Chapter 6
Maisie
Iwake coughing.
Lungs burning, chest heaving, I cough so hard I roll off the bed.
My eyes see… nothing.
I put my hands on the ground, push myself up, and my head spins. Everything spins, and I thud to the floor.
Coughing.
I can’t stop coughing.
Even as I fight to get back on my feet, my mind is busy untangling the mystery of how my apartment came to be filled with smoke.
I went to work, came home, ate the same boring dinner I always have because cooking was something I always did for him, never me, and I refused to do it again.
I remember unlocking the front door and triple-checking that I’d locked it before I went to shower off the diner smells.
Just like usual. All my windows had been shut.
It was much-needed reassurance that no one had been in my apartment while I’d been at work.
My mind was calm and my body relaxed as I showered, brushed my teeth, and crawled into bed to rest up for the night before another long day at the diner.
But now I can’t breathe.
There’s no mystery about who or why.
I know who did this, even if I’m not sure about the how just yet.
The how can come later.
There’s only getting my feet up from under me and getting out before this building burns with me trapped inside of it.
With my lungs continuing to burn, I stagger across my bedroom, press my sleeve to my mouth, and crack the door open.
The smoke reaches me before the heat does.
If I could crawl under my bed or smash the window and climb out that way, I wouldn’t hesitate. That isn’t an option. I’m on the second floor above a flower shop. If I jumped, I’d be lucky if the only thing I broke were my legs.
I don’t want to go down the hallway. It’s where the thick smoke is coming from, which means it’s also where I’ll find the source of the fire.
But I can’t stay here.
With the sleeve of my PJs over my mouth and nose, I start walking toward the smoke and the heat.
My eyes burn, and every instinct in me wants to run the other way.
If you stay you die, I tell myself, so I keep going.
With one hand braced against the wall, I feel my way down the hallway, and past the bathroom I washed up in minutes or hours ago. What time is it?
Stumbling and staggering, rocked by a coughing fit that never stops, I inch closer to the front door I can’t see.
The building groans, a deep shudder that vibrates through the floor.
I freeze, my heart pounding.
Don’t stop, I scream at myself, envisioning myself crashing through the floor and slamming into the flower shop below.
Maybe I should have gone out the window and been grateful for two broken legs.
I put one step in front of the other, not letting myself think of anything but escape.
I cough so hard my vision blurs. My knees tremble, and tears stream from both eyes.
Then I see it.
The front door.
On my right is the living room, but there’s no sign of any fire.
But on my left…
What I see freezes me on the spot.
The stove is on fire, and not just a little bit. Roaring flames lick up the back of the stove, and I stare at it, terrified that it’s seconds away from exploding and a chunk of metal will rip into me. I had crackers and peanut butter for my dinner, yet a pan sits on the stove, its contents aflame.
Can a stove blow up? Isn’t that something I should know?
The flames spark, and I flinch, covering my face and turning away.
Panicked, I lurch toward the front door, trip over something, crashing face-first to the floor. Without my sleeve over my mouth and nose, the smoke flows into my lungs, choking me. On my back, I cough and cough, struggle to get up but can’t find the strength to move.
I’m going to die in here.
Derek didn’t come back to drag me to Oregon; he came here to kill me.
Bang. Bang.
What is that pounding?
Am I falling through the floor?
Is the ceiling collapsing?
Thud.
Thud.
CRACK!
I flinch, cowering away from the sound, so terrified I can’t move.
“Maisie!”
His voice slices through the smoke.
I know that voice.
Know him.
Wyatt?
Blinking eyes open that I had no awareness of closing, I tilt my head to the side. I blink, and when I see nothing through the smoke, I blink again.
I can almost taste fresh air.
Not quite, but almost.
“Maisie?” Wyatt steps into view, and before I can tell him where I am, he’s already dropping to his knees beside me. He’s holding the front of his shirt up over his mouth and nose, the cotton shielding his airways from the thick smoke.
I start to ask what he’s doing here, inhale more smoke, and explode in a coughing fit that blinds me again as hot tears stream from both eyes.
He drops the t-shirt from his mouth to scoop me off the floor, cradling me against a rock-hard chest. Close up, I see more than just fear in his eyes. Terror and relief battle with each other, and the moment I’m in his arms, relief wins.
