Page 7 of Keeping Kara

“Did you…were you flying when you fell out?”

“Fell out?”

“Of the helicopter.”

“I wasn’t flying. My teammates were. And I didn’t fall. I jumped when I saw that the tree you were in got uprooted.”

Kara’s mouth fell open. “You jumped? Are you insane?” she asked, her voice rising.

To her amazement, he chuckled yet again. “My friends probably think so. And they’ll chew my ass out when they find us. But I don’t regret it. We’re here, aren’t we?”

He was right. But still. Kara couldn’t wrap her mind around someone willingly jumping into the raging floodwaters, as he’d done. “I…Thank you,” she said softly. “You saved my life.”

“I’m not sure about that. I think we saved each other.”

He really was insane. Because if he thought for one second that she’d done anything to save his life, he was wrong. The only reason she was alive right now was because he’d done the unthinkable. For someone he didn’t even know.

“I hate to ask this, but I need your help.”

“Anything.” She’d do literally anything he wanted. It was the least she could do after what he’d done for her.

“I’ve got something in my shoulder. I can’t reach it, but it hurts like a motherfu—um…it hurts bad. I know it’s dark, but maybe you can see if something’s stuck in there and pull it out for me?”

The thought of something being embedded in his shoulder made Kara shudder with revulsion, but she hid her reaction as best she could. She couldn’t exactly say no and leave him to suffer. “You can say fuck. I don’t mind,” she told him.

He grinned. “Good to know. I try not to swear too much, it’s a bit too stereotypical for the big bad Army pilot to swear like a sailor, no pun intended, but unfortunately it’s become kind of a habit.”

“Well, you can’t exactly go around saying ‘golly gee’ or ‘shoot’ or ‘dagnabbit.’”

He laughed loudly this time. It was a carefree sound. So out of place for their current situation, but it felt good that she’d been able to make him laugh like that.

“You’re so right.”

“I write books,” Kara blurted.

He lifted a brow in question.

“Thrillers. Spies, espionage, things like that. And my characters swear a lot. I sometimes get flack from readers about it, but occasionally a situation warrants a good swear word over something like ‘darn’ or ‘oh no!’”

“You write under your real name?”

“No.”

Arrow smiled. “You gonna tell me your pen name? Maybe I’ve read your stuff.”

“I doubt it. I don’t have an agent, and I’m not with a big publishing house or anything. I’ve only self-published.”

“I read a lot. Love browsing the ebook stores for a good book.”

“How do we want to do this? Have me look at your shoulder? It’s not as if we have a lot of space in here.” She loved writing, but it was more of a side gig than anything else. And she didn’t sell a ton of books, but even so, she treasured each and every message she’d ever received from fans, saying how much they’d enjoyed her stories.

But the thought of meeting someone in person who’d read her words was overwhelming. Even if it was highly unlikely that this man, this real-life hero, had found one of her books with the millions that were currently out there in the world.

“I think if you slip your hand into my flight suit, you can feel around back and see if you can figure out what’s in my shoulder. I’ve got a T-shirt on, and if you can, maybe try to feel under it. But if you’d rather not, you should still be able to tell if there’s a chunk of something in my shoulder. If that doesn’t work, I can try to turn around. Or if you really prefer, we can wait until it gets light outside.”

“Hold still,” Kara ordered, as if he was a little kid who might squirm the second she started probing his injury.

He brought a hand to his throat and unsnapped a fastener there, then unzipped the front of his flight suit a bit, loosening the wet material. He tilted his head to the side, giving her more space to slip her hand under his T-shirt.