I can still feel the heat of the flames on my back.
Still hear my mother screaming my name from the second floor.
Still see my father's silhouette in the window, waving me away, telling me to run.
I was nine years old, and I had to choose between going back for my parents and getting my four-year-old sister to safety.
There wasn't time for both.
The smoke was too thick.
The fire was moving too fast.
And Leah was in my arms, coughing and crying, her little fingers digging into my neck so hard she left bruises that lasted for weeks.
So I ran.
I carried her out the front door and across the yard, and I didn't stop until we were on the sidewalk, surrounded byneighbors in their bathrobes, watching our childhood home collapse into flames.
I never saw my parents again.
That's why I became the SAA.
It's why I spend my life protecting others.
It's why I can't give up on Vanna, no matter how many times she gives up on herself.
Because if I give up on her, I'm giving up on the only thing that makes any of this worth it.
I'm admitting that I can't save the people I love.
That I'm still that nine-year-old boy, running away from the fire, carrying a weight too heavy for his shoulders.
The sobs come without warning.
Deep, guttural sounds that tear their way out of my chest like they've been trapped there for years.
Maybe they have.
Maybe I've been holding this in since I was a kid, since I watched my childhood home collapse into ashes and flames.
I cry for my parents—the mother who used to sing me to sleep, the father who taught me to ride a bike.
I cry for the years I've lost, the childhood that ended the moment I smelled smoke and knew I had to make an impossible choice.
I cry for Leah, who barely remembers our parents at all, who only has me and the scar on her forehead to remind her of what we survived.
And I cry for Vanna.
For the girl she used to be and the woman she's become.
For the addiction that's stolen so much from both of us.
For the terrifying possibility that I might lose her too, despite everything I've done to save her.
I don't know how long I sit there, slumped against the wall, my face wet with tears and my body shaking with sobs.
It could be minutes.
