by Ella Roane
“Sending the ladder,” Chief says.
The twenty seconds it takes for me to see the nose of the fire engine appear from around the corner of the building feels like an eternity. The building has started in on its death groans. We don’t have long. I’m not even sure there’s enough time for the ladder to get in place to save us.
“Are you guys able to climb down the same way you came up?” I yell to Todd. “We’re running out of time.”
Todd nods. “We can jump for it once we get halfway down.”
I lean to glance over the building’s edge. What he’s saying sounds insane, but I believe him. That just leaves getting me off this building alive. For once, the people I came to rescue will be able to rescue themselves. Wish I was able to do the same.
“Hey,” I yell at Skip. “It’s time to go. You guys have to get off this roof. It’s going to collapse.”
“Fuck you two,” Skip yells back, shoving both his middle fingers into the air. He then goes into a handstand and proceeds to walk further down the length of the building’s edge. His face is to us, so he’s essentially walking backward. His expression is smug. It makes me want to shove it into a mud puddle until he quits kicking.
“This shit stops now,” I say, determined to throw him physically off the building if I have to. Maybe he’ll land in some bushes.
I start toward him but stop when he turns his hand walk into a cartwheel that lands him onto the roof’s flat surface. Still facing us, he dances backward like he doesn’t have a care in the world.
“Get back to the edge,” I yell. “The roof is failing.”
His reply is another two-fingered salute as he keeps moving backward. He throws his arms up into the air and screams, “Everybody’s gonna know my name!”
Then he’s gone.
In his place is a huge gaping hole venting hot smoke and scorching air.
Todd and I stand frozen, staring at where the guy had been standing. Then I hear it. A muffled scream for help.
Todd doesn’t hesitate. He launches himself through the air to land belly down on the roof. He moves across it on all fours, like a lizard.
I grab the rope from my hip and tie it off around my waist. I look for somewhere to anchor the other end. I want a way to make it back to the edge of the building if more of the roof gives way and I fall in, too. But the sound of tearing and cracking has me stopping my work to turn my attention back to the hell pit. Todd is lying on his belly at the hole’s edge. He’s got his head sticking out over the opening, and the updraft of hot winds is rustling his hair.
I know what’s going to happen before it happens.
“Todd! Get back from the edge!” I yell. My words of warning greet the empty spot where Todd used to be. This time, there’s no screaming.
I look around, frantic for something to anchor my rope on. There’s a chance Todd could still be alive. There must be.
Movement out of the corner of my eye snaps my attention back to the center of the roof. A man’s forearm has appeared. Now the top of his head.
“Todd!” He’s climbing his way back out. He gets the heel of his foot anchored on the roof, and I throw him the unfastened end of my rope. I can anchor him with my body.
My aim is good. Todd grabs the rope, and I gather the excess and lean back. The rope goes tight, giving Todd just the right amount of tension to pull himself out. Once back on the roof’s surface instead of dangling in midair, Todd curls his arms tight against his body and rolls. It takes him straight to me.
I help him stand. There are some singe marks on his light cotton T and jeans. Some of his exposed skin shows early signs of blistering, but that’s it.
“Skip?” I ask.
Todd shakes his head, and I understand. Skip’s gone. He’s beyond our help now.
The old building groans, this time with the addition of a shudder.
We’ve got to get off this roof. I look for the crane to see how close they are. That’s when my heart falls into my belly.
Four stories below me, my men are scrambling to get the ladder’s seized up mechanisms to work. The whole rig is stuck. Locked in place and still too far away to save us.
“Climb down,” I tell Todd. “You have to get off this roof.”
“What about you?”
“I’ve got my suit. I’ll be fine. I can wait it out.”
Todd looks from me to the gaping maw of a hole in the roof. Then back at me. His eyes narrow. “You’re lying. You’ll die up here… Or down there.” He nods toward the hole.
