“What are you doing?!” I scream as I scratch at his chest.
He wraps one big palm around both of my wrists and presses them against my belly. “Keeping you alive while I call 9-1-1.”
My heart gallops inside my chest. I don’t think I’ve ever been this viciously angry with another person. “You have noright.”
He shushes me.Shushesme.
“I’m calling to report a fire at house number three on Landhorne Lane,” he says into his phone. “Please hurry, the fire’s spreading fast.”
I exhale harshly through my nose.
“No, we’re not inside anymore. Yes, a safe distance away from the house.” He turns the mic away from him. “No pets, right?”
“No pets,” I spit out.
He repeats my answer into the phone. “Okay. We’ll wait out here.” He ends the call, tosses the phone on the ground, and looks back down at me.
“I hate you.”
A muscle in his jaw ticks. “I know you’re mad, but staying inside would be stupid.”
I roll my head against the cold ground and look at my burning house. Dense smoke is seeping through the small opening I left in the living room window. I’m staring right at it when the glass on the window bursts.
I yelp. Rowan leans over me, shielding me with his body.
The anger leaks right out of me, replaced with despair. I’m not someone who cries often, but right now, all I want to do is wail. Tears start to prick inside my eyes. “Rowan, it’s going to get so bad before they come.” My voice has a tremble to it.
He sits up and presses a warm palm to my cheek. “I know, Sunshine. I’m sorry.”
For a second, everything stills. I stare at him. He stares at me. My senses zoom in on all the places we’re touching, on thestrange intimacy of the moment, on the way he just carried me out of a burning building.
My lungs expand on a shaky breath. “Can you get off me? I can’t feel my legs.”
“Only if you promise you won’t make a run for it.”
“I promise.”
He climbs off me and helps me sit up.
Through the broken window, I see what can only be described as an inferno inside my living room. My house’s got wooden furniture. A wooden frame. And all my books.
How did this happen?
There’s only one explanation. I fell asleep with the fire still burning.
Idiot.
You’re such a fucking idiot.
The sound of a distant siren bleeds into the air.
“They’re almost here,” Rowan says. Something warm wraps around my shoulders. I glance down. It’s another dark hoodie.
“The other hoodie you gave me is still inside,” I mumble, like it matters.
“Don’t worry about it.” He sits down beside me.
“What if the fire spreads to your house?”
