by Olivia Rush
The kids broke out in wild cheers the moment they realized Micah was safe. But I was too frightened to even make a sound. All I could do was watch Ethan climb down the ladder, Micah clinging onto him for dear life.
9
CHLOE
“OK,” I said, kneeling down in front of Micah as the class was gathered in front of the fire station. “What have we learned today?”
“That Ethan’s awesome!” said Micah, pumping his fist.
I couldn’t help but admire how resilient kids were. Not thirty minutes ago, Micah had been terrified out of his mind. Now all he could think about was how cool his new hero Ethan was.
I glanced up at Ethan, who leaned against the brick face of the station, his arms crossed, the slightest hint of an expression on his face that seemed to playfully suggest: “Is the kid wrong?”
“That’s not the lesson I was going for,” I said.
“Never climb up on a fire station ladder!” said Emma, one of the girls in the class.
“That’s a little specific, but better,” I said. “The real lesson is don’t wander off during field trips like that. Micah, you’re so lucky that Ethan was there to look out for you. If you did something silly like that again, he might not be around. It’s dangerous not to follow directions.”
Micah looked down and nodded, seeming to understand.
“Now,” I said, trying to make my voice chipper, despite still feeling totally shaken up. “What do we say to Ethan for being so nice as to let us come to his fire station?”
“Thank you, Ethan,” said all of the kids together.
“My pleasure, guys,” he said. “Now, be good on the way back to school. Don’t give poor Miss Parker anything else to worry about.”
“OK,” they said again.
“Now, form up, guys,” I said, clapping my hands. “Find a buddy, and let’s get ready to head back.”
The kids gathered into their lines, and as they did, I sidled over to Ethan. I opened my mouth to speak, but before I could he raised his palm.
“Don’t even worry about it,” he said. “And you’d better not be blaming yourself for this.”
I sighed. He’d taken the words right out of my mouth.
“I’m just thinking about what might’ve happened if you weren’t there, if you weren’t able to…”
He shook his head. “Don’t think about it,” he said. “It didn’t happen—no sense getting upset over nothing.”
Almost by instinct, I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him into a tight hug. “How many more acts of heroism am I going to see you pull off in front of my eyes?” I asked.
“Hopefully that’s the last one,” he said, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “They really take it out of you.”
I gave him a small punch to the shoulder, noting just how thick and strong his muscles were in that area. Geez, his body was amazing. “I think it’s time to get these kids back to the safety of the school,” I said. “At least, before Micah tries climbing the Empire State Building or something.”
Ethan let out a small laugh. Then a moment passed. I couldn’t help but hope that he would ask me out for drinks or something.
“Good to see you,” he said instead. “Stay out of trouble.”
“I’ll do my best,” I said.
He nodded and then headed back into the station. And that was that. I stood there for a moment, feeling longing and attraction and confusion all at once.
“Um, Miss Parker?” asked Emma. “Are we going to go?”
I shook my head, snapping myself back into reality.
“Let’s do it.”
We arrived back at the school with an hour of the day left, so I killed the rest of the day by having the kids write about what they’d learned at the fire station. After they left, I went over some of the essays at my desk and found that the top subject among all of the kids was, of course, Ethan. I sighed, a smile on my face as I thought about how I really couldn’t blame them.
I gave Micah’s parents a call to let them know just what he’d been up to that day. They were a little worried, but not surprised. They seemed to understand that he was the kind of kid who found trouble the second you turned your back and were just pleased to hear that one of the firemen had been there in the nick of time.
Ethan, Ethan, Ethan. The man had only been in my life for a few days but already everything seemed to be revolving around him. And that included me. Part of me wanted to swing by the station after work and see if he was interested in a replay of the other night—including how it ended.
Instead, I decided that a quiet night home was in order. I walked the few blocks back to my small but cozy apartment, where I plopped my papers on the kitchen table and made a beeline to the fridge. I pulled a bottle of cold rosé out and gave the top a twist. After I’d poured myself a glass, I took a seat at the table, ready to go over some schoolwork and get my lesson plan for the next week in order.
Instead, I ended up going over to YouTube and pulling up the video of Ethan’s daring rescue and watching it once more. I felt that same thrill, that same warm spread of arousal. I couldn’t get over how attracted to this man I was. I’d always considered myself a modern kind of girl, the sort who liked to think she was more into kindhearted, sensitive men. So what if they didn’t have the biggest muscles or if they weren’t over six feet tall? They were the kind of men I should be interested in.
But here was Ethan, all muscle and courage and bravery. He was a man’s man in the classic sense, and I just couldn’t stop thinking about him. I’d always imagined myself an independent sort of girl, the type who didn’t even really need a man. But here I was, fantasizing about being held by Ethan, having him press me close to him, keeping me safe. It was strange and confusing.
