“Go!” he barked, his voice raw. “You hear me? Go!”
The ceiling gave way.
The sound of collapsing beams crashing overhead drowned out everything else.
I lunged at him anyway, bare arms scraping against melting metal, the skin on my side blistering before I even felt it. I grabbed his turnout sleeve.
For one brief second, I had him.
Something heavy fell between us, the heat so intense it peeled the air right out of my lungs. The blast sent me backward. My vision tunneled, the edges going dark, the smell of burning gear and flesh fusing into one.
I tried to crawl, but my arms wouldn’t move. The pain was overwhelming. The oxygen line hissed, empty.
The last thing I saw before everything went black was Beau’s helmet, glowing orange, disappearing into the flames.
Squeezing my eyes shut, letting the tears fall, the memory runs through me, relentlessly.
I remember waking up to the hospital lights being too bright. My body didn’t feel like mine. My left side was wrapped in gauze from the peak of my cheek to my waist, my arm bandaged to the elbow, the skin raw and new beneath. My throat was wrecked from the smoke.
They said I was lucky. That word still makes me sick.
My left arm always felt half-numb, the nerves too damaged to heal properly. I couldn’t even shave without my hand trembling.
Beau didn’t make it.
The academy called it a tragic malfunction.
I called it what it was, my fault.
When I was discharged, there was no turning back. My firefighting career ended before it truly began. My mama was gone. My best friend was buried.
And I was left with a face I didn’t recognize.
I came home to Tennessee with nothing but guilt that still hasn’t burned out.
My brothers helped me buy my liquor license, and I learned to bartend, turning an old feed store into my bar.
Boots & Bourbon smells like smoke and oak, and sometimes, when the lights dim and the crowd thins out, I still smell the fire, still hear Beau yelling my name.
The memory drags itself out of me, leaving only smoke behind.
I drop to my knees before I realize it, my hand gripping the edge of the coffee table as if it’s the only thing keeping me upright.
My chest tightens, and raw breath scrapes through my throat. The air feels too thin and too hot. Still, I gasp for it.
“Fuck,” I gasp.
The room spins. The smell of smoke isn’t coming from the fireplace anymore; it’s inside my lungs, my skin, that ghostly heat wrapping around me as if it’s happening again.
I press a trembling hand to my chest, trying to breathe, but the air refuses to come.
“Not again,” I whisper. “Please, not again.”
My vision blurs as I fumble for my phone on the table, knocking over the half-empty whiskey glass, amber spilling across the wood.
My thumb swipes until I hit Carter’s number.
Carter picks up on the first ring. “Reed?”
