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“You sure you’re okay?”
“Yep. Content. That was the release of a lot of sexual buildup. May take me a while to recharge.” He stifles a laugh and throws away the old gauze. “Sit tight. Going to get you some water.” I nod and climb into bed, resting my head against the fluffy pillow. I pass out before he even returns.
* * *
I open my eyes to violent streaks of red and orange. They hiss as they shoot across the ceiling. I sit up. I’m engulfed by it. Heat stings my skin. My eyes burn. I look around. Angry flames surround me.
I try to get up, but my legs are stuck. They won’t move. I scream, but it only provokes the flames, bringing more fury to the fire.
“Help! Someone help me!” I yell, but no words come out. My head whips to my right, and there he is, in the same place he always is.
“No one is going to help you now, girl.”
“Daddy, please help me!”
“Disobedient girls don’t get help. They get punished.”
“Daddy, don’t let me die,” I cry. The flames are getting closer. My arms burn. I cry out as my skin sizzles.
“You should have never left me. You wouldn’t be here if you did.” My head whips to the left. Christopher is standing in the corner amongst a wall of flames. “I would have loved you. You wouldn’t have had to die.”
“Chris, help me. Please!”
“You shouldn’t have left me, Mak. You should have stayed. Now, you’re going to die—”
I shoot up in bed. A layer of sweat coats my forehead. The heat. I still feel the heat. I throw the blankets off me, needing cold air on my skin. I grab at my chest, my heart beating erratically. “It was just a bad dream. It wasn’t real.” But shit, it felt real. My hands shake. I squeeze my eyes shut, fighting back the tears. My skin still crawls at the image of Christopher and my father. I scan the room, making sure I’m alone. “They’re not here. It was just a dream.”
I cover my face. Anger brews inside me at the tears that fall. I hate them both for what they caused me. Even knowing they can’t hurt me anymore, I still fear they will.
I throw my legs over the side of the bed and get up. Opening my door, I pad down the hallway to Ben’s door and knock.
“Yeah?” His voice is groggy. I open his door and peek my head in. He sits up. “Everything okay?”
“I—can I sleep with you?”
“Yeah, come here.” He pulls the blankets up, revealing he’s only wearing a pair of boxers. I feel silly asking, but I can’t go back to that room. I climb in, and he tucks me close to him. “You sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah. Just a bad dream.”
“You wanna talk about it?”
Yes. No.“It was stupid.”
He pulls me closer, and I rest my head against his shoulder. “It’s not stupid if it upset you.”
“I dreamt I was back in my father’s house. I was surrounded by flames and couldn’t get out.” I leave out the part about my father and Christopher.
“You’re safe now. I won’t let anything else happen to you.”
I wrap my arm around his muscled chest, selfishly enjoying how it feels snuggled against him. “What’s it like for you? Running into a fire when all anyone else would want is to run away from it?”
He doesn’t answer right away. I'm soothed by the rise and fall of his chest as he considers his answer. “We’re trained not to think about that. It’s strictly logic and training. You take what you know about a fire. How and where it will spread. You have one job—to locate and rescue. You bring emotions into it, and you’re as good as dead.”
I allow his words to sink in. “I was so scared. I didn’t know what to do or how to get out.” I squeeze my eyes shut, fighting off the images. “I was so worried Jenny was in the house. I tried to get to her, but it was too much. The fire had consumed the entire staircase.” I hate that I start to cry. “When I couldn’t get out of the house, the only thing going through my mind was I was going to die in there.” My frustration grows as my emotions take the lead, getting the best of me.
“But you didn’t.” Ben brushes my hair from my face. “Hey. It’s over.”
“But in my mind, it’s not. I still feel the heat. My hands throb, remembering the way my skin felt touching the doorknob. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m crying.”
