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Thirty-Eight
Inside her bedroom,Emilia slipped out of her fairy costume and pitched it toward her bed. A loose-fitting sundress hung in her wardrobe, and she pulled it out, her phone already charging from an outlet on the nearby wall.
The last twenty-four hours had brought more than she’d bargained for—a surplus of love and acceptance from her new community. A zest for life because of Blaine. The entire night solidified the fact that she now, finally, had somewhere she belonged.
Aside from the uncertainty over Anthony, life was just fine.
She slipped the sundress over her head and decided that letting go of the cottage didn’t have to be a sad affair. Maybe, some years, a husband, and a couple of children from now, she’d forget all about the loneliness and upheaval.
And maybe, every morning for the rest of her life, she’d wake next to Blaine. Each day would be spent together, living out their perfectly normal and boring second chance.
Her charging phone began to ring, and she laughed. Blaine was probably not even at the fair yet and already stressing about her being at the cottage alone, like she hadn’t done just that for weeks already.
She pressed the phone to her ear, her tone bright because it felt good to have someone calling her out of genuine concern and not merely a need to keep tabs on her movements. “Hey, what’s up?”
She waited for his familiar voice but got nothing more than silence. She pulled the phone away. Maybe it was glitching or something. But the scene displayed a call from a private number, so that wasn’t it. It wasn’t Blaine calling her, either.
“Who is this?”
Maybe a spam caller? Already? This was a new phone and number, and it wasn’t like she’d spent her limited time in Harlow signing up for random mailing lists or services. She waited a few moments longer. Her skin taking on a sharp prickle. Still nothing.
She searched the empty room around her, her heartbeat picking up pace, her head aching under the rush of worst-case scenarios playing through her mind.
Maybe she just had a bad connection. Someone who’d misdialed and got her number…
“Okay, I’m hanging up now.”
“I like the fear in your voice, Emilia.” A low and menacing drawl cracked down the line, and her breath stalled in her lungs. Not Blaine, but still familiar. And for all the wrong reasons. “Come out front, honey, I want to hear that fear in person.”
Blaine drove the long road into town, smiling to himself and shaking his head at how Maureen would no doubt chew him out over Emilia closing her lease early.
Of course, he had zero regrets about stealing her from the cottage, a cottage he glanced at through his rearview mirror. A huge part of him wanted to turn back and be with her again, to hang his duties at the fair and stay, despite her insistence that he go.
Last night was all the vindication he needed. He didn’t want to wait any longer. He’d waited years. Wasn’t that enough? He wanted to start the rest of their lives together. To have her with him. Always. Forever. Sure as hell not alone in that damn, isolated cottage.
The dull pain of her absence made him glance back through his rearview mirror again. For the longest time, he saw nothing, just a cloudless sky telling him not to be paranoid. But something could be said for instinct because, in the next beat, he did spot something.
A strange thin, gray smudge muddied the sky—far in the distance, twisting, and curling. His heart lurched, while his hopes turned to literal ash. Literal, because Emilia’s house was on fire.
The line went dead, and Emilia ran from her bedroom, her blood cold as she headed for the kitchen. When she got there, a trail of smoke crept from under the back door’s sill.
She stopped in her tracks, heat radiating through the timber at her feet, a sickly charred scent filling the air as she pried the door open. A wall of flames leaped up, halting her escape.
Fire licked at her entire back porch, the orange and blue glow engulfing her beloved potted plants along the edge and turning them into cinders. A scream jerked from her mouth, and she tripped backward, slamming onto the hardwood floor. Whatever had happened, happened quickly. This fire was no accident.
Somewhere out there, her monster of a husband waited for her to come out.
Or he waited for her to stay and die.
And her phone. It didn’t yet have enough charge for her to call for help while she ran. So, what could she do? Sit in her bedroom, attached to her charging phone, just waiting for someone to pick up while her house burned and her ex hovered somewhere nearby?
The weight of her predicament sank in, and she pressed her hand to her mouth, catching the sob ripping through her throat. She stood, then bolted for the bathroom since Anthony had told her to come out the front of the house, and she definitely wasn’t going there.
Tears stung her eyes, and she threw herself onto the cool tile floor, slamming the door shut behind her and setting the lock. She turned around, her gaze catching on the tiny frosted window above the bathtub. Her only chance at escape.
Hard breaths exploded from her lungs, and yet, each breath was an effort to produce. She scrambled forward and used the bath’s edge as a step up to the window, all while acknowledging there’d be a fall on the other side.
She cranked the window open and did her best to keep quiet, her heart pained from its racing pace. She hoisted herself over the sill, armpits aching from her weight on the thin ledge. The sky's bright blue freedom a few scrambling movements away.
