going to need some ice and some painkillers. I want an MRI as soon as possible,” Dillon said.
“Yes to everything but the painkillers,” Avery told him.
Dillon stretched to his feet. “No?”
“Ibuprofen or something, but I can’t be foggy.”
Dillon nodded. “If you change your mind, let me know.”
The room was still full of people, but they all moved away from the couch—as away as they could get and still be in the same office—but Jake didn’t let go of Avery. He couldn’t.
“You okay?” she asked, tipping her head to look up at him.
He chuckled in spite of the fact that every inch of him was tight and tense—and not in the usual way it was tight and tense when Avery was this close to him. “I’m fine.”
“You don’t seem fine.”
No, he didn’t. “Just give me a minute.”
She did. She relaxed against him and didn’t say a word.
Which was nice. And strange.
They sat like that for several minutes. Holding her felt good. Knowing that she was letting him do what he could, little as it might be, felt even better.
They were both still soaking wet—Avery less so having been protected by her gear—but he had no desire to move, and she didn’t seem inclined to change their positions, either.
If only they could stay like this, right here, forever. Here she was safe, and here he could do something for her. Kind of. He could hold her, he could comfort her, he could get her ice . . .
Who was he kidding?
He wasn’t doing anything to make her feel better right now. It was all to make him feel better. And it wasn’t really working anyway.
He had to fix things. That’s who he was. He especially had to fix things for the woman he loved. Could he really handle being a bystander to parts of Avery’s life? He couldn’t even handle being a bystander at a disaster site in a faraway town full of strangers.
Frank was checking various sites on the computer, Shelby and a couple of women were talking about what to do about feeding everyone who was now sleeping inside, and Dillon and two other men were watching the television and flipping to various news channels.
From where he was sitting, Jake could see all the information, and it looked like the storm cell was moving off to the east and there was nothing on the radar behind this storm. They’d be in the clear in another thirty minutes or so.
Avery sat up straight all of a sudden.
“What—”
“Shh!”
Her gaze was on the television in front of Dillon.
Jake focused on what the news was showing. He realized what it was the second before Avery turned on his lap.
“Are you supposed to be there?”
A small town in Iowa had been ravaged by a tornado earlier that afternoon.
“No,” he finally said. “Not this time.”
She pushed herself up off his lap, and he sighed. He hadn’t told her about the job in DC. And right now, a part of him wanted to run to DC. Far from where Avery would be facing more possible storms—emotional and actual—more burning buildings, more possible injuries.
He could go to DC and know this time, for sure, that Heidi and Wes were in her life. No more assumptions. He would know that she was happy and successful and confident and surrounded by people who loved her. She had Kit and Bree. Once Max and Dillon moved back, she could lean on them as well. Jake didn’t have to be the one here taking care of her. Tonight had shown him that. He could hide out across the country and not think about all the things he couldn’t prevent or fix for her. And he wouldn’t have to feel like he was having a heart attack every single time she got so much as a damned hangnail.
Yep, DC was tempting.
“You have to go. They need you,” Avery said.
The town that had been hit was a small, rural farming town much like Chance. It sat in the northwest corner of Iowa near the South Dakota border. Of the three hundred homes there, two hundred had been damaged, and 130 were completely gone. Their main street had been destroyed. Half of all their businesses had been wiped out.
It was devastating. It was a major disaster.
Those scenes usually fueled him. As he’d listen to reports, the ideas would begin to form—the plans, supplies, and personnel would come together in his mind like the pieces of a puzzle—and he’d be hopping to get on scene and