30. Orion
Orion
When I get off the phone, I see that Mars is now staring at the house, looking like someone just shot him in the heart.
I run to him and grab his shoulder, then spin to look at the house. It’s not burning yet, and Shane and his crew are already here, getting the trucks ready to pump water onto the fire. The house should be fine.
I hope.
So why the fuck is Mars staring at it like it’s already gone?
“What?” I asked sharply.
When he doesn’t answer, I shake him.
I have to admit, I never saw Mars as someone who would panic in an emergency, but I guess you don’t know people as well as you think you do.
“Mars!” I snap. “What? What’s wrong?”
He snaps back to life and looks at me, his eyes a pair of burning coals and his face creased in sudden fear. “Arden,” he says simply. “She went into the house.”
Oh. My. God.
I spin, now, and look at the house with new eyes. It’s not burning yet, but it’s right next to a burning building and unless Shane and his guys can work a fucking miracle, it’s only a matter of time until the house goes up.
And our girl is in there.
Our girl ran the fuck back into the fucking house for reasons only she fucking knows.
I don’t pause to think about how stupid it is or whether I’ll even make it into the house–or back out again. My one and only thought is that Arden is in there, and she needs help.
She needs a hero.
I break into a run and dash toward the front door, and I can hear Mars pounding along behind me. We get through the front door and into the dry equivalent of a sauna. It’s so hot in here that I’m immediately sweating and my skin feels like it’s being baked in an oven.
Fucking hell, how long as Arden been in here? Where is she? Is she even still alive?
“Plan!” Mars screams.
“We find Arden and get her out!” I shout back. “You go upstairs, I stay down here. Get her and get out of the house. Don’t wait for me.”
I don’t wait to see how he reacts. I’m too busy sprinting for the hallway toward the back of the house, my mind on how hard it is to breathe in here and her alarming habit of fainting when she’s stressed.
What if she already did? What if she couldn’t breathe and her body decided it was a better idea to just lay down and wait to die?
God, what if she’s in one of these rooms baking to death and we don’t find her in time?
The thought somehow makes me run even faster, and I streak through the living room and into the hallway.
It’s hot as hell itself back here, so close to the garage, and I my breath starts coming in gasps, the air so dry that my lungs are rejecting it.
I can’t even hold onto the thought that she might die.
I can’t stand it, and as stupid and careless as it is, I’ll run right into the flames if it means saving her.
The worst part is that I don’t know how long we have. I can hear the roar of the flames next door and the hiss that means they’re getting water on it, but fires don’t go down immediately, even with water, and that one was raging by the time we found it.
God, how the fuck did everything go sideways on us? One moment I was making Arden cocoa and the next...
The next I’m running through the house that felt like Heaven an hour ago, trying to figure out whether the girl is even still alive.
I spin through my bedroom, my eyes moving at the speed of light to try to find her, and then rush across the hall to my office.
And here she is.
Fuck’s sake, here she is.
She’s got a t-shirt wrapped around the bottom of her face and her eyes are streaming with tears at the heat. She’s pale as a ghost but I can see her skin blistering in some places, and in her arms...
In her arms, she has a box full of the pictures Mars keeps in his room of his mother, grandmother, and grandfather, plus his family. Some of those pictures are hundreds of years old, and I think Mars might be the only one who has copies. They’ve always been the pride of his life.
He wouldn’t be able to replace them if they burned.
She’s got a sling across her belly and she’s shoving my things into that sling.
The tin box full of things I managed to take from my parent’s house.
An old photo album. The first motorcycle helmet I ever managed to buy.
She’s trying to shove them all into the sling, so focused on her work that she doesn’t realize it’s feels like a turned-on oven in here.
She’s putting her own life at risk to save the things she thinks Mars and I can’t live without.
But she’s never been more wrong in her life. Because those pictures and items mean a lot, yes. Those are our histories. But they’re no longer the things we care about most in this world.
Not since she arrived.
I run forward and grab her, jerk her around so she’s looking at me. She stares up, her eyes wild and unfocused, and I can feel her pulse hammering wildly in the wrist I’m holding.
God, she’s going to faint. I can’t believe she’s still on her feet, and I can’t believe she’s in here like some fucking hero, trying to save our things when it could cost her her own life.
This silly, stupid, insane girl with the heart too big for her body and a diabolical inability to believe in her own value.
I don’t wait.
I lean down, scoop her up–along with her stolen treasure–and turn and run for the door, screaming for Mars that I’ve got Arden and that we have to get out of here before we all die.