Scorched Hearts (Kidds Beach Fire Department #3)

Chapter One

Carried Out Of The Fire

Olivia

Fire doesn’t sound the way movies make it sound.

It doesn’t roar like some dramatic dragon or crackle politely like a cozy fireplace. It screams. It eats. It sucks the air out of your lungs and then laughs when you try to take it back. It’s greedy. It crawls, it creeps, and it takes everything it touches and says mine.

And tonight, it wants me.

Smoke pours under the bedroom door in a thick black ribbon, and for a split second I’m frozen. Just ... gone inside my own head. The same memory hits me like a freight train—his voice, his hands, the look in his eyes when he said, “If I can’t have you, nobody will.”

The smell is the worst part. Burning plastic, melting paint, and that sweet, horrible scent of things that should never be burning actually burning. My throat closes and every rational thought I ever possessed scatters like terrified birds.

Move, Olivia!

The voice in my head sounds like me, but steadier. Smarter. The version of myself I always wish I could be when the panic hits.

Move. Now.

I drop to my knees automatically. He taught me that. Funny how life works. The man who tried to kill me also drilled fire safety into my head while lecturing me about how useless I was.

“Crawl low,” he’d said, “you don’t want to choke to death before the flames even touch you.”

He laughed at the time but I’m not laughing now.

My palms slide on the hardwood as I drop lower, coughing until my ribs ache. The bedroom is already hazy, shadows warping, walls flickering orange like hell is pressing its face against my windows and peeking in.

“Help!” My voice is raw. Pathetic. I try again, louder. “Help!”

No one answers. Of course they don’t. It’s late. My neighbors are asleep. I live alone, by choice, farther from town than I probably should. Libraries don’t exactly fund mansions in the city center.

I reach for my phone on the nightstand and curse when it isn’t there. Of course it isn’t. I left it in the damn kitchen with my tea. Brilliant, Olivia. Real survivalist shit.

The fire alarms shriek overhead, a high-pitched electronic scream that mixes with the crackle and pop from somewhere down the hallway. Heat presses against the bedroom door, radiating like the sun itself has decided to lean on it casually.

The handle glows faintly.

Yeah. No touching that.

I scramble back, my heart beating so hard it feels like it might break my ribs from the inside. It’s funny. My ex-husband spent years telling me I took up too much space, that I was too loud, too emotional, too soft, too fat, too everything.

Yet here I am, shrinking into a corner, trying to become as small as humanly possible while the universe tries to erase me completely.

I don’t want to die. The thought slams into me with brutal clarity.

I don’t want to die. Not like this. Not with my story ending in an obituary that makes me sound like a side note in my own life.

Olivia Reed

1990—2025

Librarian

Survived by a handful of people who barely knew she existed.

Screw that.

A crash sounds in the hallway, wood splintering and glass shattering. Flames lick under the door now, tiny tongues tasting the floor, curious and eager. Sweat drips down my back, my night shirt clinging to my skin. My heartbeat rattles in my ears like a frantic drum.

I grab the bedsheet and yank, tearing off a strip with shaking hands. I shove it under the crack at the bottom of the door because that’s what you’re supposed to do, right? Block the smoke. Block the death. Pretend a strip of cotton can hold back hell.

“Call out if you can hear me!” A voice booms from somewhere beyond the inferno.

For a second I wonder if I’ve started hallucinating. I wouldn’t be shocked in the least. My brain’s been through enough over the years to justify snapping like a dry twig.

“Fire department!” the same voice shouts again, deeper this time, closer. “Call out if you can hear me!”

The sound breaks something inside me and hope surges.

“I’m here!” My throat burns, words scraping like sandpaper. “Bedroom! I...” A painful cough cuts off my words for a moment. “I’m in the bedroom!”

Something slams against the door. Once. Twice. A third time.

The frame gives, wood splintering as the door is forced open, and then the room explodes with heat. The sheet I jammed down ignites instantly, like it’s insulted I ever thought it could help.

Flames are everywhere. And then, he is too.

He bursts into the room through a cloud of smoke and glowing embers, all heavy gear and dark silhouette and impossible power.