“I’ve got you,” he says into my ear.
Why do I barely know this man yet believe he would do anything to save me?
He has one arm under my knees and the other wrapped around my back as he gets to his feet. My head rests against his shoulder as he retreats back the way he came, out through my apartment front door, down the stairs, and out onto the street.
The cold air smacks me in the face, delicious fresh air that I suck into my burning lungs. My fingers grip onto Wyatt’s shirt as he stalks away from my building, coughing but not nearly as hard as I was.
People who live in the apartment buildings across the road are in PJs, their hair disheveled.
It looks like they pulled on a bathrobe and slippers and rushed right out onto the street.
They stand in small, stunned huddles, some with their hands over their mouths as they stare up at the building Wyatt carried me out of, or at me.
No one is talking. All their eyes are wide with shock.
The sheriff parked his car at a sharp angle directly outside the women’s boutique next door to my apartment. His lights are flashing, though he’s out of the car, glaring at Wyatt.
In the near distance, a siren blares.
Sheriff Watson yells at Wyatt. “I told you not to go up there when you called this in. The firefighters would have gotten her.”
“I wasn’t leaving her,” Wyatt yells back and strides past him, away from my smoking building.
With me in his arms, he sits on the curb feet away as two firetrucks pull up outside my apartment.
Firefighters spill from the vehicles in their yellow hats and black coats with shiny, bright yellow reflective lettering on the back and front pockets.
Wyatt holds me against his chest. Against his heart.
His hand has never stopped running up and down my back. His forehead rests against mine, and I’m trembling again. Not with cold. This is something else.
When I didn’t think I could be any closer to him, he tucks me tighter against his chest. I breathe in the scent of his skin, wishing I could live inside him.
My throat hurts, but if I don’t get these words out, I’ll choke on them. “If you hadn’t been there…”
I’d be dead.
Even if I’d gotten out of my room, would I have been able to get out of my apartment? Wyatt was banging on the front door. Did Derek barricade it to stop me from getting out? And I tripped on something. What? I always hang my coat and keep the hallway clear in case I need to run in a hurry.
“You’re safe,” he murmurs and brushes a kiss across my forehead. “I’ve got you, Maisie. You’re safe.”
I sink into his warm embrace as the wind cools my overheated skin.
I tilt my head up to look at him.
The fire truck lights flash red and white across his forehead, but he doesn’t look away from me. His face is streaked with soot, and his hair is damp with sweat.
He ran through hell to get to me.
I can’t believe that he saw all the smoke and ignored the sheriff to charge into the building to save me.
Me?
Derek told me repeatedly that I could do nothing right. For years. I felt useless and so stupid. Even now, months after I left him, I still struggle to push his disapproving voice out of my head. But Wyatt thinks I’m worth something. He thinks I’m worth saving.
He’s wrong.
I don’t deserve someone nearly killing themselves to save me.
I’m not worth anything at all. Especially a handsome alpha like Wyatt, who could have his pick of any girl he wanted.
I don’t want to imagine what I look like in the too-big PJs that I picked up for dirt cheap at a thrift store, but Wyatt is holding me as if I’m something precious when he could do so much better than me.
“You shouldn’t have come in after me.” My throat hurts to talk, but I make myself say these words out loud. Wyatt deserves to hear them after he nearly died saving me.
Wyatt’s hand shakes as he tucks a strand of my hair behind my ear. “There was no version of this where I stayed outside.”
His soft words hit me harder than the smoke did.
To our right, firefighters are busy. The Rios Fire Department, with only two trucks and a handful of firefighters, serves a town of just under ten thousand residents.
The fire doesn’t look like it spread to the neighboring buildings or the flower shop downstairs, but I’m trying hard not to imagine all the damage the smoke and water the firefighters are pumping inside have done.
I wouldn’t move from Wyatt’s lap for all the money in the world. “You nearly died because of me.”
“When I saw the smoke, I thought I wouldn’t get to you in time.” His voice cracks on the last word, and he pulls me against his chest, wrapping his arms tight around me. “I don’t know what made me decide to take a drive tonight, but I’m so fucking glad I listened to that voice in my head.”
