Wait for It

I knew before I even opened my eyes that Louie was standing by the side of the bed again. I just fucking knew, but it didn’t scare me any less.

“There’s a fire,” he whispered immediately before I could remind him he needed to quit scaring me in the middle of the night.

And, just like that, at his words, I sat straight up in bed and took a big inhale. “What?” I asked, knowing he wouldn’t be lying about something like that.

“The house is on fire,” he barely had to say before I threw the covers back, reaching for my phone at the same time.

“Our house?” I pretty much screeched, my thumb already hitting 9-1.

“No,” he answered. His little hands went to mine and squeezed. “The granny’s house.”

“Who?” I blinked.

“The granny. The old lady, Tia, remember? Miss Pearly?”

“Oh shit,” came out of my mouth before I could censor myself.

Louie backed up and tugged at my fingers. “Come on.”

I went, resisting the urge to finish dialing the emergency number until I saw it. I mean, there could be a fire over there, but it didn’t have to mean it was a house fire… didn’t it? Not that there would be a reason why anyone would be having a bonfire at a ninety-something-year-old’s house. Louie ran down the hallway that led toward the living room, and I followed behind, glued to his grasp. I’d forgotten to close the curtains so I saw the yellows and oranges and reds before I even made it to the window. He hadn’t been exaggerating.

Miss Pearl’s house was on fire.

At least the back of it was from what I could see. The porch was untouched by the flames licking at the sides by where I knew her bedroom was.

Holy fuck. Her bedroom!

I slapped my phone into Louie’s hand as I scanned the houses on either side of Miss Pearl’s, but there was nothing there to see. No one was standing outside. No one knew what was happening, and later I’d worry about how and why Louie had been awake at 2:00 a.m. to see that our neighbor’s house was on fire.

“Goo, you know our address right?” I asked even as I stepped away from him, my heart beating so fast I couldn’t catch my breath.

“Yes,” he squeaked, his eyes wide and caught on the flames.

“Call 911 and tell them there’s a fire. I need to go help Miss Pearl, okay?” My voice was quick and panicked, and it was so obvious that Lou turned to look at me, his eyes widening even more.

“You’re going in there?” He was scared.

And I understood, I really did, but what was I supposed to do? Sit in my house and do nothing? “I have to. She’s old. She might still be in there,” I explained quickly, dropping to my knee even though I knew every second counted. “We have to help her, but I need you to call so I can run in there, okay? I’ll be as fast as I can, but don’t move from here, Louie. Don’t leave the house.”

I wanted to promise him I would be back, but I couldn’t and wouldn’t do that.

Even with the lights turned off, I could see his lip trembling, feel the tension and fear rolling off him in waves as his five-year-old brain wrapped around the same possibility mine did. I was going into a burning house, but there was no other choice.

I stood up and nudged at his hands. “Call right now—and don’t leave the house. I love you!”

Tears filled those blue eyes I was so in love with, and later on, I could appreciate how mature he was being by not begging me to stay even though I knew it was probably killing him inside. But I had to go.

I blew a kiss at Lou and ran out of the house, only barely managing to stick my feet into the flip-flops I’d kicked off at the door when I got home earlier.

And I ran.

I didn’t even bother closing the door behind me; I just sprinted across the street like I’d never sprinted in my life, trusting that Louie knew what he was doing. In hindsight, I should have woken up Josh who wasn’t five years old, but there hadn’t been any time and… what were the chances that Miss Pearl had gotten out on her own? Maybe she was standing somewhere I couldn’t see.

But as I quickly glanced around at the surrounding houses, I saw the harsh reality: I was the only one who knew something was going on despite the crazy amount of smoke already polluting the sky. Dread filled my stomach, as well as this sense of I don’t what to do this, but I have to.

I had to. I knew I did. I couldn’t just pretend.

I shot a quick glance at Dallas’s house, but there wasn’t time to go bang on his door and try to wake him up. Fires were fast, weren’t they? And if it took him or Jackson a while to get up…

My legs pumped even faster as I hit the white picket fence around her front yard, slapping the gate wide open as I vaulted up the three steps leading to her porch in an act I couldn’t appreciate.

Like a complete moron, I grabbed the door handle, forgetting everything I’d learned in elementary school about what you were supposed to do during a fire.

