My Kind of Perfect: a Roommates-to-Lovers, Single Dad Romance (Finding Love Book 3)

by Nikki Ash

  So, a couple hours later, when there’s a knock on the door, I assume it’s her. Only when I open it, I find Victoria, dressed in the same clothes as earlier, with her makeup running down her face.

  “I’m so sorry,” she cries, pushing through the door before I can stop her.

  “You can’t be here.” I’m already grabbing my phone, ready to call nine-one-one. Something is wrong with her. It has to be drugs…or maybe she’s drunk.

  Hazel is finishing up her afternoon nap, so I’m thankful she won’t see Victoria like this. Not that she’ll remember it years from now. But I don’t want her upset.

  “I shouldn’t have acted that way this morning,” she sobs. “I’m just missing my daughter so much, and I got into a huge fight with my parents. My dad got mad when I told him I took the modeling job instead of going to school. And they didn’t know about Hazel being Chase’s…” Tears slide down her cheeks. “I know we agreed to supervised visitation, but if I could just bring her to their house to visit maybe they’ll forgive me…”

  Seeing the state of panic she’s in, I don’t want to upset her further. My goal at this point is to get her out of here so I can lock the door and call the police.

  “I would have to ask Chase,” I explain calmly. “And he’s at work right now.”

  “Can you call him, please?” she begs. “Please.”

  “I can ask him tonight, but I can’t call him while he’s at work.”

  “That’s such bullshit!” she yells. “I was married to him for years! I know damn well you can call him anytime.” She gets in my face, and I reach for my phone, now scared.

  “Okay. I’ll call him.”

  “Thank you.”

  I glance down at my phone, debating whether to call Chase or the police, when the side of my face explodes in pain. My body flies backward, hitting the hard ground, and the back of my head smacks against the wall, causing me to become momentarily disoriented.

  Before I can get up, a sharp object connects with my ribs—Victoria’s heel. She kicks me over and over again. In the ribs. In the face. I’m trying to get up, to move away from her, but she doesn’t let up. And when she finally does, and I open my eyes, she’s hovering above me, her face inches from mine.

  “I’m Hazel’s mom, not you, bitch!” She grips my hair and lifts my head then slams it against the hard wood. Pain, like I’ve never felt in my life, radiates through my body. My head goes fuzzy, my brain feeling like I’m being stabbed with a million knives.

  When I finally pry my eyes open, the house is quiet. Too quiet. Hazel! Oh my God, she took my baby. I grab my phone, dialing nine-one-one, as I roll over and climb into a standing position. My entire body groans in pain, but I focus on getting to my daughter’s room, praying Victoria didn’t do what I think she did.

  The operator answers as I step into her room. Her bed is empty. She’s gone.

  “I need to report a kidnapping,” I choke out.

  I go through the details with the operator, but it’s all a blur. My head is pounding, my side is in agony. I feel like I’ve been run over by a bus several times.

  She tells me an officer will be over right away to get my statement and ask me more questions and that an Amber alert will be sent out immediately.

  We’re hanging up just as Lexi is walking through the door.

  “What the hell happened?” she asks, setting Abigail down in Hazel’s crib.

  “Victoria,” I sob. “She stole Hazel.”

  Lexi’s eyes go wide. “Did you call the police?”

  “Yeah. They’ve put out an Amber alert and an officer is on his way here.” I clutch my phone in my hand. “I need to call Chase,” I cry out, my body racking with sobs.

  “You need to sit. I’ll call him.” She pulls out her phone and dials him. A few seconds later, she says, “Chase, it’s Lexi. I need you to call me ASAP.”

  She hangs up. “I think you’re going to need stitches.”

  “Forget about me!” I cry out. “I need to find Hazel. She said her parents wanted to see her… But I don’t know where they live or what their names are. But Chase will know.”

  “Let me try Alec. He stayed late with Chase.” She dials him on her phone and then says, “Alec, it’s Lexi. Call me.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Five o’clock.”

