Chapter 45
Tad
“Dammit!” I scream, slamming my phone down onto the floor of the truck as I fishtail around the corner of Maple, not even pausing for the stop sign before making my turn.
Breezy’s still not answering her phone, and Bennett isn’t picking up either. Randy’s the only one who answered, and I hung up on him as soon as I got the message across—my place is on fucking fire, and Breezy is probably inside.
Sheriff Pete slides around the corner behind me, his lights and sirens going as I floor it until the speedometer hits sixty-five. Trees pass in a blur, and the distance between me and the tail end of the fire truck in front of me closes at a dangerously fast clip.
I cut off the turn, just missing the culvert and ditch as I pull into my driveway alongside the fire truck and come to a stop a millisecond too late, the front end of my truck blowing a hole in Randy’s newly repaired fence.
I don’t bother shifting to park or turning off the ignition before jumping out and taking off at a run for the house.
Fire rolls unchecked from the seam of the roof, and smoke billows wildly from the windows at the right side of the house.
“Tad!” Norah yells as I hit the porch at a run, ripping the storm door open with brute force and hitting the interior one with a flying shoulder.
“Breezy’s inside!” I yell back. I don’t look in their direction after that, but by the sound of Norah’s scream as she calls Bennett’s name, I’d say he isn’t far behind me.
I don’t care. My only focus is getting to Breezy and getting her out of this house alive.
The heat is instant and suffocating and there’s smoke everywhere.
Fuck!
I drop to my hands and knees to limit my smoke inhalation enough to keep from passing out and crawl through the kitchen and down the hall toward the living room.
It’s fully engulfed, a hollow shell of what it used to be and by the looks of things, the likely source of the fire.
I keep moving, my throat burning and my eyes in tears from the fumes.
There’s a harsh bang, the sound of something giving way in the living room and falling across the hall behind me, and I hear Bennett curse loudly before more muffled screams take up just outside.
My ears ring, my heart racing and my head pounding from the lack of air for even just a couple of minutes starting to get to me. Sweat pours down my face and off my body as I fight to put one hand in front of the other in a bear crawl.
Twenty feet feel like a hundred yards as the heat and fumes and closing flames beat against me, but when I finally make it to the back of the house, a small glimmer of hope renews me with a burst of energy.
The door to the master bedroom is closed, and the flames in the attic have yet to break through the ceiling above.
Climbing to my feet temporarily, I put a shoulder to the door and shove, breaking it from the jamb and splintering the wood on the bolt side.
Smoke curls wildly at the ceiling, but for the first time since entering the house, it’s not thick enough to cut off my sight yet, and I move quickly around the bed to the other side of the room.
Oh, thank God.
Finally, a breakthrough. Relief and anxiety and urgency fight for supremacy as I see her.
Breezy—horizontal across the floor, just outside the bathroom door, in a T-shirt and wet skin.
“Breezy, baby,” I whisper as I pull her into my arms. My voice is choked, and my eyes scan her face and body wildly. “Fuck.”
My pulse is a hammer. I press my ear close to her mouth and feel the breaths push from her lips.
Her body’s warm. Chest rising. Lips still pink. Breathing. Thank God, she’s breathing. But her eyes stay closed, lashes still.
She’s not conscious, but she’s here and she’s breathing and she’s alive, and I made it to her.
My throat is nearly closed, the raw burn of smoke and tears mixing in a potent form of poison, and yet, I take my first full breath since I sprinted out of The Country Club.
“Okay, okay. You’re okay. I’ve got you. You’re okay.” I don’t know if I’m telling her or myself. My throat’s on fire, lungs clawing for air, but all I can focus on is getting her out of here. She needs a hospital. Now.
I scoop her up and into my arms, gathering her carefully and pulling her T-shirt up over her mouth and nose to help with the smoke as much as I can.
“Hold on, Breezy. Hold on for me.”
Moving quickly, I take the shortest route to clean air, exiting the bedroom and pushing past the spray of cascading water as it falls on us from the ceiling as the firefighters outside soak the attic where the fire has spread across the entire roofline.
Out the sun-room and the back door and onto the deck, I move quickly around the house as fast as I can without hurting or dropping her.
Sheriff Pete is the first to spot me, pointing and whistling to a couple of guys off to his left. I don’t stop or slow down, but they match my speed, running toward me. Halfway through the front yard, we meet.
“She’s alive, she’s breathing, but she’s not conscious!” I shout at them even though we’re mere feet apart. “We need to get her to the fucking ambulance! To a fucking hospital! Now!”
Nate Woodall and Barry Flyshman, two of the volunteer firefighters for Red Bridge and guys I’ve avoided getting to know for all the years I’ve lived here, take Breezy from my arms and carry her to the stretcher waiting behind the lone town ambulance.
I try to follow, but I trip over my feet as my legs give out, a cough of smoke and debris rattling out of my chest and landing on my hand.
Mud and water soak through my jeans and onto my knees in the grass in front of what used to be my house. Smoke still rolls, though lessened significantly by the work of the firefighters behind me, and the heat of smoldering flames licks at my back and fights the chill that invades my bones.
Bennett and Logan rush toward Breezy while Norah stays back with Autumn, and I struggle to my feet, willing myself to carry forward.
Randy stops me with a hand at my shoulder—I think, at first, to halt me—but ultimately helps me over to my truck and lifts me inside.
He runs to the driver’s side and pulls out in a cloud of gravel behind the ambulance, and I fight the urge to rub at my stinging eyes with my dirty, shaking hands.
“It’s going to be okay,” Randy assures me confidently, eyes on the road and one tight fist clenched around the wheel. “You got her out…you got them out.”
I nod. I know. I did. And the feeling is poisonously bittersweet.
To think I made it this time when I couldn’t for Abigail and Lucy. To think, even now, I still don’t know if Breezy and the baby are okay.
I pray to a God I abandoned long ago, and I do it without shame. I beg for mercy. I beg for compassion.
I beg for Beatrice Bishop and the baby in her belly.
I beg.
Please, God. Please let them be okay. Please don’t let this end in devastation a second time.
Please don’t make me regret where I should’ve been a second time.
Please, I beg. If you have to take someone, take me instead.