The “motherfucking fucker” that came out of me as the metal burned my palm was lost in the night sky and smoke. Cradling my hand to my chest, I thought for a brief second about kicking the door open, but I didn’t. Who did I think I was? Leonidas in 300? I had flip-flops on and there was no way I was strong enough to do that.

After that, everything was a blur.

For the rest of my life, I’d remember breaking Miss Pearl’s window with one of her garden gnomes and climbing inside, trying my best not to cut myself. I would never forget the smoke and how strong it was. How it filled everything, every inch of my skin, the surface of every single one of my teeth, the back of my throat, my very fucking heart and my poor lungs. There was no way I could forget how bad my eyes stung and how much I regretted running out in my underwear and a tank top that wasn’t long enough for me to at least cover my mouth.

And I would remember finding Miss Pearl crawling across the floor in the kitchen where I’d cut her hair in the past. I could never forget the terror on her face as I helped her up, shouting words I didn’t think either one of us knew what they were.

There was no way I would ever forget how hard I was coughing either. How I felt like I couldn’t breathe and how I didn’t understand how Miss Pearl was still doing it when I’d only been in the house for a second. I carried a lot of her weight on our way out because I knew I was rushing even though she couldn’t move very quickly. I’d seen her walk normally and running wasn’t an option. But everything stung and I wanted to get the hell out of there before the fire spread or before something else happened. I’d seen Backdraft as a kid. There weren’t any beams that could fall on us, but I wasn’t about to take any chances.

“My cat,” the woman somehow managed to tell me. “She’s inside.”

I couldn’t think. I couldn’t process what she was saying. I was too worried and scared about getting out of there with her, especially when she couldn’t walk fast. I forgot about my hand as I undid the lock and opened the front door, so relieved to be almost out of there.

We made it passed the lawn as we both hacked up our lungs. My back, neck, and cheeks burned and itched. But we kept going across the street where I could spot both boys standing at the doorway with Josh holding the phone to his face.

They ran out as I helped Miss Pearl onto the grass. I’d told Louie not to leave the house, but I wasn’t about to remind him he had ignored me.

“Are you okay?” Josh asked as he and Louie barreled into me, throwing their arms around me like spider monkeys, oblivious to the woman by their feet.

“The firefighters are coming,” Louie said quickly.

“Diana, my cat is in the house,” Miss Pearl’s voice pleaded, as something I could only assume was her hand landed on my thigh.

I was coughing, hugging the boys back as her words finally sank in.

“Diana, Mildred is still in there,” she repeated herself. “She has bad eyes and can’t see good.”

I eyed the house over the top of the boys’ heads, noticing that it wasn’t engulfed in flames yet, despite how smoky everything inside had been.

“Please,” Miss Pearl pleaded.

Honestly, I wanted to cry as I got up, disentangling the boys from around me. Did I want to go save her cat? No. But how could I let it die? If it was Mac…

I met Josh’s eyes because there was no way I could look at Lou right then. “I’ll be right back. I’ll be right, right back. Don’t go anywhere.”

And I ran again, not waiting for either of them to comment or beg me. My burned hand was against my chest as I crossed the street, through the white picket fence that I would forever associate with almost dying. The front door was open as I ducked in, trying to keep closer to the floor because I’d already learned my lesson about the smoke that had gotten worse over the last few minutes it had taken me to get Miss Pearl out of there.

“Mildred!” I yelled, squinting and trying to look around the floor of the living room. “Mildred!” The smoke was horrible, and I coughed up what felt like one of my lungs as I shoved at furniture, trying to find the damn old cat.

I wasn’t going to die for it. I couldn’t do that to the boys, but I also couldn’t live with Miss Pearl’s face if I didn’t at least try to get her pet back.

“Mildred!” I shrieked with my raw throat.

I barely heard the low meow. Barely. It was a miracle I did. With my eyes burning, my skin burning, my hand burning, I couldn’t believe I found the old, nearly blind calico hidden in a corner by the door, shaking. I scooped her up, wheezing, crying because my eyes stung so badly. The heat was horrible, and I didn’t know then that it would be a long time before I ever took a steaming hot shower again.

