I wheeze in a breath and immediately cough out an exhale, but another breath miraculously follows.
THUNK!
“Fuck!”
Kaleb Doucet’s weight jerks off me, and I think I see him crouched, clutching his head. Another blast of white blinds me.
“GET OUT!”
Crack.
“Aargh!” The cry is sharp, and limbs scramble over my legs, jerky and hurried.
Footsteps slow at first and then faster fade into the night.
A thud shakes the house before Stella emerges from this mist surrounding me.
“Lark?” Coughing, she drops to her knees beside me and something metallicclanksagainst the floor. “Lark?”
Her hair is dusted white, making her look ghostly. I inhale to speak and cough instead.
Stella’s stricken face hovers closer. “L-Lark? Are you okay?” Her hands grip my face. She’s shaking. Violently.
I raise a hand and make a grab for her wrist, but I’m shaking too. My grip is anything but firm.
“I—” I swallow and try to clear the thickness in my throat. “I’m okay,” I rasp.
She blinks at me and her stricken look gives way to almost heartrending relief. “Oh, thank God,” she pants. Her forehead presses to mine, locks of powdered hair curtaining me, her breath ragged and hot on my face.
It’s entirely the wrong time to think this, but I regret the inch or two that separates our lips.
I clear my throat again. It’s raw. Painful. But this time, when I raise my trembling hands to her face, the heat of her cheeks seems to charge me.
“I’m okay,” I say again, this time more clearly. And then a jolt runs through me. “Where’s Maisy?”
“Safe,” she answers, but she’s nodding, pressing away. “Help is on the way. Stay right there.”
And then she clambers up, and all at once I see just how disheveled she is. Hair falls around her face, but half of it is still twisted in a wrecked bun. The curls at the base of her neck are wet.
The top of her white robe gapes open, her breasts nearly spilling out. But the fabric clings to her hips, almost transparent in places where her body is still damp.
I press up to my elbows, fresh adrenaline coursing through my veins. Stella was taking a bath when that fiend—
I grip her bare shin. “Areyouall right?” My gruff voice is a collision of panic and murder.
Stella’s eyes soften on me. She tucks a lock behind her ear and pulls her robe closer, covering her exposed skin. “I’m okay,” she says, and I hear it for the admission it is. She’s unharmed. She’s safe. But she’s far from good.
I move to rise. To help her. To hold her. But she presses a hand to my shoulder to stay me, and it’s unnerving how heavy it feels. I’m weaker than I ever remember feeling. “Don’t get up. I’ll be right back.”
I listen. Not because I want to but because I don’t think I have a choice.
I watch her go, running from the room, and it’s only then I see it. The kitchen fire extinguisher abandoned on its side a few feet from me.
I stare at it, the blast of air, the blinding fog, and the bone-rattlingthunksthat preceded Kaleb Doucet’s departure.
My Stella attacked that piece of shit with a fire extinguisher.
The woman saved my life. With a fire extinguisher.
