42. Hudson

Chapter Forty-Two

HUDSON

I was impatient to see Stella, but I knew she might be at work. After we landed, I tossed my gear in my locker and hurried out to my truck. I drove straight to her office, but her car wasn’t there.

Uncertain where to look for her, I figured I might as well try home next. She hadn’t responded to my texts. When I saw her car at the house, my heartbeat began kicking along faster and faster.

“Stella!” I called as I walked inside.

There was no sign of her in the kitchen, although her laptop was open on the counter beside the notebook she usually had out when she was studying. Butter twined around my ankles, but there was no sign of Biscuit.

The doorway to Stella’s apartment was open, so I called up to her. When she didn’t reply, I jogged up the stairs. Still no Stella or Biscuit. Worry started to rumble inside.

“What the hell?” I muttered to myself as I jogged back down the stairs. Butter had stationed himself beside the doorway onto the deck and was looking at me expectantly.

When I opened the door to let him out, I saw Stella in the lake.

For a split second, I contemplated barreling through the doors and jumping off the deck. But even with a good cushion of snow, I could hurt myself with that landing. Spinning around, I bolted out of the house, shedding my jacket as I raced to my truck. I grabbed the rope I always kept in the back and kept on hustling around to the back of the house. By the time I reached the edge of the pond, Stella’s elbows were resting on the edge of the ice where she’d fallen through.

“Stella!”

Her head whipped up. “Hudson!”

She was ten feet or so from the edge of the shore. Biscuit, who I presumed was the reason Stella had fallen through the ice, had retreated to safer ground in the snow near the edge of the ice.

I wanted to break through the ice and rescue Stella, but it was just far enough I wasn’t sure that was a wise call. I held her gaze. “Stella, can you listen to me?”

She nodded, and worry reverberated through me to see how much she was shivering.

“This may sound counterintuitive, but I want you to kick the ice up behind your feet. We want your legs to be able to float upward. That will help you to slide forward gradually instead of pushing your weight up in one place.”

Stella shifted, and a few seconds later, the ice broke behind her after she kicked and her feet floated to the surface. “Okay now, try to slide your chest up onto the edge of the ice.”

The ice appeared thick enough to hold her, but I didn’t know. Ice could be tricky. There were always thinner and thicker areas, especially when the weather started to warm up.

“Take it nice and slow,” I called out as she gradually eased her chest onto the ice. “Worst case scenario I’m gonna break through and get you, but this is the safer option.”

It took all my restraint not to do more. While keeping my eyes on her, I knotted the rope around my waist and checked the sturdy handle on the other end. “I’m gonna throw this to you. Just grab ahold of the handle.”

I tossed it, breathing a silent sigh of relief when it landed right in front of her. She curled one hand around the handle.

“Okay, perfect. Now, keep sliding onto the ice.” Although I could hear the subtle cracks from her weight, the ice in front of her was holding so far.

Stella was all the way onto the ice by now, still keeping a grip on the rope handle. With me talking her through it, she carefully inched forward. I kept a little slack in the rope and tightened it incrementally as she got closer and closer to the edge of the shoreline.

Biscuit waited beside me, watching Stella. All the while, I could hear the thud of my heartbeat rushing in my ears, and tried to keep my focus. It was one thing to stay focused when you were rescuing someone you didn’t know. It was something else altogether when you were rescuing someone you loved. I loved Stella. That knowledge rang like a bell inside, the echo of it reverberating in my heart.

When she was about two feet away from the shoreline, I finally leaned down and reached for her shoulders, sliding her all the way onto the snow. Once I knew she was completely clear of the ice and on solid and snowy ground, I knelt down and wrapped her in my arms.

She was wet and shivering so hard I could feel it in my bones.

“I love you, Stella,” I murmured into her hair.

She lifted her head. Her teeth chattered. “I-I lo-o-ve y-y-you too.”

“There’s a lot more I need to say, but we need to get you inside. We might need to take you to the hospital.” I stood and lifted her into my arms.

“I can walk,” she insisted.

I wanted to argue the point, but the snow was almost two feet deep and starting to soften, so it was a slog to walk through. I eased her down, keeping a firm hold around her waist as we slowly made our way to the front of the house. Biscuit leaped along through the snow beside us.

“Did you come out here to get Biscuit?” I asked.

The sound of Stella’s teeth chattering when she nodded twisted my heart painfully.

It felt like forever later, but it was maybe two minutes before we walked through the front door. When we stopped inside the entryway, Stella looked up at me.

My brain felt filled with static. Emotion rose like a wave cresting inside and my throat felt thick. I forced myself to focus. “We need to get you warm. Shower,” I stated.

