I sucked air into my starving lungs as I quickly scanned the old stone walls of the huge well for the ladder. As soon as my eyes locked on it, I pulled Macayla’s lifeless body toward it.
“How long has it been?” Jaeg asked.
They were on either side of me, bobbing in the water as I grabbed the rung of the ladder.
She wasn’t dying. “One minute.”
“Let me take her,” Saint said.
“No.” I wasn’t letting her go. I’d never let her go.
They helped me lift Macayla up over my shoulder, and I climbed the twenty feet to the top of the well.
Callum and Ethan were there, and they hoisted Macayla off my shoulder. Callum pulled a knife from under his pants leg and cut the cable tying us together.
They lowered her to the ground, and Ethan started compressions on her chest as I climbed out of the well the rest of the way.
I fell to my knees beside her and tilted her head back. Ethan stopped compressions. I lowered my mouth to hers and breathed air into her lungs.
One. Two.
I shoved Ethan aside and cupped my hands over her chest below where her rib cage met and started compressions again. I blocked out the thought that this wouldn’t work. That she wouldn’t live. Because she had to live. She’d always been there for me. She was the girl who gave me a reason to live. To fight. Now I was fighting for her, and I’d never stop.
Thirty.
I tilted her head back again and breathed into her mouth.
Baby. Come on. Don’t you dare leave me. Leave Jackson.
I pumped on her chest again. Counting.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
Five seconds, Rainbird.
Breathe. Just breathe.
Water spilled from her mouth and down her chin. Then her body lurched up and she coughed and choked up water.
Every part of my body sagged.
It was as if I was twelve years old again. The rain pounding. My body screaming as I tried to pull the grate off the sewer. My brother begging me to save him.
I yanked the grate off and let in the light.
This time he lived. She lived.
Macayla coughed and spit up more water, and I held her steady with one of my arms behind her back. Ethan knelt on her other side. He pushed back wet strands of hair from her face, his hand trembling.
She stopped coughing and spitting up water and Ethan grabbed her, pulling her into a hug. “Macadamia.”
She hugged him, then pulled back and looked at me, her lips quivering and water and tears trailing down her face. “We made it.”
“We did.” I cupped the back of her neck, staring into her ocean-blue eyes. Eyes that had been scarred into me since I was that angry boy sitting on a bench next to a little girl who held his hand because he needed it.
She threw her arms around my neck. “I love you, Vic.”
I crushed her to me. “You’re mine, Rainbird. You always have been.”