Page 43 of Just (Fake) Married (Calloways vs. McGraws #1)

“It’s beautiful. It’s the most beautiful wedding dress ever,” I said. Wearing my mother’s wedding dress would be a dream come true. But not for this sham of a wedding.

“It’s just so much lying,” I whispered, the tears coming back. “It’s not real. None of this…” my breath caught in my throat and I forced myself to look at him. Really look at him.

He’s not yours. He’s leaving.

I watched his jaw clench and he’d worn his glasses today, too. Which of course, only made him look sexier. And someday his hair would go grey and he’d get smile lines around his eyes and he’d be so handsome…for another woman.

Asshole.

“Can’t you feel it, Ethan?” I asked him. Hoping I wasn’t alone in this crazy marriage miasma where it was getting harder and harder every day to decipher what was real and what wasn’t. “Can’t you feel how utterly fucked up this is all getting?”

“Yeah. I can. But I have an idea,” he said, his voice thoughtful. “What if we-“

Without warning, a full-grown male elk ran out into the road.

“Oh, fuck!” Ethan yelled, and swerved to miss him.

I braced myself, eyes shut as we drove into the ditch. The brakes squealed and there was the horrible thud of the car hitting the animal and then hitting the ditch on the other side of the road. The air bags exploded and a chemical powder filled the air. I coughed and tried to wipe my face.

“Harmony,” Ethan said, as he ran his fingers across my skull and down my neck, over my shoulders to my arms and then my fingers. “Do you have any pain anywhere? Or numbness?”

“I’m fine,” I said.

“What day is it?” he said, coming back to look at my eyes.

“You know I’m not good with the days,” I huffed. “Wednesday?”

“Tuesday,” he muttered.

“Help!” A kid shouted, the voice coming from across the road. “Help! Please! Someone help us!”

Ethan and I threw off our seatbelts and got out of the car that was on a steep incline in the ditch. “I have a first aid kit in the trunk,” he directed me. “And a shotgun if the elk needs it.”

He ran across the highway towards an old blue Toyota truck which was sitting ass up on the other side of the road.

I popped the trunk and grabbed the biggest first aid kit I’d ever seen and the shotgun everyone carried in their truck for exactly this reason.

The downed elk in the middle of the road was huge. Seven hundred pounds easy, but he was already dead. His neck clearly broken.

“Harmony! Over here,” Ethan shouted to me. I ran across the road and skidded down into the ditch where the old truck was crumpled.

Ethan was standing in the driver’s side door opening. There was a woman sitting in the driver’s seat, unconscious. The truck was so old there were no airbags, and the woman had a gash on her forehead and blood was gushing down into her face.

In the passenger seat was a very nervous boy.

“She’s unconscious from the head wound,” Ethan said. “And she has a broken collarbone on her right side.” I put the first aid kit on the ledge of the truck bed and unzipped it so Ethan could get what he needed. He snapped on gloves and took a thick piece of gauze and pressed it to the woman’s head.

Not as unconscious as Ethan thought, she flinched and tried to push Ethan away. “Ouch,” she said, her voice raspy. “Leave it.”

I ran around the truck to get to the kid in the passenger seat.

“Hi,” I said, trying to pull his attention away from his mother’s horror show of a head wound. “Hey, can you tell me your name?”

“No…Noah,” he said, with gasping, shuddery breaths. He wiped his tears away with the flat of his hand. He wore glasses that were crooked on his face.

“And what’s your mom’s name?”

“Mom.” He pulled in a big breath that shuddered. “Oh, you mean her name. Cinnamon. Cinnamon Swift.”

“Wait, I know her,” I said, looking across the seat at the woman fading in and out of consciousness. With the blood, I hadn’t recognized her.

Cinnamon Swift was Chuck’s granddaughter. She’d dropped out of high school and no one in the Gulch had heard from her since.

Judging by the direction they’d been going, they must have been heading up to visit Chuck.

“We need to get her to a hospital. With the bruising on her chest from the steering wheel I’m worried about internal bleeding,” Ethan said.

He stood and pulled his phone out of his back pocket.

“Sandra,” he barked into the phone. “There’s been an accident.

No, we’re fine, but there’s another car involved.

What are my chances of getting an air ambulance out here? ”

He walked away so I didn’t hear the rest of the conversation. A helicopter would have to be flown in from Big Horn, but that would also be the closest hospital.

“Got it,” he said, coming back to the truck. “I’m sending you my location now.”

“It’s bad, isn’t it?” Noah asked. His freckles stood out on his pale face and something about him was familiar to me.

“She’s going to be alright,” I said, pulling his attention back to me. “Ethan is one of the best doctors in the whole country. She could not be in better hands. I’m going to call your grandpa, okay?”

He nodded. “That’s who we were going to see.”

“Okay. Okay, honey.” I pulled him against me and called Chuck.

The next thirty minutes were a blur and seemed to take forever, but also happen instantly. Chuck showed up before the helicopter. He ran, like I’d never seen him run before, towards the up-ended tuck.

“Cin!” He shouted, heading for his granddaughter. Ethan stopped him, explaining that they needed to wait for the EMTs to move her.

Noah buried himself into Chuck’s arms and the two of them watched helplessly as Ethan set flares on the road for the air ambulance to find us.

When they did arrive, Ethan worked with the EMTs to secure Cinnamon to a stretcher for transportation. He was laser focused. Clear-headed and completely in charge. Whatever I thought was his element before, I was wrong.

This was Ethan as he was meant to be.

“I’m going with the team,” he shouted, over the sound of the whirling helicopter blades. “Chuck will get you back home.”

I nodded.

“You sure you’re okay?” he shouted.

I nodded again and touched his cheek to assure him I was fine.

He seemed to accept that. I watched him duck and run to the helicopter. Watched as he fearlessly climbed on board, his total focus on the injured patient at his feet.

The helicopter lifted off the ground, hovered and then took off for Big Horn. Leaving me with Chuck and his great-grandson and the shattering conclusion that I was absolutely and completely in love with Ethan.

And I had to let him go.