We needed to get her out of her sopping-wet clothes. I stripped her down swiftly, leaving everything in a pile in the entryway. Biscuit had followed us inside and scampered into the kitchen with Butter. I hustled Stella upstairs into her apartment and to the bathroom. She didn’t hesitate and let out a deep sigh when she stepped into the warm shower.

“I’m warm,” she said through the water a few moments later.

“You’re staying in for a few minutes,” I insisted.

There was nothing sexual about it in this moment, but I needed to be close to her. I stripped out of my own clothes and stepped into the shower behind her, curling my arms around her and simply holding her.

A little while later, Stella was dressed in a fluffy pair of fleece pants, fuzzy socks, and an oversized fleece top. I’d ordered pizza to be delivered. Stella’s hands were curled around a mug of steaming hot tea. She was sitting on the couch, watching as I carried plates over to the coffee table in front of her. The cats were flanking her. I didn’t know how to read a cat’s mind, but I was pretty sure Biscuit realized that she might’ve been responsible for the chain of events that led to Stella falling through the ice. She wouldn’t leave Stella’s side.

When the doorbell rang, I snagged my wallet off the counter and walked quickly out to the entryway. When I swung the door open, Casey from the café was there.

“Hey, Casey,” I said. “Aside from Firehouse Café and Wildlands, you also work for Alpenglow Pizza now?”

She grinned. “I switched from Wildlands to this. I don’t like those late hours. Just so you know, there is so much pepperoni on this pizza I almost stole it from you,” she teased.

I chuckled, handing her a generous tip. “I don’t believe there’s such a thing as too much pepperoni.”

“There isn’t. Tell Stella I said hi,” she said in a singsong voice as she jogged off the porch to her car.

When I walked back up to the living room, Stella asked, “Who was that?”

“Casey from Firehouse Café. I guess she started doing pizza delivery instead of working at Wildlands. She said hi.”

Stella smiled as she set her mug on the coffee table. “I like Casey. I hope she stays in Willow Brook.”

I put the pizza on the coffee table, walking back down to the kitchen to grab some napkins. “Silverware?” I yelled up.

“Nope. People who use silverware for pizza are savages.”

I chuckled as I sat down beside her and handed her a napkin. She was already sliding a piece of pizza onto a plate. She closed her eyes and let out a moan as she took a bite.

It was mid-afternoon and only an hour or so had passed since I’d gotten home to find Stella in the lake. I’d lost sense of time. For the first time since, my body could focus on something other than sheer fear and making sure Stella was safe. When she moaned, I heard that sound in every cell.

After we ate, Stella leaned back against the cushions with a satisfied sigh. “I don’t think I’m going to let Biscuit out on the porch ever again.”

I eyed Biscuit. “I’m questioning if we should keep her,” I offered dryly.

Stella’s eyes went wide and her mouth dropped open in mock outrage. “You’d better be joking.”

“Obviously. Butter would be devastated without her. So, what happened?”

Stella idly stroked Biscuit. “I let them out on the porch. They’ve always been fine out there. Butter started meowing, and when I got up to let him in, Biscuit wasn’t there. I looked over the railing and she was already walking out on the lake.”

I glanced at Biscuit who was purring away at Stella’s side. My mind kept replaying the picture of Stella in the icy water. I had to forcefully kick the memory away. She was safe now.

On the heels of a breath, I cleared my throat. “Okay, no more porch.”

“Or, we put up some kind of barrier that keeps them from jumping or climbing down,” she said.

“I’ll think on it and see if we can come up with something.”

Stella’s eyes met mine, big and brown, with her blond curls tumbling around her shoulders.

“I missed you.” My words slipped out before I could think about them.

It was the simple truth. I’d already said the hard part.

She tipped her head to the side, lifting her hand to tuck a loose curl behind her ear. She was pink-cheeked and fresh-looking. “I missed you too. But I missed you before you went away.” She blinked, looking at me uncertainly. “I think maybe I overreacted.”

“What do you mean?” I pressed.

“When I broke up with you. My words got ahead of me,” she explained.

“It wasn’t you. I panicked because I love you. I was scared to even think about it, much less tell you.” Saying that aloud was a relief. My heart started to loosen. It felt as if I’d been clenching a fist around it for years, holding on so tight that it hurt. I’d been afraid to let go.

“I guess we were both afraid,” she said slowly. “What do we do now?”

“I need to stop being an idiot. Leo told me that I had either done you a favor, or I was an idiot.” I laughed softly as I recalled his point.

“A favor?”

“By not wasting your time if I didn’t want more. I was the idiot because I was a coward and didn’t know how to tell you how much you meant to me.”

Stella pressed her lips together to keep from laughing. I reached for her hand and laced my fingers through it. “You can laugh. It hurt to hear it, but Leo was just pointing out the obvious. And then, Parker told me again he would kick my ass if I hurt you.”