Chapter 1 Piper #3
I’m jolted back to the present moment by the acid smell of smoke. I cough once, clear my throat twice, and refrain from opening the windows.
It’s working.
Not long now.
A little financial freedom would set me free from my own mind.
In difficult times when I’m counting up the cents, I think back to six months of prosperity.
I didn’t think once about finances when I was with Caleb.
Granted, I wasn’t a mother back then, but he brought a certain vibrancy to Maple Crossing that made me look at the place different.
The smoke thickens. Dangerous, black plumes cloud into the air and distort my vision. I step back an inch, to the other side of the kitchen where the smoke hasn’t yet drifted. But then I accidentally inhale some and explode into a coughing fit.
Sweat dripping down the back of my shirt, I shed a layer and try to remember why the fuck I’m purposely choosing to set fire to my stove…
Or my entire kitchen.
The leftover sunflower oil dances around in the pan without a care in the world, meanwhile I’m spiraling about my decision to take advice from a shady insurance fraud “consultant” who deleted all traces of our conversation as soon as the chat ended.
Shit. The facts were there and everything sounded pretty damn promising, but I don’t know the first thing about fires.
Sure, I might’ve unofficially dated a fireman for a few months, but that doesn’t make me an expert in the field.
My breathing turns shallow. It’s hard to regulate. Breath work usually helps me to stop acting like a hot mess, but I realize now that I’m short of breath, not because I’m anxious…
But because chemically induced smoke from the nonstick pan is skirting around the ceiling, out into the living area where I now find myself.
“Shit,” I cuss under my breath.
And that’s when the screeching smoke alarm awakens.
An intermittent shrilling noise plays repeatedly, bringing a very confused and half-asleep Sonny out into the room.
“Baby!” I rush over into the corridor and scoop him up instantly. Keeping my voice level so he doesn’t freak out, I softly say, “Wait outside a minute for me, buddy, so I can get this mess under control.”
“What happened?” he questions, rubbing sleep from his eyes as I carry him out into the backyard.
“I made a small, very fixable mistake.” I set him down in the yard and tell him to stay put for a moment. “I’ll be right back.”
I close the door and rush back into the kitchen, diving under rings of smoke to turn off the stove. I next remove the pan, but drop it in reaction to the excruciating pain that explodes up my arm from the spitting sunflower oil.
“Shit!” I hiss as the pan crashes to the floor.
And that’s when the real fun begins.
A white-orange flash tears across the kitchen floor with a life-threatening fwump.
I gasp, choke on both shock and smoke, and salvage an escape while I still have time.
In a hurry to get the fuck out as quickly as possible, I accidently barrel straight into all the mortgage documents and mess, sending all of it crashing to the floor.
The starved flames eat up the mess and start searching around my kitchen for more.
Wooden drawers. The pantry.
Flames elongate as I whip past them. I leap over the wall of orange just in time as they stretch and bend to wolf down more documentation left on another kitchen countertop.
There’s no end to all of this coughing. All of my energy is going toward getting the smoke out of my lungs, but more slips in as soon as I think I can breathe again.
Heat from the fire burns my skin a fuck ton more than the sunflower oil did. It’s like I’ve stepped into an oven—a six-hundred-degree oven that’s on a mission to burn me to a crisp as fast as possible.
Flames multiply.
I throw myself into the corridor and army-crawl the rest of the way out into the backyard. Sonny is out there screaming for me, but the smoke in my lungs prevents me from even being able to reassure him that things are…
Not okay.
Did I just burn down our home to illegally claim insurance fraud?
This horrible smoke leaves no room for overthinking. I wrap my arms around my shaking son and manage to splutter out, “It’s okay.”
But is it?
The old couple next door leap over the fence, spritely like they suddenly have their youth back, and charge toward Sonny and me. “Emergency services are on their way,” Betty consoles me, rubbing her hand up and down my back like the mother I never had. “What the hell happened in there?”
What happened is that I almost murdered my own fucking son for extra cash.
What kind of a parent does that?
As if on cue, I see my father’s old beehive at the back of the yard, and seize up entirely.
What if I’m exactly like my father? Breaking laws to earn extra cash, and damaging those closest to me as a result?
I catch one look at Betty’s terrified face and turn back around to look at the house. Flames have broken through the kitchen window now. They’re at least six feet high.
“My Boring!” cries Sonny, fighting in my grasp, wearing holey clothes that feel so irrelevant now.
My heart feels as though it’s been ripped out of my chest.
Fuck. What have I done?
My coughing transitions into choked cries.
Tears steam down my face and blur my vision as I take in what’s left of my house.
All of Sonny’s precious things are gone.
All of mine. Fine-bone china cups from the kind grandmother I vaguely remember as a child.
Gone. Clothes. Jewelry. That damned strawberry milkshake cup that for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to throw away…
Sirens wail in the near distance. Depleted from all of the coughing, I slip in and out of consciousness. Murky figures in uniform charge toward us through the smoke.
Behind them are two medics, one carrying what looks to be an oxygen tank, the other equipped with devices I have never before seen in my life.
Not much happens around here, other than people leaving.
Flames roar inside my home, the atmosphere turned dark as the firefighters unwind giant hoses and aim them at the house I know is already too far gone.
Some mother I am, listening to a random guy on the internet over my own intuition. I never should’ve started the fire. Financial freedom and new clothes are all well and good when you have a roof over your head.
I think it’s safe to say Sonny and I don’t have one of those now…
Unless the insurance payout can buy me a whole new home.
“How did the fire start, Piper?”
“Oh, you know, the usual—I was trying to trick my stove company out of compensation, and commit insurance fraud.”
I clutch Sonny’s shaking body and let him know once again that this will all be okay, but his eyes are still teary.
As are mine, as we watch the flames engulf our home.
Two firefighters abandon their efforts and walk through the smoke to let us down gently. One of them looks as tall as the fucking seven-foot flames tearing apart my house. He boulders our way with a steady grip on the hose. Like this is just another job. Another day at the office.
The smoke clears and their faces come into view.
“Fuck. Hart?” the one on the right bursts out, his hand now clenched even tighter around the hose.
And that’s when I burn, in the same unsalvageable way as my home.
His face is coated in a thick layer of soot, but even that can’t hide the sharp dimensions of his features. The long-paneled cheekbones. The deeply set eyes. He stares at me with that same onyx gaze from all those years ago.
Like no time has passed.
Caleb fucking Rourke is back in town.