Chapter 15 Angelie
ANGELIE
Perched on the front step, I crane my neck toward the road, straining my ears for any hint that they’re getting close.
The sensors on the map were snuffed out a half hour or so ago, the heat no longer intense enough to set them off, which means that the guys must have gotten the fire under control, right? Right…?
I’ve been turning it over and over in my head, the possibility of everything that might have happened—how awful it would be if the school has been badly effected, how I would somehow keep up with classes if we had to cordon off one side of the building or something.
It’s the strangest thing, even with the fire that threatened my house, this is the most emotional I’ve felt about anything to do with the chaos up until now.
The school is more than just my job; it’s where I’m going to educate my own children, the same place my sister and I attended, the same place that has stood as a bastion in this town for so long. And if it’s lost…
I swallow hard, pushing that thought from my mind.
I can’t let my head go there, no matter how tempting it might be.
I know that they will have done everything in their power to make sure that the school is safe, along with the rest of the town.
The way that Carlisle looked at me before he left, the way he swore to me that he would do everything he could to keep it safe, he couldn’t have faked that.
The walkie-talkie is sitting between my feet on the step below, silent.
I have the door open to the ops room, so I’ll hear if the alarms go off again, but I don’t think they will.
I’m pretty sure that I made out the shriek of sirens heading along the road that led up to the ridge, so it looks like the main firefighting forces from the city have finally woken the hell up to do their jobs.
I have to pray that means that everything will be under control soon, that everything will be back to normal before I know it.
But I have the horrible, creeping dread that it’s only proof of how bad things have gotten, and I don’t know if I can live with that.
Or what my life will look like if things do just go back to normal, for that matter.
I mean, with everything that has happened since I moved into this cabin, can I just brush it all off and go back to the life I had before?
I miss the kids terribly, of course I do, but being with the guys…
it’s dizzying and thrilling and confusing all in the same breath, and I’m not sure if I should crave more of it the way I do.
Shouldn’t I be a grown-ass woman about it, see it for the chaos that it is, and get on with my life?
Maybe. But when they make me feel the way they do…
Suddenly, I hear the rumble of an engine, the crunch of turf beneath wheels.
I spring to my feet and sure enough, a few seconds later the van rounds the corner, Joe and Carlisle in the front cabin.
I search their expressions for some kind of answer before they draw any closer, but as the van comes to a halt before me and they both step out, I can tell that it isn’t good news.
“Are you okay?” I ask, rushing up to them, clasping Carlisle’s hand and examining Joe’s face as though it might explain what happened down there.
There’s a smudge of what looks like ash beneath Joe’s right eye, and I reach up without thinking and brush it away.
His skin his rough, coated with sweat and ash, and my heart pounds as I wait for an answer.
“Callum, Dylan, are they—”
“We’re fine,” Dylan intones as he climbs out of the van behind us.
Like Carlisle and Joe, the twins look exhausted, spent.
Not just physically, but like there’s something even darker going on there, something they can’t quite put into words.
My heart sinks to my shoes, dread nagging at the back of my mind.
“Come inside,” I insist. “Is everything okay? Is the town—”
“The guys from the city are getting it under control now,” Carlisle replies as he makes his way inside the house, shrugging off his jacket. “Jesus, I need a drink…”
“Let me get you guys one.” I hurry to the kitchen and pull out four glasses, arranging them on the counter in front of me before I hunt down the bottle of scotch.
I try not to pay attention to how much my hands are shaking, praying that they haven’t noticed either.
I don’t want them feeling as though they’ve failed, no matter what has happened, not when they ran into the midst of danger without a second thought.
The sun is setting now, the golden rays tracing shapes out through the leaves of the forest beyond. It’s almost peaceful, were it not for the situation at hand.
When I emerge into the living room with their drinks, I find them all slumped in seats, Dylan and Joe still wearing their jackets, the air heavy with something that has, as yet, gone unspoken.
