Finding Allie by Meli Raine Page B

something? Man, I saw you go flying and you must be so hurt.” He starts rubbing my back and it finally makes me swallow and reply.
    “I, oh, it hurts,” I croak out and start to cry.
    “Can you sit up, honey?” He called me ‘honey’. I’m in so much pain I can’t revel in the fact that Chase just called me a sweet name. I move one arm and it’s so sore already, shaking. I don’t trust my elbow.
    “I can try,” I say, moving my legs to roll over.
    “Can I help?” Now I can see Chase’s face, and he’s so worried. So concerned. The press of his palm on my hair, how he tucks it back behind my ear and winces, the low, soothing tone in his voice all make me feel better. 
    But not much.
    “I don’t know.” I start to sit up and nearly scream. My knees are raw hamburger and my jeans are shredded. Elbows, too. And the side of my face— 
    “Oh, baby,” Chase says in a deep, mournful tone.
    Yeah. My face is as bad as it feels.
    “I look like something out of The Walking Dead , don’t I?”
    His eyes go soft and pitying. “It’s not that bad.” 
    “Liar.”
    He makes a funny sound through his nose, not quite a laugh. “It’ll heal. You’re beautiful no matter what. Can you move all your joints? Any broken bones?” He’s so practical and responsible, helping me go through the motions to make sure I’m okay, that I feel like I’m seeing a new side of him. Chase isn’t just some biker dude with the hots for me. 
    There’s so much more there.
    We both look over at my bicycle at the same time and I choke up. The front wheel looks like someone put it through a meat grinder. The frame is bent, and there’s blood on the tape around the handlebars.
    I look at my forearms now, bending them back.
    They’re red, with bits of brown dirt embedded in there. Chase’s shirt is streaked with blood, and so is mine.
    “Wow,” is all I can think to say through the haze of pain and horror.
    “You don’t do anything small, do you?” Chase asks, moving next to me and gingerly putting his arm around my shoulders. I rest my cheek—the one that isn’t rubbed raw by road rash—on his shoulder. 
    “What do you mean?”
    “That was one hell of a fall. You went ass over tea kettle.”
    “Ass over what?” I’ve never heard that expression before.
    He laughs. “My mom used to say that all the time when someone took a spectacular fall. ‘Ass over tea kettle.’ I think it’s like making a somersault.”
    That I understand.
    The pain is a throbbing horror, all pouring in now and in different forms. The raw skin feels like I’m being flayed. My knees and elbows are pulsing with the pain of impact, I guess, and my entire body feels drained. I probably tightened up with tension and shock as soon as I went flying, and tomorrow I’ll be a bundle of muscle pain.
    Tears well up in my eyes and I go to wipe them, but my palm is filled with gravel and blood. I can’t even wipe away my own tears.
    That makes me start to sob. At least my lungs work again, and Chase just quietly puts his arms around me and holds me while I cry, on the side of the road in the desert, my body, mind, soul and heart completely destroyed and my life falling apart.
    Jeff’s going to kill me (not really, but...), Marissa is in Los Angeles living like a real human being instead of me and my stupid life, David’s going off to college, and here I am sitting by the side of the road covered in cuts and sobbing into the arms of...
    Okay. So that part of my life is just fine.
    Chase kisses my temple so sweetly.
    “That’s the only part of my face that doesn’t have blood on it,” I say.
    One side of his mouth moves up in a smile. “It’s all gorgeous, blood and cuts included.” He frowns. “Why were you on your bike? I thought you had to work tonight.”
    The tears start up again and I babble. I can’t help it. So much has built up inside me that I’m like Old Faithful at Yellowstone National Park. Ready to blow at any time.
    “Jeff and