Page 6 of Lost in You

I don’t stop to think. I just throw my arms around her waist and pull her against me.

“No, don’t!” She tries to fight, but it’s useless.

I force myself to breathe. I’m on the cusp of clinching a Mammoths team record for most goals scored, and now I’ll never do it. I’m going to die in a plane crash six goals short.

We’re nose-diving hard now. My heart feels like it’s going to stop just from the horror of anticipation.

“Lincoln!” Trinity struggles to break free, but it’s no use.

“We don’t know how to use the parachutes.” I’m holding her as tightly as my arms will allow. “And we don’t know how to fly a plane. We’re going to brace ourselves and--”

“Die,” she whimpers. “We’re going to die.”

A shiver races through me as I hear and feel the bottom of the plane scraping on treetops. Trinity presses her face against my chest and I lay my cheek on her hair. It’s soft and smells like fresh rain. At least the last thing I’ll ever smell in this world is her hair. There are far worse things.

The nose of the plane makes contact all at once, my arms locked around Trinity as my upper body rockets forward. It’s like a bone-rattling body check into the boards during a game.

The roar of the engine goes silent and all I hear is a beeping sound. Trinity’s heart races against my chest. A couple of seconds tick by as we both breathe; neither of us seems to believe it.

“We’re alive,” she cries softly. “Oh my God, we’re still alive.”

I release my hold on her slightly and our eyes lock for a second. I exhale heavily, then suck in a deep breath, still reeling. Then I lower my brows, sniffing.

“Do you smell that?”

Her eyes widen. “Smoke.”

CHAPTER THREE

Trinity

“My bag!”

I can’t make sense of anything. The nose-down position of the plane means we have to climb up to get out of the plane, and the smoke is making it hard to see. My medication is in my bag, but it’s not within reach.

“Fuck your bag, get over here!” Lincoln barks.

He’s reaching through the smoke for me, and I take his hand. He pulls me over my seat and we climb over the next row. I’m dizzy, either from the crash or my own anxiety. I try to steady myself by putting a hand on the plane’s wall and taking a deep breath. The smoke I’m inhaling makes me cough and feel even worse.

“We’re getting the fuck off this plane,” Lincoln says fiercely.

I crouch on the back of a seat as he turns the handle to the nearest door and tries to open it. He’s working against gravity, and it doesn’t budge. He takes a step back and throws his weight behind it, ramming his shoulder into it. The door moves a few inches before slamming closed again.

“There’s something blocking it,” he mutters.

It’s getting harder to breathe. Silent tears stream down my cheeks and drip off. I’m just a few seconds away from getting hysterical. Did we just survive a plane crash only to die of smoke inhalation?

“Emergency exit in the back.” Lincoln gets there quickly in the small plane, my heart in my throat as he turns the handle and pushes.

The door opens. I let out a sob as he reaches down for me. There’s nothing for me to hold on to, so he has to pull me up on his own. He practically shoves me out the door, which is fine by me. Anything to get out of the plane.

I suck in a big gulp of fresh, freezing air as I climb out, holding on to the door opening. Now I can see that we crashed in a forest, the plane landing in a massive pine tree. There’s nothing but open air around me.

“Get to the ground!” Lincoln orders. “This thing could blow at any second!”

No time to worry about the potential pitfalls—I jump. My arms instinctively fly up to protect my face from the scrape of branches on the way down. It’s only a few seconds before I hit the hard ground on one foot, then land on my hip. Everything hurts.

It takes me a few seconds to be able to inhale fully, but I’m alive. I roll onto my back, horrified by the flames I see through the opening where the plane’s windshield used to be.

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