Total pages in book: 254
Estimated words: 240032 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1200(@200wpm)___ 960(@250wpm)___ 800(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 240032 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1200(@200wpm)___ 960(@250wpm)___ 800(@300wpm)
The little boy didn’t hesitate; he jumped on my back so fast and aggressively I almost lost my balance. But Pascal didn’t stop there, even though that was exactly what I’d asked for. He climbed me like a jungle gym. Knobby knees hit either side of my face as he scurried up my body instead of just piggyback riding me. This is going to be harder than I thought. The other bank was closer, but then how was I going to cross over again? We were going to have to go back the way we’d come. It was our only option.
“We’re okay. We’re okay,” I repeated out loud as Pascal’s fingers gripped the sides of my face so tight, I was sure I looked like I’d had bad plastic surgery. I wanted to tell him to crawl back down a little because doing this with him wrapped around the middle of my body would make it easier for me to distribute his weight but knowing him, he’d poke me in the eye or make the situation worse than it already was somehow if he tried getting off my shoulders. That would be when he fell into the water, dang it.
I managed two shuffle-steps before everything went to shit.
Agnes yelled at the exact same time Duncan went “awoo” a second before something hit me on the butt. So hard on the butt, I flailed for a second before what had to be a big branch or a log took my legs out from under me because there was nowhere else for it to go with the force of the current being what it was.
I fell backward. Hands gripped my head and my hair for dear life as multiple voices screamed. The river gushed over my face as I went under.
Fear took over my soul as I sucked in water, and something else in the river hit me as I tried to get my legs under me, but fortunately whatever it was, it wasn’t as big, so it wasn’t as painful. I came up sputtering and gasping, and somehow, Pascal was still on my shoulders as he ripped hair out of my head to hang on. He was shrieking at the top of his lungs. And I must have been under longer than I’d thought because when my head broke the surface, we were coming up to the fallen log that now seemed like a hazard instead of help.
If I face-planted the trunk….
LOVE! I tried to send Duncan. “Grab it!” I shouted out loud to Pascal. “Grab the log!” I didn’t want to die, but I didn’t want Pascal to die more than I wanted to live.
That just meant we had to nail this.
Because I didn’t want this to be what took me out. I wanted to hug Duncan again. I wanted to grow old with Sienna and help Matti wipe his butt when we were elderly if I had to, and Henri—
With all my strength, I reached up, sinking beneath the water with the shift of my weight, and literally tried to toss Pascal toward the tree. His weight left my shoulders, and I had to pray he’d made it as I blindly reached up the moment after he was gone and scrambled to grab something.
And grab something I did.
It was a broken-off branch that might have impaled me if I hadn’t gone under water when I had, but I held on for dear life with one hand as I went under again before using it to pull myself up. I sucked in a big breath and reached for something else, thanking the universe that the trunk must have not been in the water long because it wasn’t slick with algae or moss, like it should have been.
I was gasping and panting, and my hand hurt, but I found a short, thick stub, and clung to it with my other hand.
“Pascal?” I coughed.
It was the whimper I heard first, then, “Ninaaaa!” really close by. Over the top of the tree, a wet, dark head of hair appeared, and looking like a drowned rat, Pascal’s small face was one of the best things I’d ever seen. There was a cut on his cheek, but he looked fine.
He was alive. Everything else he could heal from. The urge to cry hit me just as strongly as panic had when I’d gone underwater.
But this wasn’t the time. We weren’t safe yet.
“As fast as you can, crawl off the trunk,” I told him.
There was an “awooo” that spurred me into finding another broken branch along the trunk, then another as I managed to get my legs under me, my feet grazing the pebbled bottom.
Pascal’s face disappeared, leaving me there, but I watched him crawl across the trunk in the time it took me to move a foot closer to land. When he finally made it to the bank, I clung to the damn tree, ignoring the way sharp nubs and tree bark dug into and scraped my chest and stomach, but there was no way I was relaxing my grip and risking falling back in. Slowly, I shuffled one leg after another, the water shallowing to midthigh, then my knee, and finally my ankle, and I let out the most violent shudder of my whole life.