by Shey Stahl
Maybe this will be my death.
Maybe this will be the end of the sick joke they call falling in love when life won’t let that happen. But still, something inside me pushes back when my eyes fatefully find Mila on the floor surrounded by smoke.
She’s tied to chair, face down and unconscious, but she’s breathing. Immediately I think of Evan. Images of his body being carried out, the look on Jacey’s face when I saw her. I can’t shake it.
But then I suddenly can. Right now, I can save her. I can.
“Stay with me, honey,” I beg, cutting away the ties and running down the stairs, pieces of the building collapsing around us. “Goddamn it, please just fuckin’ stay with me.”
At the sound of my voice, she stirs in my arms, whispering words I can’t understand, can’t hear over the roar of the flames.
I have her in my arms, Owen and Finn leading the way, guiding me back to the south stairwell.
Mila slips in my arms as I run, moaning in pain. She’s burned. Badly. “You’re okay . . . hold onto me. I got you.”
She says nothing. The black velvet smoke around us curls in heavy rolling sheets, a vapor so dense it feels like tar on my skin. Tangles of orange and yellow surround us as I run through the halls on the first floor.
She’s struggling for breaths, gasping through the smoke. I rip my mask off my face and hold it to her mouth. “Breathe, baby . . . God, please, just breathe . . .” I beg. “Breathe for me! Please just fucking breathe! Don’t leave me . . .” At some point, I don’t even know what I’m saying to her, just that I’m begging.
When I have her outside, I hand her immediately off to the paramedics who take over and get her in the ambulance. It’s the look of her in that ambulance, in pain as her skin bubbles around her chest and neck, that breaks my fucking heart. Those screams are the sound of everything inside of me dying.
I can’t fix burns. I did what I could. I got her out, but I can’t save her. I can’t take those burns away. I can’t take the pain away.
Cap finds me, angry and pointing in my face, the lights of the fire engines and police cars lighting his eyes in red and blue. “You’re on probation. I told you to stay out of that hotel.”
I don’t care. Not anymore.
Mila’s father and mother find me next. I’ve never met her mother, and I certainly don’t want to right now. But she hugs me, clinging to my soot-covered gear as I gasp for fresh air, my lungs full of smoke.
“Thank you,” she cries into my chest. “Thank you for getting to her.”
I don’t have the heart to tell them it might have been too late. Mostly because I don’t want to believe it.
Her father’s appreciative stare lands on mine. “Thank you, Caleb.”
I nod, but again, I can’t say anything. I can’t even breathe.
When I close my eyes, I attempt to breathe, just simply breathe in a little, but there’s no air. There’s only smoke now. Not only had I inhaled a lot of it, but I’m so fucked up in the head, I can’t. My stomach drops knowing that glimpse of her I’ve just had might be my last.
My body shakes, and I can’t stop it. Nothing can. It’s like poison being pumped through my veins. Rage rushes through me as my chest heaves in gasping breaths at the frail hope she will survive. That’s when my knees give way.
Smoke kills. It does. And it’s sometimes not right away.
Will this be it? The night I lose everything?
Backdraft
A fire phenomenon caused when heat and heavy smoke (unburned fuel particles) accumulate inside a compartment, depleting the available air, and then oxygen/air is re-introduced, completing the fire triangle and causing rapid combustion.
Don’t worry. I’m still alive.
In a weird way, I don’t remember much about the fire. Maybe that’s a good thing?
What I have are reminders, some subtle, others more prominent.
Everyone has a story. Some are beautiful, tales told through old souls and meals shared with loved ones.
Some tragic. Stories you wouldn’t believe unless you’d witnessed them.
Some just fucked up. Like sacrificing my life because he couldn’t have me.
My story? Heroic. It was one night, one outcome, where everything I hoped would turn out right, didn’t. I had nothing left to give, dying, alone. Until the arms of my firefighter carried me to safety.
