by Christa Wick
What was the saying everyone used?
Even a mother couldn't love that face...
Right, that was it -- something so wrong in appearance that a woman would reject her own offspring. Despite the lack of any disfigurement, I was that child. My mother hated the sight of me. My face and a dozen imagined failings had made her drive me out of the home she shared with Dr. Miller.
Refusing to yield another night to tears, I slapped at my cheeks, my palms wet and soapy against my flesh. I tried to cheer myself up with the fact that I still had two nights paid on the crappy, roach infested room. I also had a three-pack of ramen noodles. The hot plate worked. Tomorrow, I would visit a shelter that one of the other tenants had mentioned.
Not that the people who ran the shelter would let me stay there. At a month past twenty one, I was a few years too old to fall under their rules for homeless teens. Neither did I have a kid of my own -- thank God. And no one had beat me -- at least not recently. But the shelter had a room full of clothes. I would only get ten minutes inside the room once a month, and that was only if they took pity on me to start with. But I might spot a few things good enough to sell to one of the used clothing boutiques around town. The right jacket or a few designer tops would pay for another week's rent and a twelve-pack of Ramen.
And if they didn't let me into the room or the clothes were all shit, I would try panhandling again. My first two weeks at the hotel had been paid by begging for change and selling off the last of the clothes I had possessed when I still lived with Helen and Dr. Miller.
Dressed only in a t-shirt, I left the bathroom, the rinse water and panties still in the sink. My wallet was on the broken night stand with its sagging door. Next to the wallet, I counted fifty-seven cents in change. Opening the billfold, I removed a picture. Torn in half and held together by clear tape, it was the photo of me and Mike in front of the firehouse. The albums never made it into storage, likely by design, and this was all I had left.
I propped the picture against the base of the lamp before thumbing through three one-dollar bills. That was it. Three dollars, fifty seven cents, three packages of ramen noodles, a few pieces of clothing and even fewer nights left on a hotel room in the dead of a New England winter.
"Fuck!" I threw the wallet as hard as I could at the far corner of the room. It hit with a thick clap of leather on aging plaster then fell to the floor. Crawling onto the bed, I pulled the top sheet over me. There was no blanket. The one that had been in the room when I checked in almost two weeks ago had been filled with holes. I had taken it to the front desk, the night clerk telling me someone would replace it the next day because he didn't have the key.
When I checked the next day, the bitchy day clerk said I had best come up with a replacement before I left or they would file theft charges. My protests that I was not a thief were met with derision.
"Honey, you're a thief and a loser like everyone else here," she had said before picking up the phone and threatening to call the cops because I was making a disturbance.
Growling from the memory, I rubbed at my eyes, my fingers curled into tight fists as I swore at the desk clerk and the rest of humanity.
"I am not a loser," I whispered as I reached toward the lamp and turned it off. A loser would have sold her body already. A loser would have started running drugs or stealing from people. A loser would have used the money that had gone for the hotel on a needle filled with heroin and let her first ever fix also be her last.
"All of them," I growled in the dark, my voice breaking with anguish. "They're the losers. They are the cheats. The liars."
My mother, Dr. Miller, Helen's mother, all the people who had claimed to be Michael Burke's friends and family, Jason Bridge, my only lover who had taken me in the first time I became homeless then tried to pimp me out. They were the filth.
Or so I wanted to believe.
"Tomorrow," I mumbled, shivering beneath the thin sheet. Tomorrow was forecasted to be the first seasonable day after the city had spent the last month in a deep freeze. People would be out shopping. I would hit the shelter and then the freeway ramp near the mall. If I did score some clothes, the garbage bag that held them would make me look as desperate as I was while panhandling.
Sure, some of the passerby would hurl insults out the windows. The wrong kind of men would stop and make lewd offers. But there would be others. They might pass me a bottle of water or a bag of chips, maybe a little money. Even if just one genuine person stopped to offer what aid they could, I would make it one more day and then another.
