Page 57 of When We Dare

HUDSON

I was impatient to see Stella, but I knew she might be at work. After we landed, I tossed my gear in my locker and hurried out to my truck. I drove straight to her office, but her car wasn’t there.

Uncertain where to look for her, I figured I might as well try home next. She hadn’t responded to my texts. When I saw her car at the house, my heartbeat began kicking along faster and faster.

“Stella!” I called as I walked inside.

There was no sign of her in the kitchen, although her laptop was open on the counter beside the notebook she usually had out when she was studying. Butter twined around my ankles, but there was no sign of Biscuit.

The doorway to Stella’s apartment was open, so I called up to her. When she didn’t reply, I jogged up the stairs. Still no Stella or Biscuit. Worry started to rumble inside.

“What the hell?” I muttered to myself as I jogged back down the stairs. Butter had stationed himself beside the doorway onto the deck and was looking at me expectantly.

When I opened the door to let him out, I saw Stella in the lake.

For a split second, I contemplated barreling through the doors and jumping off the deck. But even with a good cushion of snow, I could hurt myself with that landing. Spinning around, I bolted out of the house, shedding my jacket as I raced to my truck. I grabbed the rope I always kept in the back and kept on hustling around to the back of the house. By the time I reached the edge of the pond, Stella’s elbows were resting on the edge of the ice where she’d fallen through.

“Stella!”

Her head whipped up. “Hudson!”

She was ten feet or so from the edge of the shore. Biscuit, who I presumed was the reason Stella had fallen through the ice, had retreated to safer ground in the snow near the edge of the ice.

I wanted to break through the ice and rescue Stella, but it was just far enough I wasn’t sure that was a wise call. I held her gaze. “Stella, can you listen to me?”

She nodded, and worry reverberated through me to see how much she was shivering.

“This may sound counterintuitive, but I want you to kick the ice up behind your feet. We want your legs to be able to float upward. That will help you to slide forward gradually instead of pushing your weight up in one place.”

Stella shifted, and a few seconds later, the ice broke behind her after she kicked and her feet floated to the surface. “Okay now, try to slide your chest up onto the edge of the ice.”

The ice appeared thick enough to hold her, but I didn’t know. Ice could be tricky. There were always thinner and thicker areas, especially when the weather started to warm up.

“Take it nice and slow,” I called out as she gradually eased her chest onto the ice. “Worst case scenario I’m gonna break through and get you, but this is the safer option.”

It took all my restraint not to do more. While keeping my eyes on her, I knotted the rope around my waist and checked thesturdy handle on the other end. “I’m gonna throw this to you. Just grab ahold of the handle.”

I tossed it, breathing a silent sigh of relief when it landed right in front of her. She curled one hand around the handle.

“Okay, perfect. Now, keep sliding onto the ice.” Although I could hear the subtle cracks from her weight, the ice in front of her was holding so far.

Stella was all the way onto the ice by now, still keeping a grip on the rope handle. With me talking her through it, she carefully inched forward. I kept a little slack in the rope and tightened it incrementally as she got closer and closer to the edge of the shoreline.

Biscuit waited beside me, watching Stella. All the while, I could hear the thud of my heartbeat rushing in my ears, and tried to keep my focus. It was one thing to stay focused when you were rescuing someone you didn’t know. It was something else altogether when you were rescuing someone you loved. I loved Stella. That knowledge rang like a bell inside, the echo of it reverberating in my heart.

When she was about two feet away from the shoreline, I finally leaned down and reached for her shoulders, sliding her all the way onto the snow. Once I knew she was completely clear of the ice and on solid and snowy ground, I knelt down and wrapped her in my arms.

She was wet and shivering so hard I could feel it in my bones.

“I love you, Stella,” I murmured into her hair.

She lifted her head. Her teeth chattered. “I-I lo-o-ve y-y-you too.”

“There’s a lot more I need to say, but we need to get you inside. We might need to take you to the hospital.” I stood and lifted her into my arms.

“I can walk,” she insisted.

I wanted to argue the point, but the snow was almost two feet deep and starting to soften, so it was a slog to walk through. I eased her down, keeping a firm hold around her waist as we slowly made our way to the front of the house. Biscuit leaped along through the snow beside us.

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