Chapter 26 #2
I set her foot down and move to be closer to her. She sits up, matching my movements and crosses her legs in front of her. The gray in her eyes seems to deepen as she looks at me—like they’re trying to portray the sadness she feels for me.
“Hey,” I start, wrapping my hand around her face to cup her cheek. “I think I’m one of the luckiest people in the world to have the family I do. Ivy is the best mom I could have ever asked for. Getting to live with her is the greatest gift I’ve ever gotten.”
“I remember you telling me you went to live with her right around Christmas,” she says.
I nod.
“Yep. Just a few days before the holiday. You wouldn’t have known that she just had a kid placed with her from how the house looked.
The whole place was decked out in lights and garland.
She had a full tree, a real one, set up in the living room when I first got to her house.
Bins of ornaments and lights sitting next to it.
” I pause, looking at our hands which are now intertwined, and smile at the memory.
“That’s what we did my first night there—decorate the tree.
She didn’t ask me anything or force me to talk.
We just decorated the tree. I thought I was going to fall over when I came down on Christmas morning and the entire underside was stuffed with presents. ”
“Christmas must be one of your favorite holidays.” She tips her head to one side and smiles.
“It is, but it’s also hard. Carter and Willow lost their mom several years ago around Thanksgiving. The first Christmas for their family was…hard. It’s a weird time for all of us.”
She squeezes my hand and gives me a smile.
One that brings me hope. One that makes me feel like she isn’t judging me.
That she sees me, and my family, and doesn’t mind that we all have cracks that shine an imperfect light around us.
When she goes to open her mouth to say something, instead of words coming out, she yawns.
A big one that has her opening her mouth all the way, closing her eyes, and quickly bringing her hand in front of her face.
“Oh my gosh, I am so sorry. That was so rude of me,” she says at the tail end of it.
“Are you tired? You can go to bed, you know.” I reach up and rub one of her cheeks with my thumb.
“I’m not tired, plus the movie is almost over, let’s finish it,” she insists.
She spins herself around so that her head is in my lap and she’s lying facing the TV.
Unable to stop it, my hand falls to the top of her head and slowly moves down her scalp, brushing her hair away from her face.
It’s soft, almost silky texture feels even better between my fingers than I thought it would.
When the end credits roll, I wait for her to sit up and walk me out, but she doesn’t move.
I try to bend forward to get a look at her, but I don’t want to wake her if she’s sleeping.
Reaching for my phone, I swipe to open the camera and hover it in front of her face.
Sure enough, she’s fast asleep, glasses slightly askew with a hand under her cheek as a pillow.
Her eyes are closed, lashes soft, and I can make out the tiny specks of brown dots along her nose.
I zoom out of the camera and hold it back where it was, this time with me in frame.
Smiling at the camera, I snap a picture.
“Just wanted to capture the moment,” I whisper to myself before setting my phone down. Then, as carefully as I can, I slip out from under her. Kneeling in front of the couch, I press my lips to her temple and whisper. “Hanna, Hanna.”
“Mmm, what?” she mumbles.
“You fell asleep on the couch, beautiful. It’s time to go to bed.”
“Oh, crap. Okay.” She starts to stir but I quickly stop her.
“No, no. I got you. Just wrap your arms around my neck and I’ll take you to bed.”
She cracks her eyes open enough for me to see the gray of her irises before they close again. “You just like carrying me around, don’t you?”
“It is kind of a turn on,” I tease. “Now, hang on tight.”
Scooping my arms under her, I lift her easily. She wraps her arms around my neck as instructed and buries her face into my neck. Reminiscent of the time I came over when she was sick, I carry her to her bed and gently lay her down.
“Want me to get you anything before I go?”
“Go? Where are you going?” She reaches for my wrist and holds onto it tightly.
“I was going to head home so you can get some sleep. Clearly, you need it.”
With heavy eyes, she looks at me. “Is it wrong of me to say I want you to stay?”
“You want me to stay the night?”
“It’s nice having someone else here with me.” She shrugs. “I’ve lived by myself for a while now. Knowing you’re here, I don’t know, it’s nice.”
The way she’s looking at me is wearing my resolve. I know I should go home and sleep in my own bed. While they weren’t as frequent a few months ago, I still have the occasional nightmare and I don’t want to scare her. But I also can’t say no to her.
“I’ll stay,” I answer with a sigh. “But I’m sleeping on the couch.”
“The couch? Why would you sleep on the couch? We’re two grown adults, I think we can handle sharing the same bed,” she argues, coming a little further out of her sleepy daze.
“First, I’m going to sleep on the couch because I’m a gentleman. And second”—I stand from where I’m squatting beside her and bend over, bringing my lips close to hers—“I absolutely won’t be able to lie in bed next to you and not want to completely ruin you.”
Her eyes go wide and before she can say anything, I kiss her hard. I carefully pull her glasses from her eyes and set them on her nightstand before moving away from the bed.
“Goodnight, doc. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Goodnight, Miles. See you in the morning.” Her voice is so small I can hardly hear it.