"Tomorrow," I repeated and fell into an exhausted sleep.
********************
Hours later, I woke up to burning eyes and lungs. I tried the lamp beside the bed but it wouldn't turn on. I covered my mouth and coughed violently a few times before realizing smoke filled the room. Jumping from bed, I staggered toward the door.
No matter who I might have become since Michael's death, I had been a firefighter's daughter for more than five years. The lessons he had drilled into my head were faded, but they hadn't fully disappeared. The smoke dragged the memories up from where I had tried to bury the past. I remembered not to touch the door handle until I knew the hall wasn't on fire.
I placed a hand against the door's wooden surface. I immediately jerked it away as the searing heat threatened to scorch my flesh.
A sound like voices screaming in the hall reached me. I screamed back, hoping it was a rescue team. No one answered. I heard flames as they cracked loudly and support beams splintered in the walls. The screams I had thought I heard were really the sounds of the building as it began to collapse.
Spinning around, I faced the darkness of the room. For almost two weeks, the hotel had been my only shelter. I had the small space memorized. There were no windows, no way out other than the door that separated me from a burning hallway.
No exit, no refuge, nothing but a few minutes or seconds of time before smoke or flame killed me.
Time!
The word shattered my panicky fugue. Michael's lessons came back like a ghost whispering in my ear. A barely detectible pulse of sirens indicated help was on the way. Firefighters might already have their hoses trained on the building.
I had to buy time, had to stay alive, breathing and unburnt, until they found me or put the fire out. Racing toward the bed, I scooped up the top sheet and ran into the bathroom. I shoved the material into the sink and reached for the faucet, forgetting that I hadn't pulled the plug earlier. Water sloshed on my feet. I pushed down at the sheet, soaking it then racing back to the door.
I knew it wasn't just the flames that could kill me. The fire consumed the room's oxygen, leaving behind poisonous carbon monoxide. Light headed, I returned to the bed, clawing at the fitted sheet to free it from the mattress while I fought the urge to pass out. Plunging the fabric into the sink, I turned the faucet on. When I jerked the wet sheet out and wrapped it around my body, I left the water running. I couldn't remember if Michael had told me to do so. But I could feel the heat coming up from the floor as well. The water sloshing onto the wooden boards might buy me a few more seconds and I needed every last one of them.
I pawed at the nightstand until I found Mike's photo and then, belly to the ground, I took a breath through the water logged sheet and screamed for all I was worth.
Next to me, paint blistered on the wall from the heat. I was almost out of time. The fire would be in the room in less than a second. I would burn to death before the smoke had a chance to strangle my lungs.
A wail broke from me just before the door exploded into a million pieces. My head dipped to shield my face against the fragments. With the wet sheet pressed against my nose and mouth to filter the smoke, I looked up.
A body filled the doorway and blocked almost all of the space except for the halo of flames visible just beyond his shoulder. The man was a giant with an axe, his face covered by a breathing mask and soot-smudged shield. He scooped up the wet sheet I had used to seal the d
oor. Holstering his axe, he tossed the sheet over my head then lifted me like I was nothing more than a body pillow filled with feathers.
Over his shoulder I went, his hand landing on my ass to hold me securely in place as he started to run. Every step felt like it would be our last. The walls of the entire hallway were aflame. Steam rose up from the sodden carpet and his boots hit the flooring underneath so hard the weakened boards seemed sure to shatter.
Halfway down the last landing, the stairs gave way and he leapt. My body slammed into something solid and a heartbeat later I felt the heat disappear.
Somehow, we had made it outside into the cold January air.
I was going to live!
The firefighter placed me on my feet, his hands working to peel the sheet from my body. With a death grip around Michael's photo, I pushed at the man's touch in a panic. I didn't care if every last one of my neighbors in the hotel were as naked as the day they were born. I couldn't handle another layer of embarrassment or degradation after all I had been through the last few years.
