“Almost there,” I shout as the heat singes my exposed skin. “Come on!”
We pour out of the apartment just before something inside explodes. We’re halfway down the stairs when a group of firefighters start to ascend them.
“There’s no one in the apartment that’s on fire,” Griffin tells them.
“Thanks. Now get out of here,” the man in front shouts.
He doesn’t have to tell us twice.
Chaos greets us as we stumble out of the building and across the street. Fire trucks wail, firefighters unroll hoses, and cops shout at onlookers to move back. There’s a shout from the crowd—a familiar voice—and then arms wrap around me.
“Shit. I was so worried. I got here, and it was chaos.” Bash pulls back and studies me. When he’s reasonably sure I’m fine, he moves to hug Blair and Reed, giving them the same treatment before doing the same with Griffin, Maddox, and Ryder. “Please tell me you’re all okay.”
“I think so,” I reply.
“We need a medic over here,” Bash shouts to the assembled cops and firefighters. “They were in the building.”
We’re swarmed by paramedics then. They herd us to waiting ambulances. I hold tight to Blair’s hand and reach for Reed, who clings to his sister with this wide-eyed look of panic that fucking guts me. Blair pulls him between us, and we each wrap an arm around his back, sandwiching him between us.
He’s shaking when we come to a stop in front of an ambulance. We all are.
“Are you okay?” I ask, turning to this kid I love like he’s my own. I cup his cheeks in my palms as Blair strokes a hand through his curls. “Tell me you’re not hurt.”
Tears well in Reed’s large, brown eyes and his lips quiver as he looks up at me. “I’m not hurt.”
“Thank fuck,” I choke out, resting my forehead on his the way we do to Bash when he stops a goal. “I was so scared.”
“She had a knife,” he whispers. “She wanted to hurt Blair.”
My gaze bounces to the woman I’m fucking gone for, new panic flooding my veins, even though she’s standing right in front of me, whole and unharmed, outside of the smoke that covers her skin in a thin layer of dark grime. “Did she touch you?”
Blair shakes her head. She clamps her lips tightly together, trying her best to hold back the cries I know she needs to release. “She never got a chance.”
With one arm, I hold Reed. I hold the other open and almost stumble back when she throws herself against my chest. The minute I wrap my arm around her shoulders, she breaks.
Great, heaving sobs shake Blair’s body as Reed and I hold her. As we all hold each other. And just when I’m not sure I have the strength to hold us all together, four more sets of arms wrap around us, forming a wall of support, holding us up. Holding us together.
“We’re okay,” I murmur. “We’re okay.”
In the middle of the noise and the chaos, in the middle of the flashing lights and the glow of the building burning behind us, we hold each other together. Every broken piece.
My family is all here. We all made it out.
We’ll all be okay.
Together.
fifty-five
LOGAN
“I think that covers everything.I’m sure you’re all exhausted and ready to go home. If we have any more questions, we’ll reach out.” The burly middle-aged cop stands from the desk and extends a hand to each of us. “Rest assured, we’ll make sure she spends a long time in jail.”
It’s been an exhausting day.
After being checked out and cleared by paramedics and being told that everyone looked okay—but they’d recommend being seen the following day by our primary care physicians—we opted to decline a transfer with a promise that we’d follow up.
Then the questions began.
