“Yes, okay?” I spat. “I came here to find inner peace. That’s not exactly a team sport. If I’d brought a gaggle of girlfriends, we’d have spent all our time drinking wine and shopping. Which is exactly what I do in Seattle. I needed a change. This”—I indicated my ankle—“is not on the itinerary. Obviously.”
Asher wore a grudging look of…admiration? Understanding? Doubtful. I was just another dumb tourist. Even dumber for coming here by myself.
Roy and his Basket of Doom were brought over. My pulse kicked up another notch.
“You want me to lie down in that? On purpose?”
A hint of a smile touched Asher’s lips. “It’s safe, I swear.”
“I’ll bet you say that to all the girls about to fly through the air in nothing but a basket attached to a rope suspended from a helicopter.”
The guys helped me lie down flat on my back, and I clutched my muddy backpack to my chest. From inside his white helmet, Roy busily worked attaching various buckles and straps.
“Where are you taking me, Roy?”
“They’re going to land you on dry ground,” Asher said. “An ambulance is waiting to take you to Wilcox Hospital. Where are you staying on the island?”
“Kapa’a.”
“Then you’re near the hospital.”
A lot of good that would do me. I couldn’t drive. Couldn’t walk.
How did I get here? What the hell am I going to do?
I realized that, outside of Silas, there was no one I wanted to call to help me get through this. I wasn’t one for freaking out, but at that moment, it took all I had to not burst into tears.
Asher read my expression and frowned.
“You good?”
“Just peachy,” I managed, though my heart pounded like a gong. There was no way I was going to lose it in front of this guy. “Does it change anything if I say I’m afraid of heights?”
Asher’s expression softened with his voice. “You’re going to be okay. I promise.”
I flashed him my flirtiest covered-in-mud-sprained-ankle-scared-shitless smile. “Thanks.” I looked up at the helicopter above. “This is nuts. Do I have time for a photo?”
“Seriously?”
“When is this going to happen again?”
“Next week?” He nearly offered me a grin. “You strike me as catastrophe-prone.”
“And you still need to work on your bedside manner.”
I fished my phone out and took a shot. Then I whipped my phone to the right and grabbed a pic of Asher.
“To show the folks at home the hero who rescued the dumb tourist with the bad shoes.”
“That’s Roy. Not me.” His expression softened with his voice. “And you’re not dumb. Shit happens.”
Did I detect a twinge of remorse in his gruff, manly-man voice? I had no time to contemplate. Takeoff was imminent; I wasn’t going to see Asher ever again.
“Take care, Faith,” he said as he and the rest of the guys backed away. “And be more careful next time.”
“There is no next time. This trip is over.”
Before it even began. God, what a nightmare.
Roy made a circular arm motion, and the chopper rose higher, taking the basket off the ground. I caught sight of Sam with his sons, amid a bunch of gawking tourists. He waved at me. I waved back and mouthed Thank you.
Only a slender cord, swaying in the breeze, tethered Roy and I to the helicopter above us. Below, the earth—beautiful as it was—swept beneath us at a frightening distance.
I looked to Roy, somehow attached to the side of the basket by cords and buckles. “You do this often?”
He couldn’t hear me from inside his helmet. I squeezed my eyes shut and waited for the ordeal to be over. Three minutes later, it was. We landed the basket in the playground of an elementary school.
“So that happened,” I said to the sky.
As promised, an ambulance was waiting. Two more EMTs—neither of them Asher, of course—rushed out and disengaged us. I was put on a stretcher and rolled toward the ambulance.
“I think I’m fine, guys,” I said. “A hospital seems like overkill.”
“Might be broken,” one guy said. “Better to have an X-ray.”
I sighed. It wasn’t like I had anywhere else to be.
• • •
For four hours, I waited on a gurney in the ER, shivering with cold. The thin blanket they’d given me was purely decorative, apparently, and the ice pack on my ankle felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. An X-ray was taken and determined nothing was broken. A young dark-haired doctor with a nametag that read Akana gave