  “Oh my God,” I gasp. “I was out for hours. Victoria can be anywhere with Hazel. I thought…” The room around me spins, and I have to close my eyes briefly to make it stop. “I must’ve been knocked out.”

  There’s a knock on the door and I rush over to answer it, ignoring the dizziness and pain. Standing at the door are two police officers.

  “Please, I need your help,” I tell them. “My baby was kidnapped.”

  Chase

  Today has been a day from hell. First, half of the guys on shift A caught the flu and are all out. Then, while helping an elderly woman put out a fire in her fireplace because she had no idea it was a real fireplace, I dropped my phone and shattered it. I should’ve called Georgia from one of the guys’ phones to tell her, but we got a call about a car on campus that caught fire, which took hours to deal with.

  Now, as I’m about to finally leave to pick up food for dinner, hours late, the tone sounds through the station. Stein, the assistant chief, who works shift C should be here by now, but he’s stuck in traffic, so it looks like I’ll be commanding this one. Dispatch relays the details and the station becomes a whirlwind of activity.

  On the way, Alec calls my name. When I glance at him, he looks like he’s seen a ghost.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Lexi called… Fuck! I had my phone on silent, and we were so fucking busy.”

  “What’s. Fucking. Wrong?”

  “Victoria stole Hazel. They’re both missing.”

  And just like that, my entire world implodes. “Where’s Georgia?”

  “At the hospital. Victoria beat the shit out of her and she’s getting stitches.”

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!

  “They have an alert out for Victoria and Hazel. Lexi doesn’t know anything else.”

  When we arrive on the scene, a clusterfuck of activity is swarming the front of the building. I want to leave to go look for my daughter, find out what the fuck is going on, but a portion of the building is fully engulfed in flames. I can’t just walk away.

  My eyes find the name of the complex and it sounds so damn familiar… Cypress Gardens… Where the fuck have I heard that name before?

  And then it hits me. Victoria said she lived here… Fuck! This can’t be happening.

  As the guys and I jump out of the engine, we scan the scene, assessing the situation. Since I’m the Battalion chief, it’s my job to command. But as I watch half the building go up in flames, there’s no way in hell I’m standing out here on the sidelines.

  “Hey, Rich!” I yell, as I charge to the back of the rig, grabbing gear and throwing it on.

  “Chief,” he calls back, looking shocked to see me gearing up. “What’s going on?” There’s protocol, a way shit gets handled, and by me going in, I’m breaking it. But I don’t give a fuck. If that bitch has my daughter in that building, I’m going to find her or die trying.

  “I need you to command!” I toss the radio at him.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Alec yells.

  “I’m going in! Victoria lives in this building.”

  Alec curses under his breath. “All right, let’s go. You’re with me.”

  Reaching back, I turn on the air on my tank and pull my mask on. Thankfully, it’s only a three-story building, and the fire appears to be contained to the east side. I send up a silent prayer that Victoria and Hazel aren’t here, and if they are, they aren’t on this side.

  “Chase, you there?” Rich says over the radio.

  “Yeah.”

  “The fire started in apartment 257. It’s leased to a Victoria Burke.”

  “Fuck,” Alec curses at the same time I do.
r />   It’s her damn apartment.

  Taking my Halligan in my hand, I jam it into the doorframe of apartment 257 and pry the door open. When we break through into the apartment, the fire is out of control, thick clouds of smoke curling up toward the ceiling. Thomas and Carter work the pipe to knock down the flames, while Alec and I search the place.

  With a thermal image camera in hand, I hold it up, scanning the darkness for any movement. The second I step foot into the master bedroom, my body goes numb. Victoria. She’s lying on the bed, her arm draped off the side with a needle sticking out of her vein.

  Rushing over to her, I try to shake her awake. Nothing. She’s out, whether it’s from smoke inhalation or from the drugs, I don’t know.

  I glance around for Hazel but don’t see her anywhere.

  Lifting Victoria into my arms, I radio down to command that I’m bringing her out. In the hall, I hand her over to Carter. “Take her!”