I grab Todd by the shoulders. “One of us has what it takes to get off this roof. Today that person’s not me. So that means you gotta go.” I pause and swallow hard. What I’m about to ask of him next means more to me than anything in this world. More than my own life. More than all my hopes and dreams. “Take care of Stella.” It’s the only thing I want from him, and he has to promise me.
Todd looks me up and down, then shakes his head. “No, man. I’m not leaving you here. If I do, Stella will kill me herself. We’re getting out of here together.”
This guy is such a blockhead. How can I get through to him that there’s hope for one of us but only if we act now?
I lock my arms around him in a bearhug and lift. I start duck walking toward the building’s ledge, but when I get close enough, Todd plants his feet against it so that I can’t move him any closer.
I release my hold on him. I consider punching him in the face, but that might make him loopy headed and unable to climb down.
“You have to go!” I yell.
Todd looks at me, then the rope around my waist, then at the crane stuck fifteen feet away from the building. “We jump,” he says.
The guy really is insane.
“I can’t make that,” I tell him. I see him glance down at the rope. It’s not long enough to reach the crane. We can’t throw the end to the guys on the crane so that they can tie it off as an anchor. There’s no way for me between here and there. “You gotta go,” I tell him again. This time my desperation creeps its way into my voice. I can’t leave Stella with no one. She can’t lose us both. There’s no way for me to live, so that means Todd must live.
Todd’s face lights in an asinine grin. “You trust me?”
“No!” I yell. And if he knew what was best for him, he wouldn’t trust me, either. I was about to pick him up over my head and throw him off the freaking roof. He might end up in traction for six months, but at least he’d be alive.
Todd slaps me on the shoulder, his expression growing more maniacal by the second. “It’s time you started.”
Chapter 23
Stella
“Oh my God, I can’t look!” I turn and hide my face in Marcus’s shoulder, but just as quickly turn back to the burning building on top of which Brad and Todd are standing. “What are they doing? Why don’t they get off?” I take several steps forward and scream at the scrambling firefighters. “Get them off!”
None of the firefighters stop in their work to look at me. They’re all focused on a collective, singular goal: save Brad and Todd.
Standing here, doing nothing while the men I love die, is ripping me in half.
I’m aware of the thought that fills my head—the men I love, plural—but I don’t care. Not right now. Not at this moment.
Marcus and I arrived on the scene half an hour ago. It was boring and unremarkable until I spotted Todd climbing up the side of the building behind some other guy. Then Brad got pulled into the mix. I haven’t even seen the first climber in over five minutes. That feels like an eternity with fire and smoke belching out of the building’s every orifice.
Our EMS truck is parked behind us, about seventy feet from the old abandoned bubblegum factory. It’s hard to see exactly what’s going on, but I strain my eyes to glean every detail that I can. A moment ago, Brad and Todd had been doing something to Todd’s waist. I couldn’t see what, but they were very focused. Now he’s disappeared from sight.
I sink to my knees atop
the cold, unforgiving ground and hold my hands up to cup my face. I rock gently back and forth while tears stream rivulets down my cheeks. My heart is breaking. I can feel it. It hurts. It’s hard to breathe. Each breath is forced. My chest only wants to constrict. It doesn’t want to expand.
Brad climbs onto the building’s ledge and crouches slightly, one foot in front of the other. His shoulders are forward but his arms are pulled up close to his chest. He looks ready to jump. But there’s nowhere for him to jump. Only open air.
Marcus kneels next to me. His strong arm goes around my shoulders and pulls me into his chest. He kisses the top of my head, then says, “You’re going to get to the other side of this. They’re going to be okay.”
All I can do is sob, but it’s a sob that soon turns into a scream. Todd has reappeared. He’s making a full-speed run at the building’s ledge. He bounds onto it, maintaining almost all his speed, then leaps into the open air.
Flames lick at the space between him and the hard ground below. His body is fully extended with his arms stretched out, reaching for the extendable ladder that’s nowhere near the building side.
