel her coming alive under my hands. 

She sought under my shirt, seeking warm skin. I tilted her head, devouring that soft, amazingly hot mouth as the memory came back with a vengeance, burning through all my synapses until I pulled back and stared at her, feeling like I’d been hit by a truck. “You,” I gasped, cupping her face in my hands and searching those blue eyes. “Oh my god, you’re her. It was you!”