  The second I go back in, the smoke is thicker, and the roaring of nearby flames can be heard over the piercing alarms. Dropping to my hands and knees, I search for my daughter, desperately throwing shit everywhere. She’s not in the master bedroom or bathroom, so I move on to the rest of the apartment. I hear Alec yelling clear throughout the place, but I refuse to take his word for it. I need to see for myself she isn’t here. The flames are licking the walls, the ceiling boiling and close to caving, and I know my time is limited. There’s no way anyone, let alone a baby, would survive in this heat, in this smoke.

  The call comes over the radio. “Command to all units. Evacuate the building. I repeat, all units, evacuate.”

  “Chase!” Alec calls out, struggling to get a line on the flames. “They ordered evacuation.”

  “Hazel is in here somewhere. I need to find her.”

  “The place is clear!” he yells back. “If she were here, we would’ve picked it up on the camera. We gotta go.”

  “I need to find her!” I go through a door I haven’t gone through yet and find what was the nursery, fire rooted in every corner. Ignoring the command to evacuate desperately coming through the radio, I enter the room, crawling on my hands and knees with the camera in my hand.

  Sweat pools inside my mask, the hiss of the tank and my heartbeat the only sounds. Fuck! This can’t be happening. She has to be here somewhere. I check the guest bathroom again, then move on to the kitchen. Alec has cleared it, but I need to see it with my own eyes. And that’s when I see it… One of Hazel’s shoes. Georgia bought them for her last week because her feet had outgrown the old ones. I grab it to make sure I’m not seeing shit, but I’m not. It’s half melted, but I know it’s her shoe.

  On my hands and knees, I search the other rooms for a third time. I’m crawling down the hallway when Alec yells, “We have to get out now! We’ve searched every part of this place and she’s not here.”

  “She has to be!” I choke out. “She has to be.”

  His sad eyes meet mine. “Chase…” He can’t finish his sentence, but I know what he’s thinking. If she’s here, there’s no way she’s still alive.

  Command radios in that the fire’s made its way to the boiler room, and Alec glances at me.

  “Get out of here!” I bark, but he doesn’t move. “I mean it! Go!”

  With forty pounds of gear on me, sweat clings to my body. It’s hard to breathe, hard to move. My hands and knees are burning with the boiling water beneath me.

  I don’t care about any of that, though. My daughter has to be somewhere in this fucking place. I refuse to believe she’s dead. Alec is wrong. I’m going to find her and save her. As he reluctantly exits the apartment, I head toward the nursery again. Maybe she’s hiding somewhere. She loves to play hide and seek. What if she’s somewhere scared, waiting for me to find her.

  A loud explosion shakes the building, stopping me in my tracks. I have to get out now if I want to make it out alive. For a brief moment, as I glance around, I consider staying. Is my life even worth living without my daughter?

  “Chase!” Alec yells, shocking the hell out of me. “Let’s go! I’m not leaving without you.” He grabs me by my tank and yanks me out the door and down the stairs. When we make it far enough away, my feet give out. I drop to the ground and watch as the entire building explodes like fireworks on the Fourth of July.

  A second and third engine pull up, working the fire together, but I can’t move from my place. I can’t stop watching my life go up in flames. And I don’t budge until Rich says, “The EMTs called.”

  Ripping my mask off, I whip my head around, praying someone found my daughter. “Hazel?”

  He shakes his head. “Victoria died on the way to the hospital. They don’t know the cause of death yet.”

  I nod and stand. I know what it is. Overdose. She died doing the only thing she loves, the thing she put above everyone in her life, and she took my daughter with her.

  “Maybe she wasn’t in there,” Alec says.

  I hold up the shoe I was clutching in my glove and remove my tank. “She was there,” I choke out. “This was her shoe.”

  Alec’s face falls. “Fuck, man.”

  “I gotta go.”

  “Go,” he says. “We’ll handle this...”

  I don’t hear anything else he says. My head is fucking numb. I strip out of my gear, leaving it on the rig, and then start walking. I have no phone, no car, so I have no other choice.

  I end up at the hospital. The nurse at the front desk glances at me with wide eyes. I’m sure I look a mess, but I don’t give a shit.