I ran out of the front door, coughing, coughing, coughing. I could barely see as I tried to make it down the steps, tripping and missing the bottom one, which sent me flying down the sidewalk, landing hard on my knees. The cat went running away from me and the fire as I hacked up a lung, panicking, knowing I needed to get away. Knowing the neighbors on either side of Miss Pearl needed to get away too.

But my legs weren’t working. Neither was my brain. I was too busy trying to get my lungs to breathe.

“You fucking idiot,” a voice exploded—angry, so angry—from somewhere nearby.

A split second later, two arms were around me, one under my knees, the other across my shoulders, and then I was up in the air, cradled against a chest as I hacked up coughs so strong my stomach hurt.

“You stupid, stupid idiot,” the voice hissed as I felt us moving.

I couldn’t even muster up the energy to figure out who the hell was carrying me, much less tell them I wasn’t an idiot.

My lungs wouldn’t work, and I only coughed harder, my entire body into it.

The male voice right by my head cursed and cursed again, “fuck” and “shit” and “goddammit.” The tone as bitter and harsh as the smoke had been. But I couldn’t concentrate. I didn’t care. My hand was starting to throb unbearably, and I still couldn’t catch my breath. There were other things to worry about.

I felt myself being lowered instead of actually seeing it. I felt the grass under my legs and bare feet—when the hell I lost my shoes, I had no idea. I heard Josh and Louie’s voices mixed in with other unfamiliar ones. I heard the wail of a fire truck’s siren most importantly, and maybe I heard the ambulance too.

But I was coughing too hard, trying to shield my hand.

Something soft swept over my eyes and mouth—a T-shirt. And still I coughed.

“Josh, get a glass of water,” the male voice ordered, low and grumbling against my ear. It was Dallas. It took me a second, but I knew it was him crouched by me, a weight around my back as a supporting gesture. He was the one who had carried me. Of course it was him. Who else would it be?

“Can you tell…” I couldn’t catch my breath. The side of my face was pressed against something hard and warm and steady. I closed my eyes, trying to catch my breath. “Miss Pearl… I got her cat, but… she jumped out of my arms?”

“Fuck the fucking cat,” the voice by my ear spat out. What had to be his arm around my back moved lower, slinging around my hips. I was pulled in closer to what had to be his body at my side. Something pressed against my cheek, his words almost muffled. “You stupid little idiot. You stupid fucking idiot—”

“I had to,” I whispered to him, lifting my head. Had his lips been on my cheek?

“Had to? Had to?”

It was Louie, my poor wonderful Louie that explained it to him. “Daddy fell and hit his head, and nobody stopped to see him,” he told him, word for word in the same way I’d relayed the story to him in the past, minus a few details. “That’s why you gotta help people who need it,” he ended, his little chest shaking with emotion at the memories I was sure he was living through right now because of me.

Dallas glanced back and forth between Louie and me, his own body continuing with the tremors I’d originally felt. I was pretty sure he muttered, “Jesus fucking Christ,” but I couldn’t be positive.

“Dallas?” Miss Pearl’s soft, creaky voice managed to tear through my coughs.

“Don’t move, Diana,” Dallas barked. Something tender pressed against my temple and cheek. Somewhere in the back of my head, I guessed it was his nose to the side of my eye, his mouth at my cheek. “The ambulance will be here in a second. Don’t fucking move,” he told me one last time before his support left me.

In less than two seconds after he moved, he was replaced by a much smaller body. One that was as familiar to me as my own. One that crawled onto my lap and pressed itself against me, whimpering and shivering just like poor Mildred the cat had been when I found her.

“Are you dying?” Louie asked against my ear as he tried to bury himself inside of me, squishing my hand against my stomach, making it hurt even more.

But I couldn’t tell him to move.

I shook my head, gritting my teeth at the pain. “I just inhaled… a lot of smoke, Goo.” I coughed some more, lowering my forehead until the side of it touched the back of his soft-haired head.

“Are you gonna live?” His voice broke, and that shredded my heart and made me feel like a selfish asshole.

I nodded again as my lungs tried getting rid of more smoke. “I’m gonna live.”

He shivered and he shook even more. “Promise?”

“Promise,” I rasped out, wiggling my arm out from between us to wrap around his back.