When I reach her door, I turn over my shoulder and wink at her before turning off the light. Closing it behind me, I make my way back to the couch and hope that I’m awoken by a new day and not the sounds of the screams of my fallen comrade.
Cracking wood.
Hot skin.
The sound of rushing water hitting a building that’s buckling under the heat.
My eyes try to see through the smoke but my lungs are filling up with it too quickly. I’m searching for him everywhere but I can’t find him.
“Help me!” I hear him scream.
“Wes! Wes, I’m coming to get you out!”
“Please, someone!”
“Miles…”
“Stop, I have to save him.” I fight the arm that’s pulling me back. I’m so close, I know I’m about to find him.
“Miles…”
“No! I’m not leaving him! Not how she left me, I never leave anyone behind.”
“Miles, wake up.”
My eyes burst open when I feel the softness of her palms frame my face.
Blinking a few times, I notice she’s flipped on a light.
The soft illumination of it paints her in a warm glow and she almost looks like an angel sent to save me from my nightmare.
Rolling over, I set my feet on the ground and bring my hands to cover my face not only to conceal my embarrassment but also my shame.
“Are you okay?” she asks, sitting on her knees in front of me.
“I—I’m sorry for waking you up. I was really hoping that wasn’t going to happen here. I hope I didn’t scare you.” I pull my hands back and look at her quickly. “I didn’t scare you, did I?”
Pushing up, she walks on her knees towards me and pushes her way in between my legs. Then, she brings her hands back to my face. They’re cool against my skin and I close my eyes, letting her touch settle me.
“You could never scare me. I am worried though. These nightmares, you mentioned they’ve happened before?”
I nod, keeping my eyes closed because looking her in the eye as I admit to them feels impossible. The only person who knows about my nightmares is Carter and that’s only because he woke me up from one in the bunkroom.
“Who’s Wes?” she asks delicately.
I finally open my eyes and look at her. “He’s one of my men. Was one of my men. We lost him this past summer in a really bad fire. And it’s all my fault.”
My voice breaks as I speak about it for the first time since the accident.
Wesley was one of the greatest men I ever knew.
He was funny, and kind. He always made sure to check in on the people around him and he loved his family something fierce.
And now, because of me, they have to live without him.
It should have been me.
“I was going to go in and do the final sweep to make sure it was empty. The building was old and we knew it was coming down. The fire was an accident, old wiring. But Wesley, he ran in before me, without a spotter.” Tears prick my eyelids as my mind conjures up the images and sounds from that night.
We’d never been to a fire so hot in my entire career.
It was an old, abandoned factory just outside of downtown and dry as all hell outside since it was the dead of July and we hadn’t gotten any rain.
A recipe for disaster from the very start.
“I was about to run in after him when Carter pulled me back just in time. One of the structural beams at the entrance fell, blocking the only way in. And out.”
I crush my eyes closed, remembering the panic we all felt trying to find a different way in.
Multiple engines had arrived by that point and were spraying the building down as quickly as they could.
But as soon as they’d contain one spot, another part of the building would be engulfed.
I remember getting in through a busted out window in the back and climbing in, trying to find him through the wreckage but it was no use.
“Miles.” The sound of her voice calls to me like a beacon in the night.
A lighthouse to navigate towards through the storm raging inside my mind.
When I feel her thumb wipe away a tear that’s fallen down my cheek, I open my eyes and look at her.
“You tried to save him. You did what you could to rescue him.”
“He has a wife and three daughters,” I croak and clear my throat. The images of them crying at his funeral still haunt me to this day.
“And you have me,” she says, bringing my attention back to her. “If you had gone in, and gotten trapped, we wouldn’t be where we are now. I wouldn’t be here with you now. Nolan wouldn’t have an art lesson scheduled. I never would have gone to Fresh Start or sang to you at karaoke night.”
She leans in and presses a kiss to my cheek before pressing her forehead to mine.
“Life opens and closes doors all the time. We don’t always get to pick which ones it opens and which ones it closes.
The only thing we can do is learn how to survive with the path life sets us on.
” She leans back and looks at me seriously.
“And that includes allowing yourself to heal and move past the things that hurt. It does us no good to hang on to every hurt we have. The only thing that does is stop us from experiencing new things that could make us feel alive again.”
Staring at her, I know she’s right. And I know she’s my something that’s going to make me feel alive again if I let her. Even if it feels impossible and selfish to do so.
“Come to bed with me?” She pushes up from her knees and stands, hovering her hand in front of me, waiting.
“What if I have another nightmare?” I know she has work in the morning and I don’t want to be the reason she doesn’t get enough sleep.
Not waiting any longer, she snatches my hand from my lap and pulls me up and into her. She wraps her arms around my middle, giving me a hug. “Then I’ll be there to pull you out of it. I’ll pull you back to me.”
Looking down at her, I kiss her forehead and follow her into her room.
We both crawl in together and she quickly comes to my side of the bed, burrowing deep into my side.
I wrap my arm under her shoulders and pull her as close as the laws of physics will allow.
It isn’t long until I hear her breathing heavily next to me and not long after that I drift off on my own into the best night of sleep I’ve had in months.