I thought about Dad and Mom.
But when I turned on the phone, the display said low battery and my thumb automatically hit Chace’s numbers.
I put it to my ear and after one ring heard, “Keaton.”
God, I loved his voice.
I’d made the right choice. If I died here, the last thing I’d hear was his beautiful voice.
I took the tank from my face and whispered, “Hey honey,” then put it back.
“Jesus, fuck, Faye, baby,” he whispered back. “You okay?”
I took the tank away and told him, “The phone they left me to say good-bye only has a minute –”
“I know where you are, darlin’. I’m on my way. Everyone’s on their way. You got time. Be there soon.”
I took the tank away and told him, “The tank’s almost out.”
“What?”
“I’m in the red zone.”
“You got over an hour.”
“I’m in the red zone.”
“Faye, someone will be there soon.”
“Okay.”
“Soon.”
“I love you Chace.”
“Soon, Faye.”
“Okay, I love you.”
“I love you too, now someone will be there –”
The phone died.
I put the tank back and breathed.
I waited.
And I breathed.
I waited more as I breathed.
I did this until there was nothing left in the tank to breathe.
My mouth pulled in nothing.
My eyes fluttered closed.
Ella Mae sang in my ear.
*
“Just fucking dig!” I heard shouted in my dream.
My eyes fluttered, my mouth sucked in breath.
It got nothing.
Scraping.
Thumping.
My eyes closed.
Banging.
Loud, loud banging.
Wood splintering.
Air rushed in and, my body moving without me telling to do it, I shifted toward the weak breeze, sucking it in.
More banging, scraping, the sounds of something beating through wood, the piercing, scratching noise of someone tearing it away. I felt dirt shower on me, wood falling on me, air streaming in and I sucked at it, taking dirt in with it and choking.
Then I heard a loud thump and Chace’s, “Fuck me, Jesus, fuck, fuck me.”
A loud crack of a sheet of wood breaking then hands under my armpits and I was pulled out.
Out.
Air.
Clean air.
A lot of it.
No dirt.
I sucked it in.
“Give her to me,” I heard rumbled and I was jostled, in different arms, my eyes opening and closing, my mouth sucking in air. “I got her. Give him a hand,” the same voice ordered.
I was shifted then jostled and new arms closed around me, familiar arms, and then I was down, my ass in Chace’s lap, his arm tight around me, his legs cocked, cocooning me, his other hand shifting my hair away from my face.
“You breathing, baby? Faye, you breathing, baby?”
I looked into his face and saw the bad kind of raw.
So I gave him what he needed to take it away.
“Yeah.”
Before I could watch it melt away, he shoved my face in his neck, his voice thick and hoarse when he muttered, “Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me.”
I looked over his shoulder and saw Ty, Tate, Wood, Deke, Twyla, Bubba, Deck and Nina Maxwell’s husband dirty, filthy, mud caked up their arms, on their chests.
They’d dug me out with their hands.
I turned my face into Chace’s neck and whispered, “You need to buy a shovel, honey.”
His body went solid around me.
Then he shoved his face in my neck and burst out laughing.
*
Semi-lounging, semi-not on Chace’s couch, hanging over the back of it, I looked out his back window.
On his deck illuminated by the outside lights was a beautiful, thin brunette who was having words with an extortionately handsome Italian American man. This was happening while a supremely good-looking black man with twists in his hair and another man, somewhat schluby wearing Buddy Holly glasses and a t-shirt that I could appreciate that said, “All hail Khaleesi, bring on the dragons!” looked on.
“I told you once, I told you a thousand times, Ren, what I do with my life is none of your business! Stay out of it!” she shouted.
She.
That would be Serenity.
My Serenity.
Or a woman I met an hour and a half ago named Ally Nightingale. A woman, after she gave me a big, relieved hug, who told me she lived in Denver. A woman who unabashedly and thankfully did not stop poking her nose into murder and mayhem in Carnal when I asked her to.
The woman who saved my life.
Luckily, at her back, was a badass introduced to me as Darius Tucker (the black guy) and a computer geek that Ally admitted did all the keyboard work introduced to me as Brody (the Game of Thrones freak).
Following her on her self-appointed assignation to save my behind but doing it in order to ream her, was a man I hadn’t met since he laid into Ally the second he arrived. I did know from her shouting at him that he was called Ren.
Cool name.
Hot guy.
And he seemed seriously pissed at her but it was in that way that Chace got pissed at me when he found out I did something crazy and stupid. That was to say, he was pissed because he was seriously worried she’d get hurt.