The fire had wiped out the last of my plans and the fragile hope I had nurtured before falling asleep. It didn't matter that I was alive, I didn't have the means to keep on living.
I sucked a ragged breath in as my rescuer propped me on the bumper of a fire truck, mumbling something as he walked away. I watched him go, my heart sinking lower with each step he took in departure. I blinked and let the cold air brace my emotions. I wasn't anything to the man and he wasn't anything to me beyond having saved my life. No need to feel abandoned.
But I did.
Maybe I felt that way because these were Michael's people. It didn't matter that they couldn't know I was his stepdaughter or that maybe none of them had served with him. Firefighters were supposed to be family to one another, the social contract extending beyond the teams to their children, spouses and parents. If the fabled bond existed at all, it seemed like it should be felt at an instinctual level.
So how could my rescuer just walk away like he was leaving trash on the curb?
Lifting my head, I saw him grab a dry blanket and turn back to me. He gestured for me to stand. I obeyed, grateful for a few more seconds of someone acting like I meant something, even though it was a stranger helping another stranger as part of his work.
Looking away, he held the blanket up and shielded my body from everyone's gaze as I unraveled the wet sheet from my naked lower half, my efforts clumsy as I kept a tight hold on the photo. As soon as the sheet hit the ground, he wrapped the blanket around me.
Brain fuzzy, my body still shaking, I wanted to curl up against the man. He was so damn big in his gear and I felt fragile as hell and in dire need of a hug. I gladly would have pushed my pride to the side and asked for one but some middle-aged bureaucrat with a clipboard was yammering in my ear and pulling me reluctantly back toward a reality in which all I could hope for from the firefighter was my sorry-assed life and a blanket.
I had no money, no ID, nowhere to go and no one to call.
"Miss, I asked if you could give me your name?"
Feeling like a deer caught in a train's headlights, I blinked at Mr. Clipboard. I had the sense that I had already answered some of his questions, but I couldn't remember doing so. More of Michael's training came back to me, leading me to realize that I was in shock from the trauma.
"Miss, if you give me your name, I can get you on the shelter's list, get you somewhere to sleep tonight."
My name?
I shook my head, searching for an answer. All the years I had lived in Hagersburg as Eden Burke had been a farce. My mother wouldn't disclose my birth father's identity, making it impossible for Michael to officially adopt me. Dr. Miller hadn't even considered giving me his last name. All I had was my mother's maiden name, my legal name according to my birth certificate.
"Eden Abbey," I answered.
The man who had saved me from the burning building made a noise that sounded like someone had just tackled him. I gave a side glance. He had removed his mask. Smoke smeared his face and all I could see for sure were a pair of dark blue eyes, their gaze incredibly intense as they stared back at me.
Unnerved and knowing there was a high chance I had met the man at least once through Michael's job, I redirected my attention to Mr. Clipboard. I didn't want anyone in Hagersburg to know I was in town. If word got out, the hateful people I had left behind would make my life that much bleaker.
"The shelter would be great," I answered. "At least I guess it would be. I really don't have anywhere else to go."
Something heavy landed on my shoulder. I turned to look and found it was my rescuer's ungloved hand gripping me. His thumb gave a quick caress along my neck, the intimate gesture and the blue fire burning in his gaze sending a sudden arc of heat straight to my pussy.
Damn. More than just shock, I was losing my mind to feel arousal at a moment like that.
"Her name is Eden Burke, not Abbey, and she's not going to the shelter." His gaze lifted to glare at the man with the clipboard. "She's coming home with me."
My first thought was "hell yes," followed by a quick "what the fuck?" I wasn't some dog he could scoop up and take home, no matter how good looking he might be beneath all that sweaty soot covering his face.
