***
Three hours later, I woke up to my last day in my house with it on fire.
Smoke was billowing into my small bedroom, but with my bedroom door, it only had a limited place to come in.
But as I said that, the door slammed open and an imposing figure in a yellow jacket started through the doorway.
Smoke poured through even faster behind the figure, and soon it became harder to breathe.
“Shit,” I said, dropping down onto the floor on my hands and knees.
“Ruthie!” Darth Vader called.
I looked up to see the yellow jacketed man about three inches from my face, and realized that I was disoriented.
“Ruthie!” Darth said again.
I blinked.
“Yes, Darth?” I asked, somewhat delusional from oxygen deprivation.
The yellow-jacketed man moved his mask aside and placed it over my face, allowing me a few blissful mouthfuls of oxygen before he removed the mask again.
“It’s me,” the man said.
It took me a few minutes before I realized just who ‘me’ was, and then I smiled, launching myself at him.
“Zander!” I cried, so happy to see the goofball that I didn’t contemplate what I did next.
I threw myself in his arms, hugging him so tightly around the neck that he choked out a, “you’re okay.”
“Thank you so much for coming for me!” I gasped.
He patted my back and started to crawl.
Inevitably, I ended up on the floor beside him, my hand in his as we crawled together.
I couldn’t see a damn thing with all the smoke, and the moment we made it to what, I guessed, used to be the living room, I was praying that it wouldn’t be much further.
And it wasn’t.
Only a few short crawls more, and I felt the familiar feeling of a doorway.
Zander pushed me through it, and I fell face first into a man’s ass.
A man I hadn’t realized was in front of me until I became acquainted with his butt.
“Ack,” I exclaimed.
The man didn’t budge when I hit him, even when I slammed ungracefully against his backside.
Then my hands were grabbed and I was hauled off my front porch before I was unceremoniously dumped on my front lawn.
“Ruthie!” Zander said, patting my face.
Except I couldn’t look at him.
I was too busy looking at my house burning.
All of my things that I’d managed to gather over the last seven months were gone.
Every. Last. One of them.
Then a thought occurred to me, and I was up and running back towards the front door before anybody could stop me.
I didn’t have to get far, though.
All I had to do was make it back up to the front porch, right inside the door.
I held my breath until I was dizzy, feeling around for the familiar hook that I hung all my bags from that I needed for the next day.
And as soon as my hand closed around it and I lifted it off the hook, strong arms encircled my ribcage and I was yanked back so hard that my head snapped.
I gasped in a full lungful of smoke filled air, and started to gag.
Then I started to cough as I was dragged further and further away from my home.
“Why’d you go back into the building?” Sterling yelled as he shook me, fuming.
I held out my hand, offering him the book in my hands, and his face completely fell.
“Fuck,” he sighed. “Just fuck.”
I nodded.
It was Jade’s baby book.
It had her tiny footprints…and her tiny handprints. A lock of her dark brown hair, and a few dozen pictures of her that the nurse had been kind enough to take for me.
“I couldn’t leave her behind,” I whispered brokenly.
His eyes closed, and he leaned his head forward until it rested on my shoulder.
“You could’ve died,” he whispered.
I didn’t know what to say to that.
I could have.
I didn’t want to lie. He’d know I was lying…so it defeated the purpose.
“Yo!” A voice barked, interrupting our little bubble.
I blinked, finally looking around the area.
I was at the curb now instead of on my front lawn, which was good since I could clearly see that the house was fully engulfed now.
Firemen worked hurriedly around us, massive fire hoses snaking along from the road beyond my driveway.
People surrounded a makeshift barrier of fire trucks and police cruisers.
Two bikes were parked haphazardly in the middle of it all.
One of which I knew to be Sterling’s, and the other one I’d never seen before.
“She needs to put on this mask,” a medic ordered from beside me.
I didn’t look away from the bikes.
Only kept staring as I thought about all that had happened in the last ten minutes.
It felt like hours.
“Y’all need to back up so my men can work,” Sebastian ordered, pointing to a point where there were more men standing around.
“Go over there. Stay with the cop who’s standing beside her cruiser,” Sterling ordered.
My eyes followed where he was pointing, coming to the conclusion that Sterling wouldn’t be following me over there, otherwise he would’ve led me to her.
“What are you doing here?” I asked softly.
His eyes connected with mine, and became somewhat softer.
“We’ll talk…just not right now. Go over there and be good,” he ordered once again.
I sighed and let go of his hand, walking away from him.
