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“Let’s go!” Colby yells.
I can hear my deda whispering in my ear, reminding me that our strength lies within us, and no one can ever take that away. He had to leave his own precious art collection behind when he fled our homeland; I can do the same. If only one item can come with me, it’ll be one of his Fabergé eggs.
“I need to break that,” I tell Colby, pointing at the climate-controlled glass case that displays my eggs. “It’s thick.”
“Grab a fucking picture and let’s go!”
I shake my head and Colby runs his hands through his hair, thinking.
“You got a baseball bat?” he asks.
“No. It’s designed to be impossible to get into.”
“Fire. Evacuate immediately. Fire. Evacuate immediately.”
The voice and the beeping haven’t stopped. Colby gives me a desperate look.
“This whole building could burn down.”
I close my eyes, willing myself to be strong enough to just go. My apartment is equipped with fire sprinklers, and it’s possible nothing will be damaged.
“You go,” Colby says. “I’ll stay and break the glass. What do you want that’s in there?”
I’m taken aback by his offer. Not only isn’t he racing out the door without caring whether I’m behind him, he’s offering to stay while I get to safety, all because of a sentimental art piece.
“Any of them,” I say tearfully. “Any one of them. And I’m not leaving without you.”
He’s still wearing his tux pants, shoes and white dress shirt, the sleeves of the shirt rolled up since dinner. Racing over to an iron sculpture of a human male, he picks it up and says, “Turn around and stay back.”
I do as he says, turning and crouching, able to hear my heart pounding in my ears as I hear him running. He lets out a mighty roar and I hear the sound of breaking glass.
“Go to the door!” he yells.
My priceless collection is scattered on the floor, shattered glass everywhere. Colby scoops an egg into each pocket and fills his arms with more, then races over to me.
“Let’s go!”
Frantically, I open the door. Smoke billows into the small foyer from around the elevator doors. I lead the way to the stairwell, holding the door open for Colby and taking two eggs from his arms to stick into my robe pockets.
He was able to save nine eggs. It eases my grief over leaving the rest of my collection.
“Go as fast as you can,” Colby says from behind me as we descend flight after flight of stairs.
After the first couple flights of stairs, we start encountering others fleeing the building. Colby has fallen behind me, and when I stop to look for him, I see him standing on a landing, making sure all the women and children are going down in front of him.
A man racing down the stairs runs into a little girl and pushes her into me. She’s maybe five years old and she looks up at me with big, terrified eyes and says, “Sorry.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong, just keep moving,” I say.
It feels like it takes forever to reach an EXIT door. I’m sweating hard by the time I do, inhaling gulps of fresh air. I hold the door open, checking the faces of everyone who filters out.
My heart is hammering in my chest as I wait for Colby. Firefighters rush past me, going up the stairs. One of them forces me to move out to the road.
Finally, Colby walks through the door, a young boy in his arms. A woman rushes forward with a sob, thanking him as she takes the boy.
“I couldn’t carry him,” she wails. “Thank you.”
“It’s okay,” Colby says. “He’s okay.”
He searches the faces in the crowd as I make my way toward him. When our eyes finally lock, his expression crumbles with relief and he puts his arms around me.
The whole building is on fire, flames visible through the front entrance. I’ll mourn the probable loss of the art in my apartment later, but for right now, I’m just grateful we made it out in time.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Colby
“What’s she wearing underneath that robe?”
“Something white. That’s definitely a garter belt.”
My teammates Sal and Beck are in the seats behind me on the team plane, and like everyone else on this plane, they’re obsessing over the photos being posted online of me and Mila.
We’re getting a one-two punch—not just headlines about a team owner marrying one of her players without anyone even knowing they were involved, but photos and stories about the fire.
Between the time it took us to wait for the fire to be put out and catch an Uber to my house, and my 6:00 a.m. wake-up call for my road trip, I ended up getting just under two hours of sleep and zero wedding night sex. I’m definitely not in the mood for my teammates’ bullshit.
