Love is Always Write Anthology Volume 3

thing left in his life, besides his business.
    He'd just laid hand to the stove, shoved under a rolled sleeping back, when a series of loud, splintering cracks erupted from the woods—and Ethan screamed.
    Jude took off running.
    Just as it occurred to him that he had no idea which direction Ethan might've turned, he realized that something up ahead wasn't quite right. He slowed to a walk, approaching the slight rise that made the leaf-strewn ground seem broken away from the landscape beyond.
    A groan drifted through the air. It sounded impossibly far away.
    "Ethan!" Jude picked up the pace. The closer he got to the rise, the more wrong it looked. Everything past that ridge of ground was disproportionate. Distant.
    "Watch out..." Ethan's voice, faint and strained.
    His gut twisted in sick suspicion, Jude moved cautiously to the top of the ridge. Beyond it, the ground dropped sharply into a deep, narrow gorge. A thin stream choked with leaves and branches trickled along at the bottom, a good thirty feet below.
    And Ethan was halfway down the steep embankment, dangling head-down from a jutting ledge—with only a foot ensnared in a thick, tangled deadfall keeping him there.
    CHAPTER 3
    "Don't move, okay?" Jude called from somewhere above. "I'm coming down."
    Ethan would've laughed, if he could catch enough breath. Move? That didn't seem to be an option right now. He couldn't get enough leverage to swing himself upright, even if it hadn't felt like someone had skewered his ankle with a red-hot poker. He'd almost passed out when he tried it.
    It was a bonehead move, stomping off like that. Well, stumbling off. If he'd been a little more awake—or a little less petulant—maybe he'd have noticed that the ground ended some time before he'd ambled over the cliff.
    He shouldn't have been this upset. Walking to the campground was a perfectly logical idea. Did he really think that after last night's drunken mistake, Jude was going to start lusting after him?
    Or that the single most incredible experience of his life was going to magically change the rest of the world, so he could come out without destroying himself?
    A series of rustling crunches and sliding steps announced Jude making his way carefully down the embankment. It was utterly humiliating, having to be rescued like this. And he'd just made the awkward situation he pulled them into last night a hell of a lot worse, because now they really would be stuck here until someone happened to drive up this way. He couldn't walk anywhere.
    He almost wished he'd snapped his neck instead of his ankle. Death would've been easier to deal with.
    "Oh, man. You're really jammed in there, aren't you?"
    Without thinking, Ethan twisted automatically toward the sound of Jude's voice beside him, and had to suppress a shout as pain surged through his leg. He grunted instead. "Something like that."
    Jude fell silent for a moment. "Think I'd better go up and pull you onto the ledge," he said. "If I break you loose first, you'll fall."
    "Yeah." Ethan closed his eyes.
    He waited, listening to the sound of Jude's footsteps, and then the crunch and crackle of dry wood above him. The noises stopped. "How far can you reach?"
    Ethan strained to lift his head and made out Jude's arm extended toward him. After a few awkward lunges, he managed to grab the hand, and Jude hauled him up slowly. Once he was more or less upright, a wave of inertia grayed his senses, dulling sight and sound. He fought to stay conscious as Jude broke the branches that pinned him in place and helped him crawl away from the deadfall.
    When his head cleared, he found himself sitting at the back of the ledge with Jude crouched beside him. He could barely look at the man. "Thanks. And...sorry," he murmured. "That was really stupid of me."
    "Don't worry about it." Jude nodded toward his foot. "How bad?"
    He didn't even want to find out, but there wasn't much choice. Jaw set, he bent his knee and dragged his throbbing left ankle toward him, then gingerly tugged his jeans up and pushed his sock down. The skin was swollen taut, already starting to bruise. Not the best sign.
    Jude gave a low whistle. "Think it's broken?"
    "No idea." He tensed, bent his good leg and started to stand. And then wanted to die all over again when Jude helped him up.
    Once he was supporting himself on one leg, and Jude moved away, he settled his foot on the ground and eased a little weight onto it. His ankle ramped up from a throb to a steady howl, but it