His stare stayed on my back as I moved through the crowd of people, coming to a stop next to a woman police officer who looked like she’d rather be anywhere else but here.
“How are you doing?” She asked reluctantly.
I smiled. “I’m fine, thanks.”
“No, she’d be better if she put this oxygen mask on her face,” the same persistent paramedic sniped from my side.
I sighed and turned, holding my hand out.
“Give it to me,” I snapped.
The medic gave me the facemask and I placed it over my nose and mouth, annoyed that she was making me wear it when I felt perfectly fine.
Except when she started the oxygen, I immediately realized how much easier it was to breathe, and inadvertently let out a small sigh of relief.
“Good,” the medic said. “Keep this on. I’ll come check on you after I check on the firefighter.”
I blinked, turning to find Zander sitting on the back of the medic, his eyes focused on me…or at least my area.
When I moved, his eyes didn’t even flicker.
And then I realized it wasn’t me he was watching, but the police officer at my side.
“You’ve got an admirer,” I said through my mask.
The officer looked down.
“What?” She asked.
I lifted my mask and said, “You’ve got an admirer.”
She looked over at the fire truck, and I was impressed with how she knew exactly whom I was talking about without asking.
“Yeah, he’s an…ex,” she said.
My brows rose.
What’d they do, graduate high school together?
Were they high school sweethearts?
“He looks into you,” I observed, watching how they watched each other.
Zander moved his big body so that the medic who was in front of him was more to his left, freeing up the area directly in front of him for his viewing pleasure.
“Well…he’s not into the fact that I’m a cop…so he can’t be that into me,” she finally offered.
I blinked, surprised that she’d admit that.
All the female cops I’d met over my time didn’t like to share feelings, and either this woman at my side didn’t mind sharing her feelings, or she was tired of holding those feelings in.
My bet was on the latter.
“How long did y’all date?” I asked, eyes scanning the area for the only man that would ever be on my mind.
“He’s by the fire truck on the right side,” she said. “And we dated for six years, all the way through high school and the first two years of college. We’ve been separated for two years now.”
And they still had it this bad.
Imagine that.
I turned my head to find the man that currently meant the whole world to me and found him exactly where the young cop at my side said I would.
He was talking to some man I’d never met before, Sebastian, and Torren.
Sterling had his hands resting on top of his head, as if he was so relived he could barely contain it.
He must’ve sensed my gaze, because he turned and offered me a wink.
I waved back, but the order of the cop at my side was what had me jumping.
“Put your oxygen back on before he comes over here,” she ordered quickly.
I quickly complied, looking over at Zander with the now finished paramedic staring at me in anger.
“She’s a strict woman,” I said.
“She’s the reason we broke up,” the cop confided.
“Why?” I asked.
Was it weird that I was having this conversation with a practical stranger?
Because I thought maybe it was.
But it was taking my mind off the matter of someone burning my house down.
Because I didn’t doubt for one freakin’ minute that this wasn’t deliberate.
I’m sure they wouldn’t have gone to such exuberant measures had they known I was planning on moving anyway.
But now it was somewhat comical, since I knew for a fact that there were cameras on the house…something I imagined Sterling was discussing with the police officer on his right, and Sebastian that was on his left.
He hadn’t specifically told me he had a camera on my house, but it was kind of obvious when I saw new wires leading into a battery pack in one closet.
Well, I’d had to Google it…but I’d figured it out eventually.
“I think they’re in love with each other,” the cop continued.
“How did you realize they were in love?” I asked.
“They’re partners. She calls…texts…invites him out. He was sacrificing time with me on his days off to spend time with her…even though he’d just had a whole day with her and not with me,” she continued.
I didn’t know what to say to that.
That did sound bad.
“Looks like he still likes you,” I said finally, not sure what she was looking for here.
“Nothing you can say. Thank you for listening to me,” she said.
Her radio squawked, and she moved to the side to speak into it privately.
“It’s trash like you who ruined this street,” a woman at my side sneered.
I looked over at the woman who’d just spewed that venom, and couldn’t help the tear that slipped out of the corner of my eye.
“What did I do to deserve your hostility?” I asked woodenly.
She sneered, her son in her arms as he slept away, blissfully unaware.
“You brought this trash to our neighborhood…you know it was because of you,” she pointed at me.
The movement woke the child in her arms enough that he switched sides of his face of which he was laying on, and it was then I saw the mark on his neck.
A perfect heart shaped birth mark that was plain as day, even under the harsh glow of emergency lights that lit up the night.
I’d seen that birthmark on the news earlier.