It’s a terrifying sight, but it gets worse. With Todd still in midair, Brad leaps next. It’s a hard leap, but it’s nowhere near as effective as Todd’s.
I fall backward onto my rump, as if trying to put distance between myself and the tragedy unfolding. My hands and arms go everywhere. The sounds that come out of me are unintelligible, the product of a brain too overcome with shock to be able to function.
There’s a chance Todd might reach the firemen’s ladder, but Brad—my Brad, my love, my future husband—won’t. He’s going to fall four stories to his death, and I can’t stop it.
I want to die. I want the earth to swallow me up before he hits the ground so that I don’t have to be alive to lose him.
Todd’s hands connect with the frozen ladder. He slips, his grasp not solid enough. But somehow, he manages to connect again. This time he hooks his elbow through the rungs, then wraps his legs around the ladder and locks his ankles together.
But Brad is falling. He has crested the arc of his jump and is now plummeting downward.
“No!” I scream. And just like that, Brad stops falling. With a hard, slamming jerk, his body dangles in midair.
My gaze snaps back to Todd. His legs have pulled free from their hold around the ladder. He’s barely holding on, and the firemen are scrambling up the apparatus toward him. Those at the rear stop when they reach Brad’s height. One of them stretches his body as far as he can off the ladder’s edge, holding his ax at its full length out in front of him. Brad reaches for it. The tips of his fingers cause the ax’s angle to dip, but it’s clear he hasn’t secured a grip on it.
Above, the firefighters have reached Todd. Their hands grab any part of him they can reach to keep him from slipping away. If he does, both he and Brad will fall to the ground. Their destinies are tethered together, the same as their bodies.
The firefighter levels the ax at Brad again. Brad stretches, reaching, and this time grabs hold. It takes some gentle maneuvering, but Brad is soon within the firefighters’ reach. They gather their own onto the ladder. Saved.
The sobs wrench from me uncontrollably. I cry harder than when I thought they were going to die.
I know in my heart, I’m going to kill them both—right after I hold and kiss them and make them promise never to do anything like that again.
Time ticks by with an eternity of slowness before I have Brad wrapped tightly in my arms. “Don’t you ever do that again,” I say, squeezing him with all my might.
“Stella, you’re crushing me,” Brad wheezes.
I let go and throw my arms around Todd. I squeeze him just as tightly as I had Brad.
“Ow, ow, ow, ow, Stella,” he complains.”Blisters!”
His body is covered with them. They’re even under his clothes.
“Shut up and take it,” I tell him. “It’s what you get for making me almost watch you die—again!” I push away and hold him at arm’s length. “How many times do I have to do that?” I’m honestly not sure how I could handle it. The man is going to give me a heart attack someday. Then I soften. “You did save Brad, though, didn’t you? Thank you for that.” I follow my words up with a big solid kiss right on his lips.
The moment Todd starts to kiss me back, his hands slipping around my waist, I pull away. This time I step back completely, breaking all contact. There’s a finality to the disconnect that I wasn’t expecting. It leaves an unsettling emptiness in me. A void. With it is an intense itch to fill the void in any way I can.
My mind flashes to thoughts of drink, rampant sex, and even drugs. It’s a feeling unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before.
I see Brad shift out of the corner of my eye, and I go to him. We stand side-by-side, his arm draped over my shoulder and my arm looped around his waist.
The void within me blurs at its edges, seeming a little smaller, but it’s not gone. Neither is the need to fill it somehow. It’s a feeling I’d like to shake. I try to push it away, but it stays, sitting at the edge of my consciousness, waiting for its chance to crawl back in and demand my attention.
The three of us stand in awkward silence for a moment, but if things are strained for Brad, Todd and me, Marcus is oblivious to it. He’s standing looking at the three of us, grinning like a Cheshire cat. He’s got his hands in his pockets, rocking on and off the balls of his feet. He reminds me of a little kid bursting with a secret to tell everybody.
