Images assaulted her instantly. Blaze laughing in Baltimore, kissing her forehead half-asleep in bed, and sitting across from her while promising he wasn’t trying to run anymore.
“Where are you?” she whispered.
“At the scene.”
Johanna was already moving before he finished speaking. She grabbed the first sweater she found, but she struggled to pull it over her head. Panic climbed higher and higher inside her chest with every passing second.
“Send me the address.”
“Jo—”
“Ryan.” Her voice broke completely now. “Please.”
Another silence stretched between them before he finally answered quietly. “I’ll text it.”
The line disconnected.
Johanna stood frozen in the middle of the bedroom for one terrible second, staring blindly at the wall. Then the tears came fast and uncontrollable, fueled by a level of fear she’d never experienced before in her life.
Because suddenly none of the other fears mattered anymore. Seattle, trust, and old wounds all became meaningless beneath the horrifying possibility of losing Blaze forever.
All that mattered was Blaze.
The man she loved was trapped in a fire while she wasted days pushing him away out of fear he might someday leave.
Johanna barely remembered the drive afterward.
Later, pieces of it would come back in fragments. The sweep of rain across the windshield, her trembling hands gripping the steering wheel, and the desperate prayers she hadn't spoken in years.
Mostly, though, she remembered the fear.
It tightened around her chest with every mile.
Long before she reached the neighborhood, red emergency lights flashed against the storm-dark sky several blocks away. Smoke still curled upward through the rain while fire engines, police cruisers, and ambulances crowded the narrow residential street in a maze of chaos and flashing lights.
And suddenly everything became terrifyingly real.
Johanna parked badly near the curb and jumped from her car before the engine fully died. Rain soaked her coat almost instantly while icy wind whipped her curls around her face. Neighbors crowded the sidewalks beneath umbrellas and porch awnings, whispering anxiously while firefighters rushed through smoke, water, and debris with controlled urgency.
Then she saw the house, or what remained of it.
The top floor had partially collapsed inward while flames still flickered through shattered windows. Smoke poured upward into the storm while water hoses blasted across blackened woodand falling debris. The entire structure looked exhausted and dangerously close to giving up completely.
Johanna’s stomach dropped so fast she nearly stumbled right there in the street.
No. God, no!
She pushed through the crowd toward the barricades while rain soaked deeper into her clothes. “Excuse me—sorry—please move—”
Someone grabbed her arm before she reached the fire line.
Michael.
His turnout gear was blackened with soot and rainwater while exhaustion streaked heavily across his face. Smoke clung to him so strongly it burned her lungs even standing there.
The second he saw her expression, something inside his own shifted.
“Jo—”