For a second he looks like something from a myth, some warrior pulled straight from the fire itself.

Helmet, mask, and broad shoulders that fill the doorway. A body built to block the world.

My lungs seize when he turns and finds me.

I don’t know how I know he’s looking at me, I can barely see his face behind the mask, but I do. The air shifts. Attention has weight, and all of his lands square on me.

“Hey!” he says, voice muffled but warm. Steady and grounding. Not like my ex’s, which was always sharp and cruel. This one is like molasses and thunder all at once. “I’ve got you, all right? Stay low. Don’t stand. Don’t run.”

Run. As if my chubby ass is sprinting anywhere right now.

I nod instead, because words are failing me spectacularly. I must look like hell, hair sticking to my cheeks, soot streaks everywhere, mascara probably smeared halfway down my face like a depressed raccoon from the tears I can’t seem to contain.

He doesn’t hesitate. He moves like someone who’s done this a thousand times and hates that he has.

In two strides he’s in front of me. Then strong arms slide under me like I weigh absolutely nothing, like my thick thighs and soft stomach and all the parts I’ve been conditioned to hate are not obstacles, not burdens, just part of me. Just a person worth saving.

He lifts me.

I gasp and automatically cling to him, fingers curling into his turnout jacket. He smells like smoke and some sharp-clean detergent, like danger and safety at the same time. His chest is solid against mine, and for the first time since the fire started, I can breathe, not well, but enough.

“You’re doing great,” he says, voice low by my ear as he turns and shields my body with his. “Keep your head against my neck. Keep your eyes closed if you can. It’ll be less disorienting.”

“I’m...” My voice cracks. “I’m heavy.”

It slips out before I can stop it.

Of all the things to say while being carried through a burning house, that is what my traumatized brain comes up with. Not thank you. Not save me. Not even a dignified scream.

Nope.

Hi. My home is on fire and my insecurity would still like to speak.

He huffs a sound that might be a laugh if the situation weren’t so dire. “You’re alive,” he shoots back instantly. “That’s all I give a damn about.”

Something in my chest stutters at his words.

Heat surges behind us as he backs through the doorway, turning his body over mine so the flames can lick at him instead of me. Every muscle in his arms flexes as he adjusts his grip, like I weigh exactly what I do and he still doesn’t care.

The world becomes noise and light and smoke.

There’s shouting somewhere, other firefighters, radios crackling, and boots thundering across my floors. My home, the one I worked my ass off to buy after leaving my ex, is dying around me, and I don’t have the luxury of mourning it yet.

We move fast. Down the hall. Through the broken frame of my front door.

And then, finally, outside. Cold night air slams into my lungs like a slap, shocking and painful and glorious.

I gasp greedily, coughing so hard more tears spill down my cheeks.

He doesn’t put me down right away. He kneels with me still in his arms, keeping me tucked to him like I’m the most important thing on the street.

Lights flash everywhere, red, white, and blue, spinning, painting the world in chaotic color. Neighbors stand behind yellow tape in robes and slippers, hands over their mouths. My house glows, roof alive with orange tongues that claw at the sky while hoses arc water across it in glittering streams.

A paramedic appears at my side in a blur of latex gloves and competent chatter, but I can’t stop looking at the man holding me.

He finally peels off his mask and helmet.

And the world tips a little.

He’s young. Younger than I expect. Early twenties maybe. He’s tall, his dark skin glistening with sweat, and jaw sharp enough to cut glass. His eyes, holy shit, are warm brown with flecks of gold that catch the rotating lights.

He looks down at me with a mixture of absolute focus and ... something else. Something that sees me. “You’re okay,” he says gently, crowding out the chaos around us with just his voice. “You’re safe. I’ve got you.”

No one has ever said it like that to me. Not like a promise. Not like a vow. But instead, like it’s a simple immutable fact.

The paramedic touches my shoulder. “Ma’am, can you tell me your name?”

“Olivia,” I rasp without looking away from him.

He smiles a little at that, like he’s cataloging it, tucking it away somewhere private.

