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Another explosion happens, making the entire apartment feel as though it’s detonating like a bomb.
Everything turns black, but then heat licking at my flesh jerks me to the here and now. Tate shakes me, sobbing for me to wake up. I sit up and try to make sense of my surroundings.
Fire.
Nothing but hot, punishing flames.
I deserve to die, but not Tate.
You do not deserve to die either. You deserve life and love.
“Mom?”
Tate lightly smacks my cheek. “Focus. Look at me. You’re not giving up and dying,” he says. “We have to get out of here.”
I blink in confusion but quickly realize I said those words aloud and it was Tate who responded, not Mom.
Mom’s dead.
But it wasn’t an accident.
Tate grunts as he pulls me. I stumble to my feet but succumb to a coughing fit as the smoke chokes my lungs. The smoke dazes me and I might’ve just sat back down had he not yanked on my arm.
The flames singe my clothes and hair, a couple times actually getting my skin and hurting like hell. I roar in pain—both physically and the ache inside my chest—wishing to just die a quick death.
But. He. Won’t. Let. Me.
We stumble along until we collapse into the hallway of the apartment building. It’s much cooler here and my mind starts to clear.
“We have to get out of here,” I rasp. “We have to get you safe.”
If I couldn’t save Mom, I can at least save Tate.
“We will,” he assures me, stopping to kiss me hard on the mouth. “But first we need to get everyone out of the building.”
With the smoke pouring into the hallway and now more smoke alarms going off, the warning shrieks are all too much, rattling my brain inside its cage. I keep flopping back and forth between memories and reality. Between Mom and Tate.
Tate drags me to his neighbor’s apartment and starts banging on the door. An elderly woman peeks out and then coughs when smoke rushes into her apartment.
“Ethel, we have to go,” Tate says. “There’s a fire and it’s spreading.”
“Oh dear,” the old woman says. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.”
He finally coaxes her out of the apartment and then practically shoves me over to her. I snap into action and scoop up the frail woman in my arms. Tate rushes across the hall and bangs on that door next. The fire seems to chase after us as we collect any stragglers in the building.
The sound of sirens approaching fills the air, which gives me hope this could all be over soon.
Tate guides everyone to the stairwell, where we’re nearly knocked over by several firemen dressed in their gear. It’s a blur as we’re all herded to safety outside where more firemen are already making attempts to put out the blaze.
I set Ethel down in the grass and then fall onto my ass, my mind still spinning with Baker’s confession.
Mom walked in on him and he freaked out.
Baker murdered my mother because she caught him sucking me off.
Tears burn at my eyes, but they’re not from the smoke. I’m attacked by emotions, lashing at me much like the flames in the apartment were. It hurts. It fucking hurts. Mom just wanted to protect me. When she yelled at me for not being at school the day she ended up dying, it was because she thought I would get hurt and she was angry.
I wonder if she knew it was Baker who started the fire.
