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He knows my name?
I try to search for a name tag, or his eyes through the plexiglass shield for anything familiar, but the smoke is getting thicker as we trudge up the stairs.
“Hold on to me, almost there,” he says, pulling me closer.
I sink into the hard fabric of his coat, shutting my eyes. I can feel his form even through the girth of the thick material, and it’s flexed and firm from carrying me.
I’ve never been carried by another human before. At least not as an adult. In other circumstances, I might like it. Being saved has its perks.
I wrap my arms up around his neck and picture myself posing for the cover of In Heat of the Fire, by that hack Shelly DeWinter.
Not a book I’d recommend, by the way. Page 147 is the only good part, and it’s not even that clever.
We reach the top of the stairs, and I expect him to put me down, but I’m thankful that he doesn’t. I cough again, into his chest, and he reaches up and pulls me closer.
“Almost out,” he says.
“Fire’s spread to the main floor!” Another firefighter rushes through my house, axe in hand
“Is anyone else here?” my firefighter asks me. “Any pets?”
I shake my head.
“Good,” he says.
Through the haze I glimpse unwanted and invasive flames licking the walls of my stairway, and I’m about to ask him to save my favorite coral dress with the white Peter Pan collar when the whole scene fades to black.
When I come to, I’m outside, and I hear the faint sound of sirens in the distance. I’m lying on a stretcher with a plastic mask over my face, and as I start to sit up, a young female paramedic says, “Just stay still, Miss Smart. Breathe.”
I try to and end up coughing thick mucus from the liters of smoke I must’ve inhaled.
Gross.
I frown and fuss the mask off my face. The paramedic tries to put it back on, but I hold up my hands and say, “I’m fine, I just need a minute.” I swallow as I peer around my yard. I spot my neighbor Pat, standing on my lawn, shirtless, with his wife Peggy at his side. Peggy is the town gossip, and she’s got her phone pressed to her ear, and I wonder out loud, “How long I was out?”
“Not too long,” the paramedic tells me. “But you’re lucky that we got you out of there so quickly. It could’ve been a lot worse.”
My vision teeters and my head lobs over to one side as another paramedic calls out, “Need to check you out.”
My eyes follow his gaze to the firefighter, still wearing his mask, but it’s flipped up, tilted back.
His face.
I can’t focus through my watery eyes and the flashing red and blue of the emergency vehicles. He gives the paramedic a nod, then walks straight over to where I’m lying.
My romance-fueled mind is filling in every blank. It’s like he’s walking in slow motion. He’s about to reveal himself to me. My real-life hero. And I’m about to rethink my position on fictional men being better than real ones.
He starts to pull his helmet all the way off. My heart is pounding in my chest, a literal drum.
This is the canon event. The hinge on which the story swings open.
This is the moment the reader sits forward to focus on the words.
And it’s happening to me.
He walks up to me, slowly coming into focus.
There, standing on my front lawn, is Owen Larrabee.
