I peel off the rest of my filthy uniform, leaving it in a heap on the bathroom floor. The hot shower stings the bruises on my arms and back, but I welcome the pain—it’s pure and honest, unlike the twisted mess of emotions churning inside me.
Clean and exhausted, I sit on the edge of my bed, staring into the void. Lily’s words echo in my head on an endless loop: “You made me fall in love with you without me even realizing it.”
She loves me. But she can’t bear to be near me. Can’t bear to love someone who might leave her alone again.
I close my eyes, but all I see is the fire rushing toward me, the silver shelter that saved my life, and Lily’s face contorted in grief and rage.
I’ve spent years training to handle worst-case scenarios: flash floods, backdrafts, earthquakes. But nothing prepared me for surviving when the person I love can’t stand loving me back.
Maybe the real danger was never the fire.
Maybe it was thinking I could have both—this job and her—and pretend one wouldn’t burn the other to the ground.
27
LILY
I don’t know where I’m going. I run block after block at random, unable to flee the despair chasing after me. The echo of Josh’s words.
I couldn’t stay away. I love you.
I shake my head and jog faster. But as the burn in my lungs becomes unbearable, I have to slow. I stand on an unfamiliar sidewalk, dropping my hands on my knees, wheezing with the effort. The taste of salt creeps down the back of my throat. My heart’s going so fast it might burst through my ribs and splatter on the concrete. I have no idea where I am. The sun’s climbing higher, throwing long shadows across the lawns of a neighborhood I don’t recognize. I’ve run blocks—maybe miles—away from my apartment, away from Josh and the words I can never take back. I told him I love him.
Oh gosh, I told Josh I’m in love with him.
My legs give out, and I drop to the ground. The concrete scrapes my palms as I catch myself. A passing car slows, the driver peering at me with concern, but I wave them off with as much dignity as a sobbing woman in pajamas can muster. They hesitate, then drive on. Thank goodness for LA’s signature indifference to public breakdowns.
I’m exhausted. I’ve been up all night, staring at my phone, waiting for a text, a call, anything. Every hour, I checked hospital admissions, terrified I’d see his name. Somewhere around 3a.m., I moved out onto the balcony, parked myself in a chair, eyes fixed on the complex entrance like I could manifest him through sheer will. I don’t remember falling asleep, just jolting awake at dawn, still at my post, neck stiff from the awkward angle.
It was the familiar sound of a fire engine pulling over that jostled me. And then Josh was walking through the gate alive and whole. And I fucking hated him.
I attacked him. I screamed at him for making me care, for making me love him when I told him I couldn’t do this again. Couldn’t love another firefighter. Couldn’t live a life where I wake up wondering if today was the day I’d get that knock on the door again.
I told Josh I loved him. And then I screamed at him to get out of my life. To move away. What kind of person lays her heart bare and then rips it right back, bloodied and pulsing?
Me, apparently.
I push myself up from the curb and grab my phone, which is still miraculously in my pants pocket; it didn’t tumble away in my mad dash across town. I open the map app to check out where the hell I am.
The pulsing dot of my position shows I’ve run three miles from the complex, ending up near the cemetery where my husband is buried. I spin in a circle, taking in my surroundings again, and recognize the glowing cross atop the mission-style church steeple peeking over the palm trees. It makes sense my subconscious would bring me here. Daniel wasn’t just my husband. He was my best friend, and the only person I could talk to right now.
I walk down the block until I turn a corner and the cemetery gates appear in front of me across the street. I stop at the crosswalk, waiting for the light to change. A flower stand sits on the opposite corner, petals crowding together in their metal buckets. I rarely bring Daniel flowers, but today I drift closer to the display, eyes lingering on pale peonies and violet mums, letting the riot of scent and color tug me along until I land before the daisies.
They were our flowers. On our first date, Daniel had shown up at my door with a bundle of them tangled with a string, looking both sheepish and proud. He’d joked about how roses felt too heavy, too serious, but daisies were beautiful, fun, and light like me. I wore them in my hair the day we got married. And when Penny was born, he had a necklace made for me with a single silver daisy. He gifted it to me while I was still in my hospital bed.
The pendant is buried in a velvet box in my dresser now. I used to wear it every day, rub my thumb over its petals whenever I needed reassurance, but after Daniel died, it became a weight.
The man running the stand doesn’t ask why I’m crying. He wraps the flowers in brown paper and hands them over. I don’t trust myself to speak, so I nod my thanks and pay with my phone, gripping the bouquet tight enough to crumple the stems as I make my way to the open cemetery gates.
The air here feels different, thinner and unnaturally still, pressed flat by the sorrow of all the interrupted lives that echoes between the headstones.
I’ve walked this path so many times I could find Daniel’s grave blindfolded. I used to come every week after it happened. But I haven’t visited since Daniel’s birthday eight months ago. We come as a family on that day, preferring to celebrate the day he came into the world rather than the one he left it.
Daniel’s grave is at the end of a row, tucked beneath the spreading arms of a jacaranda tree.
The marble is cool and smooth under my fingertips as I trace the letters of his name.
DANIEL FINNIGAN
