CHAPTER 24
EDEN
Sirens cut through the night air, echoing down the block like they did more often than not. Where I lived, there was always noise like that. You learned quickly not to react to every emergency that wasn’t yours.
I turned the corner and stopped dead.
Police cars lined the road in front of me, their lights flooding the street, painting everything in harsh red and blue.
A fire truck dominated the curb, a thick hose stretching and snaking across the asphalt.
A few yards away, an ambulance idled with its back doors open, EMTs moving briskly in and out.
Knots of people were pressed together behind tape, murmuring and pointing at the scene.
It took a second for my brain to catch up that this was all happening in front of my apartment building.
My bag slipped down my arm as I broke into a run, the smell hitting me before anything else did.
Smoke hung in the air, curling out of the open stairwell like the building itself was exhaling.
I pushed through the edge of the crowd, my heart pounding as I stared at the firefighters moving up and down the stairs.
One of them came down carrying something blackened and unrecognizable, cradled carefully in his arms. My stomach twisted violently.
“Hey,” I said as I grabbed the sleeve of another firefighter as he passed. “What happened? Is . . . is everyone okay?”
He slowed, turning toward me, his face streaked with sweat. “Yeah,” he said. “Everyone’s fine. No injuries.”
I nodded in relief at that news. “What happened?”
“I can’t comment on that, ma’am,” he replied. “The fire spread quickly, but we got it under control before it took the rest of the building with it. If this is your building, you got lucky.”
Lucky.
The word rang in my head like a cracked bell, all wrong, because lucky was the last thing I’d ever call myself . . . I immediately began to panic.
I swallowed. “Which apartment?” I whispered.
“What did you say?” he asked, leaning toward me.
I cleared my throat. “Which apartment had the fire?”
He hesitated, studying my face and starting to look concerned. Then he glanced down at his clipboard. “Unit Twelve.”
The words didn’t land at first. They hovered somewhere in front of me, shapeless and wrong, like they belonged to a different conversation. I stared at his mouth, waiting for it to rearrange into something that made sense.
Unit Twelve. My apartment.
“Hey—are you all right?” the firefighter asked, his voice closer now, urgency creeping in. Understanding dawned across his face a second later. “Unit Twelve is yours?”
He started to reach for me.
“I got her.” Jagger was suddenly there at my side, one arm sliding around me before I could even register how close I’d come to falling to the ground.
“I’ve got her,” he repeated firmly as the firefighter paused, his gaze flicking between us with a brief, assessing look.
He finally nodded once and stepped back, turning his attention toward the stairs.
My hands were shaking as I searched Jagger’s face like it might have answers. “I don’t understand,” I said, the words tumbling out unevenly. “How did this happen?”
“I heard someone saying your stove was on, and something sparked the gas,” he said.
I was shaking as I stared at him incredulously. “I didn’t even cook this morning. I didn’t eat anything. My stove shouldn’t have been on!”
His face tightened immediately, and his lips curled up in displeasure. “You didn’t eat?” he growled.
I shook my head, tears blurring everything. “No.”
His jaw flexed. “Zachary brought you food,” he said. “Did he not?”
“He did,” I said quickly, the words rushing out as panic clawed higher.
“He brought food. I just— I got distracted. I never turned on the stove. That’s what I’m trying to say.
I didn’t cook anything. I didn’t leave that stove on.
” My voice broke at the end, the logic unraveling in my hands as I shook my head like that might make it make sense. None of it fit. None of it lined up.
“How did this happen?” I whispered.
Whatever fight I had left drained out of me all at once. I tipped forward, pressing into him without meaning to, my forehead hitting his chest as a sob tore free.
“Why do bad things keep happening to me?” I cried, the question ugly and helpless and unanswerable.
He didn’t respond, but his arms wrapped around me instantly, holding me together when I couldn’t manage it myself.
Jagger let me cry for a few minutes before I forced myself upright. I swiped at my face, embarrassed by the fact that once again . . . I was falling apart in front of him. “I need to see it,” I whispered, and he didn’t argue.
He kept one arm around me as we moved, guiding me past the tape, past the murmured voices and the flashing lights.
A firefighter stepped directly into our path at the base of the stairs, one gloved hand lifting. “I’m going to have to ask you to stay back. It’s not secure yet.”
Jagger shifted slightly in front of me so that the firefighter’s attention slid fully to him. “She lives here,” Jagger said calmly.
“I understand that, sir, but—”
Jagger leaned in, close enough that I couldn’t hear what he was saying.
The firefighter’s expression changed almost instantly. The fight drained from his posture as his eyes flicked from Jagger to me and back again. For some reason the color had leached from his face. “Right,” he muttered, stepping aside. “Just—be careful.”
Jagger gave him a brief nod, and then we were moving again. I didn’t have the energy to ask Jagger what he’d said to him.
The stairwell smelled like smoke and wet ash, and each step I took felt disconnected.
My apartment was still standing, technically.
The door hung crooked on its hinges, paint blistered and peeling like old skin.
The frame was scorched black, the numbers warped and barely readable. I stopped short and stared at it.
“It was really my apartment that burned,” I said stupidly, a part of me unable to comprehend it until this moment.
His hand tightened at my back as we stepped through the doorway.
Inside, everything was ruined.
The walls were charred and streaked with soot, and the ceiling was warped and sagged in multiple places.
My couch sat soaked and misshapen, its fabric melted in spots, springs poking through like it had been flayed.
My coffee table was split down the middle, one leg completely gone, the surface blistered and warped beyond recognition.
The kitchen was worse.
Blackened cabinets hung open, their contents spilled and burned. The stove was scorched, knobs melted into useless lumps. A pot lay on its side, unrecognizable, fused to the burner by heat. Everything smelled like loss and chemicals and . . . How was this happening to me?
