Page 40 of Fuse

His sweat-slickened chest rises and falls on a hesitant breath.

“Oh, thank God.” I allow myself a full breath too.

He pulls his next punch.

Yes. Yes!

But lands the next one twice as hard.

“Gaaaahhh!” It’s the expression I usually save for snark or shock, neither of which apply right now, but typical profanity isn’t enough for the fear and frustration as he knocks new rocks loose. They’re the size of bowling balls, splashing into the puddles of his charged blood and detonating like geological mortar bombs.

I dive back down, dropping my head against my knees and clutching my hands around my neck, but not before desperately screaming his name again. Not that it makes a damn difference. Not against the lightning of his electric armor, the thunder of the cascading rocks, and the gale of his fury, swirling and growing on the air like a living creature.

Until suddenly dying into silence.

But not exactly silence.

Now, I can just hear other things better. The ringing in my ears, like Notre-Dame’s belfry on Christmas. The disorientation of my mind, like bats cavorting around that belfry. The thrum of my heartbeat as I slowly inch my head up and my sightlines are filled with something besides the sky and the trees and the hills.

Something a thousand times more beautiful.

My Reece, the most perfect creation God has put on this planet for me, still standing there.

But only for one moment longer, until he lets his arms drop again.

Their weight becomes his burden, pulling him all the way to his hands and knees, making the mud slurp and sizzle around him at the same time.

The vortex wavers again.

Then completely fizzles out.

He’s motionless. So am I. And feeling a thousand kinds of awful about my paralysis, because it has nothing to do with dread anymore but everything to do with a slam of pure awe.

“Ohhhh, God.” The sound spills out of me with a strange mix of reverence and remorse. How can I be this transfixed by his terrible, dirty glory? By the otherworldly blue veins glowing across the clenched muscles of his arms? By the mesmerizing disappearance of them beneath the mounds of mud covering his hands, only to reemerge and fan along the ground as his electrons find the tributaries of blood in the sludge.

Never has his power stunned me more.

Never has his desolation joined it—and sucked all the air from me.

But never have I felt more abysmally ill-prepared to help him.

Crawling to him means I’ll have to navigate through all those skeins of electrical thread. But staying right here means he’ll keep glowering as if I’m a complete stranger. That he’ll keep rolling his head and adding his stare to the lightning tracks in the mud, as if he’s become a stranger to himself.

I hold my breath. And start to slog forward.

And whisper, with every filament of patience and passion in my heart, “Reece. It’s me.”

Still realizing he could choose to supercharge this muck any second—immobilizing if not killing me—but praying he won’t.

And somehow, in that deep part of my soul where truths like “the sky is blue” and “nobody buys less than fifteen things at Target” live, knowing he won’t.

Even though the man still glowers as if he doesn’t know me or want to know me, I inch closer to him. Not letting my gaze leave him. Showing him, every time I shift nearer, I’ve refused to give up on him. Not now. Not ever.

Even when his face twists as if I’ve brought a knife and suddenly used it on him.

Even when he snarls as if tempted to yank the blade out, figuratively or not, and use it on me.

I stop—but only to raise a hand, palm out. “Stop,” I rasp. “Just stop it, mister. You’re not in your damn tower at the Brocade anymore.”