Page 15 of Not How I Saw That Going

“What? No.” Caleb shakes his head. “What happened?”

“I, uh—”Gosh, how do I get out of this?“We hit heads. I think.” I rub the tender spot on my forehead. The details are a little blurry even to me.Someone please tell me I’m still asleep.

Caleb curses under his breath and gently straightens his partner’s head. A huge bump on the firefighter’s forehead catches the light and I gasp.

“Did I do that?”

Before Caleb can answer, EMTs burst through the open door of my apartment.

Great, now the whole gang’s here.

I point to the man on the ground Caleb had called Ward, but they barely glance in my direction on their way to him.

They kneel over Ward, checking his pulse and stabilizing his neck. They angle a board beneath him, and with the two firefighter’s help, shift him onto the stretcher in a single fluid motion. The whole process is impressive. Ward is a big man.

Though he went down pretty easily.

One of the EMTs looks at me, her eyes narrowed. “What did you just say?”

I gulp and take a step back. “Huh? What?”

“We should check you out as well,” the EMT says and before I can decline, she walks over to me and shines a flashlight in my eyes. I try to appear normal, well as normal as I can be in this situation.

“You don’t seem to have a concussion.”

“Dang it, I was hoping this was all some weird hallucination.”

She frowns.

Tough crowd.

The woman looks hesitantly at me before turning her attention back to Ward, where it clearly should be.

They raise the gurney and are almost to the door when Ward jerks. His arms and legs flail and Caleb and the other guy jump on him to keep him from falling off the stretcher.

“Get off of me,” Ward barks. “What are you doing?”

He seems pleasant.

“You got knocked out, man. You need to go to the hospital to get checked out,” Caleb says.

“I did not. I was checking on the woman.”

All eyes swivel in my direction.

I raise my hand.Womanhere and accounted for. “Um, I’m just fine, thank you. I was asleep. This was all just a big misunderstanding.” I wave my hand around the room like I invite firefighters and EMTs over every Tuesday just for fun.

Ward sits up, impressive since his friends are still trying to push him down. The frown on his lips is downright scary. But then his eyes connect with mine.

“You,” he looks at me, confusion written all over his face.

Same here, buddy.

“You’re the woman from the store.” He blinks, and it looks like it takes him a great deal of effort to open his eyes again.

My lips part. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before. Probably because I didn’t have time to admire his brown eyes before I headbutted him. Ward, retriever of children and giver of Swedish Fish. He looks different in uniform, grumpier somehow, yet even more attractive.

But one can never be too sure. Maybe I should ask him to prove it by showing me the tattoo.