I remember his voice that night, his muffled pleas for me to breath under his mask and the warmth of his breath against my neck that kept me there, on the edge, with him.
I remember the air, so thick my skin felt tight, my lips and cheeks burning so much I felt them cracking.
I remember laying my head against his chest as he took quick steps and the way my arms wrapped around his neck, holding on as tight as my weak arms would let me.
I remember him begging, “Breathe, baby . . . please, just breathe . . .” and removing his breathing mask, placing it against my face, urging me to take a breath.
And that’s all I remember.
The next thing I recall is waking up in the hospital bed four days later with second-degree burns covering my chest, neck, and a third degree burn on my right arm.
I’m not concerned with any of that. I don’t care about the scars or how long it’s going to take to heal. I’ll deal with all of it because of the one holding my hand, begging me to stay strong.
“I can’t lose you,” he tells me, kissing my hand over the bandages.
There’s sincerity in his words and sadness in his eyes and I desperately want to ease his pain.
“Well, I’m kinda stuck here for a while so you have me until then because I physically can’t run away from you.” It’s meant to be a joke, one I thought maybe this guy with tormented eyes and a downturned mouth might possibly laugh at given everything we’ve been through.
He doesn’t laugh. He runs his thumb carefully over the bandage on my arm. His eyes don’t meet mine; I’m not sure they can. His brows pull together, and he takes a few breaths before he says, “This is the part where you run away, Mila.” He turns his head and looks at me with pure agony in his eyes.
His words, his warning, it feels like it penetrates my soul, and the way he looks at me, the way he’s touching me, I forget about everything else.
“No, this is the part where I stay.”
Beside me, he’s breathing heavily, and I touch his cheek, wanting to comfort him. His face crumples, his eyes squeezing shut as he nods. He knows I’m going to stay no matter what.
“Why would you want to? You’re a beautiful woman who has it all together, and I burned it to the fucking ground and pissed on the fucking ashes.” I flinch at his words and want to slap him for thinking any of what happened was his fault. It was Nixon’s, not his. He didn’t leave me to die in the flames. He saved me. How can he not see he’s a goddamn hero as far as I’m concerned?
Just as I’m about to tell him off, my heart racing with the idea that he’s pushing me away at a time like this, my dad comes in. He has minor burns, nothing like the ones I have, but it’s enough he spent a few days in the hospital as well.
Caleb stands when my dad comes in, dropping my hand from his.
“No, you stay.” He gestures to Caleb with a flick of his wrist. “What I have to say the both of you need to hear.” Tears brim his gray eyes, his chin shaking and he regards Caleb. “Thank you, Caleb. I know those words don’t come close to expressing how grateful her mother and I am for you saving her life, but it’s all I have. I know I’ve treated you unfairly and I’m embarrassed at the man I’ve allowed myself to become, but please understand that Mila, she’s our everything. From the moment she came into our lives, she’s been our world. Her whole life I’ve worried about losing her. I only want the best for her and I worry she’s making bad decisions. But she’s an adult, and I have to remember that.”
It takes Caleb a minute before he nods, reaching for my father’s hand. “There’s no reason to thank me, Mr. Wellington.” His eyes move
to mine when he says, “I would have given my own life to save hers.”
Tears roll down my cheeks. He loves me. He definitely wants me to have his babies.
My father moves toward me and gently kisses my forehead. “Get some rest, sweetheart.”
I stop him, my hand gently on his wrist. “Dad . . . did everyone make it out okay?”
Everything happened so fast that night I have no idea if anyone was killed.
Dad gives me a weak smile. “Yes, everyone that mattered, thanks to guys like Caleb.” My heart swells with pride that I can now call Caleb my boyfriend. Whether he knows it or not, we’re totally boyfriend and girlfriend now. In my book, if you rescue a girl from a burning building—and stay by her side for four days even though she’s unconscious—you’re dating. Officially. And that only applies to me, not the other women he rescues.
My father’s expression darkens into what I know to be hatred. “I can’t say the same for Nixon.”
