Chapter Thirty-Two
MIA
I stabbed the letters on my keyboard a little more—okay, a lot more aggressively than necessary, making them click loudly as I typed.
The last few days had been horrible. My appetite was severely lacking and my feelings would swing from sad to pissed off on a general whim.
I’d thought of texting Zack so many times, or even just showing up at his house.
But for what? It wouldn’t change anything.
He was in love with me.
And I was an idiot.
Somewhere deep inside I’d known how he felt about me. I’d just chosen to ignore it. Yet one more example of how I was a horrible, damaged person who deserved nothing good in life. Especially not the love and affection of someone as special as Zack.
And it didn’t matter how I felt. Even if I’d had to stop and question if I’d fallen in love with him too. Because that didn’t matter. There still couldn’t be a future there. I was almost sure of it. Marriage and kids were never something I’d wanted, and surely he would want those things.
“You’ve gone from all smiles to doom and gloom,” Charlie observed. “Trouble in paradise again?”
I sent him a glare that I hoped said fuck off, not that I really expected him to. Charlie would likely push until I told him the whole sordid story. “We ended things.” The words left a sour taste in my mouth. “I ended things,” I clarified.
“Let me guess.” He sat back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “You figured out he was in love with you and freaked the fuck out?”
I gasped and then narrowed my eyes at my friend. “You knew?”
“Anyone with a set of eyes could see that.”
Except me. Or maybe I just didn’t want to see it.
“He was like a freaking puppy dog following you around most of the night after you soothed his jealous ego at the wedding,” Charlie added.
I replayed that night in my head. How it made me feel that he was hurt. The way he looked at me as he slammed into me over and over. Our connection that night was so strong, so intense. I was a complete fucking idiot not to see it then. How could I have been so blind?
And then when we danced later that night, everyone just seemed to disappear, and it felt like it was just the two of us. And I was so happy in his arms. Safe. Content. I wanted to be there more than anywhere else in the world. But only with him.
And now it was all over.
Pain ripped through my chest at the reminder.
My screen lit up and I forced myself to focus on the call.
A male voice came through the line. He was void of emotion as he told me his house was on fire, and he was stuck inside.
He gave me his address, but I didn’t even have a chance to say anything else before the line disconnected.
I tried calling back, and when he didn’t pick up, I verified the signal was near the address he gave me.
But something didn’t feel right. People in the midst of an emergency sounded panicked when they called.
Even if they were trying to stay calm, the adrenaline that was pumping through their systems came through in their voice.
Being stuck inside a home on fire was definitely not a no-emotion situation.
I dispatched the HMLFD, but not being able to shake the feeling that something was wrong, I pulled up my texts with Zack and warned him to be careful. He might still be angry with me, but I didn’t care. I just needed him to be okay.
Once the crew radioed back that they were en route, I updated them with what I knew, explaining just the facts. Not my gut feeling. But I wondered if Zack could hear what I wasn’t saying in my voice. I really hoped he could. Because that feeling definitely wasn’t going away.
“You good?” Charlie asked.
I nodded. “Yeah, just kind of a weird call.”
My screen lit up again and I answered the next three calls—all of them reporting a fire, indicating smoke from a house on the outskirts of town.
I logged them all and relayed any new information to the responders, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was missing something. When the calls slowed down, I googled the address and gasped, feeling my stomach sink with dread.
The home they were responding to had been recently foreclosed on. And it was vacant.