Title: Summer Storms, Part 3 of 6 (sorry, I think it will now be 6 instead of 5)

Chapter 3: Blood and Rain

Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: I don't own them. Why people who did own them and could broadcast them would give them up is completely beyond me.

Author's Notes: As you can tell by the title, this is the one I warned you about. It's not for the squeamish. The original version of this chapter was really long and somewhat uneven in terms of tone, so I've chopped off the end and moved it. Now I think it reads a lot better. Please let me know what you think.

As Jake propped herself up on her elbows, Hamilton knelt next to her. They both stared open-mouthed at her foot clenched by the trap.

"Ohhh... shit," was all Hamilton could say.

For a moment Jake couldn't say anything at all. She just swallowed. Then she managed, "Yeah, that's basically what I was thinking."

Hamilton looked at her and she stared back at him silently, both of them struggling to think of what to do next. Scout and Will ran up.

"Hey, what happened?" Scout asked. "We --"

"Jesus!" Will interrupted.

"Ouch," Scout added, finally seeing what had Jake prostrate on the ground. "What is that, a trap?"

"Yeah," Hamilton replied, the word barely escaping his throat.

"Like for beavers or something?" Scout continued. Will elbowed him to indicate that this was not the important issue, so he switched topics to, "Jake, are you OK?"

Jake looked up at Scout and tried very hard to pretend that this was not the dumbest question she'd ever heard. "Well, it kinda hurts. I'm just glad I have shoes on. I feel sorry for the little barefoot animals who get caught in these things."

Hamilton moved closer to the trap to examine it. It gripped the middle of Jake's foot, and it pretty clearly sliced through her canvas sneaker. A dark ribbon of blood was just beginning to seep from where steel teeth gnashed through blue cloth.

Hamilton shook his head, frustrated and angry. "What the hell... They can't put traps this close to the school grounds!"

"Well, I'll be sure to leave them a nasty note," Jake quipped. But her sense of humor was wearing off along with the initial shock, and the excruciating pain was sinking in. It felt like her foot was being stabbed, crushed, and snapped in half all at the same time. She dug her fingers into the ground next to her and pulled at the grass as another scream boiled up in her throat but thankfully did not escape.

Hamilton tried to pry apart the steel jaws, but even in his strong hands they wouldn't budge. He let out a sigh and stated quietly, almost to himself, "It's a lock trap."

"What's that?" asked Jake.

"I saw one once, on a walk with my mom when I was little. There was a fox caught it in, just by his paw, and the thing was going crazy trying to pull itself out. My mom was so upset she started crying, and she went over to look at it, and I thought she was going to open the trap and let the fox go, but she said it was a lock trap – you need a key to open it."

Jake hadn't thought this could get any worse. She looked at the chain securing the trap to the tree. "So, does that mean I'm stuck here?"

"No," Hamilton replied, with a determined shake of his head. "It means I need some help." He looked up at Will and Scout and said, "Guys, come here."

As they knelt down next to him, Bella came running up.

"What happened?" she asked breathlessly. "I heard a scream." As Jake managed an embarrassed smile, Bella saw her foot in the trap. "Oh, my God..."

Jake shrugged. "It's not as bad as it looks." But she was already realizing that this was a lie.

"It looks pretty bad," Scout had to admit.

"Shut up, Scout," Hamilton snapped. "Just grab on." He gripped one jaw of the trap, and Scout and Will grabbed the other. "OK, guys. On the count of three, everybody pull." He looked at Jake and nodded silently to tell her to prepare herself. He waited for her to take a deep breath, and then he quickly counted, "One, two, three!"

Grunting with effort, the three boys pulled as hard as they could. A summer of toning their arms with rowing paid off in a big way, as biceps flexed and bulged and finally, with an ear-splitting screech of rusty steel joints, they opened the trap just enough to release its quarry.

"Aaah!" Jake cried out, biting at her lower lip and pounding a fist on the ground. She crawled backwards on her elbows, and once she was safely out of the way, the boys let go. The jaws snapped shut again, almost catching their fingers.