I knew Nixon didn’t make it. It was one of the first things Caleb had told me.
You’re probably wondering what happened to that sick fuck, aren’t you?
Well, I killed him. Shot him with his own gun and then burned the body.
I’m lying. None of that happened. I just wish it played out that way.
Actually, this is how it went down. After sacrificing my body to the fire gods, he rushed out of the hotel, got lost and they found him dead in the stairwell. Died from smoke inhalation hours later.
How’s that for karma? The fire set to kill the girl you’re obsessed with like some kind of sick fuck kills you.
I won’t be attending his funeral.
When my dad leaves, there’s a look of concern on Caleb’s face I’d never seen before. A look that, for someone as controlled as he always has been, seems disoriented and confused.
I’m the first to speak. “I don’t care what you say next, Caleb Mathew Ryan, but I love you, and if you thinking you’ve burned me to the ground, well then, by all means, I’ll be ashes if it means I can have you too.”
He inhales deeply, searching for words, or maybe the courage to say them. Maybe he sees when you finally listen, when you find the words you need, that’s when the pain finally stops. “Don’t give up on me.”
“I’m not going to. I’m very determined.” I hold up my bandaged arm, smiling. “Even burns couldn’t keep me down.”
He laughs, lightly and leans in. There’s a smile on his face, but it does nothing to ease the conflict in his eyes. “Does it feel like I don’t care?” he asks, reaching for my hand again, his tone full of warmth. “That I don’t love you?”
Oh shit, we’re being serious. When I don’t say anything, he stares at me. I hesitate for a moment but say, “I know you love me, but you don’t know how to say it.”
His jaw tightens, eyes searching mine for an answer, a way to say the words his mouth won’t form. You’d think it’d be easy, right? Just say what you mean. It’s not for someone like Caleb because everything he’s ever loved has been brutally ripped from his life and burned.
“If you can’t feel my intentions here, I’m doing something wrong, and I’m sorry for that. If this stops beating”—he brushes his knuckles softly over my left breast above my heart—“mine does, too.”
I’ve had a few experiences of intimacy in my life, and all of them have been very different from one another and only physical. Even my connection with Caleb was physical in the beginning, but he tested my vulnerabilities and weakened my ability to say no to him since the first time I sat on his lap. He stole my heart, and he knew I would never be the same. He made sure of it.
I try to think about this in a way Caleb would, related to a fire.
In order for a fire to burn you need three things. Oxygen. Heat. Fuel.
We’ve got oxygen, we’ve got heat, now we needed something to burn.
Someone once told me that in order to make a relationship work, you have to give it everything you have and then give everything you didn’t think you had to give.
It makes sense now.
And as I look at him now, a shell of the man I first met, I’m reminded that I’ve seen his anger, his pride and watched them destroy him just the same.
But I’ve never seen him like this. In love and close to admitting it.
As carefully as I can, I lean forward and press my palms to his cheeks. His eyes are anxious. He’s not sure what I’m going to say next, and it scares him. He blinks, and when he opens his eyes again, those evergreen depths are full of anger and pain.
I don’t want to cry, but the tears surface and then spill over before I can stop them. “Caleb, if we don’t give this everything we have, we’re always going to wonder. I don’t want that. I want to know I gave everything I had.”
Leaning in, his breath blows over my face as he breathes, then presses a gentle kiss on my lips. “I want that, too,” he says against my tear-soaked lips, his hands sliding from my cheeks, mindful of my burns. “I can’t lose you.” Drawing back, his stare is intense, like he knows what’s said next is important. “I know I haven’t said it, and it’s not that I don’t feel it. It’s because love isn’t a word I can use as easily as others would, not with what I’ve seen. I don’t feel love when I’m with you.” My brow furrows, an ache in my chest as I attempt to follow what he’s saying. It doesn’t help that I’m on pain pills and they’re clouding my thoughts, but he’s speaking from his heart and I know I need to listen carefully. “Love is an experience. You can’t put a word on an experience. It’s impossible. It’s something that finds you like the way forgiveness finds you, or tragedy, it’s something that happens in the aftermath of an experience.” His eyes narrow, intent on mine, and I blink, waiting for him to continue. “But in the sense that I know you need to hear it, somewhere along the lines I fell in love with you. It wasn’t romantic, it was dirty, but I fell anyway.”