The sirens got louder and louder, and out of the corner of my eye I could see the flashing, bright lights as they stopped in front of Miss Pearl’s house. Before I knew it, the firefighters were circling the home, and neighbors from all over the neighborhood suddenly appeared on the streets close by. Josh came back and nudged a glass of water into my hand before promptly coming up behind me and wrapping his arms around my neck, his face pressing against the side opposite of Louie’s. He held me tight.

I gulped down the water and watched as the ambulance pulled up a couple of houses down. The paramedics went straight to Miss Pearl, who I barely noticed was right where I’d left her, next to Dallas who was holding one of her hands with Jackson hovering close by. It only took a few minutes for them to put her on a stretcher with a mask over her face, and it was about that time that another ambulance pulled up the street.

“I was so scared,” Josh admitted into my ear as Miss Pearl was loaded into the ambulance.

There was no way I could tell him I’d been just as scared as he had been.

* * *

I knew it was late when I finally woke up. Too much light was coming in through the curtains when my eyes finally cracked open, my hand giving more than a gentle throb at me finally being awake and able to comprehend the pain radiating from it. It wasn’t too surprising that I was alone in bed when I remembered all three of us piling on to it in the middle of the night. The paramedics had checked me over to make sure I was going to be fine—making me breathe through a mask that had the boys both crying in a way that I never wanted to see again—and bandaging up my hand after I told them there was no way I was going to the hospital.

It was after four in the morning when we finally trudged inside, and I took a shower, coming out to find Josh and Louie waiting for me in my bed already under the covers. It had been years since Josh slept with me. Years. But now… well, I understood and, honestly, I was more than a little grateful. Last night, I had gone to bed confused about Dallas’s reaction to my toolbox, and the next thing I knew, I had run into his grandma’s burning house to get her.

I was freaked the fuck out. The entire night before had scared the shit out of me. I could admit it.

If I could go back, I wouldn’t not do what I’d done, but… I could wish it hadn’t come to it. What would the boys do without me?

Sliding out of bed, my shoulders screamed in protest at what I’m sure had been their usage when I’d helped Miss Pearl out of her house. My hand started throbbing even more painfully at the burn gracing its palm. My knees only stung a little as the sheets brushed against them. I hadn’t bothered with Band-Aids on them. They were scraped, but I’d had worse.

It took me a few minutes to use the bathroom, dab some honey on my scrapes, and brush my teeth awkwardly with my left hand. My head and throat were achy and raw from the night before.

And it was right then, as I was trying to brush my teeth with the wrong hand, that I realized what the hell I’d done.

I’d burned the hand I used to cut hair.

Flipping my hand over, I looked over the area that was covered by gauze. “Fuck. Fuck!” Most of my fingers were fine, but… “Motherfucker!”

My head throbbed. My eyes got watery. I’d burned myself. What the hell was I supposed to do? I used my right hand for everything. Everything. With so much gauze on it, I couldn’t cut hair, or even hold a brush for color. I had a feeling that anything that required me to stretch the skin on it was going to cause a world of pain.

“Fuck!” I cussed again, clenching my teeth together for all of a minute before I made myself think of Miss Pearl and what would have happened if I hadn’t intervened. My hand for a life. My hand for a life and the life of a cat. It hadn’t been for nothing.

But, I couldn’t believe I had been so stupid to touch the doorknob with my right hand. Fuck.

“Aunt Di?” Josh’s voice came from the doorway.

I swallowed hard and plastered a smile on my face that wasn’t completely fake. He was still in his pajamas from the night before, and he looked like he’d been awake for a while. “Hey. I just woke up.”

Josh glanced between the hand I was holding and my face. “Are you okay?”

I nodded, not trusting my words.

“Does it hurt?”

I didn’t like to lie to them, so I nodded again.

“A lot?”

“I’ve had worse,” I told him softly, also still not lying. It was the truth. I’d been in worse pain. It hadn’t been physical, but that didn’t matter.

He didn’t look like he entirely believed me, but he let it go.

“Did you eat already?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Did Louie?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What?”

“Cereal and a banana.”

“Good.” I gestured toward him, calling myself an idiot for what had happened. “I’m pretty hungry,” I said.