I watched the video one last time, then forced myself to shut the laptop and turn my attention to my schoolwork. The evening went on, and soon I was finished with everything—along with a couple tall glasses of wine. It was dark out, and now that I had a little booze swimming around in my head, the idea of going to the station and paying a little visit to big Mr. Hero sounded even better than it had earlier.
I put the idea out of my mind as I drained the last bits of wine from my glass. I needed a good night’s sleep after the day I’d had. In my bedroom, I stripped down to my bra and panties, slid under the covers, and was out as soon as my head hit the pillow.
I woke up to an irritation in my throat. My eyes shot open, and I glanced around my bedroom, noting that it was still dark. There was something else strange, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. It seemed like there was an odd film over my eyes, as though everything was slightly out of focus.
I chalked it up to some effect of being pulled out of my sleep and closed my eyes again. Then the irritation returned. A dry cough sputtered from my throat. It was just a light cough at first, and then it turned harsh and violent, as though my lungs were doing their damnedest to get me to clear something out of me.
After a sip of water from the glass on my bedside table, I felt a little better. When I looked around again, however, that strange film was still there. It was worse, even. With a flick of the lamp switch, my bedroom filled with light. Now that there was some illumination, I could see that the odd film wasn’t a “film” at all.
It was smoke.
I shot up out of my bed, glancing around frantically for the source of the smoke. I didn’t see anything on fire in my room. It had to be the kitchen. More coughs burst out of my chest as I fumbled around for something to put on. I found a large T-shirt hanging off of my bedroom desk chair and slipped into it as I stumbled out to the other room of the apartment. I flicked on a light, expecting to see a small fire in my oven. But there was nothing, just more smoke.
Worry ran through me. More and more smoke filled my apartment, and breathing became more difficult by the second. Whatever the source of the smoke was, I had to get out of the apartment, and now. Shoes were in order, and I stepped into a pa
ir of sneakers by front door, grabbed my bag with my laptop and school supplies inside, and placed my hand on the knob.
With a shock, I pulled my hand back—the doorknob was hot.
Now, it’d been some time since my last fire safety course, but one lesson that’d stuck with me was that if a door was hot, it meant that there was a fire on the other side. Still, I needed to know if the way out was, in fact, blocked. A towel around the knob protected my hand from the heat, and I slowly pulled the door open.
A huge plume of smoke rushed into the apartment, a raging fire visible through it. I slammed the door hard, violent coughs exploding from my lungs. I leaned against the door for support as I coughed, but the heat of the wood was soon too uncomfortable against my back.
My heart raced—I needed to get out, and fast. I threw the strap of my bag over my shoulder and fumbled through the now-smoke-filled room, making my way toward the fire escape. Strength faded from my body by the second. The smoke was doing its damage.
By the time I reached the windowsill that led to the fire escape, I had to stop and rest for a moment. The smoke sapped the energy from me with each breath I took, but all I could think about was breathing. Black formed on the outside corners of my eyes, and my heart beat like a drum.
As I leaned against the windowsill, I noticed something down in the alley. Or several somethings, I should say. Three men, all dressed in black hurried away, glancing back over their shoulders every few steps. I don’t know what came over me, but I knew that these men, whoever they were, had something to do with the fire.
With a grunt, I pulled the window open and shouted down to the men.
“Hey!”
They stopped dead in their tracks and turned back toward me. Through the smoke and the blur, I saw that one of them, the taller man in the middle, had a long scar down the side of his face, one that curved from his jaw to his ear.
“Leave her!” he shouted. “Fire’s got her good as dead!”
The other two men nodded, and the group took off again, this time vanishing around the corner toward the street. I coughed again, my hands yanking back from the window and causing it to drop back down with a thud.
“Oh no,” I said, my apartment now so filled with smoke that I could hardly see my hands in front of my face.
I tried to open the window again, but every last bit of strength had left my body. I struggled against it, but all I could think about was the burning in my lungs and the stinging in my eyes. My body fell hard onto the ground, and through the floor I could feel the heat from the fire below.
My eyes closed, and my last thought was, So. That’s that.
But it wasn’t over yet. The events of the next several minutes were a blur, but there were two things I remembered with perfect clarity: the strobe of lights from the fire trucks outside, and the look of focused intensity on Ethan’s face as he pulled me up from the floor.
10
ETHAN
The minutes seemed to drag into hours as I sat by Chloe’s bed in the emergency room of the hospital. The lights were bright and sterile, and the low noise of patients and nurses moving around here and there echoed through the expansive space. Every now and then someone would be requested over the PA system, the dispassionate voice on the other end asking them to report to this room or this floor or that ward.
Still dressed in my fireman’s uniform, the jacket draped over the other seat in the room, I sat with my hands clasped together between my spread legs. Chloe was unconscious on the bed in front of me, a breathing apparatus hooked up to her mouth.
Thinking about how close she’d come made me sick to my stomach. The crew and I had arrived just in time to rescue her and the other people in the building. If we’d been just five minutes later… I didn’t want to consider it.