“What?” I finally demand to know, laughing.
“You three would make the best thruple ever,” he declares.
“A what?” Todd asks.
“You’ve lost your mind,” I exclaim.
With his brow furrowed, Brad looks Todd up and down, then at me, then at Marcus. “Come again?”
I hadn’t thought it was possible, but Marcus’s smile grows even bigger. “Now you’re getting it!” he says, giving Brad what seems like a hearty congratulatory pat on the back.
I narrow my eyes to shoot Marcus my evilest glare, silently vowing to meddle in Marcus’s love life the very next time I get a chance.
Epilogue
Stella
“Two months of wedded bliss,” I say as I crawl my way up my husband’s naked body. “I didn’t know it could be like this.”
Brad grabs me by my hips and pulls me into place atop him before wrapping arms around me and rolling me onto my back. “What? You didn’t know marriage could be an endurance run of orgasm after orgasm?”
I giggle as he kisses and nips my neck. My giggle slips into a moan as his long length slides its way home inside of me. His thickness always catches me by surprise, even now after having had him a hundred times. We just get better and better together. Every single time, he seems to learn something new about my body, how to touch me, when to speed up… and when to slow down. God, I love it when he slows down and rubs just the right spot. It makes me forget my name, what day it is, and how to even exist outside a permanent state of bliss. And then when he makes me come, sometimes it’s as if my entire body shatters and it’s only him holding me afterward that allows me to come back together again.
No… I never knew it could be like this.
A ball of tension is growing in my belly as Brad moves inside of me just the way I like him to. Yet, I manage to murmur, “I want to marry you again.”
Brad finds my mouth with his. His kiss is harsh and demanding, completely opposite from the gentle, persistent stroke of him inside of me. The difference has me clawing at his back and kissing him as hard as I can. I growl with the need for more—more power, more ravaging, more everything—but he refuses. He knows exactly what he’s doing. He understands the slow-growing orgasm winding up within me. He knows how it will push me to the edge of a higher cliff, how it will send me over with excruciating ecstasy. He’s in the spot that will make my pleasure linger for days with phantom memories of him.
“Brad. Oh,
God, Brad!” My breath is ragged.
“I need you to come for me. Fucking come for me,” he demands with a growl.
I arch beneath him and cry out my pleasure. My entire body tightens like a bow.
Brad keeps his pace slow and purposeful, but the power behind it grows, pulsing my entire body upward each and every time he reaches the zenith of his thrust.
My hands shake and reach for everything and nothing all at the same time, grasping and pulling as sensation overwhelms me. “Oh God, oh God! Brad!” My voice fills the room as I feel Brad’s already large size swell even more inside of me. He’s close.
My entire body clamps down around him, and my release rolls through my body to leave tingles at the top of my head. Brad’s hot seed warms my core, and I’m left spent and languid beneath him.
His kiss trails down my temple to my lips. “I love you, Mrs. Bowman,” he says, kissing my mouth, then my jawline and my neck.
“For the rest of my life plus one day?” I ask. It’s my way of making him promise to be with me forever.
“For the rest of my life plus eternity,” Brad answers.
Brad shifts onto his side and pulls me against him. Sleep calls, blurring the edges of my awareness, yet a harsh sound manages to force its way into the tiny little universe Brad and I have created for ourselves.
I look at Brad to see if he heard it too, but he’s looking toward the bedroom door.
The sound comes again. A knock. Someone’s at the front door.
“This better be good,” Brad grumbles.
“Ignore them,” I say, snuggling myself closer. “Whoever it is will go away.”
But with perfect timing to contradict my words, the knock sounds again. It’s insistent. Determined.
“You stay here,” Brad orders. “I’m not done with you.”
His ravenous look up and down my body makes me giggle. Yet, he manages to push away. He marches buck naked out the bedroom door.