Jake bent her knee and grabbed her foot at the ankle as the pain throbbed up her leg. It was even worse now then when her foot was still in the trap. She tried desperately to maintain her composure and take it like a man, or how she imagined a man would take it.

Hamilton could tell what she was doing and it made him feel sick to his stomach, but they both knew that she could take the pain longer than he could take the agony of not being able to wrap his arms around her and comfort her.

"Dammit!" Jake yelled. She squeezed her eyes shut and focused. Pull it together, Pratt, she urged herself silently. She opened her eyes and said to the guys, "You know, this is the kind of crap we don't have to deal with in Manhattan."

Hamilton almost smiled at that, but then he looked back at Jake's shoe -- dark navy blue could no longer disguise the seeping blood, which now crept up the white shoelaces, turning them bright red. He reached over and started to untie the laces, but Jake pulled her foot away and pushed back away from him.

"I got it, Fleming. My hands are fine." She untied the red-stained laces herself and carefully pulled the shoe off, her face contorting in agony as she did so. It was as if her flesh were being ripped apart all over again. The removal of her shoe revealed a white sock soaked through with blood, from her toes to her ankle, so much blood that it was hard to tell where it was all coming from.

"Damn," Will said. Scout whistled.

With great effort, Jake wiggled her toes. "I don't think it's broken," she lied. She slowly peeled off the bloody sock to reveal the nasty gouge that ran entirely across the top of her foot, splitting the flesh nearly to the bone.

Bella gasped, and Hamilton had to swallow to avoid doing the same. Scout turned away and retched, and Will grabbed him to steady him.

Eyebrows raised, Jake examined her foot. She felt lucky that the steel jaws had failed to cut through the rubber sole of her sneaker, so the bottom of her foot was fine. But the top... Blood rained from the wound onto the grass below, red droplets sliding down each green blade to pool on the ground.

Her heart throbbing from her stomach to her throat, Jake suppressed a moan. She had never seen so much blood, and she could only vaguely believe that it was coming from her own body. The fear even overwhelmed the throbbing pain.

"Oh... that's not good," was all she had to say. She didn't waste any more time looking but simply took her blood-soaked sock and wrapped it around her foot like a bandage, tying it tight to try to stem the crimson tide.

"I'll go get some help," said Bella.

"No, let's just get out of here," Jake replied.

Bella was adamant. "Jake, you're soaking wet, there's a storm coming in, and you're bleeding. I think we need to get some help."

Will shook his head at Bella. "They can't drive an ambulance in here. We're too deep in the woods." He pointed on down the trail. "If we can get over that hill, I think we'll be in the clearing. But Ham would know better than I would."

"How much farther is it?" Scout asked. They all looked at Hamilton.

He was silent, pale, kneeling next to Jake and looking back and forth from her foot to her face.

Will realized he wasn't hearing anything they said. "Hamilton?"

"Yeah?" he replied, not taking his eyes off of Jake.

"How much farther until we're out of the woods?"

Hamilton hesitated a moment, then looked up at Will and replied, "About a mile."

"A mile?!" Scout exclaimed. "Look at Jake's foot! He can't walk ten feet on that."

He. The word shook Jake now in a way it never had before. It was a simple pronoun, but the key to everything. An impetuous charade that had become necessary if she was to keep Hamilton. She had to be he to have him.

But as she felt her very life force draining out of her, her veins releasing like the floodgate on the river, she doubted her ability to keep pretending even more than she doubted her ability to stand. Even on her best day, the charade took so much energy it often left her tired and tense.

She looked up at Will and Scout, two boys looking back at the imposter among them, and she wondered what they would do if they knew the truth. They were her friends, but could she trust them to hold on to her secret? Scout came from a political family; he couldn't afford to be involved in anything scandalous. And Will... Will was on scholarship; this was his one shot at a brighter future. If he got kicked out, he couldn't just move on to the next prep school the way the rest of them could. No -- both Scout and Will had too much at stake to become players in her game. And that meant she had no choice but to keep going or else risk losing the one thing that mattered to her.