  I give her Georgia’s name and she directs me to her room. When I walk in, she’s in tears, crying into her phone. “Please, I just need an update. I—”

  When her eyes land on me, her words come to an abrupt halt, before she speaks. “The police located Victoria’s parents. She showed up with Hazel, but they got into an argument and she left. They haven’t seen her or Hazel since. The police are searching for her, and I was asking them for an update—”

  “I have an update,” I say flatly, cutting her off.

  “You found her?” Her tear-stained face brightens.

  I hand her the half melted shoe and her face drops. “Chase…”

  “She’s dead.”

  Her head snaps up. “What? Who? How?”

  “Hazel… and Victoria. They were in a fire. It hasn’t been confirmed yet, but Victoria overdosed, and I couldn’t find Hazel’s body. I was too late. She’s gone.”

  Georgia gasps. “No.” She shakes her head, and it’s then I notice she has bruises and cuts all over her face. Stitches above her brow. I should ask her if she’s okay, but I don’t have it in me to care.

  “Yes,” I bark out, my grief quickly morphing into anger. “She’s dead! Because you, with your rose-fucking-colored glasses refuse to see the world for what it is! Fucked up!”

  She flinches. “Chase, I’m…” She breaks into sobs. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Of course you didn’t mean for this to happen. Because you never could’ve imagined it turning bad because you have no clue about how ugly this fucking world is!” I swipe the tray by her bed, the contents flying all over the place.

  “Enough!” a deep voice barks from behind me. Tristan, Georgia’s dad, walks inside. “I get you’re hurting, but so is she.”

  “Good!” I bark. “She should be hurting because she caused this.” I point my finger at Georgia. “I will never forgive you for this.”

  Fresh tears fill her eyes, and they’re the last thing I see before I walk out of the room and out of Georgia’s life. I should’ve known this would all end badly. She’s too good, too sweet, too fucking innocent and naïve. She just doesn’t understand how the real world works. How drug addicts like Victoria work. She wants to see the good in everyone and everything, but that’s her reality, not mine. In my world, good doesn’t exist.

  When I get home, I stumble through the door. Robotically, I shower, and once I’m dressed, having no idea where to go from here, I end up in
Hazel’s room, sitting in her rocking chair and holding her stuffed animal.

  I bring it to my nose, inhaling her scent, and then I fucking lose it. In a blink of an eye, I’ve lost my entire world.

  Georgia

  I can’t stop crying. The tears won’t stop falling. My body hurts so damn badly. But my heart… my heart has been destroyed. It’s all my fault. I wanted to believe the good in her, and in the end, my naivety got Hazel killed. I should’ve listened to Chase. But I was so hell-bent on wanting to do the right thing, be a good person. I wanted Victoria to have the chance Lexi’s mom never got. I didn’t want Hazel to one day have to be told that we refused to let her mom see her.

  And because of all that, she’s dead. She died in a fire by herself. She was probably scared, calling out for us, and I failed her.

  “Georgia, I know you’re hurting, but you have to calm down,” Mom says. “The doctor is going to admit you.”

  “I’m trying,” I cry out, hiccuping through my sobs. “It just… hurts. I never meant for this to happen and now she’s gone.” I clutch my hands to my chest, wishing for God to take me instead of her.

  “I know, sweetheart,” Mom coos. “I know.” She runs her fingers through my hair, but it does nothing to soothe me. Chase was right. This is all my fault. And nothing I do will make it right. We lost the most precious little girl today because of me.

  A couple hours later, the doctor discharges me and I go to the police station to make my statement to get it over with. I can barely hold it together when I recount what happened. They inform me what Chase has already told me, that Victoria died from a drug overdose. As of now, Hazel’s body hasn’t been found, and until forensics can get in there and investigate, it will remain an open case.

  Not wanting to go home and upset Chase further, I instead go to my parents’ place. Exhausted and heartbroken, I lie in my childhood bed and, with the help of the prescription the doctor gave me, I fall into a fitful slumber, wishing when I wake up this all will be a horrible nightmare.

  Chase