Chapter 55

CHAPTER 55

LOGAN

W hy was it that things always seemed to become crystal clear as soon as a person was in mortal danger?

The metal creaked. I heard the screech and looked up, my retort to Slate dying on my lips when I saw the beam shearing away the rest of the support structure.

I'd once promised Slate I wouldn't come over onto this platform. I had figured the worst of the danger would be coming from the cranes and other equipment they used around here. Maybe from the moon pool. I hadn't ever expected the danger to come from the rig itself collapsing.

But that seemed to be what was happening. As if in slow motion, I saw that the massive beam was about to fall and there was nowhere for me to go to get out of the way. I looked around frantically, my instincts screaming at me to duck, but that wouldn't help.

The only way out seemed to be over the railing, but the plummet itself would certainly mean death.

Outside of churning, angry water, I didn't even know what was below us around here. Another almighty screech rang out and my gaze darted to Mira's. If I was about to die, I wanted her face to be the last thing I saw .

Naturally, as soon as I looked at her, Slate let out a loud roar. His shoulders dropped and he shot toward me, crashing into me and taking me over the railing with him. The next few seconds were a complete blur.

I heard Mira's scream, followed by the loud crash of the beam hitting the platform. Slate disappeared as we sailed through the air. I saw gray, rusted metal, and then I saw blue. Lots of blue, then white on blue, and then I landed on something hard as fuck when we finally stopped falling.

Pain radiated through every inch of my body. From my stomach from when Slate's shoulder had barreled into it. My hips, arms, back, and shoulders where I'd made impact with whatever we'd landed on. My head spun, spots dancing in front of my eyes. I groaned as I tried to figure out if I was still alive.

As far as I knew though, being dead didn't hurt, which meant that I'd made it.

I blinked hard, trying to get my eyes to focus. My heart was thumping in my ears, but the sound of my heartbeat was drowned out by the crashing of the waves below and the chaos coming from above.

I lay there, realizing that I could feel all my extremities, and my vision sharpened. It was still a little double in places, but the first thing I saw was the railing we'd gone over. It'd been a drop of about fifteen feet or so, which explained how I'd survived.

Slate was a few feet away from me, on his hands and knees looking rattled. His eyes were wide as he surveyed the damage around us. But at least he was moving. He seemed okay. He had a cut on his arm and blood was seeping out of it, but he didn't seem to be in pain.

Another loud crack rang out from above and my gaze snapped up again, my eyes widening in horror. The beam had crashed into the structure above and the railing Slate had taken me over was about to give way too.

"Fuck." I scrambled to sit up, all thoughts on Mira and her safety as the thing started to come down all around me. "Slate! Mira!"

"I'm here!" Slate shouted from behind me. "Get out of the way, Logan! Now! Move it! "

I was already trying to do just that, but while I could feel my extremities, I was struggling to get to my feet. My head was still spinning too much, my vision too blurry, and my limbs weirdly unresponsive. Scooting on my ass in the direction of his voice, I moved as fast as I could, keeping my head down. The structure continued to fall, folding in on itself in places with ear-piercing screeches and deafening groans that made it even harder to focus.

I finally managed to get up and I kept trying to blink the world back into focus. Fingers wrapped around my bicep and pulled me further back, insistently dragging me away from the edge and closer to the center of the rig.

"Slate?" I shouted.

"Right here." His voice was practically in my ear, which meant he was the one currently helping me regain my bearings.

My vision cleared a little more as we scrambled to get out of the way, but everything I saw kind of made me wish it hadn't. The thin metal staircase leading to the deck we'd fallen from was littered with debris. Sparks were zapping in places, and on this side of the platform, everything seemed to be bent or twisted. I couldn't see up to the platform above. I didn't know if Mira had gotten out of the way.

Didn't know if she was safe.

Fuck.

What I did know—what I'd realized with absolute clarity just before we'd gone over the edge—was that I loved her. My chest felt too tight and my lungs failed when it occurred to me that she might be hurt up there.

Injured or worse.

My thoughts kept coming and going, like my brain couldn't hold on to anything for an extended period of time. But Mira.

With my heart in my throat, I listened for sounds coming from the floor above, but there was nothing. Nothing I could hear that confirmed whether she was alive or dead anyway.

All of these thoughts flew through my head in a matter of seconds. But I still felt strangely slow. Like a fog had descended on me and I couldn't quite shake it or break fre e

"Mira!" I called again, but she didn't respond. Shit. I have to get to her. Mira. My Mira.

I tried again to get my body to listen to me. Without it, I couldn't get to her and she was the only thing that mattered right then. A rush of pain hit me as I forced my legs to work and my feet to move. I hobbled to the debris-littered stairwell, fighting to maintain my footing on the slick surface. As with everything else on this godforsaken rig at all fucking times, the metal was covered in moisture. I started to climb, pushing through the pain, the spots in my vision, and the way my head had started spinning even faster.

"Mira!" I still didn't know if she could hear me, but I kept shouting for her anyway, ascending the stairs as fast as I could.

Something felt wrong. I'd managed to get moving, but I was off balance. I couldn't quite put my finger on what else was going on, but a rush of dizziness brought me to a stop and my stomach rolled. The edges of my vision turned black. The spots turned into floating streaks of blurriness that only got worse as I tried to blink them away.

"Logan?" Slate called to me as I swayed, bent over double and gripping the slippery remnants of the railing as I tried to stay on my feet. "Logan?"

"I'm fine," I tried to call back to him, but my voice wasn't working properly. The words came out as a harsh whisper rather than a yell.

I groaned, fighting the nausea and the dizziness, and I decided to keep climbing. I could figure out what was wrong with me later. I wasn't important right now. Whatever it was, it wasn't so bad. It couldn't be. Not if I was moving and thinking. I wasn't doing it fast, but that was fine. I'd probably just smacked my head when I'd landed.

My girl was up there somewhere though, and until I knew that she was okay, I wasn't going to stop to worry about myself. The staircase loomed as it rose in front of me, a seemingly endless ladder of rungs that didn't appear to be getting any shorter. I gritted my teeth, trying again after swallowing some spit in the hopes that it would make my voice work better. "Mira!"

There was no way she was going to hear me when even I was struggling to, but I needed her to know that I was here. That I was here and that I was coming for her.

"Stay where you are, Logan," Slate yelled from somewhere behind me again. I didn't know exactly where he was or what he was doing, confusion muddying my thoughts even more now than it had before. "Logan! Listen to me. Stay where you are and sit the hell down."

I groaned, my hand moving to my head. I held it tight, trying to gain control of the spinning, but it didn't work. Something is wrong with me.

Determined to get to Mira, I used my grip on the slick railing to pull myself along as my knees started getting weak. Slate's voice pierced the air around me again, but it seemed more distant now than it had been before.

"Logan! Sit the hell down. I'm coming!"

The dizziness intensified and the black at the edges of my vision creeped in further, trying to take over completely. I fought it as hard as I could, but in the end, the black won and the last thing I was aware of was the dull thud as I fell to my knees, and then I must've passed out because it was all just gone.