She turned her gaze from Will and Scout to Hamilton kneeling beside her, his scared blue eyes never leaving her face. In his eyes she saw the possibility that she could find the strength to do this, that she could make it out of the woods, both literally and figuratively.

"I'll be fine," Jake finally replied to Scout, keeping her voice deep even as she struggled to get the words out. "Let's get out of here." She looked at Hamilton and nodded.

He slowly stood up, holding out his hand. She took it, and he pulled her up onto her good foot. Once she had her balance, she let go of his hand and tried to step down on her other foot but grimaced and stopped.

"You can't walk on that," Hamilton insisted.

"I can walk." She took a step forward on her bad foot, but the pain was unbearable, and she almost toppled over.

"Jake, don't!"

"Hamilton..." The tone of her voice warned him to back off.

Will stepped over and offered his shoulder. "Here, we'll give you hand."

"I don't need any help."

Bella had been watching all of this silently, but she couldn't hold back anymore. "Jake, stop being such a guy! Let them help you."

Jake wasn't in the mood for irony, but she understood what Bella was saying. They needed to get the hell out of the woods.

"Yeah, man, don't be an idiot," said Will. "We gotta move, like, now."

Sighing her acquiescence, Jake put a hand on Will's shoulder and a hand on Hamilton's and tried to hop along between them.

Overhead, a flash of lightning sprinted across the sky. It was followed quickly by another peal of thunder that rumbled into a crescendo like a giant revving engine. Jake shuddered.

They hadn't walked more than a few yards when the rain began to fall.

Finn felt the first drops pelt his head as he motored up the river in his speedboat. He spotted Ryder and Biggs jogging along the bank and three others not far behind. He pulled up beside them and cut the motor.

"What happened?"

"We had to abandon ship," Ryder explained.

"Is everybody OK?"

"Yeah."

"I just got word about the floodgate," Finn explained, "and I know the Dean is seriously pissed that we weren't warned earlier."

"We would've been fine if our moron coxswain had been paying attention instead of playing X-ray vision with his boyfriend."

"Ryder, this really isn't the time for --" Finn stopped as he realized that the coxswain in question was nowhere in sight. "Where are the rest of the guys?"

"They didn't follow us," said Ryder. "I guess they thought they knew a shortcut, probably Fleming's idea. Finn, did that pup actually make this team?"

"It's the summer team, Ryder. Everyone makes it. Even you. Now shut up and get in the boat."

Fortunately, the first sheets of rain that fell weren't too heavy, and the forest did provide some cover. They moved as quickly as they could, Jake limping along between Hamilton and Will. There was no longer any kind of trail, so they counted on Hamilton to navigate them through the trees. Scout and Bella followed silently behind; everyone was too cold or too worried to carry on a conversation. Bella had abandoned her bike to stay with them, figuring that Jake could use someone there who knew her secret and wasn't completely shaken like Hamilton.

After half an hour Jake was exhausted from hopping uphill on one foot, and they were nowhere near the top of the climb. Their progress slowed as the hill got steeper and the wet ground grew more slippery. While the tall trees did protect them somewhat from the rain, the whipping wind made sure they still got wet and cold, and Hamilton watched Jake with growing concern. The color was slowly draining from her face.

Without warning, she suddenly loosened her grip on the shoulders supporting her and sagged between them. Hamilton slid an arm around her waist before she could fall.

"Jake, what's the matter?" he asked, trying to sound calm.

"I'm... just a little dizzy." She put a hand on her head and closed her eyes. "You know, I could sit down for a minute."

"We can't," said Will. "Bad idea."

Hamilton concurred. "Jake, we need to get you to a hospital."

Jake pulled away from Will and then from Hamilton, who tried to keep a hand on her arm. She struggled to keep her balance on her own, but she stumbled sideways. Hamilton winced when he saw her put her weight down on her bloody foot, but she barely seemed to register any pain.

"I just need... for a minute..." she mumbled. She leaned against a tree trunk and sank to the ground.