My heart thrums in my chest as I hand them each a drink, and they all mutter their thanks but none can look at me in the eye.
“What happened down there?” I ask. My voice is so tiny I can hardly get the words out, and my chest feels like it may burst with horrible anticipation.
“The school,” Dylan replies, finally. All of them tense. A lump leaps into my throat, and I hold it there for a moment, willing it to be a misunderstanding, a miscommunication, something. Anything other than the obvious conclusion.
“What happened to it?” I ask. I stand there before them, the tips of all my fingers tingling as I wait for someone to break the silence.
Carlisle looks up at me, meeting my gaze as though he wishes he didn’t have to. “It…it burned down.”
My hand flies to my mouth, shadows playing at the corners of my vision as panic and shock course through me.
For a second, I think this must be some weird, twisted joke at my expense, something that I’ve entirely misunderstood—no way could the school be gone.
Not the place where I’ve worked for years, the place where I studied as a child myself, the place that was meant to serve as the education for my children too.
It’s too solid, too grounded, to ever really be gone…
But nobody makes a move to contradict him. I look around the room, silently pleading for any of them to tell me that this isn’t true—to tell me that it’s just a mistake, that the school will be fine, that Carlisle is just catastrophizing and there’s nothing for us to worry about.
Silence rings through the room, and it hits me that this is really happening.
The school…the school is gone. Sickness twists in my guts, and my knees crumple out from underneath me.
I grab for the arm of the chair closest to me, the one Joe is sitting on, and he rises to his feet just in time to pull me into his arms before I hit the ground.
“Hey, hey, it’s going to be alright—”
I can hear him talking to me, but the words are not reaching me.
Tears spring to my eyes, the painful lump in my throat turning to heaving sobs that wrack their way through my entire body.
I feel as though I’m going to throw up, as though I’m going to pass out, as though I might lose my mind entirely.
I manage to force my head up once more, though my eyes are blurry with tears. I look around the room to all four of them, practically pleading for them to tell me this isn’t true. “It’s gone? Just like that? How bad can it be…?”
“The roof collapsed,” Callum tells me, as gently as he can given the circumstances. “And by the time the fire is out, the place will be practically underwater. It’s not going to be useable again, if there’s even much of the foundation standing at all—”
“You can’t—you don’t—” I try to catch my breath, pressing my face into Joe’s shoulder and inhaling deeply.
I just don’t want this to be happening. The very place that I’ve poured my life into for so long, the heart of this town, the place of safety and comfort and growth that has served so many in this place for so long…
it’s gone, just like that. “This can’t be happening,” I gasp.
Joe smooths his hand down my back, clearly doing his best to comfort me. “You’re having a panic attack,” he tells me gently. “You don’t have to—”
“No, I’m not!” I reply, pulling back from him, forcing myself upright again. I know it’s not fair to turn this anger on them, given that they’ve done everything in their power to keep the town safe, but right now, I need to do something with this emotion, and they’re the only ones here.
“That school—” I jab my finger back over my shoulder, as though I’m referring to it directly.
“That place was where my children were supposed to be educated,” I tell them.
“Where I was meant to work. Where I—where all of us spent at least ten years of our lives. It’s not irrational for me to be angry or upset about this! It’s not just a panic attack, it’s—”
“I’m not trying to say you’re being irrational,” Joe assures me, rising up, speaking slow, like he’s taming a wild beast. Right now, that’s what I feel like, eyes blurred with tears, body wracked with more tension than I know what to do with.
“That school was one of the only things I had in this town, one of the only things I had that was mine,” I continue, the words spilling out of me faster than I can get a handle on them.
I know I’m being unfair, but I can’t stop it.
I need them to hear this, and I don’t know if I’ll get the chance to tell them now that the fire is almost dealt with.
“Because when I came back to this town, when I was pregnant with the quads, I—I thought I would find you here,” I confess, looking around at them, their eyes all pinned to me as they listen in silence.