“It’s all gone,” I whispered. “Everything I had was here.”
Jagger didn’t rush me. He stood solid at my side, his eyes moving over the damage with a focus that felt different than mine. While I saw pieces of my life reduced to wreckage, he seemed to be studying it.
I took a few more steps, moving through the debris, and stopped in what used to be my bedroom.
The bed frame was twisted, and the mattress collapsed and blackened.
My dresser was a skeleton of warped wood and half-melted handles.
The closet door had burned clean through; my clothes reduced to ash and scraps clinging to metal hangers.
I doubled over, pressing my hands to my mouth like that might keep me sane.
Something caught my eye near the nightstand, half buried under soot and plaster.
I crouched without thinking and reached for it.
My fingers were trembling as they closed around a picture frame.
The glass was gone, and the metal edges were curled and blistered and still slightly warm to the touch.
I brushed at it with my sleeve, smearing ash instead of clearing it.
It didn’t really matter, though; I knew it was a picture of Ryan and me.
Or what was left of us.
My own face was barely there, a pale oval beneath smoke and scorch marks.
His was worse. The fire had eaten it almost entirely, leaving only the outline of his shoulder and the suggestion of a jaw.
Whoever he’d been in that moment, whatever smile he’d worn when the picture was taken, it was gone now, erased so completely it felt intentional.
I stared at the blank space where his face should have been and laughed harshly. “I can’t even see him,” I whispered. “I can’t even remember what he looked like in this.”
My grip loosened, and the frame slipped from my fingers, clattering softly to the floor.
I pressed my palm to my chest in an effort to hold something in place. Why did it feel like the fire hadn’t just taken him from the picture? Why did it feel like it had reached inside me and blurred him there, too?
Jagger pulled me into his arms again. “Let’s go,” he murmured, his lips brushing my ear. “There’s nothing here for you anymore.”
The words settled in my chest with a finality I hadn’t prepared myself for. “No,” I gasped as my new reality hit me. “I can’t—I can’t go. I don’t have—” My chest tightened, each inhale shallow and useless, my vision tunneling as the room seemed to tilt again. “I don’t have anywhere to go.”
I hadn’t even had a panic attack when I’d found out Ryan was dead, but this seemed to be pushing me over the edge.
“What am I supposed to do?” I cried. “I don’t have a place. I don’t have anyone. I don’t know what to do.”
“Hey,” he soothed as he guided my face to his chest. “Breathe with me.”
I tried, but my lungs were seizing up. A high-pitched ringing filled my ears, drowning out everything else, and the edges of my vision continued to narrow, the room folding inward as shadows pressed in from both sides.
“Breathe,” Jagger said calmly. “You’re safe. I’ve got you. In through your nose. Slowly.”
I tried again, clinging to the rise and fall beneath my cheek, matching my breath to his when I could, missing it when I couldn’t.
The black at the edges wavered and retreated by inches.
My body still shook, panic clawing and refusing to let go, but his hands stayed steady, holding me together while the storm tore itself out of me.
“Good girl,” he murmured, his hands firm at my back. “Stay with me.”
I tried, but my next inhale snagged halfway down. The ringing surged louder, swallowing his voice, and the shadows bled back in, sudden and thick.
My body folded inward again, refusing to obey no matter how desperately I begged it to.
“Eden,” Jagger said insistently. His hand tightened at my back. “Look at me.”
I couldn’t, though. The panic had taken over.
Jagger tipped my chin up, and then his mouth was on mine.
The kiss wasn’t forceful or demanding . .
. it was just present. A firm press that startled the spiral right out of me.
The world narrowed to that single point of contact, the solid reality of him, the unmistakable here and now of it.
My breath caught in shock instead of panic, and my lungs finally began to drag in air.
I gasped against his mouth, and he pulled back just enough to breathe with me, his lips still close, his nose brushing mine.
“There you go,” he said softly. “That’s it.”
The darkness at the edges of my vision thinned, retreating as the ringing in my ears dulled to a distant hum. I sagged against him, the fight draining out of my limbs all at once, leaving me shaky and spent and painfully aware of how close we were.
His forehead rested against mine, and we stared at each other. He didn’t kiss me again; he just stayed there, holding me together while my heartbeat found something like a normal rhythm.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I can’t seem to stop embarrassing myself in front of you.”
He shook his head once, barely perceptible. “Don’t be,” he said. “You’re allowed to fall apart. I’ve got you.”
Before I could step away to gather whatever dignity I had left, his arms shifted, and suddenly I wasn’t standing anymore.
Jagger scooped me up like I weighed nothing, one arm under my knees, the other locked firmly around my back, holding me close against his chest. I grabbed on to his suit coat as the ruined room tilted out of focus.
“Hey—” I started weakly.
“Like I said . . . I’ve got you,” he said with a wink as he turned toward the doorway. His tone left no space for argument.
Smoke-stained walls slid past as he carried me out, my destroyed life receding behind us in charred fragments and unanswered questions.
“I don’t have anywhere to go,” I whispered. “I don’t have a place. I don’t have—”
“Yes, you do,” he interrupted, not slowing his stride at all. He glanced down at me briefly. “You’re going home.”
I blinked at him, exhausted and confused. “What?”
“With me,” he said simply.
His words were too big to fully process. Home. With him. I should have argued or at least asked questions. I should have been afraid of how easily he’d decided this for me.
But my body was still trembling, my heart still sore and bleeding, and he was warm and solid and carrying me away from the wreckage without hesitation. I closed my eyes against his chest as the sounds of the fire scene faded behind us.
I didn’t know what waited for me next.
I only knew I was leaving everything I had behind.
And I was doing it in his arms.