Josh walked alongside me toward the kitchen, watching as I put my slippers on and watching even closer as I cradled my hand to my stomach again. But he didn’t say anything. Louie smiled at me when I spotted him in the living room sitting on the couch in front of the television playing video games. If he wanted to act like yesterday hadn’t happened, so be it. The last thing I’d been thinking about before I’d fallen asleep was what I would tell my parents and the Larsens when they saw my hand. I thought I could just not tell them, but with these two big mouths, it was going to come out at some point.

I was already dreading the comments they’d make.

“Morning, Goo,” I greeted him, taking two steps forward before I stopped in place directly in front of the television and glanced back at him.

He’d been sitting pretty high up in the air, but as I gave him another good look I realized why he seemed to be taller on the couch than usual. It was the Iron Man blanket under him that hadn’t made me look too closely at the couch, but now that I did… I realized he was sitting on something.

Sitting on someone.

It was a long man with short, dark hair, asleep faced down on the couch with a bicep covering the side of his face. And Louie was sitting on what I could only assume was his butt as he played video games.

“Are you sitting on Dallas?”

The five-year-old smiled and nodded, whispering, “Shh,” at me. “He’s sleeping.”

I could see that. When the hell had he gotten into the house? I didn’t care that he was over—of course I didn’t—but I was confused. I figured I would just ask Josh but told Lou instead, “Get off him, Lou. He’s sleeping.”

“He told me it was okay,” he argued. “Stop talking so loud.”

Oh my God. Was this kid telling me to be quiet? I opened my mouth and closed it again, taking in the sleeping man beneath him. Shooting Lou a look he didn’t see because he’d turned his attention back to his game, I kept going into the kitchen where Josh had disappeared to.

He was already waiting for me, immediately handing me the box of my favorite strawberry cereal and peeled my banana for me as I got out the milk, watching me with those brown eyes so much like Rodrigo’s and mine.

“When did Dallas get here?” I asked him in a quiet voice.

Josh hesitated for a second before reaching to take the gallon of milk out of my hands, going to pour it into the bowl for me. “Around eight. Louie woke me up when he heard the knocking.”

“Did you check to make sure it was him before you opened it?”

He shot me a look as he put the cap back on the milk. “Yeah. I’m not a baby.”

“I’m just making sure,” I muttered back. “What did he say?”

“He came inside and asked if you were okay. Then he said he was really tired and was gonna take a nap on the couch.” With his back to me as he set the milk back inside the fridge, he asked, “Are you mad he’s here?”

Plucking a spoon from the drawer, I stuck it in my mouth as I moved my bowl of cereal to the edge of the counter. “What? No. I was just surprised… he was here. Did he say anything about Miss Pearl?”

“No.” Had Josh’s tone gotten husky or was I imagining it? He seemed to think about something for a second before adding in a weird voice, “He called you stupid last night.”

With the spoon in my mouth, I realized he was right. He had called me stupid and an idiot. A stupid fucking idiot or something like that. Huh.

“You were dumb,” Josh whispered, his words making my head snap around to tell him not to talk to me like that. But the expression on his face made me keep my comments to myself. If rage and grief could have a child, that was what would have been reflected on my nephew’s face. It made me want to cry, especially when his eyes went wide as he battled the emotion inside of him. “You could have died,” he accused, his eyes going shiny in the time it took me to blink.

The scare from last night seemed to swell up inside of me again, the possibilities fresh and terrifying. My own eyes went a little watery as I shoved the bowl away from the edge of the counter and faced Josh head-on. There was no point in lying to him or attempting to play off the situation as anything less than what it had been. It was easy to forget sometimes how smart he was, how mature and sensitive this eleven-year-old could be.

So I told him the truth, our gazes locked on each other. “I know, J. I’m sorry I scared you. I was scared too, but there was no one else out there—”

“We have neighbors,” he declared, his voice uneven and low so that I knew he didn’t want to let Louie hear what was going on between us. “They could have gone in so you didn’t have to.”

“Josh.” I reached out and tried to take his hands, but he hid them behind his back, making me sigh in exasperation. “No one else was out there. I didn’t want to do it, but I couldn’t leave Miss Pearl in there and you know it.”

His throat bobbed and he squeezed his eyes closed, killing me a little inside.