It took a few seconds to realize he had offered a different last name for me. He knew who I was, which meant I knew who he was. I dismissed the idea that it was Dare. The age might have been right, the blue eyes certainly were. But there was no way in hell Mary O'Donnell would let her son follow in his father's footsteps despite his plans to do so. And, really, could the cold, seemingly indifferent universe be so cruel as to have Dare O'Donnell rescue me from a burning building?
The last time I had looked into his blue gaze, it had been filled with accusations and anger -- anger directed not at his cheating father or my slutty mother but at me.
Mr. Clipboard dropped his pen. The older man's mouth shaped words as he bent down to pick it up but no actual sound came out. Upright again, he tilted his head, started to say something but the firefighter cut him off.
"I said she's coming home with me, Pearson." The hand that gripped my shoulder pulled me closer. "This is Michael Burke's daughter and she isn't going to some damn shelter after nearly dying."
Pearson stuttered then shook his head. "That's highly unorthodox, Sergeant O'Donnell."
Well fuck me running...
I looked once more into those blue eyes. No way in hell it was Frank O'Donnell. It had to be Dare. More than three long years had passed. The grimy coating of smoke and time had changed him. Mostly it was a factor of time and years spent lugging around all that equipment. His body was bigger, his face more sharply contoured around the jaw and cheeks. There was a hardness to him that I didn't recognize.
"You can go help someone else now, Joe." Dare's voice dropped low, a trace of menace and a whole lot of authority edging his words as he nodded in the direction of a small group of people.
The man left, his clipboard clutched to his chest.
With Pearson gone, I turned to Dare. I couldn't even finish getting an awkward "hello" past my lips before he put his hand up, blocking my attempt to speak.
"How in hell can you be in town, living in this junkie-infested dump, without contacting me? And to say you had nowhere to go? What the hell, Eden?"
I tried to dredge up a smile, but I didn't have it in me to do so. I wanted to cry and I still really needed that hug. Breaking into tears, I fell toward Dare and into his arms.
Chapter Seven
Dare
Seeing the tears start to slide down Eden's cheek, I felt like a total shit. Even then, all I could think was "what if?" What if I had been the one carrying Bailey down the stairs instead of anyone on any of the other fire teams? She would just as likely be dead and I wouldn't even know it. I wanted to yell at her, shake her.
I grabbed her by the shoulders as she started to fall, not sure what I was going to do. A sob tore through her throat.
<
br /> Don't be an asshole, O'Donnell.
I wrapped my arms around her, smoothed my hand over the back of her damp hair. I couldn't believe I was holding her. Three and a half years had passed since I last touched her. And the last time I had looked at her, I had been blind with fury.
Ignoring my mom's tearful request for me to stay home, I had returned to Eden's house the next morning to find her gone. Expecting she had been as much in the dark as I was about what was going on between Frank and Helen, I had been ready to forgive any knowledge she might have had. Discovering that she and her mother had skipped town in the dark, I had retreated into my own little world for a few weeks as my father moved out of the house and my mother started divorce proceedings.
When I finally pulled my head out of my ass at the end of the month -- all traces of Eden were gone. Her social media accounts were closed. Her email address bounced when I finally opened the three pleading messages she had sent me, claiming ignorance about the affair. The one thing she hadn't told me in those emails was where she had gone. The last one promised to tell me if only I would answer her. Helen didn't want anyone to know, but if she knew she could trust me, if I was still her friend, she would give me the address.
If I was still her friend...
I had proved a lousy friend and that had cost me more than three years. I stroked her wet hair again. It had darken since I'd last seen her, or maybe the light just made it look that way. I'd know in the morning -- if I could convince her to come home with me.
"It's okay," I said softly, my throat too tight from the danger she had just escaped to speak any louder without barking at her. "I'm sorry I yelled."
She sniffled¸ trying to pull it together and be tough, but I knew better. She'd always been a hard shell with a soft center. A tomboy who would squeal with delight when she would open one of Michael's gifts to find a stuffed bear even though she was already a junior in high school.
