“I’ve got you,” he says into my ear.
Why do I barely know this man yet believe he would do anything to save me?
He has one arm under my knees and the other wrapped around my back as he gets to his feet. My head rests against his shoulder as he retreats back the way he came, out through my apartment front door, down the stairs, and out onto the street.
The cold air smacks me in the face, delicious fresh air that I suck into my burning lungs. My fingers grip onto Wyatt’s shirt as he stalks away from my building, coughing but not nearly as hard as I was.
People who live in the apartment buildings across the road are in PJs, their hair disheveled. It looks like they pulled on a bathrobe and slippers and rushed right out onto the street. They stand in small, stunned huddles, some with their hands over their mouths as they stare up at the building Wyatt carried me out of, or at me. No one is talking. All their eyes are wide with shock.
The sheriff parked his car at a sharp angle directly outside the women’s boutique next door to my apartment. His lights are flashing, though he’s out of the car, glaring at Wyatt.
In the near distance, a siren blares.
Sheriff Watson yells at Wyatt. “I told you not to go up there when you called this in. The firefighters would have gotten her.”
“I wasn’t leaving her,” Wyatt yells back and strides past him, away from my smoking building. With me in his arms, he sits on the curb feet away as two firetrucks pull up outside my apartment. Firefighters spill from the vehicles in their yellow hats and black coats with shiny, bright yellow reflective lettering on the back and front pockets.
Wyatt holds me against his chest. Against his heart.
His hand has never stopped running up and down my back. His forehead rests against mine, and I’m trembling again. Not with cold. This is something else.
When I didn’t think I could be any closer to him, he tucks me tighter against his chest. I breathe in the scent of his skin, wishing I could live inside him.
My throat hurts, but if I don’t get these words out, I’ll choke on them. “If you hadn’t been there…”
I’d be dead.
Even if I’d gotten out of my room, would I have been able to get out of my apartment? Wyatt was banging on the front door. Did Derek barricade it to stop me from getting out? And I tripped on something. What? I always hang my coat and keep the hallway clear in case I need to run in a hurry.
“You’re safe,” he murmurs and brushes a kiss across my forehead. “I’ve got you, Maisie. You’re safe.”
I sink into his warm embrace as the wind cools my overheated skin.
I tilt my head up to look at him.
The fire truck lights flash red and white across his forehead, but he doesn’t look away from me. His face is streaked with soot, and his hair is damp with sweat.
He ran through hell to get to me.
I can’t believe that he saw all the smoke and ignored the sheriff to charge into the building to save me.
Me?
Derek told me repeatedly that I could do nothing right. Foryears. I felt useless and so stupid. Even now, months after I left him, I still struggle to push his disapproving voice out of my head. But Wyatt thinks I’m worth something. He thinks I’m worth saving.
He’s wrong.
I don’t deserve someone nearly killing themselves to save me.
I’m not worth anything at all.Especiallya handsome alpha like Wyatt, who could have his pick of any girl he wanted.
I don’t want to imagine what I look like in the too-big PJs that I picked up for dirt cheap at a thrift store, but Wyatt is holding me as if I’m something precious when he could do so much better than me.
“You shouldn’t have come in after me.” My throat hurts to talk, but I make myself say these words out loud. Wyatt deserves to hear them after he nearly died saving me.
Wyatt’s hand shakes as he tucks a strand of my hair behind my ear. “There was no version of this where I stayed outside.”
His soft words hit me harder than the smoke did.