“I love you and your bro more than I love anything, J. I would never intentionally leave you,” I whispered, watching his face as I pressed my good palm against my thigh. “I’m sorry that I scared you, but there was no other choice for me but to go in there and get her. You can’t always wait for someone else to do the right thing when you can do it yourself.”

Josh didn’t say anything for a long time as he stood there in front of me. His eyes stayed shut. His hands stayed balled at his sides.

But finally, after what felt like forever, he opened them. They weren’t glassy. They weren’t pained or angry. They looked more resigned, and I wasn’t sure how that made me feel.

“Bad things happen all the time, and we can’t control them. You’ll never know how sorry I am that you’ve had to learn that the hard way. But I love you, and we can’t be scared of shit we can’t do anything about. We can just be happy to be alive and enjoy what we have. I don’t know if something bad will happen to me now or fifty years from now, but I would do anything to stay with you two.” I touched his cheek and watched him let out a shaky exhale. “And like my grandma used to tell me, the devil will probably kick me out of hell the day I die. I won’t go anywhere without a fight.”

He eyed me quietly for a moment before asking, “You swear?”

“I swear.” I touched his head, and he didn’t move away from me that time. “I’m sorry, okay?”

“Me too. You’re not really dumb.”

“Sometimes people say crazy things when they’re upset that they don’t mean. I get it.”

He ducked his chin but kept eye contact with me. “You do that sometimes.”

“When?”

“When you’re… you know…” His cheeks turned pink. “That time every month.”

I was never going to forgive myself for having to break him into the female period so early in his life, but it had happened, and there was nothing I could do to change it. It was him either thinking I was dying, thinking I was a vampire, or knowing the truth. I’d gone with the truth. I’d started making sure I locked the bathroom door after that one incident of him busting in and finding me in the middle of wrapping up a used nighttime pad. It had taken us like two weeks until we were finally able to look each other in the eye again after that.

“Mind your own beeswax. I’m always nice.”

That had him snorting.

“What? I am.” I smiled at him.

“Sure, Tia.”

I stuck my tongue out at him, pleased every single time he called me tia since he did it so rarely now, and he stuck his out right back.

“Morning.” Dallas’s voice made us both jump, the sound of it about fifty times raspier than normal.

I turned to look at him, suddenly remembering how angry he’d been hours ago and feeling uncertain. The expression on his face as he moved into the kitchen and rested his hip against the counter didn’t help any either. In fact, Dallas looked more pissed than I’d ever seen him. How could someone wake up that mad? Those clear hazel eyes flicked down to Josh’s for a moment, a brief smile flashing across his mouth. “Hey, Josh.”

“She just woke up,” my nephew explained quickly.

Dallas’s eyes swung back up to me, the slight smile on his face melting off before he glanced at the forearms I had crossed over my breasts. I’d changed from the night before, and the baggy T-shirt I had on hid everything. “I can tell.” He looked back at my face, and I took in the tendons popping out along the column of his neck. Did his jaw jut out more than normal or was I imagining it? “J, can I talk to your aunt alone for a minute?”

The little traitor nodded. “Okay. I’m gonna take Mac for a walk then.”

“Don’t go far,” Dallas and I both said at the same time, watching each other carefully.

Josh gave us a horrified expression, but just like that, he disappeared.

My neighbor tipped his head toward the kitchen door that led to the backyard, and I followed after him, trying to decide whether to tug my shirt down or not. He’d already seen me in just a tank top and underwear the night before, at least I hadn’t worn a thong to bed.

Out on the back stoop, Dallas took a step down to give me the top and watched me with that intense gaze, his lips pinched together. Even with him giving me the advantage, he was still taller than me.

I raised my eyebrows at him, remembering briefly that he’d called me things last night that hadn’t been okay. “Is Miss Pearl all right?” was the first thing I asked.

“She’s fine,” he answered in a cool, calm voice. Carefully, he said, “You saved her life.”

And risked mine. Just thinking about it sent a shiver up my back. “I couldn’t leave her in there. Anyone would have done it.”

Dallas bit his lip again, that pink stretch of flesh turning white with pressure. “No, they wouldn’t have.”

“Any decent person would have.”

“No, they wouldn’t,” he grumbled, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “I can never pay you back for that.”

I frowned. “You don’t have to.”