“Olivia,” the medic repeats, “I need to check your oxygen levels and make sure your airway isn’t compromised. Are you hurt anywhere?”

Am I? I blink, doing a mental scan. Everything aches in a distant, delayed way, like my body hasn’t finished filling in the pain report yet. My chest burns. My throat feels like I’ve been trying to give a cactus a blowjob. My skin is hot, but I don’t think I’m badly burned.

“My pride,” I croak.

The firefighter snorts softly. The sound is brief, almost strangled, like he doesn’t think he’s allowed to laugh right now and did it anyway.

“Let them check you,” he murmurs. “I’m not going far.”

I should not be disappointed when he shifts me into the paramedic’s care.

But my fingers tighten on his jacket anyway.

“Will ... will you stay?” The words slip out before my brain approves them. Great. Smoke inhalation apparently turns me into a clingy octopus.

He looks down at my hand on him, then back up at my face. And the soft expression he wears does something dangerously reckless to my heart. “As long as you need,” he says simply.

Time blurs, slowing down and speeding up at the same time.

Someone presses an oxygen mask over my nose and mouth, blessed coolness flowing into my lungs. My vision swims in and out, thoughts flickering like a bad film reel. I answer questions automatically.

Yes, I’m divorced.

Yes, I live alone.

No, I don’t have any pets.

No, I don’t know how the fire started. Not this time anyway.

This time. The phrase slides icy fingers down my spine. Because last time wasn’t an accident.

Last time was a man I married saying, “You’re nothing without me,” and lighting a match to prove it.

“Hey.” The firefighter crouches back into my line of sight like he can feel me drifting. We’re close enough now that I can see the faint scar at his jaw, the little crease between his brows that deepens when he’s worried. “Olivia. Look at me.”

I do. Because apparently I’d follow that voice into fire or out of it.

“You’re safe,” he repeats.

Safe. The word sits in my chest like a foreign object. Heavy, strange, and impossible. I swallow hard and nod because I want to believe him so badly it hurts.

“Can you tell me your name?” he asks, teasing lightly.

I narrow my eyes at him over the oxygen mask. “Funny.”

His mouth curves into a grin that should not be legal. “Just making sure you’re still with me.”

“I’m with you,” I whisper.

Oh. Well, then. Way to sound like you’re pledging eternal allegiance, Olivia.

He doesn’t mock the slip. His gaze warms instead, like the words mattered, like he felt them too. And then the medic interrupts to tell me they want me to go to the hospital for observation, and everything spins again.

“I can’t afford...” I start automatically, panic of a different flavor rising now.

“Stop.” The firefighter’s tone sharpens just enough to cut through my spiraling thoughts. “Breathe. Insurance, paperwork, deal with it later. Right now, it’s about your lungs and your heart still beating. We’ll figure the rest out.”

We. The way he says it knocks the air out of me more than the smoke did.

He stands when they guide me toward the ambulance, but his hand lingers at my back, firm and steady, like a tether to something solid. Someone calls out to him, “Cole! We need you on the C-side exterior!” and realization settles in my foggy brain.

Cole. That’s his name.

“You should go,” I say softly, my voice small against the mask.

He hesitates, his jaw working. His eyes skim my face like he’s memorizing it, the soot smudges, the cracked lips, and the tear tracks. Like if he looks away, I might disappear back into the flames.

“I’ll check on you,” he says finally. “At the hospital.”

“You don’t...”

“But I will.” There’s no arguing with that tone.

He steps back only when the paramedics close the doors of the ambulance, and the last thing I see through the narrowing gap is him turning toward my burning house again, walking straight into hell without fear because someone inside might need him.

I lie back on the gurney as the sirens start up, heart hammering, oxygen mask fogging slightly with each shaky breath.

My house is gone. My past is cracking open again. My future is a smoking question mark. But all my mind can circle back to is him.

Cole. The firefighter who carried me out of the fire like I mattered.

The man who must be at least ten years younger than me who looked at me—soft belly, soot-streaked face, terror and all—like I wasn’t too much.

Like maybe ... I was just right.

God help me. I think I’m in trouble already.