The storm is raging more violently and capricious around us than ever. It does not matter; I no longer see or feel or hear it. All that exists now is cradled in my arms, this little shivering bundle of flesh so dear and precious to me. Never, I tell myself, never never never will I let you go, not as long as I live, not until every last ounce of strength drains from my veins. You’re mine now, Shannon. Don't you see? From now until the end of time.
For some minutes we sit there, right smack dab in the middle of the hurricane as I hold Shannon and cover her face and neck and shoulders and the crown of her head with a shower of kisses. The boat is rocking wildly from side to side; above us, trees creak and sway and groan as the wind whips their branches into a foment. Loud cracks are sounding all around as limb after limb is ripped from its mother. Still we don’t move. I can feel the same desperation in Shannon as she clutches at my shirt. “Kyle, Kyle,” she says over and over again. “My darling sweet Kyle…”
It’s only when a tree falls so close to us that I can feel it as it moves through the air that I'm finally snapped out of my euphoric trance, the perils of the world racing back and sobering me up in an instant. No. We couldn't stop now. I might have her in my arms, she might be safe from the raging water, but we were far from being out of danger. There still remained a long trek back to the others, this assuming I would be able to find them even if we did make it back. And with the water still deepening, and with more and more trees tumbling, this was a feat that was beginning to look increasingly impossible.
Clinging to Shannon like she's a life preserver, I rise to my feet. The boat rocking more violently than ever, I half-lurch, half-step over the middle bench and plop down onto the back one. Shannon grunts but otherwise says nothing.
“Come on, my love,” I yell over the throes of the storm, my words immediately carried off by the wind. “It’s time to go home!” Thankfully, the engine has been idling this entire time.
“Home,” echoes Shannon as I swivel the motor to flip us around. “My home…”
Fresh tears well up in the corners of her eyes even as new streaks of rain run down her cheeks. Her home. This was the first time I'd thought of it since finding her. If she was up in the tree, then that must mean her home was…
With a sigh, Shannon settles deeper into my lap. Where before her face showed pain, so evident, so powerful, now there is a slight, almost secret, smile, a smile meant just for her and I.
“Home,” she whispers again, her tiny fingers twisting themselves into the soaked fabric of my shirt. “Home…”
“Don’t worry,” I assure her. I’m navigating slowly through the darkness, maneuvering much more cautiously than before now that precious cargo is aboard. Still, I can't be entirely sure I’m not just driving us deeper into the storm. “The insurance will cover—“
“No!” Shannon interjects forcefully, for a moment her exhaustion overcome by her fervency. “No...”
“No?”
“No,” she affirms. Her hand venturing up the back of my neck, she runs her fingers through the hair at my nape. The smile on her face widens, even as a new series of shivers run through her half-thawed body. Pulling my face down to hers, she presses her lips to mine.
“No,” she says again just as a loud crack of thunder sounds overhead. As if cause and effect have been reversed here in the center of the storm, the clap is followed immediately by a flash of lightning so close it sends an electric shock down my spine.
“Home,” she continues. “Home is wherever you are. The rest doesn’t matter.”
“But your hou—“
“No,” she interjects again as she pulls away just far enough to put a finger to my lips. “Just promise me, Kyle. Promise me you’ll never let me go.”
“I won’t.”
“Do you promise? Do you really promise?”
“I promise. With all my heart I promise.”
“I love you, Kyle. More than words could ever express.”
“I love you too, Shannon.”
“Good,” she giggles. Her strength has returned enough that she can sit up on my lap. Readjusting herself so that her back is to my chest, she peers out into the darkness, her hand on my knee. “Now let’s get the hell out of here!”
And with that, our hearts triumphant and full and now forever one, we set off for the dry land I know is awaiting us not too far ahead.
Wow!, I cry silently in wonder as I feel Shannon's heart beating in time with mine. Isn’t wonderful to be alive!
First Epilogue
Shannon
“Knock knock!”
My eyes open just in time to see the door of the hospital room swing open, Kyle’s massive silhouette framed the next second in the center of the doorway. With only the lights in the hallway on illuminated, I can’t make out his expression, though I can see the glitter in his eyes.
“Hi,” I say, my voice hardly a croak as I struggle to push myself up onto an elbow. All around me a variety of machines are beeping and whirring and buzzing, several with screens showing numbers or jagged green living lines of vitality. “What are you doing here, my love? Why aren't you at the apartment?”
“Well, that’s easy,” Kyle says breezily as he steps fully into the room and pull the door shut behind him, my vision going back to black for a moment as the lights from the hallway wink out. “I have a surprise for you.”
“But you aren’t supposed to be here. Visiting hours are—“
“Oh please,” my love says with a snort. In two strides he’s standing at my side. Reaching down, he gingerly runs a hand through my hair, his touch sending a tendril of warmth straight down to my center. “You know I wouldn’t let a little thing like that stop me.”
“But the nurses—“
“Don’t worry about the nurses” he continues. Bending down, he plants a kiss on my forehead. “I took care of everything. Wasn’t anything a few well-placed compliments and a box of chocolates couldn’t handle. But enough about that. Quit distracting me. As I said, I have a surprise for you.”
“A surprise. What kind of surprise?”
“Well, actually,” Kyle says, his grin widening, “I have two.” With the lights of Dallas seeping in under the closed curtains of my hospital room, I can just make out the glow of his smile.
“Two surprises?”
“Mmm-hmm,” my love says. His eyes venture around the dark room, taking in the sink and the bathroom door and the TV on the dresser and the various medical contraptions surrounding the bed. “I know how hard it’s been staying in this hospital and having to eat all this terrible hospital food and not being able to go anywhere, especially after all you've been through. So I was thinking…”
As he trails off, Kyle pulls out the hand he's been hiding from behind his back, the paper bag he's holding in it crinkling. As my eyes find it, the delicious smell of fast food greets my nostrils, my stomach immediately rumbling. In the three days I’ve been in here, I’ve had nothing but cardboard cutout hospital food, even the chocolate pudding with every night's dinner as tasteless as a handful of dried rice. Not that I had any real right to complain, of course. As bad as the food might be, I was still lucky to be alive, something too many people weren't here to say for themselves. And it had all happened by miracle. Miracle and Kyle's quick thinking. Upon arriving to safety, he having somehow found his friends after fishing me out of the water, it had become immediately clear that I was much worse off than either of us had originally thought, and so under Kyle's direction, Mike had taken me to the first hospital beyond the destructive reach of the storm we'd found, where the doctors had declared I was suffering from a severe case of hypothermia, not to mention all the cuts and scrapes and bruises I’d hadn’t realized I’d collected in my struggle to survive.