Chapter 31
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Dahlia
The scent of smoke drags me from sleep. Not the screaming fire alarm. Not the heat licking across my skin. Smoke. Thick, wrong, invasive, and filling my lungs like wet cement.
I bolt upright and gasp.
Bad fucking idea.
My lungs reject the action, and I cough violently. Each breath, broken glass and razor blades that shred through my chest and scrape my throat raw.
I force my eyes open, trying to see through the haze. Smoke is everywhere. Rolling across the ceiling in thick gray spirals. Seeping down the walls like lava.
What is this?
I swing my legs over the bed and my feet hit the floor. The hardwood is warm. Wrong. Everything is wrong.
“Fallon!” I try to shout, but my voice comes out strangled. Raw. Like someone took a sander to my throat. I stumble toward my bedroom door and yank it open.
The hallway is an inferno. Flames devour the far wall near the kitchen. Orange and alive and so fucking hungry. They crawl toward me like they recognize me, like they’ve been waiting for me to show my face. My body freezes as my mind slips to a different fire on a different night.
This can’t be happening.
Not again.
Heat slams into me like a physical shove, pulling me out of my memory. I stagger back and jerk my arm up, shielding my eyes from the embers and ash floating in the air.
The smoke is so thick I can barely see two feet ahead of me. My eyes burn. My throat burns. Every breath feels like I’m inhaling glass.
“Fallon!” I scream, louder this time.
A door slams open down the hall, and she stumbles out, coughing. Her eyes are wide and terrified when they lock on mine.
“What’s happening?” She chokes out.
“Fire. We need to get out. Now.
She nods and we move together toward the front door as flames spread across our bedroom doors like they’re racing to trap us.
We reach the front door and I grab the handle without thinking.
Pain explodes across my palm.
“Fuck!” I hiss, yanking my hand and cradling it against my chest.
The metal is scorching. Blistering. The skin of my palm, already hot and angry.
“There’s fire on the other side,” Fallon says, grabbing my other arm and pulling me away from the door. “We need to find another way out.”
She’s right.
I look around, desperate, but Fallon’s already two steps ahead of me.
“The patio.” She says, jerking her head toward the living room.
Right.
As we stumble toward the sliding glass door, my lungs scream for air, but there isn’t any to be found. Just heat and smoke and the crackling sound of everything we own turning to ash.
Fallon reaches the door first and tries to pry it open. “It’s stuck.” She gasps, giving me a panicked look.
I step beside her, and we both pull. Still, the door doesn’t budge.
Melted, probably. Or warped from the heat.
“Move!” Fallon yells, grabbing a chair. I jerk out of the way, and she hurls it at the window with full force.
The glass shatters outward in a violent spray, and cool air rushes in. Beautiful and clean, everything my lungs are screaming for.
We both rush onto the patio, gasping. For half a second, relief floods through me.
We made it. We’re out.
Then, the fire inside roars to life.
The fresh oxygen feeds the flames, and they surge forward with renewed hunger. Heat intensifies so fast it singes the hair on my arms and burns through my clothes.
Fire crawls up the wall. Spreads across the side of the building like something alive. Something hunting.
“Fuck!” Fallon scurries back, slamming into me.
I pull her away from the doorway, and we both keep moving until our backs hit the patio railing.
Trapped.
Again.
“What do we do?” Fallon asks, her voice cracking between coughs.
I look over the edge. Four stories down. Too high. Way too fucking high. The fall would kill us faster than the flames would.
“I don't know.”
We’re trapped.
The realization settles over me and weighs me down like a physical thing.
Fallon grabs my hand and squeezes so hard it hurts. “I love you.” She says, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears.
I love you too. I want to say it back. I want to tell her she’s everything to me. That she saved me from myself when I thought I had nothing left to live for. But the words are lodged in my throat.
I squeeze her hand back. Harder. Hoping she understands. Hoping she knows.
Fallon smiles as her eyes slowly drift closed. I close mine too, bracing for the end. For the heat. For the smoke to finally win.
Then I hear a crash. A loud and violent one coming from somewhere inside the apartment.
My eyes snap open.
“What-”
Another crash. The front door explodes inward, sending splinters of wood flying in every direction. Through the smoke and flames, shadows move.
No. Not just shadows. Men. Two of them. Tall. Broad-shouldered, and cutting through the inferno like it’s nothing. Acting as if the flames don’t singe their clothes and the heat doesn’t scorch their skin.
I see Echo first, and relief swells inside of me. His name tears from my throat before I can stop it.
He’s here.
How is he here?
How did he know?
My brain fires questions faster than I can process them. Between the pounding in my head and the ash coating my lungs, nothing makes sense.
“Bambi!” He shouts, his voice rough and desperate as his eyes cut across the living room. “Where the fuck are you?”
“Here!” I scream back, and I’m crying now. Tears streaming through the soot on my face. “Over here!”
His head whips toward the sound. Our eyes lock. And then he’s moving. Fast. Purposeful. As if nothing in this world could stop him from reaching me.
He reaches us on the patio, and the second he does, his arms wrap around me.
“I’ve got you.” He says, his voice rough and strained in a way I’ve never heard before. “I’ve got you.”
I try to speak. To ask what he’s doing here. To ask how he knew. To tell him I’m not going anywhere without Fallon. But before I can, the other man appears through the smoke.
He looks like Echo. Same height, same build, same dark hair, but where Echo is all sharp edges and danger, this man is... different. Softer features. Warmer eyes and skin. But the way he moves? Just as lethal. He must be his brother.
He doesn’t say anything when he sees me staring at him. He just gives me a quick nod before scooping Fallon up and throwing her over his shoulder.
Then they’re both moving.
Echo leads the way, navigating through the smoke and flames in my apartment like he’s walked this floor plan a thousand times. Like he’s memorized every obstacle. Every exit.
I think about asking him how he’s doing that, but decide against it. Partly because it doesn’t matter right now and partly because I don’t want to know.
I bury my face in his neck, trying to block out everything. The ash. The flames. The way him being here makes me feel a strange warmth in my chest that has nothing to do with the fire.
His skin smells like smoke and sweat and that signature woody scent that’s distinctly him.
I grip onto him tighter as he takes the stairs down two at a time. Each step jolts me, making my pounding headache worse, but I don’t care. We’re almost out. Almost safe. Almost—
Cold air hits my face the second we make it outside. Clean. Fresh. Beautiful. I gasp, pulling it greedily into my lungs, and coughing hard.
We’re out.
We made it.
Relief hits so hard, my whole body goes limp.
I try to lift my head. Try to look at him. Try to say thank you, or I’m sorry, or something that matters. But the edges of my vision are already going dark, and it feels like I’m slipping underwater.
Echo’s saying something. His mouth is moving. But I can’t hear him over the ringing in my ears. I can’t focus on anything except the way his arms tighten around me. Like he’s afraid to let go. Like he thinks I might disappear if he does.
Then… nothing. Just darkness. And the distant wail of sirens fading away.