Something hit the bumper with a thump.
I slammed on the brakes, the action so sudden, so rough, that my whole body shot forward.
My forehead bounced against the steering wheel.
“Ouch.” I heard myself groan through the ringing in my ears.
“ADALYN?” came from somewhere to my right. Matthew’s voice. It sounded muffled now. “Jesus Christ, what just happened?”
“I hit something,” I announced, a stinging sensation burning the right side of my forehead. With a ragged breath, I gave myself three seconds, letting my head rest on the leathery surface of the wheel, before I straightened up and turned my head, looking for my phone, which had fallen from the dashboard.
Matthew’s voice returned.
“Tell me you’re okay or I swear I’ll call your mother right fucking now—”
“No,” I croaked. “Please, don’t. Not Maricela. She can’t know.” I blinked, trying to clear the tiny spots popping around the edges of my field of vision. “I’m good,” I murmured, spotting something moving outside the car. Something… that was running. And… Clucking? “I think I just hit a chicken.”
Unintelligible swearing came from the speaker while I released the seatbelt and picked the phone up from the floor. I returned to the upright position and—
My head swirled. “That was a mistake,” I murmured.
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Adalyn. The Green Warriors—”
“I feel like I need to throw up.”
“Get out of that car,” he said. “Now.”
With a nod Matthew couldn’t see, I put the car in reverse. “The car is in the middle of the driveway so I’m going to park and then—”
“No.”
“I can’t just leave the car here.” Pebbles jumped from under the tires as the vehicle started to move. “Maybe I should check on the chicken, too.” A thought formed in the haziness that was my head. “Oh God. What if I killed it?” My eyes drifted to the direction the chicken had run off. I couldn’t believe this. “Another stupid bird.”
My eyelids fluttered shut. Just for a moment. It couldn’t have been more than a nanosecond, a short-lived reprieve, but—
A thump jolted me.
A thump. I had hit something. Again. Something larger than a chicken. Something like a—God, don’t let it be a bear.
My eyes blinked open, panic surging.
In the same breath, a growl—a bear-like growl to my utter dismay—came from the rear of the car. My foot shot forward. But my head was fuzzy and my basic reflexes clearly amiss, because instead of the brakes, I must have hit the accelerator.
And hurled the rental against a tree.
CHAPTER THREE
Cameron
The woman inside the car was unconscious.
“Hello?” I called, squinting my eyes. I was trying to get a look at her face, but her head was against the window and the only thing I could see was a tangle of… brown hair. I knocked on the window and repeated, a little louder, “Hello?”
No reaction.
Christ. This wasn’t good.
Pushing aside the pang of lingering annoyance and anger, I wiggled the door handle, hoping the car was unlocked and feeling immediate relief when it opened with a swift click.
Relief that vanished the moment the woman toppled to the side like a dead weight.
“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath, catching her midair.
This had just escalated from inconvenient to concerning.
Without losing more time, I secured her against my chest and plucked her completely out of the vehicle so I could place her on the ground.
I kneeled next to her, that mass of hair still obscuring her face and pushing me to brush it aside with my hand. A set of parted lips, a button nose, and pale cheeks were revealed. Too pale, I noticed, my gaze inspecting her for obvious injuries. My eyes stopped at a bump on her forehead. It was an ugly shade of red and didn’t alleviate any of my concern.
“Hello?” I called a third time, not obtaining any reaction from her. I patted her cheek softly. Still nothing. “Christ.”
I tilted my head back for a second, dragging my hand down my face and dreading the reasonable course of action. I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact she’d almost run me over. Missing the fucking bird that had been roaming the property for weeks was fair enough, but me? I had been standing right behind the car. And I wasn’t a small bloke. She’d overlooked a six-foot-two man in broad daylight, then hurled the goddamn car against a tree.