Lilli…
He’d been absolutely perfect on that show. He had been cool, calm, and collected the entire time, never losing his temper. The only evidence of his displeasure had been his clenched jaw and the smolder in his eyes. Which, if you didn’t know him, you could completely overlook. He’d been articulate, had backed up his statements with truth, fact, and most importantly, proof. He'd cracked his life like an egg and let it spill over national television for everyone to see.
It was probably one of the most selfless things I’d ever seen anyone do for someone else and he’d done it for me. I loved him, so much that all I could think about was how we could weave each other more completely into the fabric of one another’s lives.
I let myself into my apartment and closed the door, Jaspar and Marigold trotting out from their hiding places to greet me. I smiled, they weren’t fooling me; they wanted fed. I rushed through opening them a can of wet food and portioning it out between their two plates, my mind working a mile a minute and jumping between things I needed to do like a hummingbird on crack.
Mostly, I really thought about what I knew was important to Backdraft, and, of course, the first thing to come to mind was his beautiful old brownstone, so full of potential. I picked up my phone from where I rested it on the counter and committed completely to what I was about to ask.
I called him. He picked up on the third ring.
“Hey, babe. Sorry, you caught my hands in a sink full of dishes. You home okay?”
“Safe and sound,” I said.
“I miss you already,” he said and I felt my smile grow.
“Feeling is mutual,” I told him and sighed.
“Uh-oh, that was a big sigh, what’s going on in that gorgeous head of yours?”
“I want to ask you something, but at the same time, I’m a little scared to.” I moved from the kitchen and traveled slowly up the hallway toward my room, mostly to get away from the sounds of my kitties noshing on their food.
“Shoot, babes. You can ask me anything, you know that.”
“I want to do something meaningful, something with us, for us,” I said and I could hear the smile in his voice with what he said next.
“I like the sound of that. Any ideas what you want to do?”
“I’d really like to help with your brownstone. I know you said that you were doing the renovations by yourself and that money has been the main obstacle holding you back…” I sighed again, frustrated. “You know, for an author, you’d think I would have the words and articulate this much better!”
He laughed and said, “Relax, babes. Take a deep breath. It’s your nerves getting in the way, and they shouldn’t, because I’m liking what I’m hearing so far, if it’s where it’s going where I think it’s going.”
“If you think it’s going that I want to help build your house into our home, then, yes,” I said, bouncing nervously on the balls of my feet. “I don’t mean hire a bunch of contractors to do it, I mean take our time and do it ourselves. I mean, obviously, there are probably some things we’ll need contractors for, but I’m saying I want to build a life with you.”
“Thank fuck, because I never want to spend another day without you, and what you’re offering is pretty much all I’ve ever wanted in a partner in life.”
“Yeah?” I asked, voice breaking with emotion.
He laughed slightly and said, “Yeah, Lil. I meant it. Us. Always.”
“I love you,” I murmured.
“I love you, too.”
“You know my schedule, baby. I get off Friday morning. I think, for now, the best thing is for you to work from the condo while I’m stuck here at the firehouse, but if you can meet me at the brownstone Friday, we can work on it during the day and be home to feed the kitties at night.”
“I like that plan,” I said softly.
“I just like planning things with you. Feels good,” he said.
“It does,” I said with a laugh, much lighter for not being on the verge of more emotional tears anymore. I was so glad, so grateful that he felt the same and wasn’t insulted about using my money to get us going. There were so many men who weren’t so easy-going about the kind of money I was worth. Some were resentful, some were all too happy to spend it for me; Backdraft had never made a thing about it. He’d always either paid or went halfsies, but never once bore a grudge where my net worth was concerned.
We talked about smaller things, that were still no less important, as I changed and got ready for bed until he asked me, “You’re sure you’re good with how much I said on that show?” I could hear his nerves shining through with the question and smiled.
“Absolutely,” I murmured. “You did beautifully, you didn’t overshare but didn’t hold back in confronting what had been overshared already. Not to mention, you looked really hot up there.”
He laughed and I smiled, glad I could make him.
“Shit, I’ve got to go,” I pouted, listening to the grating alarm in the background. “Be safe!” I told him as a farewell.
“You know it,” he said and the call ended.
I smiled and lowered the phone and moved about my closet and bathroom, putting up what I’d worn and getting the makeup off my face, generally just getting ready for bed.
The next few weeks flew by as we settled into a new routine. I would work from home while he was at work at the firehouse and it was nicely motivating for me to get my self-imposed daily word count in. If I didn’t, I would have to cut my nightly conversation with Backdraft short, and if I didn’t he certainly would. He was so incredibly supportive and motivating and it was like we fueled one another, sparking a drive in each other to be the very best versions of ourselves we could be.
It was Thursday and I had blown through my word count for the day, partially the night before and the rest early this morning, so that I could meet with one of the contractors and with an interior-design firm about my very own secret-squirrel project at the brownstone.
Backdraft and I decided to work our way from the top down, and the first step had been deciding together what the bedroom and bathroom that were already accomplished would look like. Our first weekend working on the brownstone had been deciding those things, giving the top floor a finished and polished look.
The second floor we’d started dreaming about that weekend, too. The next weekend we had started in on it. There were two rooms on the second floor. The front room we had decided to make into a library and reading room, while the room toward the back, overlooking the back garden, we’d decided would be my office.
I’d called the contractor for the basement, though. Upon further inspection, I’d realized from the outside that something wasn’t right. The basement wasn’t actually the basement at all, but rather the ground floor, but I could have sworn there was something about a basement in the paperwork Backdraft had shown me on the place.
