Chapter One
Carried Out Of The Fire
Olivia
Fire doesn’t sound the way movies make it sound.
It doesn’t roar like some dramatic dragon or crackle politely like a cozy fireplace.It screams.It eats.It sucks the air out of your lungs and then laughs when you try to take it back.It’s greedy.It crawls, it creeps, and it takes everything it touches and saysmine.
And tonight, it wants me.
Smoke pours under the bedroom door in a thick black ribbon, and for a split second I’m frozen.Just ...gone inside my own head.The same memory hits me like a freight train—his voice, his hands, the look in his eyes when he said, “If I can’t have you, nobody will.”
The smell is the worst part.Burning plastic, melting paint, and that sweet, horrible scent of things that should never be burning actually burning.My throat closes and every rational thought I ever possessed scatters like terrified birds.
Move, Olivia!
The voice in my head sounds like me, but steadier.Smarter.The version of myself I always wish I could be when the panic hits.
Move.Now.
I drop to my knees automatically.He taught me that.Funny how life works.The man who tried to kill me also drilled fire safety into my head while lecturing me about how useless I was.
“Crawl low,” he’d said, “you don’t want to choke to death before the flames even touch you.”
He laughed at the time but I’m not laughing now.
My palms slide on the hardwood as I drop lower, coughing until my ribs ache.The bedroom is already hazy, shadows warping, walls flickering orange like hell is pressing its face against my windows and peeking in.
“Help!”My voice is raw.Pathetic.I try again, louder.“Help!”
No one answers.Of course they don’t.It’s late.My neighbors are asleep.I live alone, by choice, farther from town than I probably should.Libraries don’t exactly fund mansions in the city center.
I reach for my phone on the nightstand and curse when it isn’t there.Of course it isn’t.I left it in the damn kitchen with my tea.Brilliant, Olivia.Real survivalist shit.
The fire alarms shriek overhead, a high-pitched electronic scream that mixes with the crackle and pop from somewhere down the hallway.Heat presses against the bedroom door, radiating like the sun itself has decided to lean on it casually.
The handle glows faintly.
Yeah.No touching that.
I scramble back, my heart beating so hard it feels like it might break my ribs from the inside.It’s funny.My ex-husband spent years telling me I took up too much space, that I was too loud, too emotional, too soft, too fat, too everything.
Yet here I am, shrinking into a corner, trying to become as small as humanly possible while the universe tries to erase me completely.
I don’t want to die.The thought slams into me with brutal clarity.
I don’t want to die.Not like this.Not with my story ending in an obituary that makes me sound like a side note in my own life.
Olivia Reed
1990—2025
Librarian
Survived by a handful of people who barely knew she existed.
Screw that.
