Page 287 of Don’t Say Mafia

Blackened cabinets hung open, their contents spilled and burned. The stove was scorched, knobs melted into useless lumps. A pot lay on its side, unrecognizable, fused to the burner by heat. Everything smelled like loss and chemicals and . . . How was this happening to me?

“It’s all gone,” I whispered. “Everything I had was here.”

Jagger didn’t rush me. He stood solid at my side, his eyes moving over the damage with a focus that felt different than mine. While I saw pieces of my life reduced to wreckage, he seemed to be studying it.

I took a few more steps, moving through the debris, and stopped in what used to be my bedroom. The bed frame was twisted, and the mattress collapsed and blackened. My dresser was a skeleton of warped wood and half-melted handles. The closet door had burned clean through; my clothes reduced to ash and scraps clinging to metal hangers.

I doubled over, pressing my hands to my mouth like that might keep me sane.

Something caught my eye near the nightstand, half buried under soot and plaster. I crouched without thinking and reached for it. My fingers were trembling as they closed around a picture frame. The glass was gone, and the metal edges were curled and blistered and still slightly warm to the touch. I brushed at it with my sleeve, smearing ash instead of clearing it. It didn’t really matter, though; I knew it was a picture of Ryan and me.

Or what was left of us.

My own face was barely there, a pale oval beneath smoke and scorch marks. His was worse. The fire had eaten it almost entirely, leaving only the outline of his shoulder and the suggestion of a jaw. Whoever he’d been in that moment, whatever smile he’d worn when the picture was taken, it was gone now, erased so completely it felt intentional.

I stared at the blank space where his face should have been and laughed harshly. “I can’t even see him,” I whispered. “I can’t even remember what he looked like in this.”

My grip loosened, and the frame slipped from my fingers, clattering softly to the floor.

I pressed my palm to my chest in an effort to hold something in place. Why did it feel like the fire hadn’t just taken him from the picture? Why did it feel like it had reached inside me and blurred him there, too?

Jagger pulled me into his arms again. “Let’s go,” he murmured, his lips brushing my ear. “There’s nothing here for you anymore.”

The words settled in my chest with a finality I hadn’t prepared myself for. “No,” I gasped as my new reality hit me. “I can’t—I can’t go. I don’t have—” My chest tightened, each inhale shallow and useless, my vision tunneling as the room seemed to tilt again. “I don’t have anywhere to go.”

I hadn’t even had a panic attack when I’d found out Ryan was dead, but this seemed to be pushing me over the edge.

“What am I supposed to do?” I cried. “I don’t have a place. I don’t have anyone. I don’t know what to do.”

“Hey,” he soothed as he guided my face to his chest. “Breathe with me.”

I tried, but my lungs were seizing up. A high-pitched ringing filled my ears, drowning out everything else, and the edges of my vision continued to narrow, the room folding inward as shadows pressed in from both sides.

“Breathe,” Jagger said calmly. “You’re safe. I’ve got you. In through your nose. Slowly.”

I tried again, clinging to the rise and fall beneath my cheek, matching my breath to his when I could, missing it when I couldn’t. The black at the edges wavered and retreated by inches. My body still shook, panic clawing and refusing to let go, but his hands stayed steady, holding me together while the storm tore itself out of me.

“Good girl,” he murmured, his hands firm at my back. “Stay with me.”

I tried, but my next inhale snagged halfway down. The ringing surged louder, swallowing his voice, and the shadows bled back in, sudden and thick.

My body folded inward again, refusing to obey no matter how desperately I begged it to.

“Eden,” Jagger said insistently. His hand tightened at my back. “Look at me.”

I couldn’t, though. The panic had taken over.

Jagger tipped my chin up, and then his mouth was on mine. The kiss wasn’t forceful or demanding . . . it was just present. A firm press that startled the spiral right out of me. The world narrowed to that single point of contact, the solid reality of him, the unmistakable here and now of it. My breath caught in shock instead of panic, and my lungs finally began to drag in air.

I gasped against his mouth, and he pulled back just enough to breathe with me, his lips still close, his nose brushing mine.

“There you go,” he said softly. “That’s it.”

The darkness at the edges of my vision thinned, retreating as the ringing in my ears dulled to a distant hum. I sagged against him, the fight draining out of my limbs all at once, leaving me shaky and spent and painfully aware of how close we were.

His forehead rested against mine, and we stared at each other. He didn’t kiss me again; he just stayed there, holding me together while my heartbeat found something like a normal rhythm.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I can’t seem to stop embarrassing myself in front of you.”