Saving Katie Baker (14 page)

“Lots on my mind, sorry.” He said.

The woman looked at him with an irritated look and pointed down to the sign that hung in front of her station, “Cash only. Card machine broken.”

“Ah, sorry.” Blake opened his wallet and happened to have just enough cash on him to pay for everything already bagged and ready to be taken home. “In luck,” he replied to the girl, handing her the cash.

Blake walked out in a hurry and headed back towards the house. He was anxious and yet excited to see what Katie thought of his little shopping spree. Would she find the items acceptable? He hoped that his choice for underwear wouldn’t offend her.

Blake walked in with his hands full of bags and pizza. Before saying anything, she went to the kitchen and started the oven.

“Thanks, Blake, for doing this for us. I hope you weren’t too inconvenienced.”

Blake laughed, “Let’s just say it was educational.”

“Oh really? Hope that’s not a bad thing.”

Katie reached to take the bags from his arms, and with a glance inside, he knew she had seen the black lacy panties.

Before her mind could continue to finish the marathon that he was certain she had begun, he interrupted any thoughts of hers with, “I didn’t have any idea what to get, you know, for you, so I got a few different kinds.”

Katie’s face heated up, the brightest red yet to find it’s way on her skin. Blake smiled.

“I am a gentleman you know,” he said and walked to place the other items down.

Blake could smell the pizza cooking in the oven. The feta and spinach with garlic started to make his stomach growl and his mouth water. He walked into the kitchen to see if he could be of any help and found Micah standing at the oven window, gazing intently at the pizza, watching the cheese slowly begin to melt.

“Bake, pizza,” she said to Blake, pointing, getting her little fingerprints all over the front of his oven.

He smiled at the thought of her left-over toddler prints and wanted to treasure each and every little moment that he had with them while he could. He feared that they’d be leaving him sooner rather than later.

“You don’t like pizza, do you?”

The question was posed to the little girl in obvious jest. She looked up at him and made a silly face as she nodded her head yes.

“Are you helping your mommy?”

Micah looked up at Katie who was standing up on her tiptoes, attempting to grab plates from off of the top shelf in his kitchen. He liked her there. He had heard others talk before, making jokes of wanting their woman barefoot in the kitchen. He always assumed that this was because of some biased idea that women were meant to be in there, doing “their kind of work”, but this scene literally took his breath away.

The woman inside, cooking and cleaning—he’d always thought it a bit chauvinistic, but now he found out the true secret behind the phrase. It’s really meant to be a compliment, men actually appreciating how their wives look and move in the kitchen. Katie looked sexy as hell reaching up, stretching, and moving about, more so in the kitchen than in any other place he had seen yet.

There he went again, running away with those crazy ideas of her being his. How could he stop the thoughts from invading? Just because she was in his house right now, did not make her his woman. Why was this so hard for him to soak in?

CHAPTER
13

K
atie turned and found Blake looking at her. It wasn’t just any look; it wasn’t just a friendly smile. She sensed there was more behind his eyes and it puzzled her. She tried to figure it out, and the realization dawned on her like a punch in her chest. She remembered the look perfectly because she had seen it time and again in the eyes of her husband. Blake was looking at her with longing.

He shouldn’t be looking at me like that. He can’t be
, she thought to herself.

Their eyes met and he smiled with a light in his eyes that said it all. Katie knew her suspicions were unfortunately correct. The heartbeat in her chest wouldn’t slow. All she could think of was that she couldn’t breathe.

“Here, let me help you,” Blake said as he stood up and moved in closer to Katie.

She quickly backed away, as if scared of him. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know what to think, but she needed to do something. When his hand touched hers to grab the plates, she pulled away as if his very touch had burned her.

“Katie, are you okay?”

Blake looked at her in confusion and with concern. Katie didn’t know how she should respond; she just knew that she needed air. She couldn’t breathe.

“I . . . I think I need some air.”

She began walking toward the door, but just before making it to the living room her knees shook, her legs gave way from underneath her, she struggled for air, and hit the floor, gasping. It didn’t take long for Blake to be by her side; he knelt over her with panic on his face.

“Katie. Katie are you all right? What happened?”

Katie struggled to find the words. She forced herself up. “Too close.” She began pushing him away, shoving him, struggling to get up. Katie’s face was red, and she was sweating and attempting to catch her breath.

