Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 113270 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 566(@200wpm)___ 453(@250wpm)___ 378(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113270 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 566(@200wpm)___ 453(@250wpm)___ 378(@300wpm)
“Breezy, baby,” I whisper as I pull her into my arms. My voice is choked, and my eyes scan her face and body wildly. “Fuck.”
My pulse is a hammer. I press my ear close to her mouth and feel the breaths push from her lips.
Her body’s warm. Chest rising. Lips still pink. Breathing. Thank God, she’s breathing. But her eyes stay closed, lashes still.
She’s not conscious, but she’s here and she’s breathing and she’s alive, and I made it to her.
My throat is nearly closed, the raw burn of smoke and tears mixing in a potent form of poison, and yet, I take my first full breath since I sprinted out of The Country Club.
“Okay, okay. You’re okay. I’ve got you. You’re okay.” I don’t know if I’m telling her or myself. My throat’s on fire, lungs clawing for air, but all I can focus on is getting her out of here. She needs a hospital. Now.
I scoop her up and into my arms, gathering her carefully and pulling her T-shirt up over her mouth and nose to help with the smoke as much as I can.
“Hold on, Breezy. Hold on for me.”
Moving quickly, I take the shortest route to clean air, exiting the bedroom and pushing past the spray of cascading water as it falls on us from the ceiling as the firefighters outside soak the attic where the fire has spread across the entire roofline.
Out the sun-room and the back door and onto the deck, I move quickly around the house as fast as I can without hurting or dropping her.
Sheriff Pete is the first to spot me, pointing and whistling to a couple of guys off to his left. I don’t stop or slow down, but they match my speed, running toward me. Halfway through the front yard, we meet.
“She’s alive, she’s breathing, but she’s not conscious!” I shout at them even though we’re mere feet apart. “We need to get her to the fucking ambulance! To a fucking hospital! Now!”
Nate Woodall and Barry Flyshman, two of the volunteer firefighters for Red Bridge and guys I’ve avoided getting to know for all the years I’ve lived here, take Breezy from my arms and carry her to the stretcher waiting behind the lone town ambulance. I try to follow, but I trip over my feet as my legs give out, a cough of smoke and debris rattling out of my chest and landing on my hand.
Mud and water soak through my jeans and onto my knees in the grass in front of what used to be my house. Smoke still rolls, though lessened significantly by the work of the firefighters behind me, and the heat of smoldering flames licks at my back and fights the chill that invades my bones.
Bennett and Logan rush toward Breezy while Norah stays back with Autumn, and I struggle to my feet, willing myself to carry forward. Randy stops me with a hand at my shoulder—I think, at first, to halt me—but ultimately helps me over to my truck and lifts me inside. He runs to the driver’s side and pulls out in a cloud of gravel behind the ambulance, and I fight the urge to rub at my stinging eyes with my dirty, shaking hands.
“It’s going to be okay,” Randy assures me confidently, eyes on the road and one tight fist clenched around the wheel. “You got her out…you got them out.”
I nod. I know. I did. And the feeling is poisonously bittersweet.
To think I made it this time when I couldn’t for Abigail and Lucy. To think, even now, I still don’t know if Breezy and the baby are okay.
I pray to a God I abandoned long ago, and I do it without shame. I beg for mercy. I beg for compassion.
I beg for Beatrice Bishop and the baby in her belly.
I beg.
Please, God. Please let them be okay. Please don’t let this end in devastation a second time.
Please don’t make me regret where I should’ve been a second time.
Please, I beg. If you have to take someone, take me instead.
46
Tad
Ten Years Ago
March 14th
Debris falls all around me as my oxygen alarm rings out into the quickly dwindling space. Thick black smoke cloaks my face and robs me of my sense of direction, and a heat unlike I’ve ever felt licks at me from every bearing.
Water sprays on me in waves, droplets splattering across my mask through the cloud of smoke and rendering me even more useless. A sooty paste coats the clear surface, smearing badly when I try to rub at it with my glove. I swallow, choking on an airlessness as the tank strapped to my back depletes, but I won’t be deterred. I rip off the mask and toss it aside, sinking to the floor to find any bit of clean air I can.