Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Roan

My head is banging like a drum squad from the high school marching band. Standing in front of me is a… vision. Like something sent from heaven. I’m totally down to take one of them on, but I’m not sure I’m man enough to handle two at the same time. Not after today. Well, not right now. Give me a few hours and we’ll see.

I squeeze my eyes together and my dream angels meld into one. I have double vision. There aren’t two, just the one and I can definitely handle that. She speaks and I have to focus on the words she’s saying as her image fades in and out.

“I’ll get you out! I promise.”

My eyes go to the scene around us and facts start rushing in. There was a car. It crossed the line and… my fucking cruiser is on fire. Something warm is leaking down the side of my face which I can only assume is blood.

The sound of panicked breathing reaches my ears as I turn my attention back to the woman standing beside me fighting to wedge herself between me and the airbag.

“Son of a bitch!” It’s said softly but I can almost feel her start to panic.

She’s stretched across me so she can reach the latch on my seatbelt, and I realize just how small she is.

“Please, just let go, you damned piece of shit!”

Her last words ring through my head like they are echoing in an empty room. She must have said them louder than the others.

“My belt.” The words barely make it out of my mouth, and I worry she’s not going to be able to understand me. But she pulls back and looks at me.

“What?”

She leans closer to me, placing her hands on my chest. I should be focusing on what the hell is going on around me, but I swear I can’t get past the soft weight of her stretched across me.

“Tool on my belt…will help cut it.”

Her face lights up. It might be the height of the flames, but I think it’s because of what I told her. Her next words prove I’m right.

“Oh, thank God, yes. Yes!” She looks down at my belt. “Wh… which one?”

I try but can’t push the words out the first time. When I try again I finally do it. “Long, black thing that looks like…kinda like a bottle opener.”

“Bottle opener?” She starts running her fingers over the things I have clipped to my belt and I can’t help but think about how much I would like this if I wasn’t in this situation right now. She slips the right one from its case and holds it up for me to verify she got the right one.

“Yes.” I don’t even think about nodding, knowing it will make everything so much worse for me, “Use the blade on the end.”

“Okay. Okay, I’m just gonna slip this… ow, damn it!” I can’t tell what she’s doing but I feel the tightness of the belt give way and she helps me untangle myself from what’s left of the seatbelt. “Come on! Let’s get you out of here.”

She puts my arm over her shoulder and hops down from where she was standing. I am half pulled and half fall from the car sending both of us down on the side of the road. She struggles under my weight, and I have to focus to help her get me in a semi-standing position. The world around me is hazy and spins but it helps if I concentrate on the sweet little woman standing up next to me. Somehow, we manage to limp our way over to her car, where I lean against the hood for a second before calling in the accident and making sure help is on its way.

I also take stock of the other car. Normally, I would be on top of something like this, but my head injury seems to be getting the better of me. I look over at the little angel who came and saved me. I hate to do what I am about to do.

“We… We need to go check on the people in the other car.”

“Um…you want me to help you over there?” She asks me so uncertainly that I want to reassure her or even tell her we don’t have to… but we do.

“Yeah.” Normally I would just nod but I’m not going to chance it right now. “We need to find out if they need help too, angel.”

“Oh! Uh… okay, I guess.”

I pull her into me in the guise of having her help me walk over to the other vehicle. Part of it is guise and part is necessity. She wraps her arms around me and we slowly limp our way over to the crumpled mass of metal.

“Listen, when we get close. I want you to kind of look to the side before you look straight at anything, okay.”

“What? Why?”

Giving someone a crash course in how to be an emergency responder isn’t something I thought I would have to do today. But I didn’t think I was going to be in a head-on collision either. “If you don’t look directly at… whatever is there, you won’t automatically go into shock, if you do it like that.”

She halts, which halts our progress, and looks up at me. “What… what do you think we are going to see?”

“It’s a car wreck, darlin’.”

“Oh God.” She says the words, but her feet start moving us again. “I… don’t know if I can do this.”

“You can, sweetheart. You came to me without thinking. You can do this. I’ll check everything, you just have to get me close.”

“Okay.”

When we are close enough for me to see in the car, I hear her gasp and feel her body shake next to mine. It’s not pretty, the scene in front of us. But there is also something that doesn’t make sense even to my addled brain. The only person in the car is sitting in the passenger seat and I don’t think the force of the wreck caused the person to slide out from under the steering wheel.

So, where the fuck is the driver?