In fact, I remembered thinking to myself how good it was that he had such an identifying mark because if anyone did spot the child, he’d be recognized almost immediately.
I didn’t know what to do.
I vaguely remembered the news anchor saying that she was volatile, and might have weapons.
Yet, I didn’t want to leave her here with the kid.
What if she ran off?
So what did I do?
Did what I did best…piss off my neighbors.
“Why do you care? Just go back inside your house and close the door. No harm no foul,” I sniped.
“I can’t go back inside my house, the firefighters made us evacuate due to your piece of shit house being on fire,” she hissed.
The child blinked sleepily at me, and it was then I saw that the child was exhausted.
He had dark circles underneath his eyes, and they were red rimmed from what looked to be hours of crying.
Everybody knew what that looked like…because most people did it at least once in their life.
The kind of crying where you can’t stop, because you see no way out.
“Are you the bitch who’s been calling the cops on me because of my car being in the road?” I asked her.
She narrowed her eyes.
“No, but had I, you would’ve deserved it. We don’t need your kind of trash in this neighborhood. This is a family neighborhood, not a murdering one,” she snapped. “It’s probably a good thing that your house is gone. Saves me the trouble.”
The last comment was said in such low tones, that I wasn’t sure it was meant to be heard.
But I had.
And so had Sterling who’d come up behind her.
He opened his mouth to speak, and I shook my head at him.
The woman kept her eyes averted from me, completely dismissing me, and I was never more thankful.
Mostly because I started to do some weird sign language at Sterling, who had no freakin’ idea what I was talking about.
His brow furrowed, and when I widened my eyes and flared them at the woman, he looked in the direction of her, then turned back to me with a ‘what the fuck?’ face.
I sighed.
Men were so freakin’ stupid!
How hard was it to understand a cutting throat signal and a point at the woman?
I mean, wouldn’t you at least assume she was some sort of killer…at the scene of a freakin’ fire?
Sure, she may not be the actual one who set the house on fire, but in a pinch, I’d work with it.
Because the execution of it all would still be the same.
The woman would get taken into custody, and that child would be taken away from her.
End goals, people! End goals!
I finally resorted to walking over to him, getting up on tiptoes, and whispering in his ear.
“Saw the news earlier. This woman kidnapped that child in her arms,” I said as softly as I could.
He squeezed my ass to let me know he understood, and turned, catching the eye of Trance who was now standing in the circle he’d been in earlier.
Then like freakin’ magic, he did a series of hand signals that looked nothing like mine, and Trance nodded in understanding, breaking off from the group with his K-9 unit, Kosher, and started our way.
He caught two other officers on the way, again with the hand signals, and surrounded the woman before she could even protest.
My mouth dropped open as they had the child out of her arms, and cuffs on her hands in less than thirty seconds.
“Holy cow,” I whispered in awe. “You’re hand signals are way better.”
“That’s because I was using hand signals and not made up shit that doesn’t do anyone any good,” Sterling muttered.
Okay, he was still pissy.
Duly noted.
“I’m going to get the officer,” he gestured to the woman officer I’d been speaking with earlier. “To take you to a hotel. If I can find time, I’ll stop by…but this may take all night.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
What else was there to say?
Nothing he needed to hear right then.
I knew he was worried about me…about my situation.
And I didn’t want to be that woman that threw a hissy fit because she wanted a freakin’ hug from her boyfriend. One that wasn’t out of anger because she’d gone into a burning building for something that didn’t matter more than her life.
Something I’d done…and probably shouldn’t have.
Would I do it again?
Yes.
But I hated that he was there to witness it.
“Don’t do anything stupid. Don’t order room service, don’t call anyone on the phone. Wait for me to get there. Promise,” he said briskly.
He didn’t deserve to have another worry added onto his plate.
Something I knew for a fact that he did.
Constantly.
He was a worrywart.
Which was also why I knew he’d overthink everything to death before he actually put any plans into action.
“Okay, Sterling.”
He nodded and turned on his heel, walking back to Sebastian and now that I looked closer, Silas.
Once he arrived back at the huddle, and intense conversation ensued.
And I was left chanting to myself.
Don’t cry. Don’t cry.
I didn’t cry.
At least not until I got to my hotel room, that was.
There I broke down.
There I cried for my lost things.
My only possessions in life.
The worry that I kept putting on Sterling and my friends.
Maybe…maybe it was time for me to leave.
Maybe that would be best for everyone.
I couldn’t say that my mind was in the best place…but the next morning, I had my answer. It was time to go.