OverTime 03: Slipping (First 70 Chapters)

Chapter 09: Going to the West (Lillabit)

Have you ever tried to run across a football field, end to end? Wearing a wet, wool overcoat? In a storm?

Who knows--maybe you have. I had not, and I wouldn't be trying it again anytime soon.

On a cattle drive, the herd isn't kept too close to camp. That's to avoid stompy cloven hooves in the face while you're sleeping, and upsetting the cattle with chuck-wagon noises like pots and pans or the hand-crank coffee grinder. But of course, being the whole reason for the camp, the herd is kept in sight. How close? Picture a football field, more or less.

When I first saw that blast of lightning take down a horse and rider, and what looked like several steers, I ran. Ran toward it, mind you. No matter the wind. No matter the dark, uneven ground. That might have been Jacob, and if it were Jacob, I--

I couldn't even conceive of such a possibility. Bad enough to lose the man you love, but to do so before telling him you love him? Before winning his love in return? And after giving up your whole freaking world for him?

No.

But, as mentioned--I couldn't do it. I kept tripping! Despite me probably being in the best shape of my life, my coat just got heavier and heavier. I had to squint against blowing rain, and my wet hair wrapped across my face. And as my skirt and petticoats absorbed more water and mud, they wrapped themselves around my booted ankles like lace-trimmed leg-irons.

There's a reason my great-grandmother's generation ditched the long skirts as repressive!

I hadn't made it a quarter of the way before another flat-out thunderbolt zapped the exact spot as before. A million-decibel crash of thunder shook the plains around me, and ozone burned in my throat. I'd thought lightning wouldn't strike twice in the same place. Did nothing make sense anymore?

But in that 1.21 gigawatt flash, I caught a glimpse of Jacob, struggling with his horse. That was him, had to be him. Didn't it?

Although it felt like I was somehow adding another wet petticoat for every ten feet I gained, I staggered on.

I was over a third of the way there, stumbling against mud and layers and exhaustion, when a sustained strobe of lightning high across the clouds gave me a better view. Nobody sat horseback, now, but I recognized two men who still stood tall, dangerously close to whoever had been hit by lightning. One had Benj's classic profile, and the other....

Yes. Jacob. My Jacob.

Alive.

Staring right at me.

The good news, miraculously good, was that h--and Ben--were still alive. The bad news? Someone else lay dead, sprawled beside a horse and some downed cattle, their horns jutting upward at odd angles, getting rained on.

Romero? Clayton? Amos?

Even at that distance, my husband looked really mad.

He should have been hiding under his horse like the two other men I could see amidst the cattle, not just standing there glaring.

Get down! I thought through the blur of adrenaline. I might have screamed it, despite the distance and the howling wind, if I weren't panting too hard to even form words. Take shelter. Are you trying to kill yourself?

Thunder rumbled. Darkness dropped again. And no, it didn't take long for me to grasp the irony.

What was I doing?

At first, I just dropped to my knees, on purpose this time--splat. The wind continued to moan, shoving at me and throwing rain in my face. Water poured off the brim and back of my floppy, tied-down hat. And I was an idiot.