Carlisle throws back a generous gulp of his drink, like he’s trying to shut out the truth of what I’m telling him, but I know it doesn’t work like that.
“But by the time I made it back here, you were all gone,” I continue.
“And I had no idea where the hell you had gotten to. I thought—fuck, I don’t know what I thought.
I thought that I would be able to find some stability here, that at least one of you would step up to help me with the children when they came along, but you… ”
I clench my fists at my sides, trying to contain the tears that are threatening to fall.
I can tell how unreasonable I’m being, but I can’t help it—I just can’t stop picturing the school in a pile of ash, the classroom that I’ve gone out of my way to make such a safe, welcoming space for the children of this town, knowing one day it would include my own.
Everything I thought I would have has been torn away from me, just the same way I felt when I first discovered I was pregnant.
The emotions collide faster than I can make sense of them, faster than I can take hold of them.
“You were all gone,” I whisper. “And now, you’re all going to leave again, and I don’t know where the fuck that leaves me, because one of you is the father of my children and none of you seem able to talk about it with me!
” My words ring out in the quiet room, and I finally come to a halt, breathing hard, shoulders squeezed up to my ears.
Well, now I’ve said it. We have all been carefully avoiding the matter of my children up until this moment, ever since the conversation that Joe and I had on the topic when they first arrived, but with their reasons for staying here starting to fade, I need to get it all out in the open.
Better that I say it now than be left with the questions in their absence, even if it does feel as though I’ve thrown a live grenade into the middle of the room.
Finally, Carlisle speaks, breaking the silence. “You think we would just leave? Like that? After everything that’s happened?”
I’m still breathing hard, my chest rising and falling quickly, as I turn to face him. “I don’t know what you would do,” I admit. “It’s not like this situation—it’s not like they give out a handbook for this kind of thing…”
“I would never have stayed away for as long as we did if I’d known about the babies, Angelie,” Callum murmurs, his words laced with an almost painful sincerity.
I can tell that he’s hurt that I would even think of him like that, but what choice do I have?
It’s not as though I’ve been in touch with any of them long enough to know one way or another what they would have done if I’d given them the choice.
Perhaps it was easier for me to turn all this in on myself rather than acknowledge the truth of what they might have done.
The thought tangles in my mind, messy and discomforting.
How much have I kept from them for my sake instead of theirs?
“None of us would,” Joe adds, as the silence fills the room again. “You know that, right? It wouldn’t have mattered which one of us it was—which one it is—we all would have been there for you.”
I glance between them, chewing my lip. These men, I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve all of them focusing their attention on me like this.
It feels almost surreal, as though I’m standing in the middle of a fairy circle or something, the way they all look at me like they can hardly believe I’m there.
I feel the same embers flickering in me that I did the night we were together for the first time.
That sensation of being wanted, desired, craved in a way that I hadn’t ever felt before.
Even as I stand here now, accusing them, chewing them out, none of them make a move to leave or argue with me, as though they know I need to get this off my chest. All of them are listening to every word I say.
“I just…I just don’t know what happens now,” I whisper, the words catching at the back of my throat. “I don’t know if I can stand this town without you in it, not again…”
Dylan reaches for me, taking my hand and pulling me into his lap. “You don’t have to,” he murmurs, hand resting briefly on my cheek. “You don’t have to, Angelie.”
I gaze into his eyes, willing myself to believe him with every fiber of my being.
His hand runs up the back of my shirt, resting on my bare skin, and the shock of his ash-stained hands on me suddenly pulls me back to the here and now.
Maybe it doesn’t matter what comes after this.
Or maybe I can believe that, just for the time being, just for long enough to grant my addled mind a break from the questions that have been tearing it apart for as long as they’ve been back in Devin Ridge.
As though I’ve drifted back in time to the night of the bonfire all over again, I lean in, wrap my arms around Dylan, and kiss him on the mouth.