Page 32 of Love Is A Draw
She was everything.
CHAPTER 14
The mist peeled away, leaving the balloon exposed to the dazzling brightness of open air. Gail blinked against the sudden sunlight and gripped the edge of the basket, her fingers curling tighter on the woven ropes. The damp coolness no longer clung to her skin. Yet, she quivered deep in her belly. She glanced at Victor, who stood close beside her. His reassuring warmth didn’t stop the trembling in her hands.
Her unsteady breath wasn’t just from the kiss they’d shared, that flicker of happiness already remote, as though it had been borrowed from a life that wasn’t hers to keep. She searched Victor’s face, needing something sure to hold on to. When their eyes met, his held a steady kind of confidence, as if he could will her fear away with just a glance. For a fleeting moment, it worked. Her heart leapt for an entirely different reason, and she clung to that sensation.
The thought turned to ash an instant later when the basket jerked downward as though the earth itself had reached up to tug them back. Gail gasped and stumbled, her stomach twisting. Her hand shot out, gripping Victor’s arm so hard she felt his muscles shift beneath the fabric of his coat.
“What’s happening?” Victor asked, unable to hide that his calm was laced with a sharp edge, as if his restraint was a rope being pulled too taut.
The pilot cursed low, a weighty, final curse. He wrestled with one of the lines, his hands moving quickly. “We’re droppin’. Not right, this height. Not safe.”
Victor turned sharply toward him. “What do you mean, ‘not safe’?”
The man didn’t lift his eyes. “Gas is escaping faster than it should.” He jerked hard on a rope, jaw tight. His movements were precise, but compared to the measured rise and fall of the ride so far, the urgency in his actions struck something cold in Gail’s chest.
She didn’t ask questions. Didn’t trust herself to speak. Her pulse thudded so loudly she half-expected it to echo against the sky. Something had gone wrong, horribly wrong. She didn’t need the pilot to tell her; she could feel it in the way the basket quivered beneath her feet, in the hitching sound of the air, in the jarring tilt forward that angled the horizon at an unnatural slant.
Victor’s arm pressed against her back, steadying her. “Hold on, Gail.” He wasn’t offering reassurance, but instruction.
She didn’t need to be told twice.
Then she saw it. Above, where the balloon envelope arced high into the sky, something was wrong. Smoke curled upward, dark and sinuous. She stared, trying to convince herself she’d made a mistake. But it was painfully real. The faint flicker of orange and gold wasn’t sunlight.
“The balloon envelope is on fire.” The words trembled from Gail’s lips, barely audible before the wind swept them away. Her own words sounded foreign to her ears, brittle and insubstantial, as though the horror of the realization had bled the strength from it.
The pilot snapped his head up, gaze locking on the rising smoke. “Damn it. Knew those seams were weakening. We patched the envelope last season.” He yanked hard on a rope. “And these ethanol burners—always temperamental in damp air.”
Heat prickled up the back of her neck, not from the flames, but from the wave of panic coursing through her. She couldn’t pull her gaze away from the smoke. The dark tendrils swirled upward, twisting and expanding with terrible purpose. The sky itself seemed to be closing in, heavy and suffocating, the faint snap and crackle of the fire a mocking reminder of its steady climb.
“Torches off now,” the pilot barked. He yanked hard on a rope. “Less flame, less chance it’ll spread faster.”
The words grated against her ears, cold comfort for the terror clawing at Gail’s insides. Her throat tightened, making her breath come in shallow gasps, scraping painfully against her ribs. Her eyes fixed on the edges of the burning silk, flickering orange at first, then bursting brighter. The smoke thickened, rolling out in spirals against the bright sky, staining it with its menace. Each new puff of smoke was like a lash brushing over her skin, pushing fresh waves of dread over her.
“We’ll hit ground shortly.” The pilot’s words jarred.
Hit.
Ground.
Shortly.
Her mouth turned dry, as though her body had drained of even the moisture needed to form words. She tried to swallow, but the effort only made the rising knot in her throat more unbearable. The braided wicker felt rough beneath her fingertips, offering no comfort. Her knuckles, already pale, as though they would burst from the tension. She didn’t dareloosen her grip—not when the air seemed to tremble with an unrelenting, fiery threat above her.
Victor shifted, stepping behind her, movements smooth but deliberate. He drew his arms around her and pulled her into a crouching position in the basket, encircling her waist with a protective strength that left no room for argument. The coarse weave of his coat pressed against her back as he pulled her close, his broad chest anchoring her against the quaking basket’s edge.
“Sit,” he murmured, a command softened only by the urgency woven through it.
When she didn’t respond quickly enough, barely able to make sense of the chaos storming through her head, his hands guided her down, pressing her gently but firmly onto the basket’s uneven floor. He wasn’t rough, but he left no room for hesitation.
His touch made her breath falter, though relief and tension tangled so tightly within her that she couldn’t separate which was which. Roaring wind around them made the wicker creak.
Her knees buckled, her body yielding to his quiet insistence. Gail found herself hunched low, knees tucked, hands still gripping the edge for dear life. Victor lowered himself behind her, bracing his legs to cage her within his frame. The weight of his arms tightened across her middle, solid and unyielding, the heat of him cutting through her cold terror. Where minutes earlier, they had floated freely and carelessly in the basket, it had now turned into a cage of terror.
His chin brushed the top of her head, and a moment later, she felt its weight resting there, the press both grounding and intimate. Too much, too fast, but oh so needed. She didn’t pull away, could not even consider it. Safety might have been nothing more than an illusion, but here, in his arms, she clung to it fiercely.
The basket lurched again, a sharp jolt that made the ropes groan, and Gail gasped, the sound barely audible under the roaring of flames above. Her body locked up as if she could make herself smaller, as though shrinking into Victor’s hold could shield them both.