“Katie, you just collapsed. Something isn’t right. You’re having trouble breathing. I’m not backing away until you steady your breath and tell me what the fuck is going on.”

Right then the timer went off on the pizza.

“Get off me. Leave me alone—I just need some fresh air.”

It took him a while to get the hint, but finally Blake turned away from Katie.
I must have finally made myself clear
, she thought as she slowly stood and made her way outside.

“Katie, please be careful,” he said to her as she walked out the front door.

Outside, Katie inhaled deeply, slowly. She looked across the street and thought of her husband. She thought of the life that she’d had before all of this, the life that she was supposed to be living. She remembered the ways her husband looked at her. How his looks could make her melt. She had never thought that she would see another man look at her like that.

Was Blake falling in love with her? It couldn’t be. She couldn’t let that happen. She had made a promise to herself that night—the night that she was being pulled out of her car, screaming with labor pains and fear at seeing her husband lay motionless next to her with his eyes opened and unseeing. She knew then that she would never fall in love again. She would never be with another man. When death took away her husband, he took away her love. She wouldn’t risk it, not ever.

These thoughts made Katie’s head start to spin again. She needed to move, she couldn’t just stand there and let her mind roam or she’d end up passing out once more, attracting even more attention from Blake. She didn’t want that. She didn’t want him anywhere near her.

Katie did the only thing that she knew to do in order to get her mind moving in another direction, she took off running. Running from the thoughts of Blake; running from her messy life. One foot in front of the other, she moved quickly down the trail without any intention of stopping until the hurt had gone away.

Katie thought back to life before marriage, before Micah—a life of running. She had spent so much of her free time back then training and running marathons. Katie thrived off of the challenge of competing against herself, striving to beat her previous times on the track. She’d loved it and had assumed that she’d go places, but life had a way of changing plans.

She didn’t regret getting married, and she tried to run when she could, but because they were expecting, her husband asked her to stop. Then, there was no time to run anymore. She could feel a pain creep up in her side but she shoved it aside. She didn’t know where she was going; she was just running, through the woods, jumping over logs that were in her way. She felt wonderful.

She felt free. Nobody near her, she invited the fresh air into her lungs and pushed her body. She didn’t care and didn’t worry about how far she was going, or how fast; she just ran. Katie focused on her breath, pacing herself as she had remembered doing before. She ran and ran. Nothing could stop her.

It didn’t dawn on Katie while she was enjoying her runner’s high that the sun was setting. She was in her own world, and running away from all that life had taken away and left behind. The stitch in her side increased in intensity, but she kept going. She kept pushing. She wasn’t ready to give up or go back just yet.

Another pain. Her thoughts went back to training and injuries. She had suffered quite a few back in those days. As the remembrance of them all came back to her, she decided to obey her body and stop. When Katie slowed her run to a quick walking pace, she realized the sun had set. She turned and took a few minutes walking toward what she assumed was Blake’s house, but then, as if in slow motion, the atmosphere all around her went dark. Night had won the race.

Fear began to torture Katie. Her mind filled with images of hungry animals, snakes, spiders, and all those childhood nightmares. She tried to shake them off, but began to panic instead. She’d only had a few panic attacks in her life, but lately they seemed to be coming all too often. Now, here, in the middle of the woods, that all too familiar feeling began to return. Her heart raced and once again she found breathing to be difficult. Katie debated what to do. As a child she was told to stay exactly where you are if you get lost, that moving around would cause you to possibly be missed by your seeker.

Katie wasn’t sure about that theory. She was here, alone. She had been alone for a long time now, but here, she felt it. She felt loneliness as she had never felt it before. Her eyes tried to make sense of anything: shapes, ground—she could make nothing out.

She kept moving forward, slower this time, feeling with her hands outstretched, searching as she imagined a blind woman might. Nothing: her hands just clawed at empty space. She bent and touched the ground—it was there, and she felt thankful. It was something familiar, something that she could recognize.

Katie decided that she would sit; she would be still and wait. Blake would come to look for her. She just knew it.
It won’t take him long
, she told herself,
he walks these woods
. He knew them better than anyone else. She would wait.

Blake was cleaning up pizza from Micah’s face and glanced at the clock. Katie had been gone for two hours. He wondered if he should attempt to go looking for her. She acted as though she really needed some space, so maybe that wasn’t a good idea. The last thing he wanted to do was to create more issues between them by being too smothering. He recalled her words, “too close.” What did she mean by them?

