There’s no other option.
My choppy breaths are getting shorter, and the heat is getting hotter and the longer we stay in here, the higher the chances of not making it out.
I want to make it out.
That same flash of Emmett steals my sight, but this time he’s not on the bathroom floor of the firehouse. Or his house.
But on mine.
I can’t let that happen.
My ribs scream in protest when I get to my hands and knees and start to crawl, the edges of my vision dancing with a darkness I used to let claim me.
I used towantit.
Crave it.
Do anything to get this close to it.
Part of me still does.
Anything … anything to get me closer to that peace. That serenity of surrender.
That same feeling I felt on that sunny day laying in the mulch with a broken arm I didn’t feel rushes me so fast, I’m breathless.
Ashton and I had fought that day, too.
At least … I think it was him.
But not even the shitty words and wayward punches thrown at me had broken through that cloud of joy surrounding me.
Hell, it wasn’t even because of the fight that my arm had broken.
That … was the swings I jumped out of under the assumption I’d be able to suddenly fly. I ended up sideways in midair, meeting the ground face first with just my tiny arm to brace me.
I’d rolled over. Laid in the stabby mulch beneath the blazing sun until it was blocked out by an angel with white hair.
And just like that day, I reach for them through the haze of brilliance too bright to look at straight on.
Closer.
Just a little more and I’ll be able to make out the face of the one that saves me.
Closer.
I bump into something warm and fleshy and jolt when I realize it’s Noah’s burned thigh.
Closer.
I push him first, and then me, across the floor.
So close that I can see that figure hovering over Noah, and me, until it vanishes completely in a roll of flames.
“No!” I hear myself call out, only to dissolve in a fit of coughs.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t fuckingbreathe.