His lips moved but no sound came out, and he took his attention to something above my head. “I went to bed and didn’t hear anything until Josh came pounding on the door.”

Josh did that?

“I don’t know what I would’ve done if something happened to her…” Dallas kept going, his attention still away from me. “I owe you everything.”

Oh God. I was getting uncomfortable. “It’s fine, really.”

And then, he turned those hazel eyes on me once more and he blinked. But it wasn’t a normal blink. It was the kind of blink that changed your life. The kind of blink you noticed enough to earmark this moment in history. It was a preparation. A buffer. It was everything. And then he slashed his hand across the air, angry. “But if you ever do something so fucking stupid ever again—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I cut him off, caught off guard by the fury in his tone.

He held up a finger, silencing me. “What you did last night was the stupidest fucking thing anyone has ever done, do you hear me? I get that you went in to get her, but you’re a goddamn idiot, and you’re a bigger fucking idiot for going back to get the fucking cat.”

My bottom lip dropped open for a moment before I shut it. “You wanted me to let the cat die?” I asked, slightly outraged.

The exasperated look he shot me sent the hairs on the back of my neck to standing position. “The cat’s sixteen years old and you have two boys and your entire life ahead of you. Are you fucking kidding me? You’re going to risk your life for Mildred?”

While I recognized he had a point—and that I’d had that exact same thought when Miss Pearl had pleaded for me to save her beloved cat—I didn’t like the brutal honesty in his tone. I wasn’t a fan of the accusation and possibility he raised to the forefront of my brain once again either. I did have two boys. It wasn’t that they wouldn’t be fine without me, but it was… well, I couldn’t do that to them. I couldn’t be the third person in their lives to leave so unexpectedly. I had never taken a single sociology or psychology class, but my inner guts screamed that chances were, two little sponges so early in their lives couldn’t handle those kinds of losses and move on from them very well.

The fact was while nothing had happened to me, something could have. And then what?

Then again… I would have jumped into a burning building for Mac. I understood where Miss Pearl had gotten the balls to ask for a hero.

Regardless, that guilt buried itself deep into the back of my brain, and I sensed my face going warm. Josh had already given me enough shit for only having been awake a few minutes. I’d never handled guilt well. “I’m fine. Mildred is fine. Your grandma is fine. If I could do it all over again—” well, I wasn’t positive I would have run in for Mildred again. “It doesn’t matter. Everything worked out all right. Miss Pearl is fine. I’m fine. Everything is okay.”

My words did nothing for the anger bubbling through his skin, eyes, and mouth. Dallas shook his head and his hands went up to his face in that same exact way they had the night before when he’d asked for my toolbox. Was he red? “If something had happened….” He trailed off, the sound in his throat anguished.

I reached toward his forearm. “You said your nana’s fine. You can’t think about what might have happened—”

“It’s not Nana I’m thinking about, Diana!” he exploded, his entire body leaning toward me. “You don’t have to save the entire fucking world!”

The breath left my lungs in a sharp inhale and I blinked up at the man radiating so much fucking fury, I didn’t know what to say or how to react.

“If something had happened to you—”

I choked. Me? He’d been worried about me too?

The hand connected to the forearm I’d been touching came up to my eye level. His fingers went to my chin, cupping it as he looked directly into my eyes. “If something happened to you, I wouldn’t be okay. I would never be okay,” he practically hissed.

Knowing I was an idiot asking for the pain of a lifetime, I still let myself lean forward into his touch, but I couldn’t look him in the eye. Instead, I focused on his nose even as I felt his stare centered on my eyelids. “The good thing is, you’re going to be okay because I’m fine.”

“Fine?” His snort had me glancing up at him. He raised a brown eyebrow in a completely smart-ass response that seemed so at odds with the calm, mature man I had started getting to know. “Lemme see your hand.”

Shit.

I kind of maneuvered it partially behind my butt, as if he hadn’t already caught a glimpse of the wrapping around it. “It’ll heal,” I argued.

He was getting pissed off all over again. I could sense it coming off his body. “Did it happen getting the cat?”

