Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 71015 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 355(@200wpm)___ 284(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71015 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 355(@200wpm)___ 284(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
The window that was covered in bars.
It was then I knew that I’d have to walk back through the fire, and pray that I’d make it out alive.
Three minutes ago it’d been on the verge of destruction. Now, I’d be lucky to make it out alive.
“Here goes nothing,” I muttered, and stepped out into an inferno.
***
Tru
“You stupid, stupid man,” I whispered, looking down at the man that had such a hold on my heart that it hurt to breathe.
I’d thought my dad was joking when he’d said that Grayson had been hurt while saving an infant from a burning building.
I hadn’t heard anything on the news, which I’d been watching at the time of the call.
Surely something as big as a house fire would’ve made it, but it hadn’t.
I’d known, of course, when I started dating Grayson that being hurt in the line of duty was a very real possibility for him, but I’d always thought that it’d never happen to him.
Boy was I wrong.
It had happened to him.
From what I’d ascertained from my father, he’d made it all the way to the front door before a beam in the living room collapsed, making the integrity of the house give.
When that had happened, the roof had caved in, causing another large beam to strike him on the back of the head.
He’d held his feet, but only long enough to move out the door and collapse onto the lawn.
That’s where he’d lost consciousness and was immediately transported to the hospital.
The child had been transported in the same ambulance, but luckily he was just fine and only being observed overnight for possible smoke inhalation.
I looked from Grayson to his fire helmet that was on the rolling table next to his bed and grimaced.
It was trashed, but the thing had done its job, protecting Grayson’s head. The pieces, though, would never be put back together again.
“If he hadn’t been wearing that helmet, he’d be gone,” Sebastian said quietly from the chair across the room.
I’d known he was there, of course.
But he hadn’t said anything when I entered, and my attention had been on Grayson.
“I can see that,” I said softly, looking down at Grayson’s hand.
It was clean except for the nail beds and the creases of his knuckles which held the remnants of the terrible fire that’d nearly taken his life.
“He’s reckless,” Sebastian growled.
I didn’t look up, but I could tell he was sending that accusatory comment to the man currently lying flat on his back in a hospital bed.
I nodded again in agreement. “He’s passionate. It’s not in his nature to let someone go if he has the ability to save them.”
He had nothing to say to that, so we sat like that in companionable silence, listening to the reassuring sound of Grayson’s monitors telling us his heart was beating correctly.
“The kid’s father is FBI. Grayson’s gonna get a medal for his act of dumbassness,” Sebastian said a while later.
I looked over to him. “He won’t like that. You know how he is with getting the spotlight. He told me about the night that Tunnel died. He said the press wouldn’t leave him alone for weeks. This’ll only make them even more persistent to get their story.”
Although I’d only heard other people’s retelling of their accounts, where Tunnel had perished from smoke inhalation, I knew it to be true. Grayson hated attention.
He nodded. “Yep.”
I looked down at Grayson, noticing the stray smudges of ash and dirt on him, and walked to the sink to wet the wash cloth I’d spotted upon entering the room.
Wetting it with warm water, I took the rag to Grayson and started to clean off the smudges of dirt that I could see, starting at his face and ending with his hands.
The white rag was black by the time I was finished.
“I catch him staring at a picture of the two of you on his phone a lot,” Sebastian said when I was finished.
I did the same.
I wanted so badly to talk to him, to see him. To feel him.
Taking one last, longing look at the man that had the ability to destroy me, I walked out of the door without another word.
I knew I wasn’t alone.
I was followed everywhere I went by a few of the prospects as well as the other members of the MC. When I went to the grocery store, they followed. When I went to the doctor’s office last week, they followed. They left me alone at night, but I had a sneaking suspicion that my new place was wired, and they’d know if I ever needed anything.
One thing was for sure, and that was that Grayson worried about me. Which didn’t fit the description of an ex-girlfriend that he was through with.
As I walked to the waiting area and to my father, I wondered how long this would go on.
There was one promise I could make, though, and that was that I didn’t intend to go much more than a couple more weeks before I decided to fight. I was tired of being unhappy. I was tired of living in limbo.
I’d give him another month, and if he didn’t have it solved by then, then he’d have to find a different way. I wouldn’t be able to say away for much longer.
Chapter 18
Firemen never die, they just burn forever in the hearts of the people whose lives they saved.
-Plaque in the Benton Fire Station
Torren
Three weeks later
The front door chimed when I entered the building. As my eyes adjusted to the dim room, it took me a while to realize that Tru was in front of me at the bar.
“Torren,” she said, nodding at me before turning and making her way to a booth where she sat by herself.
My eyes clenched shut, and my heart ripped in half.
I hadn’t realized that the name Torren on her lips could sound so inexplicably wrong.
That’s not my name! I wanted to shout.
But I didn’t do anything, just walked to the table where Molly was sitting, fighting with every cell in my body not to turn around and look at her.