Jack's Surrender (Holiday Cove 5)

Every cell in my body fought, urging me to not give up. I’d never given up on a fight in all my years and the one in front of me was the most important one of all. I broke into a sprint and chased after her. I probably looked like a damn fool, but I didn’t care. She could hurl insults at me and tell me to fuck off, but it didn’t matter. Not anymore.

Holly hit the gas when she caught sight of me chasing after her in the rearview mirror.

The SUV lurched forward, determined to get away, but in a split second it screeched to a halt, suspended for one split-second before all hell broke loose. The scene unfolded in slow motion: Her car hit an uneven patch of gravel and began to fishtail. My eyes went wide even as my vision shrank to laser-like precision, fixed on the scene unfolding before me. Nothing else mattered. I didn’t hear anything but the sound of her tires sliding on the gravel, the muffled yell from inside the car, and then the sound of wood breaking as she careened off the road, snapping the wooden guard, and…

“Holly! Holly!” My lungs felt close to bursting with the full volume of my scream.

Her SUV fell over the side of the bluff, and then it flipped.

I sprinted for the side of the cliff. She had to be okay. The candy apple red SUV rolled once…twice…three times. The trees and brush finally slowed the momentum and the car came to a halt with a sickening crunch at the bottom. My hands shook and the world spun around me.

“Oh, God, oh God.” Blindly, my hands started patting at the back pocket of my jeans. Like I was in a daze or a dream, my body took over where I failed. My hands found the phone and dialed 911. The operator’s voice came on the line and my military training kicked in. I relayed the information as the dispatcher asked, even though my voice trembled and broke off in places.

“Is the driver breathing?”

I shook my head. “I—I’m not sure.” The drop-off was steep but I used my free hand to grab onto anything I could as I picked my way down the incline. “I’m trying to get to her.”

“Be careful, sir. Help is on the way.”

I nodded and kept going as fast as I could without slipping. When I reached the car, I hurried around to the driver’s side, trying to keep my eyes trained on Holly and not the damage to the car. Holly’s blonde hair was everywhere, scattered over the airbags. Her face was down and looking away from me. She wasn’t moving. My heart clenched and my stomach rolled over, sending a wave of nausea over me. “Holly?” I called, reaching for the door. “Holly!”

The metal was crumpled and dented from the crash and no matter how hard I pulled; I couldn’t open it. The front window was shattered, and I climbed on top of the wreck and reached in to see if I could find her pulse.

“She’s breathing,” I said more to myself than to the waiting 911 dispatcher. “She has a pulse.”

“Very good, sir. See if she can respond.”

“Holly? Baby, can you hear me?”

She didn’t move. I couldn’t see if her eyes were open from the angle of her head. “I don’t—I don’t think so. No.”

“Okay. Stay with her. The paramedics are two minutes out.”

I kept my fingers on Holly’s pulse, needing the reassurance that she was all right. Her arm was bent at an awkward angle, broken in at least one place. Blood was splattered on the airbag and I had to assume she had cuts on her face from the broken glass or maybe she’d hit her head on the side of the car as it rolled. Thank God she’d put her seat belt on and the airbags had deployed properly.

“Holly? Baby, please wake up.”

The dispatcher said something in my ear but I couldn’t hear it over the thunderous beating of my pulse. She had to be okay. I couldn’t lose her—not like this.

“Baby, stay with me,” I begged. My voice sounded like it was far away, like it belonged to someone else. This was a scene in a movie. Surreal and confusing. This wasn’t real life. It couldn’t be.

Sirens screamed in the background and snapped me back to reality like a slap across the face.

This was real.

Holly was hurt, unconscious…pregnant.

“Holly, please wake up. Please, baby. I love you. I need you. Please, baby, wake up.” Hot tears crashed down my cheeks, breaking my resolve to stay strong. It went against everything I’d been trained to do—to keep calm, not let my emotions take over, but seeing her there, unable to help her, I lost all grip on my self-control.

Sobs wracked from somewhere deep inside of me and even as I heard the sound of the paramedics above, beginning to pick their way down the steep ravine, I couldn’t get myself together.