Chapter 2
HALLE
I t’s all a bitter haze.
I’m not dead.
I can hear Luna and Sammy crying out for me somewhere in the darkness, Eric calling out to Wyatt and Chase to help him, and the sound of a wheeled gurney rushing across from the ambulance.
The fire is still burning as the diner caves in.
Good grief, it sounds awful—like the earth itself opened and swallowed it up.
“I’ve got her,” Eric says.
“We need to get her to the hospital,” someone replies.
Their voices echo in my head while I swim in the darkness.
“Mama!” Luna screams.
My sweet baby Sammy keeps crying. The sound of his voice breaks my heart into a thousand pieces. I hate to hear him and Luna suffer like this. I know they’re terrified. But I can’t move. I’m not really conscious; I’m somewhere in between the world of the living and the world of the dead.
I’m loaded onto the gurney.
I feel someone touching my wrist. Searching for a pulse.
“Is she breathing?” Eric asks.
“I need to intubate her.”
I feel a poke, and everything fades away.
My eyes flutter open for a moment, but I can’t focus on anything. I hear monitors and people rushing about, but I can’t make sense of what’s happening. I think I’m in a hospital.
I hear the words “smoke inhalation” and “second-degree burns.”
Second degree? That sounds bad.
Then, the darkness reclaims me, and the world goes away.
I don’t know how long I sleep. I drift in and out for a while, catching snippets of conversation.
My left upper arm and shoulder are tightly bandaged, a cool sensation traveling all the way to my tingling fingers.
My whole body aches, every joint screaming and begging me not to move, though moving is all I want to do.
The room feels cold.
It takes a few minutes to fully open my eyes. When I do, the picture before me is clear: I’m in a sterile-looking hospital room with white walls and harsh fluorescent ceiling lights that buzz and make my head ache, made worse by the steady beeping of monitors.
I’ve got an IV in my good arm and an oxygen mask on my face. The cool air feels sharp as it blows into my lungs, clearing away the smoke I inhaled during the …
“Fire,” I manage to say, my gaze desperately darting across the room.
I try to move, but it hurts too much.
Then I see Eric. He’s still in his uniform, his face blackened with soot.
Sammy. Sammy’s face was like that. My children.
“You’re okay,” he says. “You’re gonna be okay, Halle.”
“Sammy… Luna…”
“They’re safe; they’re in the next room. I’ll bring them in as soon as the doctor’s done checking them. They still have a few more tests to run to make sure there are no carbon monoxide issues.”
My mind is fractured, and I can’t think straight. I can only look deep into Eric’s blue eyes and desperately cling to the sense of comfort his presence gives me. He saved us—my children, him, and his brothers.
I’m safe. We’re safe.
I fall asleep to that mantra.
The next time I wake up, I am infinitely more alert and aware of my surroundings. The clock on the wall says it’s two in the morning. I can still smell the smoke and burnt wood. My hair stinks of it. I’ll need to take a long bath when I get home.
“Sammy… Luna…” My voice is weak and raspy.
“Hey, hey,” Eric says, reappearing in my field of vision. “Welcome back.”
I give him a long, confused look as the moments leading up to this replay in my mind, the events that landed me in a hospital room with a machine helping me breathe. “Oh, God …”
“You’re okay. The kids are fine. They’re asleep,” he says, then points to the left corner of the room. “Look over there.”
I follow his gaze and find Luna and Sammy huddled together under Eric’s firefighter jacket on a cot the staff has brought in.
Both of them are exhausted and sleeping calmly.
I would like nothing more than to jump out of bed and hug them both and never let go, but my limbs feel weak and heavy.
Besides, after everything they’ve been through, they need their sleep.
Tomorrow holds a different kind of challenge, I realize, as tears prick my eyes.
“The diner burned down,” I manage to say.
“Almost completely, yeah. I’m sorry,” Eric says. “You were lucky that we were at the firehouse when the call came through. A few minutes later, and I don’t think it would’ve ended as well.”
“Good God.”
“You’re all right, and the kids are, too; that’s all that matters. Nobody else was at the diner; nobody else got hurt.”
I glance down at my shoulder, frowning as the discomfort takes center stage. “I’ve got some burns, right?”
“Nothing awful. With some care and a good topical ointment, you probably won’t have visible scars,” Eric replies.
“They said second-degree burns.”
“It looked worse than it actually was, trust me,” he says, giving me a reassuring smile. He’s so calm and comforting. “You’re going to be fine, Halle.”
