Angry God

And he wasn’t going to. He was going to let me burn for what he thought I’d done to him.

I took a step from the window, turned around, and tried kicking the door open.

I clawed at the wood, feeling my nails chipping, and knew I had absolutely no shot at getting out of this room on my own. How had I been so stupid? Why did I fling my arm out, trying to talk to Vaughn, a guy who’d made it clear he wanted to hurt me? What the hell was wrong with me?

I grabbed the doorknob and pulled at it, propping one leg against the wall and using all of my strength. I was too shocked and full of adrenaline to cry. Then I heard something behind me. When I turned around, I saw the window was smashed, completely broken, and Vaughn was crawling inside. He’d climbed onto the roof, probably after calculating that it’d take him too much time to find the key underwater in the dark. Tiny pieces of glass clung to his shirt and flesh like fangirls. His left bicep had a tiny, open wound. I’d never met a god who bled so often.

Wordlessly, he turned around and started kicking out the remainder of the window glass so we wouldn’t get cut on our way down. The fire was gaining speed and body. I saw the tips of orange flames dancing at my eye level on the second floor.

More sirens—this time firefighters—rang in the air, deafening me. The sound of heavy wood splitting suggested the front door had been kicked in. The cops were downstairs.

“Won’t they see us?” I asked.

He didn’t turn around to look at me. Just nudged the last piece of glass aside to make the window a perfectly glassless hole.

“I’m going down first, and then you’ll jump into my arms.”

“You can’t catch me,” I told his back.

Vaughn was bigger than me, but he wasn’t the Hulk. Jumping into the pool made more sense, although I’d have to take a leap and hope not to hit the deck. Bloody hell, hoping to be saved at the last minute by a flying unicorn was more likely.

He turned around to me, seething. “You do it my way, or you burn to death. I really don’t care. This is a one-minute offer. I’m not fucking up my life to save yours, Good Girl.”

Vaughn slipped out the window without glancing back at me. I realized it was still more than I could have hoped for. Everybody else had run away. Poppy probably forgot I was even in the house.

I ran to the window and watched Vaughn climbing down the roof, then taking a leap to the patio. He walked backward, watching me with his calm, dead eyes, and waited for me to jump. I held the window frame, shaking all over. There was not even one bone in my body that wanted to do this. I tried to tell myself he was going to catch me, that he wasn’t just saying that to let me die. He wouldn’t go through the effort of climbing up just to watch me plunge to my death.

“I didn’t tell them your secret.” My fingers dug into the wood of the window frame, the splinters cutting through my skin like little blades. The police officers were raiding the second floor, I could tell. I could hear them. They were going to find the attic, and then me. “Tell me you believe me, and I’ll jump.”

“What difference does it make?” He bared his fangs, staring at me with forced boredom.

The fire spread, licking at the grass and approaching us with surprising speed, though he didn’t seem to mind at all. We were already dangerously close to getting caught.

“Because it’s the truth,” I screamed.

Our eyes met in the dark and held for a moment.

“I don’t believe you, but I’ll still catch you,” he said. “I will always catch you, the fucking dumbass that I am.”

“What do you mean?”

“You soften me.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want to fucking kill you! You’re too fun to fuck with. Now Get. The. Hell. Down.”

I jumped with my eyes shut, not expecting it to work, but Vaughn defied gravity and somehow caught me honeymoon-style, while still managing not to fall back. It was like my bum knew exactly how to land in his palm, my back braced against his other hand. In one smooth, continuous movement, he ran to the back of my house, ignoring the fire at his feet, keeping me closely pressed to his chest.

He shoved me behind the bushes, then joined me, taking shelter and hiding. The cold, moist earth was a welcome relief from the dancing flames, and I shuddered with pleasure as I took a clean breath—just in time for the firefighters to start yelling among themselves and turning on their hoses.