Him and the fucking cat. Jesus. “Why do you hate the cat so much? And no, Dr. Evil, it didn’t happen then.” During Mildred’s rescue, I had almost died from smoke inhalation, or at least that was what it had felt like in the moment. “It happened when I tried opening the door to her house. The knob was hot.” Okay that was the understatement of the month. I had a second degree burn from it, and I didn’t want to even begin to piece together what I was going to do with a burned hand and my job. How long would it take to heal? How long would I have to take off from work? Could I hold shears in my hand once it got a little better?

I had no idea, and that made me panic a little.

Okay, more than a little.

I didn’t have some huge savings account; I’d barely started getting my feet back under me after taking time off to visit Vanessa, and asking my family or Van for money seemed like a horrible fucking idea. I could probably get by without working for a couple of weeks, but that was it—and that was with me counting every penny and not wasting a single cent. There was money in the account I had set aside for the boys from Rodrigo’s life insurance policy, but I would never, ever touch it. It was the boys’.

His eyelids hung low over those hazel eyes, and I caught a flash of his teeth as they bit down on the inside of his cheek for a moment. I knew when he didn’t comment on me calling him Dr. Evil that he was genuinely really angry. He looked like he was mulling my words over… or talking himself out of yelling at me. From the murderous expression on his face, it could have been both. Then he swallowed hard. “It was stupid. Really goddamn stupid, and I don’t think you seem to realize that—”

“I do,” I argued.

He shot me this disbelieving look. “You have two boys, Diana—”

Guilt pricked at my chest, and I swallowed at the same time my eyes got teary. “I know, Dallas. I know. Josh already—” My voice broke and I dropped my gaze to the bottom of the wrinkled T-shirt he had on. It was a different one than he’d worn to the movies the night before. “He was so mad at me. I feel terrible I did that to him.”

The sigh that came out of him wasn’t even a slight warning for the hands that came to my shoulders and gave them a squeeze. It didn’t prepare me for the arms that went around them afterward, or the chest that came in contact with my forehead. He’d hugged me the night before, hadn’t he? I hadn’t imagined it? His voice wasn’t any less rough or mean as he said, “You scared the hell out of all of us.”

I had?

“I thought you were mad at me last night when you left,” I told him.

His sigh was so deep, it was choppy on the way out. The arms he had around me tightened, but the rest of his body relaxed. “I wasn’t mad at you. I swear. It was other things.” He gulped, and I’d swear one of his hands cupped the back of my head. “Look, I have to leave tomorrow for a couple of days.”

Why was he telling me this? “Is everything okay?”

“It will be. I have to go. I can’t reschedule it,” he explained, his breath so deep it made my head move. “Diana—”

A breeze hit the back of my legs as the back door opened and something poked me in the leg while I stood in Dallas’s arms. “Can you make me a sandwich?” Louie’s voice came from behind. “Please?”

I didn’t even freeze at getting caught. “Sure, give me a sec,” I answered him quickly.

Lou said nothing; he just stood there, not moving. I could sense him.

I sighed, my mouth inches from Dallas’s sternum. “Goo, quit being nosey and give me a second, please.”

There was a hum and then, “Can I have a hug too?”

Dallas’s arms flexed and I swore I heard him laugh lightly before one of them dropped from around me as he took a step back. “Have at her, buddy.”

It was then I finally glanced down at Louie to find he’d moved to stand beside my hip. The kid blinked and edged closer between us. “No, you too,” he said so effortlessly it made me want to cry. “Sandwich.”

Just like that, Dallas crouched and scooped Louie up. One of those little arms went around my neck, and I would bet my life the other was around Dallas’s. The only other thing I knew for sure was that an arm too brawny to belong to a five-year-old wrapped low around my back. The side of my head went to a shoulder and one half of my chest was crushed against a much harder one.

“This is nice,” Louie muttered somewhere close to my ear.

I couldn’t help it. I laughed, and what I was sure was the hand connected to the arm around my back, stretched wide and covered part of my belly, the tips of long fingers touching my belly button. I sucked in a breath.

“Can we do this more?” Lou continued on.

“We will,” the voice above my head agreed.

What was I going to do? Say “no thank you”? I could do this more often. I could do this every day.

But Dallas was married, and we were just friends. I couldn’t forget that.

What I couldn’t forget either was that he wasn’t going to be married forever.

And that didn’t necessarily mean anything good for me.