"Jake!" Hamilton cried, finding it impossible to keep the emotion out of his voice, no matter how it might look to Will and Scout. He knelt in front of her and looked down at the sock bandage, which was soaked completely bright red with blood.

"Oh, God," Bella said. "We should change that bandage."

Jake stretched her foot out in front of her and stared at it, then almost laughed. "Wow, that's a lot of blood, isn't it?" She looked up at Hamilton. Her hazel eyes now looked almost black against the pale of her skin, or maybe, Hamilton thought, it was that her pupils had grown so wide. He didn't know what that meant, but it scared the hell out of him. He was losing it, and he wasn't doing a very good job of hiding that fact from Jake.

"Hey, Ham, don't freak on me," she said, her voice barely audible above the wind and rain, even here in the shelter of a gargantuan pine tree.

Hamilton tried to ignore this comment as he started to remove the sock bandage. This time Jake didn't resist but let him do it. When Hamilton saw the gouge in her foot, his stomach sank. The wound was still bleeding profusely.

"You need another bandage, and we need to tie it tighter." Hamilton sat down and started to take off his shoes.

"Hey," Jake said, "just use my other sock." She stuck her other foot out to him.

"No, keep it."

Lightning flashed again, followed even more closely by another explosion of thunder that splintered across the sky in staccato pops like a firecracker.

Will and Bella exchanged a frightened glance. The townie kids knew what this meant – the worst of the storm was almost upon them.

Will acknowledged reluctantly, "We won't make it back to school. We should think about finding some other shelter."

"No!" Hamilton objected. "Sh— he needs a doctor, someone who can stop this bleeding." He looked at Jake, but she didn't seem to notice his near slip-up.

Bella was with Will on this one. "It's not going to help Jake to get even colder and more soaked."

Hamilton finished untying his shoelaces and slid off his sneakers and socks, thankful that the latter were still dry. He looked at Jake. Her sweatshirt was still wet from the spill in the river, and the rain that filtered through the pine needles wasn't helping. Hamilton prayed the rainfall wouldn't get any heavier, but he knew the storm was just beginning.

A gust of wind blew through Jake's hair and she shivered. As Hamilton took her foot in his hand to tie his sock around it, he could feel her shaking.

"It's getting really cold out here," Jake said, her voice barely above a whisper.

Hamilton tied one of his socks tight around the wound and then slipped his other sock over her whole bandaged foot, hoping it might warm her up a bit. There was blood all over his hands now, smeared on the white sock he'd just put on her, but he did his best to ignore the blood and the tremors in his stomach that left him just on the edge of nausea. He squeezed Jake's toes in the tiniest display of affection and then turned to put his shoes back on his sockless feet. As he tied the laces he looked back at Jake, saw that her teeth were chattering, and admitted to himself that Will was right. They needed to find shelter. She needed to dry off, or she would freeze.

"There's an old fire tower just a little further up the hill," Hamilton informed the others reluctantly.

"What's a fire tower?" asked Scout.

"It's like a stone cabin, a lookout where you can see all over the forest. The rangers keep supplies up there."

Scout clapped his hands together. "Sounds good. Let's go."

"I don't know," said Will. "Jake doesn't look like he wants to go much further up this hill."

Hamilton replied, "If we want to get out of this storm, it's the best place." He stood up and held a hand out to Jake, who was slumped back against the tree trunk, listless. She looked like she had no intention of getting up.

"You know, rain isn't so bad," she mused, her voice soft and tired. "I could just hang out here for a while."

"Come on." Hamilton bent down and grabbed her hands. He pulled her to her feet.

"Oh, God... too fast," Jake objected, dizziness making her head loll back. She started to sink again. Hamilton caught her. He took a quick side-glance at Will and Scout, only momentarily self-conscious of what he was about to do.

He whispered in her ear, "I've got you, baby." And with that, he scooped her up in his arms.

Will and Scout couldn't help but exchange a look. Hamilton saw it but no longer cared.

"Ham, don't..." Jake protested, knowing how uncool this looked.

Hamilton ignored her and turned to the gang. "Let's go."

Without another word, they turned and started hiking back up the hill.

END OF PART THREE