I spotted his disheveled brown hair as soon as I got to the parking lot. His arms were clutched tight to his chest, and he was talking to the old woman who lived across the hallway from him. The building was still standing, and I didn’t see a lot of fire damage from the outside. There was that at least. Maybe he hadn’t lost everything. Maybe it had just been a small kitchen fire that had sent everyone running.
God, I hoped it was just a small kitchen fire.
I hung up our call and rushed over to him, pulling him into my arms. “Baby,” I whispered as I held him tight. He wrapped one arm tightly around me, the other clutching his laptop. He’d managed to rescue it from the fire, but he hadn’t put on shoes. I wanted to take the computer from him so I could feel him clinging to me, but I didn’t know if that would help him or hurt him. So instead, I just held him until his grip finally loosened. “What happened?”
“I don’t know.” His dark eyes were watery, and I wondered if he had been on the brink of tears the entire time we’d been on the phone. I pulled away and searched his face. There weren’t any telltale tear streaks on his cheeks. There was nothing that said he’d lost it while he was waiting for me. I wanted to take him to my car, pack him away so he could be safe to break down if that was what he needed.
But I couldn’t do that. I could just be there. “Tell me what you do know?”
“I was asleep, and the fire alarm went off. I grabbed my phone and my computer, and I got out of there. I could smell the smoke. I probably still smell like smoke.” Now that he mentioned it, I could smell it too, an acrid and pervasive scent that stung my nose. I didn’t know if it was in the air or clinging to his clothing, but I didn’t think it mattered to him. “I could see the fire. It was right up there.” He pointed to a window on the top floor. I could see figures passing the window, firefighters in their gear. “I don’t know if it’s out yet. I don’t know if it spread. I just—” He choked, and I pulled him back into my arms, stroking the back of his head.
“It’s okay, baby. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.” I kept whispering into his hair, trying to make him believe that it would be okay. No matter what happened when the firefighters came out, he had made it out. He hadn’t been hurt, and that was the most important part. “I’ve got you.”
I didn’t know how long I held him to my chest before he started crying. His body racked with sobs as it all crashed down on him—the stress of the entire night, the lifelong fear of fire, all of it. I hated this for him. I hated that he had to face one of his biggest fears and that he had to face it alone until I’d gotten there. I wished that I’d been there with him from the start. I wished that he’d been at my house so that he hadn’t had to go through it at all, though that might have been worse. I didn’t know if it would have been.
I didn’t know anything.
When he finally pulled away, I didn’t want to let him go. I brushed a few tears from his cheeks with the pad of my thumb and kissed him softly on his now dry face. “Let’s put your computer down, okay?” I suggested softly. “We can put it in your car.”
“My keys are inside.”
“We can put it on your car,” I amended. I took his hand and led him through the parking lot. I took the laptop from his arms and laid it on the hood of the car. “We’ll stand right here. Make sure nothing happens to it.”
He looked down at the computer on his car and then back at me. “What am I supposed to do now?” he asked in a choked voice.
“What do you mean?”
“Everything I own is up there. What if the fire spread? What if I don’t have anything left?” The fear was back in his voice, and I wanted to give him all the answers. I just didn’t have them. I tried to think through it logically. The apartment he’d pointed to was a few floors above his. It was on the top floor, and his unit was on the third. Maybe it hadn’t spread, but I didn’t want to give him false hope. “And oh god, what if I’m homeless?”
“Then you’ll stay with me,” I told him simply. That was at least one thing I could help him with. I wouldn’t let him be homeless.Neither would his friends, but after seeing him like this? I didn’t want him to go to his friends. I wanted him at my apartment where I knew he was safe, where I could reach for him in the middle of the night.
“What about taking it slow?”
“That doesn’t apply in cases of emergencies.” Taking it slow was at the bottom of my priority list. Making sure he was safe… God. I’d almost lost him tonight. It would be different than the way I’d lost him after high school. Our breakup had been devastating, but we’d managed to find a friendship in the wreckage. He’d existed in the periphery of my life. He’d been a call, a text, an email, a Christmas and a birthday card. If I’d lost him tonight, he wouldn’t have been any of that, and the world would have been a darker place because of it.
I didn’t want to exist in a world without Matthew Bennett.
“Say you’ll stay with me.”
“I don’t know. I could stay with one of my friends.”
“No,” I told him bluntly. “I don’t want you to stay with your friends. I want you to stay with me. If you can’t go back upstairs, I need you to be with me, okay?” I felt like I was pleading. I felt like I was begging. If that’s what it took, I would have dropped to my knees right there in front of everyone.
His eyes met mine, and I watched as they softened. “If the firefighters say I can’t go back in, I’ll stay with you.”
I nodded, and we waited. We sat on the hood of his car, my arm wrapped over his shoulders and him tucked into my side, and we waited. People came to talk to us. A few of his neighbors left in their cars, talking about hotels or other accommodations. His elderly neighbor left with her cat, getting in the car with a much younger woman. Matt whispered that it was her granddaughter. The crowd was slowly thinning, and I wished that Matt would just climb into my car and go to myplace. I wished I could whisk him away from this to deal with the damage in the morning.
But I knew him well enough to know that he wouldn’t agree to that. He would want to know what was happening immediately. If I took him away from this, he’d toss and turn all night. Hell, he might do that anyway, but at least he wouldn’t be doing it because he had no idea if he even had a home to go back to in the morning.
I didn’t know how long we’d been waiting when the firefighters finally came out of the apartment building. Matt reacted immediately, pulling me from the hood of the car and dragging me toward them. The few remaining neighbors began to move as well, desperate for news. We stood a few feet away from the huddled firefighters, waiting. Somehow, waiting with them standing there felt longer than waiting on the cold metal hood of his car.
“The fire has been put out, but it appears there may have been structural damage on the top two floors,” the captain announced. “We’ve spoken to the manager of the building, and unfortunately, no one will be allowed back inside until a full investigation has been completed. You will be contacted with more information in the morning.”
A few of Matt’s neighbors had questions, but Matt? He slumped against me, and I knew I needed to get him out of there. “Let’s go,” I whispered. “My car’s just down the road.”
“My clothes…”
“We will get you clothes.” My eyes moved down to his bare feet. “And shoes. After you get some sleep, okay?”
