Page 49 of Double Trouble

I nod, burying my face into my free hand. “She was just doing a drop-in.” A drop-in—the thing she does every day here, a million times over. She could drop-in in her sleep.

I rip at my hair, strands breaking loose, and the sharp pain is nothing compared to the panic boiling in my gut, popping against my chest, closing my throat. Her hand rests near my knee, and I take hold of it, careful not to move any part of her body. I need her skin against mine. I need her okay. I need her to open those hazel eyes and throw out a joke, tease me about worrying so much.

My eyes skate over her to her board, tilted on its side a few feet away. A crevice splinters the wood straight down the middle, the back left wheel missing. I knew that hunk of junk wouldn’t last much longer. I should’ve pleaded with her instead of teasing. I should’ve just given her a board and risked her getting mad. Anything would be better than this.

The dispatcher says something, her voice low and comforting, probably so used to calming down freaked out callers. I swallow around the acid building on the back of my tongue and try to listen to her, try to answer the questions I know she’s only asking to distract me. How long has Mad been boarding, do I like my job, how long have we been together… I answer in monotones, not even sure if the answers are correct.

“Okay, Tanner,” she says after a minute. “The paramedics are arriving. I need you to open the door for them.”

“But she’s still not awake…”

“They can’t break in, okay?” She tries to explain the law to me, but I’m uninterested.

I give Mad’s hand a squeeze and whisper, “I’ll be right back.” My brain has to force my knees off the floor, and my bones crack and ache, but I push them anyway, running across the Wheel Zone and through the back hallway. I slam my hands against the horizontal bar with so much force the door swings open and bangs against the outside railing. The lights from the ambulance skitter across the parking lot.

“She’s this way!” I yell, ripping my shoe off and stuffing it under the door to prop it open. I rush to Mad’s side, and as I kneel next to her, her eyelids twitch.

“Brink?” I test. Another twitch. “Maddie.”

I swear her brows pull in, giving her the smallest wrinkle over the bridge of her nose, but my gaze is torn from her as two paramedics crouch down beside her.

“Hey, come over here, man,” a guy says, pulling me to my feet. I stand lopsided next to him, one shoe on, one still under the outside door. “Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

I blink, my brain too slow to answer any questions, so I shake my head.

“You’re not hurt,” he verifies. I shake my head again and lean to the side, trying to catch a glimpse of Maddie. They lift her carefully onto a stretcher, a brace settled around her neck and another on her leg.

My voice comes back with a vengeance. “Are you taking her in? Will she be all right? Can I ride with her?”

The paramedic leads me behind Maddie, his hand on my shoulder. I snag my shoe from under the door and slide it on before they let me hop into the ambulance with Mad. My heart stutters and falls in relief… Her eyes are open, one pupil larger than the other. She scans the ambulance, her eyes growing wider and wider until they land on me.

“Hey,” I say lamely, pushing my way to her side. She lifts her hand, and I don’t hesitate taking it.

“What… what happened?”

I try to quirk a smile, but the prickles of relieved tears pressing against the backs of my eyeballs probably don’t help my case. “That hunk of junk you call a skateboard lost a wheel and cracked.”

She lets out an off-sounding laugh. “No, you’re a hunk of junk.”

I lift a brow. The paramedic sitting near her head nods in my direction. “She’s got a concussion. Pretty bad one, from the looks of it. She’ll probably be a bit incoherent for a while.”

“My mom told me that,” Mad says.

“Told you what?” I ask.

“What?”

I meet the paramedic’s eye, and she gives me a look like “I told you.”

I squeeze Mad’s hand and kiss her knuckles, resting on the edge of the stretcher as we bump our way to the hospital. The corner of her mouth lifts as she studies me with a vacant stare.

“I love you,” she slurs.

My eyes widen, and I lift my head. “You do, huh?”

“Yep.” She nods. “But I can’t tell you yet.”

“Why not?”

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