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grew warm between us. In that moment, nothing else existed: just that light in his eyes and the touch of his hands on my hips. If I were more experienced with guys, I might have known how to flirt with him. But I didn’t. All I could do was hold my breath and lean in ever so slightly, willing him to come closer.
    It didn’t work. Letting out his own breath, Michael dropped his hands and swept his gaze to my feet.
    “How’s your ankle?” He took half a step back.
    My foot was swelling inside my boot, but the pain was completely manageable. I put weight on it and didn’t cringe. Not having to walk back must have helped. “It’s good. Thank you—for everything.”
    “You don’t have to—”
    “Michael, that was awesome of you!” Fiona cut in, still a little short of breath from the hike.
    Oblivious to the moment we’d just had, she praised and thanked Michael a few times, and then reassured him that she and Heather would take me to the hospital to get checked. I thanked him again too, but only once. Fiona’s profuse attention made me uncomfortable for all three of us.
    Once we were inside the car and Michael was well out of earshot, Fiona gushed, “Oh my God, he’s so hot — celestial hot. You’re so lucky!” She sighed for emphasis, putting the car into drive. “He didn’t even break a sweat when he carried you. And did you see that body? Like an Olympic swimmer.”
    Heather made a face. “Fiona, Mia had a serious fall and may have broken her foot. That’s hardly lucky.”
    Fiona backpedaled. “Of course not lucky to have fallen…but lucky he was there.”
    “It was nice of him to stay,” Heather said, studying me for a reaction.
    I schooled my expression to a neutral one so she wouldn’t notice my rush of excitement from thinking about him. With my luck, she’d analyze my feelings, try to set me up on a date, and I’d embarrassed myself around this guy enough already, thanks . Whatever I felt would be best kept secret for now. “Yeah, it was nice, I guess.”
    “You guess ?” Fiona turned her head to look at me in the back seat. Then remembering she was driving, she turned back to the road. “The way he carried you was so romantic. If he’d carried me like that—”
    Heather began to laugh. “I think we have a pretty good picture of what you’d do, Fiona.”
    I laughed too, grateful for Heather’s injection of humor. The strange sensations and pain coursing through my body after the fall were overwhelming enough, not to mention all the strong feelings I’d had around Michael, or the strange things I’d seen. I didn’t need to add Fiona’s fantasies about him to the mix.
    ***
    Luckily for us, the Emergency Room wasn’t too busy. Heather walked me in while Fiona went foraging for something to eat.
    The nurse at the administration desk paged my mom and asked me to take a seat in the waiting area. Mom came down a few minutes later wearing the lilac-colored nurse’s uniform we’d picked out together last spring. It brought out her green eyes and softened the gray streak in her hair. After greeting Heather, she drilled me about the accident. Between her crazy hospital schedule and my starting the school year, I hadn’t had much time to spend with her since I’d returned from Denver. I had to admit, getting injured was a strange way to do it.
    I told her about the log bridge and that some noise had startled me, for lack of a better explanation. I didn’t want to talk about the likelihood of seeing the same dog again, not with Heather present. If it were real, surely someone else would have seen it.
    “Eight feet,” she said coolly. She was never one for big emotional scenes, not when it came to injuries. “It could have been a lot worse. How did you get back?”
    Mom was far too smart sometimes.
    This was where Heather chimed in. “A boy from school came by. He knew some first aid and helped us get Mia out.”
    Mom squinted at me suspiciously. “Were there boys on this