I was really excited now, because I’d been right. The windows of the first floor had been bricked up and there was a basement below it. In talking to some of the neighbors, I’d discovered this was a Prohibition thing, that the building did indeed have basement levels that were actually old, narrow garages meant for horse-drawn carriages; there was even a curb cut in front of each one. They’d been bricked up for a speakeasy to be put in down there. It was a huge renovation project, but I had the money to open them all up and I aimed to do just that.
The ground floor would then become Backdraft’s man-cave, while the basement would become a functional garage for his motorcycle and tools. Meanwhile, I could be guilt-free about taking up the entire second floor for office and library space.
The top floor would remain our bedroom suite, plus the guest room, while the first floor would be living, dining, and kitchen, the front door leading down the front steps and out onto the street, and the back door out to the small terrace and down into the garden. When the ground floor/basement renovation was through, the ground floor, or man-cave, would also open up out into the back yard.
He had no idea about my plans expanding to the whole building, but I didn’t want him to build his own man-cave space. I wanted to do that for him and this, this was a lot more than he was going to be able to take on. He may be good at contracting, after all, that’s what his brother did, carpentry and construction work. Still, he’d told me where his skills ended and the professionals needed to be called in, and this was only his second passion. His first and foremost would always be firefighting.
Now was also the time to do this, while most of the building still sat empty. We only had two neighbors in the block of eight in the row, and it made things a lot less complicated when you factored in that most of the units were owned by a real-estate company intent on flipping them. I had lawyers involved and was pretty much looking to become an investor of sorts. I should see most of my money back with the increased values and sales of those empty units.
I was so excited about this and Veronica had been, too. We’d postponed putting my condo on the market until this could all be done; it would tap my pretty considerable resources, so by the time it was done, I would need the condo to sell, but I wasn’t worried. This all felt so right. Plus, real estate was pretty much a sure thing. Indigo City was only growing.
After the contractor and decorator had left, I went back up to the third floor and took a hot shower and settled into bed with my laptop to get some more writing in. There may have been no internet, but that never stopped me from doing my job.
I had my nightly call with Backdraft and he said he would be a little late getting to the brownstone in the morning. The next shift had some sort of in-service training and so his crew was holding over four hours later than they usually did for the next shift to get through it.
I went to bed feeling good about life, but I was in for a rude awakening the next morning. I got up and decided to get a shower but hadn’t slept exceptionally well. It was tough still, sleeping in the brownstone without Backdraft there. I was far closer to street level and could hear things out there. It wasn’t as quiet as the Echelon.
When I got out of the shower, I thought I heard something downstairs, out front, but dismissed it at first until I heard a definite crash and a ‘Woomf’ sound.
“Backdraft?” I called, knotting the belt on the satin robe I’d brought with me. I took up my phone off the card table we’d set up in here and I unlocked it, creeping to the top of the stairs.
“Hello?” I called, lightly taking the stairs and pausing on the second floor. I could smell it, then. The smell of campfire and burning plastic. I frowned and rushed to the top of the stairs to the first floor and let out a short scream. Smoke was creeping in underneath and between the cracks between the two front doors; flames were licking the outside of the frosted decorative glass panels.
I dialed 9-1-1.
“9-1-1 what is your emergency?”
“Yes, fire, I’m at eight-three-zero, Twenty-Third Avenue, Indigo City.”
“Okay, slow down, what’s the address again?”
I repeated the address and shouted “Please hurry!”
“Are you inside the residence?” the male operator asked and I shouted, “Yes!”
“Can you get out?”
“Through the back garden, I’m trying to get there now.”
I rounded the banister and the glass exploded in one of the doors. I jumped and let out a little scream and ran further up the hall to the kitchen, but froze.
“Oh, my god!”
Backdraft’s ex looked in the back window and gave me a savage grin. She backed away from the back door and there was shattering glass and that sound, as flames engulfed the back door.
“Ma’am? Ma’am are you still with me?”
“I’m trapped!” I cried. “She threw something, she set the back door on fire. Please hurry!”
“Who, ma’am, who threw what?”
“Um, this is my boyfriend’s apartment.” I coughed and covered my mouth and nose with the sleeve of my robe, choking on the rising smoke which stung my eyes. I squeezed them shut and went back for the stairs, skirting the flames eating their way up the door frame and chewing through the front door, the heat intense and unbearable.
“You can’t get out?” the operator asked again.
“No!” I wailed. “I’m going to try the second floor back terrace. I’ll jump if I have to!”
“No, ma’am, don’t do that, help is on the way.”
I got to the second floor just as something crashed on the stone of the second floor back terrace.
“Shit! She threw something up there. There’s no way out. Please, please, hurry! I don’t want to die.”
“You’re not going to die, ma’am, just stay with me. Help is on the way.” I shut myself into the third floor master suite and went into the bathroom up here, wetting a washcloth in the sink and putting it over my nose and mouth.
“I wish I could believe you,” I said, coughing, my chest tight with fear and smoke, my eyes burning with tears.
“You can, are you sure there’s no other way out?”
I heard glass shatter down below and sniffed.
“No. I’m trapped inside and the building is burning.”
“The fire trucks should be there any minute, just stay on the phone with me.”
“You’re recording this, right?” I asked.
“Yes ma’am.”
“Then I’ve got some things to say,” I said, my chest hurting with every rushing heartbeat.
“You just say what you need to, just stay on the line with me.”