Micah began to rub her eyes and suck her fingers, Blake guessed that it was getting close to her bedtime, so he went ahead and changed her. He knew nothing about bathing a baby, so he decided that he’d wait and let Katie bathe her in the morning.

He grabbed the little girl’s blanket and began cuddling with her on the couch. It didn’t take long for the little girl to start dozing off. He tried to calm his worrying about Katie, but he just couldn’t. He had a feeling something wasn’t right.
She should be back by now
.
She wouldn’t have left me to put Micah to sleep on my own
. Something was wrong.

Blake laid Micah down in the bed, and after he made sure that she was safe asleep, he closed the master bedroom, grabbed a light jacket and walked out of the house. Just the sight of the darkness caused fear to rise up within him. She shouldn’t be out there. How was he going to find her in the darkness? It was a daunting task that frightened him.

Blake walked back inside, and grabbed a flashlight. He opened the bottom to check for batteries and made sure that it was working properly. He had a feeling that it was going to be a long night. Upon returning outdoors, Blake was met by drops of water falling from the sky.

“Not now. Seriously? Why rain, now?”

Blake locked the door to the house behind him, just in case Micah did happen to wake up and attempt an escape. He knew that he was being overprotective, but better safe than sorry.

He walked quickly, at more of a jogging pace than actually walking. He was calling her name over and over again.

“Katie. Katie where are you?” No answer in reply. Blake kept yelling for Katie as he walked. He debated running, in order to quicken the search, but feared he’d miss her.

He could feel his heart beat throughout his whole body like a drumbeat reverberating in his chest at a rock concert.

The rain was coming down harder now, the flashlight dripping, his clothing sticking to his body, and the ground muddy beneath his feet. He didn’t know which way to turn, there were so many different ways that Katie could have gone. He begged the heavens for a miracle.

Blake remembered being a kid and walking through a corn maze in the fall. All of the kids in his town would pay to get lost and rush through, searching for a way out. He enjoyed it back then, but the game wasn’t fun anymore. He didn’t want to play. He wanted to call a time out, to scream for a hint, an answer to what he was looking for.

“Where is she?” He shouted. “Katie, where are you?”

Right then he saw what he thought at first was a dead animal in the distance. Something lay huddled on the ground. He was afraid. He could tell it was his race shirt. He knew that he had found her, and he feared the worst.

“Please be okay. Katie. Katie, are you okay. Can you hear me? Katie?”

No answer. He was bending over her, and she was lying on her side in a balled up position soaked to the bone and shaking. Blake tried to get her to wake up. When he realized that she wasn’t conscious, he lifted her head to look at her face. She wasn’t responding.

“Katie.”

He picked her up in his arms, her head lay against his neck, and her skin felt warm. He knew that it wasn’t supposed to be that hot. He quickly started making his way back to the house, but it seemed like it was taking forever.

He could see the house in the distance and then, Montag came running out to him.

“She’s in trouble boy,” he said to the dog.

As soon as he got the door open, which was no easy task since he had locked it, he didn’t second-guess his actions. He was educated in responding to emergency situations and went into EMS mode. Blake knew he had to get her fever down. He began taking off the wet clothes; he removed her shirt and jeans, but left her underclothes on, even though they too were wet. He laid her on the couch and threw a thin blanket over her, hoping that when she woke she wouldn’t feel violated.

Blake worried about her. He felt responsible in some odd way. Katie had to get well, she just had to. He grabbed the quilt off of the master bed and covered her in hopes that she would stay warm.

“Katie,” he tried again to get her to wake up. “Katie, please; answer me, honey.”

Blake felt helpless, there was nothing he could do but wait. He reached out his hand and placed it on her arm, just below the stitches.

“Please, please be okay,” it was the best he could do at a prayer right now.

Katie began to move, and she attempted to open her eyes. Blake thought he saw her shiver.

“Are you cold?”

She shook her head no. Blake felt a sense of relief that she was responding, but her eyes looked so empty and sad.

“Thanks for coming to find me,” she said.

Blake shifted closer, moved a wet strand of her hair from her face, and promised, “I wont ever leave you.”

“Blake. Don’t. Don’t say that. You can’t. You can’t fall for me.” Katie lay her head back down and dozed off again.

“I’m sorry. It’s too late. I’ve already fallen.”

After Blake said the words, he stretched out next to her on the floor for the rest of the night.