The doctors said that her lungs had been mildly burned from the smoke and the heat. She’d likely be fine once she woke up, but still. It struck me as odd how protective I felt toward Chloe. When she’d been brought to the hospital I’d simply followed her as though it were the most normal thing in the world. It didn’t even occur to me until I’d plopped into the chair across from her that I’d only know her for a few days.
Felt like a lot longer than that, though. And I wasn’t sure why.
“Where am I?”
Chloe’s voice was muffled through the plastic of the breathing machine. I pressed the call button, then jumped out of the chair and to Chloe’s bedside. Her eyes were open, but I could tell that she wasn’t entirely sure who I was, or why she was there.
“Hey, hey,” I said, placing my hand on her arm. “How are you?”
“I…I dunno.”
A pair of nurses entered the room before the conversation could go any further.
“She just woke up,” I said.
“And you are?” asked one of the nurses, a heavyset woman with red hair.
“I’m, uh, the fireman who brought her here.”
“Well, you’re going to have to give us some space.”
I did as they asked, leaving the room for a few minutes. A short time later, the nurses came out.
“How is she?”
“She’s fine,” the redheaded nurse said. “About as lucky as it gets. One of the other women from the apartment above her suffered major burns to her lungs. Chloe’s in much better shape than that.”
“Thanks for everything,” I said.
The nurse gave me a nod and headed off. Before I had a chance to reenter the room, I spotted a pair of cops coming down the hallway, serious looks on their faces.
“You with the girl in there?” one of them asked, a skinny guy with a thin mustache and a chrome-dome head. “A Miss Chloe Parker?”
“Kind of,” I said.
I let them know very briefly just why I was here with her.
“Damn,” the other cop said, a thick-bellied man with childlike eyes. “We heard about what you guys pulled off. Saved everyone in that building.”
I gave a nod.
“Anyway,” said the first cop. “We’ve gotten word that the fire’s being investigated as an arson. Just like the other one your crew took care of the other day.”
My gut instinct had been confirmed. I don’t know how I’d known it, but I did.
“Good to hear you boys are on top of it,” I said.
“Thanks,” said the bald cop. “We’re here to ask the girl some questions if you want to stick around.”
“Will do,” I said.
With that, I stepped into the room, the two cops following behind. Chloe sat up in bed, a little more light in her eyes than before—a good sign.
“Ethan!” she exclaimed, her voice still a little raw from the smoke.
She stuck her arms out toward me, and I went in for a quick hug. There was an intimacy to our embrace. Just like everything else, it seemed to be something more than what I’d expect from only knowing this girl for a few days. It was nice all the same.
“What happened?” she asked, her eyes bouncing from me to the cops.
“What do you remember?” I asked.
“I remember smoke in my apartment…then feeling like I was, um, going to die…then…you!”
“That’s the long and short of it,” I said, putting my hands on my hips.
“Good morning, Miss Parker,” said the bald cop. “I’m Officer Paulson and this is Officer Collins. We’re going to ask you some questions about what happened to you last night.”
“Wait a minute,” she said, a frantic expression appearing on her face. “Did you say ‘morning’? What about my kids?”
“The boys at the station called your school,” I said. “They got a sub covered for you. Don’t worry.”
“Wow,” she said. “Saving my ass all kinds of ways.”
“Anyway, Miss Parker,” said Officer Paulson. “We need to know if there’s anything else you remember from last night.”
“Why?” she asked. “It was just a fire.”
“It might be arson,” said Officer Col
lins.
“Arson?” she asked, a quizzical expression on her face. “Why would anyone burn down some mediocre apartment building?”
“We’re thinking it wasn’t the whole building they were after,” said Officer Collins. “The fire started in the business on the first floor.”
“The deli?” she asked. “That doesn’t make anything clearer. Who would torch the deli on purpose?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” he said. “If there’s anything you might be able to tell us, it could make the difference between breaking this case open or not.”
A look of concentration appeared on Chloe’s face. Then she shook her head.
“Nothing,” she said. “Everything’s just too blurry.”
Then a flash of realization lit up her features.
“Wait a minute,” she said, raising her finger in the air. “I remember something—before I passed out and you came to save me.”
“What was it?” asked Officer Collins. “Anything can help.”
“I remember when I first tried to make an escape out of the window. I looked down from the fire escape, and I saw these three guys there. I didn’t recognize them, and even though I was freaking out about the smoke and everything I remembered thinking how weird it was that they were down there. And they were dressed all in black, like they were trying to hide or something.”
The officers became very, very interested. And I was too—I remembered the three men who’d been lurking in the alley behind the other torched building. Officer Paulson pulled out a notepad from his back pocket and began eagerly scrawling.
“Anything else you remember about these guys?” asked Cornrom.
“I don’t know…” she said as she looked away. “Wait! They looked at me. They saw that I saw them.”
“Anything else could help,” said Paulson. “Even little details that you might think don’t matter.”