“Thank you,” I whisper, hugging his waist. “No one has ever fought so hard to save me before. Thank you.”
He leans his forehead against mine. “I will always be there, Maisie. Whatever you need, I will always be there to save you.”
When the tears come, I don’t try to stop them. I sob until I’ve soaked the front of his shirt. He holds me, murmuring soothing words in my ear that I barely hear with how hard I’m sobbing.
Long minutes later, a man loudly clears his throat.
I wipe the tears from my wet cheeks and pull my face from Wyatt’s shirt to see who it is.
The sheriff has always had a friendly, open expression. You look at him, and you want to believe he’s a good man who’ll do his best for you. He’s not smiling now. He looks down at us, so serious that his expression instantly sets off alarm bells.
I must’ve been crying for a lot longer than I realized because my apartment has stopped smoking, and firefighters are pulling the hose from the building, though the smell of smoke still hangs in the air.
“What is it?” I ask, voice husky from my tears and the smoke in my lungs.
“The firefighters got the fires out,” he says, “but it’s not safe to go back into the building until the fire marshal deems it safe. They used a lot of water up there, and there’s a lot of smoke damage.”
My brain catches on one of his first words. “Fires?”
He glances to his right, and I see what I missed when Wyatt carried me out of the building.
“My car.” I struggle to get up.
Wyatt keeps hold of me. “Maybe you shouldn’t see it.”
“I need to.”
He gives me a searching look and lets me go.
My heart hurts when I see the state of my car. I could barely afford to lose the few clothes I had after Derek found me in Nevada and forced me to grab my purse and run, leaving everything I had behind. I could have replaced my clothes cheaply at another thrift store. But my car?
I barely make enough to survive as a waitress. I’d paid my car off soon after I’d graduated from high school. There’s no way I can afford to buy a new car and have a regular car payment when I might have to leave town and struggle to get another job.
I stand there looking at the smoking husk of my destroyed car, hating my ex as much as I want to cry. Derek did this. Burned everything I have. Left me with nothing.
Just when I thought he couldn’t take anything more from me, he always takes more.
He’s determined to ruin my life, and I’m running out of strength to keep going. Maybe that’s what he wants. For me to give up.
“The pot on the stove in the apartment looked accidental. At least at first glance,” the sheriff says quietly beside me. “But this fire was deliberate, and the fire chief has an inkling someone set it first. Do you know who would do this?”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell him it was Derek Brandon, former star quarterback and my ex-husband, who turned cruel and abusive when his dreams died. But I have no car. No home. No money, except what Nico hasn’t yet paid me for the shifts I worked.
I have nothing to my name.
Now Derek is in Rios… somewhere, and I can’t afford to buy another car to leave.
After what he did to that motel worker in Nevada, I would never forgive myself if he hurt this sheriff, his wife, or Wyatt. The best thing I can do for everyone—myself included—is keep my mouth shut.
“I-I don’t know,” I lie, avoiding his gaze.
I feel the sheriff looking at me as I hug myself.
“Well, if you think of anyone it could be, Miss Lucas, you know where to find me,” the sheriff says after a brief pause. “I’d recommend a trip to the hospital for a checkup.”
“I’m fine,” I say, but that’s a lie too.
Tears slide down my cheeks, cold against my hot skin. Across the road, most of my neighbors have gone back into their homes, but not all.
They watched me break down in Wyatt’s arms where he sat on the curb and I cried my heart out. They still watch me, pity filling their eyes. I have to pull myself together and figure out what to do next, even if I’m not sure what that is yet.
The sheriff says something else about seeing a doctor, but I shake my head, more tears wetting my cheeks as I slowly give way to panic.
I’m in smoky PJs and bare feet. My car is destroyed, and I can’t go back to my apartment until it’s deemed safe.
What am I supposed to do? How do I fix this mess?
“How about we talk about this tomorrow, Sheriff?” Wyatt says, wrapping an arm around my shoulder and drawing my trembling body against the hard warmth of his chest. “I’d like to get Maisie somewhere safe and warm.”
My eyes fly up to Wyatt.
What?
“And that place is?” the sheriff asks Wyatt.
Wyatt gives me a reassuring smile. “With me. Maisie will be staying with me.”