“Thank you,” I say with a trembling voice. “Had you not been there, I would’ve?—”
“Hey, now, don’t let this fool take all the credit,” Wyatt chimes in.
I look around and realize that Wyatt and Chase are also there, both of them standing by the window. They’re still in their firefighter gear—the pants and tees, at least. Their jackets, along with their oxygen tanks and radios, occupy the second chair next to the kids’ cot.
Despite the nightmare I just survived, I can’t help but notice how handsome the Danson brothers are, even after a night’s worth of hard work.
They’re sweaty and dirty from the fire, tired and worn out, yet they still carry themselves with the kind of grit and determination that get my engines rumbling.
These are some ridiculous thoughts for me to entertain at this point in time, but it is better than facing reality.
“You’re all here,” I say, my gaze bouncing from Eric to his twin, Chase, then to Wyatt and back. Eric and Chase are almost identical, though the former is slightly bigger and buffer than the latter. Wyatt is taller and more slender but just as athletic and dominating with his presence. “Why?”
“We were worried about you,” Wyatt says with a wry smile. “We just witnessed our favorite waitress in deadly peril and our favorite diner burning down. We’re in a lot of pain here, Halle.”
“ You’re in a lot of pain?” I scoff, shaking my head slowly. “I’m homeless.”
“You were renting the apartment upstairs, weren’t you?” Eric asks, looking at me with a certain intention in his eyes.
I nod slowly. “For cheap, too. I lost everything up there. My ID, my wallet, my clothes, the kids’ stuff. We’ve got nothing. We had little to begin with, but now… nothing.”
“Hey, hey, it’s gonna be okay,” Eric tries to comfort me, but the tears run freely, my whole body shuddering as reality comes crashing down on me harder than the ceiling beam did earlier. “You and the kids are going to pull through this.”
“How?” I mumble. “The diner is gone. I don’t know if they’ll rebuild it or cash the insurance check and sell the plot altogether.
I don’t have a job anymore, obviously. My kids and I are homeless.
How the hell am I going to pull through this?
” I take a deep, almost painful breath in an effort to regain my composure.
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to complain or to sound ungrateful after what you and your brothers did for me, for us. ”
Eric reaches for a glass of water resting on the bedside table, puts a straw in, then gives it to me. I grab it with my good hand and sip half of it in one long gulp. “First things first, Halle,” he says. “Is there anybody that you’d like us to call?”
“No,” I say decidedly.
My mother let me down one last time earlier tonight. She’s out gambling and being her usual self. I’m done trying to reason with her, and I’m certainly done foolishly relying on her for anything. Calling my ex, Colby is out of the question, and so is that sociopathic shrew of a mother of his.
“Are you sure?” Eric asks, carefully analyzing my expression.
“Yes.”
“She’s all alone,” Wyatt confirms, then looks at my kids.
“I’ll manage,” I say. “You don’t have to worry about me. You’ve already done so much.”
Chase scoffs, giving me a long, persistent glance. “We were just doing our jobs, Halle.
“You’re still here,” I shoot back. “You didn’t have to stay. I’d argue that’s going above and beyond just doing your jobs.”
“We were worried about you,” Eric says. “We still are.”
“He’s right,” Wyatt insists and crosses his arms.
The brothers exchange meaningful glances, and for a moment, I find myself completely lost. It all happened so fast. In the blink of an eye, my whole life literally went up in flames. My fresh start was blown to smithereens, reduced to ashes.
What the hell am I going to do?
“It’s gonna sound weird, crazy even,” Eric says, pulling me back into the moment.
“What is?” I ask, totally confused now.
“You’re going to stay at our place,” he says after what feels like a long and heady silence.
“I’m going to do what, now?” I blurt out, my brain failing to properly register what I just heard.
“You’re going to stay at our place,” he repeats while Wyatt nods in agreement.
Chase frowns slightly, but he doesn’t seem entirely against it, either.
“Until you get back on your feet. You and the kids can stay with us. We have a house over on 7th Street, a couple of blocks east of the fire station.”
“Two bedrooms all to yourselves,” Wyatt says. “One for you and one for the little ones.”
I’m speechless. It feels like forever before I manage to string a few words together. “Have you three lost your minds?”
“No, but you lost the roof over your head,” Chase grumbles, almost insulted.
And now I feel bad.
“No. I couldn’t possibly impose, but thank you, guys, really, thank you.”
“Where will you go?” Chase asks, pinning me with his gaze.
I look around. “Where’s my phone? I’ll get a room.”