“I’m here, in the corner.” Colt’s voice, soft and firm. He never panicked.
Lexi bit down on her lip, listening to the crash and splinter of trees and the wind slamming her house. Her heart pounded painfully in her chest and she didn’t want this to happen, not this, not now.
Not when she was finally starting to get it together again. Total destruction was a perfect marriage crumbling into a nightmare of silence and loneliness. This nightmare she couldn’t take, not the town crumbling around her.
What was God thinking? Did He know she had been at the end of her faith rope and she was just beginning to climb back up?
Chico was on the table she used for folding laundry. His side was gashed open and blood oozed from the wound. She glanced up, making eye contact with blue eyes that had once danced with laughter.
When had Colt stopped laughing?
She searched through the supplies she’d grabbed, and Colt moved closer. He grimaced and held his left arm close to his chest with his right hand.
“Are you okay?”
He smiled, as if it didn’t matter. “Take care of Chico, I’m fine.”
A loud crash sounded above them and then shattering glass. She shuddered and paused, waiting to see if everything would collapse in on them. When the world calmed for a minute, she looked at Colt again, at the arm he held to his side.
“Of course you’re fine.” She touched his arm and he flinched. His face was bruised, as well. “What happened out there?”
Tight lines of pain around his mouth. “We’re taking a direct hit. I need to make sure the two of you are okay and get back out there.”
“Not until I make sure you’re okay. You look like you were in a car accident.”
“It was nothing like that. A tree limb hit my arm.” He wouldn’t tell her more. She knew he didn’t want her to picture what had happened out there. What was still happening. But she could hear it.
She cut into a sheet and ripped a strip of cloth away. She tied the ends and handed it to him. She wouldn’t put it around his neck. She couldn’t do that. Tight lips formed a smile and he slipped the makeshift sling over his neck.
A huge crash above them. Lexi jumped and shuddered, tingles sliding up her arms and through her scalp. She closed her eyes and waited.
“Lexi, it’s okay.” Colt’s voice, steady and calm.
She opened her eyes, and he was watching her.
“Of course it is.” She tried to smile but she couldn’t, not with the storm raging outside her home and fear tangling with adrenaline inside her heart. “The town falling in around us is okay.”
“We’re safe.”
She nodded, not really believing it. She’d watched the news all morning, watching national coverage of storms ripping across Kansas, taking lives, taking homes and dreams. She had prayed that it would stop, that it would turn away from them.
Chico whimpered and raised his head to look at her, his sad eyes pleading. Lexi smoothed his brown coat and examined the cut. “I’m going to give him a shot and then clean this out and sew it up.”
“Is he going to be okay?” Little-boy eyes in the face of a man. She nodded and looked away.
Last week she’d gone out with a farmer from a neighboring town. He had two children and dimples. She had liked him. He wasn’t complicated.
He wasn’t Colt.
“He’ll be fine. But he’s losing a lot of blood, and I don’t have an IV down here.”
“I’ll run upstairs and get one.”
“You can’t run upstairs. It’s too dangerous and you don’t know what I need.” Everything she said seemed to have a double meaning. She looked away from him.
“This isn’t the first animal I’ve tended to with you, Lexi. I know what you need. I’ll get it, and then if it’s clear enough, I need to get back to town. I need to make sure people are safe.”
“The storm.”
“Don’t worry.” He winked, as if it really was okay.
“I don’t want to be alone.” Honesty. She bit down on her bottom lip as he looked away. “I don’t want to die down here alone.”
“You’re safe, Lex. We’re both safe.”
She wanted to hold on to him, refusing to let him leave her alone. Instead she nodded, and she let him go. “Get what I need while I close this wound.”
And he was gone.
She listened to him upstairs, slamming cabinets. The wind pounded the house and something upstairs crashed. She shuddered because she knew it wasn’t Colt. He was tall and muscular, but not clumsy.
She sutured Chico’s wound, talking quietly to her dog, and praying they’d all survive this. Quiet tears slipped down her cheeks and she couldn’t brush them away with gloved hands. She used her arm.
But upstairs the wind was pounding her house and through the narrow basement window she could see debris scooting across her lawn. A crash vibrated through the house and she shuddered, hunkering over the silent dog. A quick glance at the window and this time she saw only tree limbs against the glass.
The door slammed. Wind wailed outside, roaring like a train about to come off the tracks. More glass shattering. And then the windows in the basement. Lexi ducked as a pipe in the basement ceiling fell.
It was an old house, and the upstairs hardwood floor and underlying support beams were the ceiling for the basement. Pipes and electric wires crisscrossed the big, open room, making it not the safest place to be in a tornado. She preferred the storage room in the far corner of the basement.
“Lexi, here it is.” Colt took the last step and was halfway across the room when the house above them splintered and crackled. “Run to the storage room.”
Colt’s voice was drowned out by the roaring wind. He reached them, grabbing the dog and pushing behind her. A board splintered and fell. Lexi tried to duck, but the board hit the arm she lifted to shield herself and then it hit her head.
Crashing and roaring filled her ears and the world tilted. Colt was behind her, pushing her forward.
“Don’t fall, Lexi. Keep moving.”
“I can’t.” She was dizzy and her eyes clouded for a second. Her legs buckled and she felt Colt’s arm against hers. Her ears popped and her lungs heaved for air. “I can’t.”
“Five more steps. You can.” He shoved with his shoulder and they were in the storage room, the door slamming behind him. The building shuddered around them.
A house over one hundred years old and today it gave up. Lexi cried because the house had history. The house had stood the test of time.
It was the one thing in her life that had been sturdy and unwavering. It had a history that she had wanted, of families growing up and growing old together. As she ran to the far corner of the room, she knew the house was falling in around them.
Her ears were filled with the sound of glass shattering and wood splintering, and behind her, the ragged breath of her ex-husband as he moved them to safety.
“You’re bleeding.” Colt laid the dog on the floor and glanced over his shoulder as Lexi dropped to the ground, leaning her head on her knees until her vision cleared. “Lexi, stay awake.”
“Don’t yell. My life is crumbling in around me and you’re