That bastard. Wes Kraemer didn’t have a good bone in his body. I could still smell him, that horrible, thick cologne simmering in the air around us, even as I watched my childhood home burn to the ground.

It had been the home into which my parents had moved after they’d first gotten married. It had been the home in which I’d first kissed a boy, first cried myself to sleep, first learned what it meant to grow up. And now it was mere splinters, falling down before me.

The sheer unfairness of it consumed me. I slipped from beneath Colt’s arms, falling to my knees on the ground. Bringing my hands before me, I let out a guttural scream that made my bones quake. Somewhere far in the distance, I heard the sirens as they barreled toward us.

They didn’t know yet that there would be nothing left to save, that the bones of the house were breaking before us, that the organs had already been destroyed.

As I watched my home burn, Colt bent down next to me, placing his firm hand on my shoulder.

“Baby, you’re not breathing,” he told me.

I forced myself to take a breath, coughing in the smoke-filled air.

“Talk to me,” Colt demanded. “Let me know you’re all right.”

I turned toward his handsome face, blinking. His eyes were just an inch away, glistening and reflecting the fire that grew before us. Soon, I thought, the fire could overtake the entire neighborhood. It could take over the entire world.

“Please, Luna. I don’t want you to go catatonic on me,” he said, giving me a wry smile. “We made it out of there alive, and that’s all that matters. And your father—he’s all right.”

I gave him a soft nod, my nostrils flaring in disbelief. What had been a fortuitous meeting with an attractive outlaw had grown into—what? The most dangerous day of my life? My heart hammered in my chest as I felt the urgency to wish this all away, every moment of it.

But going back to the past didn’t prove to be so easy.

“Listen, Luna,” Colt said, his voice growing lower. “If the cops find me here, I’m finished.”

Without thinking, I reached into my pocket and drew out the keys, my lifeless hand dropping them into Colt’s outstretched one. He clenched them, giving me a knowing look. The sirens grew louder and more insistent around us, the fire trucks and the ambulance halting in strange patterns outside the burning building.

“You’re going to be okay, right?” Colt asked me, as if I had any other choice than to stay there, to observe the world as it shook before me.

“Go on,” I said, hardly able to hear my own voice. “Get out of here.”

Colt pulled his lips into a half-smile. “I’ll come back for you,” he called back.

My hands fell to my sides, my fingers tracing along the sidewalk. The firefighters around me began to holler at one another, yanking a hose from the fire hydrant down the road and toward the burning yellow house. Colt gave me a final nod and then raced toward my little red Chevy, hopping into the front seat and revving down the driveway.

As he drove away, I felt certain I would never see him again. With a quick leap, I rose to my feet and thrust a waving hand toward him, hopeful that he would remember me: the diner waitress with long, fire-tinged hair and bright green eyes. We’d had a connection. We’d almost died together.

And now, watching him go, I knew our paths couldn’t cross again. We were too volatile, too alive for one another. Colt’s path was the open road, and mine was right here, standing on the sidewalk, watching my life burn to the ground. It was a metaphor. It was the reason I woke up and went to work and cared for my father. Somebody had to do it.

The water burst over the boards of yellow and through the shattered windows, making a brown, swampy soup of the house. The firefighters’ helmets reflected strangely in the late October sun.

As I stood, my arms pressed to my chest, a police officer approached me, placing a hand on my upper back and guiding me toward his squad car. He began to ask me questions, to demand things of me, but my ears had given up on hearing. I just shook my head at him, in shock, my eyes like saucers.

How did he expect me to know anything when, if it wasn’t for Colt, I would have been a pile of ashes the living room floor?

“Kraemer,” I whispered to the ground, unsure if the officer could hear me or not. My nose filled with the scent of smoke, making me unable to breathe correctly. I staggered into it. “He did this. Him and his men—to teach my father a lesson. They have guns.”

“Guns?” the officer repeated.

He motioned his partner over and whispered to him. They glanced at one another, and then me, incredulously. To them, this was merely an accident, as if houses just sprung up in flames overnight all the time. They couldn’t imagine the depth of what had happened over the past day.

My eyes flashed with anger. “Wes Kraemer. Make sure he pays.”

Putting me in the back of a squad car, they tried to drive me to the station, but I insisted they take me to my friend Donna’s apartment instead. They drove me with my lips pressed tightly together and my fingers against the windowpane. My eyes filled with tears.

As we drove past the diner, I caught a view of Marcia in the window, swiping a sponge over table six, her eyes glancing toward the black smoke in the distance. I hadn’t appeared at work that day. Now, at least, I had a pretty good reason why.