My chin shakes, a soft smile tugs at the corners of my mouth having heard those words from him. Momentarily, I shift my stare to his hands. I study the cuts and scars on them, a lifetime of working hard for what he wants displayed in every detail of them. This man saved me and he loves me. “Caleb Ryan,” I choke out between tears I quickly brush away. “Was that your way of telling me you’re completely and irrevocably in love with me?”
He laughs, smiling now, his forehead pressing against mine. “Yeah, I suppose it was.” And then he says, “I love you, Milena.”
The sincerity in his eyes makes me wants to kiss the hell out of him, again.
Caleb looks away, toward the window and takes a few deep breaths through his nose, then swallows hard. “I don’t know if I ever said it, but I’m sorry for the way I acted with you. For everything. I shouldn’t have . . . I’m just sorry.”
Shoving the ache aside, I take a deep breath. “Don’t be.”
His jaw clenches and I know whatever it is he’s trying to say is harder than he imagined it would be. “No, I need to be. There are so many times I treated you badly and shouldn’t have. I’m a lucky son of a bitch to have you still here after all that.” There’s truth in his words and conviction in his eyes, and I believe him. I do.
“You’re right,” I tease trying to return the lightness of the moment we just had a minute ago. “And I forgive you.” Placing my palms on his chest, I grip the dark fabric, clinging to him in any way I can. “So you kinda really like me, don’t you?”
He smiles, blinking slowly, a boyish smirk I remember lifts the corners of his mouth. “A little bit.”
“We’re totally boyfriend and girlfriend now.”
Leaning in, his kisses my lips, tenderly. “I think we were long before today.”
He’s right. We were.
Outrigger
A stabilizing device that extends from a ladder truck to provide a wider weight distribution when the aerial ladder is raised and extended.
3 months later
I knew I needed to get Mila out of the city before the hotel reopened and
she went back to work. Or maybe it was that I wanted some alone time with her before life interrupted our bubble of isolation I put us in following her release from the burn center. Could have been that.
When I was younger, my parents used to take us over to Alderbrook for the weekend during the summers as a weekend gateway. I hadn’t been there since I was fourteen but from what I remember, Mila’s going to love it.
Tucked away outside of Shelton Washington, Alderbrook sits right on the hood canal with views of the Olympic Mountains. When you enter the hotel, it’s like you’re coming into a lodge, which it is. A large fireplace in the middle of the lobby greets you. And a cat. Like an actual cat roaming around like he owns the place.
“Why’s there a cat walking around?” Mila asks, leaning down to pet it.
It hisses at her and rubs up against my leg. I don’t pet it.
Mila laughs, adjusting her purse on her shoulder to the other one. She still can’t carry anything on her left shoulder, the burns covering it too tender for touching. I frown, the reminder of that night and what I almost lost holding on longer than I care to admit. As much as you want it to, memories like that don’t just vanish overnight.
Moving toward the counter, the man behind the front desk greets us with a smile, but the cat is tangled in between my legs to the point I can’t step without stepping on it. I grin at Mila. “What can I say, I attract pussy.”
Rolling her eyes, she shakes her head. “Your jokes are weak these days.”
Once we’re checked in, Mila grabs my hand and pulls me toward the door. I had plans of having sex, but apparently, she’s got different ones.
“I’m off my pain pills. Let’s go get me drunk and maybe I’ll sit on your lap and dip french fries in crack for the fun of it.”
I smile at my girl. I love that despite everything she’s been through she still finds a way to make a joke and bring a smile to my face.
“Only if you promise to put out later.”