A Fire That Burns

by Kirsty-Anne Still

  Tyler didn’t look at anyone but Austin as she caved to her exhaustion. It was time he took a break from the life that had torn his world apart and just focused on the only thing that felt right to him – Austin Pearson.

  Chapter Forty-One

  AUSTIN’S head swirled with the new drugs and she didn’t know if this was an apparition, or a bad dream, but with Natasha now standing at the end of the bed, she was hoping to snap back to reality as soon as possible. She had awoken to her bed shaking, and it did nothing for her uneasy head, and as her senses slowly floated back together, she realized that Natasha’s domineering figure at the foot of her bed was more than real. God, she was so much like her mother with her general persona.

  Great! Just fucking great! Austin’s thoughts manifested as she tried to grapple at reality.

  “Want some help waking up?” Natasha asked casually and grabbed the cup of water and threw it over Austin. “Try that.”

  Trying to respond, Austin spluttered and pushed herself up shakily as the water ran from her face. She was soaked and the assault did nothing to make her feel better. At that moment, Austin would do anything to sink back to sleep and get away from this, but alas; she knew that wasn’t going to be a wish she could have granted. The devil wasn’t that kind.

  Helplessly, Austin looked around the room as though trying to work out where everyone gone, and then she remembered – everyone had decided to give her some peace for an hour or so when she finally began to fall asleep. It was more a ploy to get Tyler to eat something proper.

  “I waited for them all to leave,” Natasha commented as she observed Austin’s behavior. “I thought this was more a thing for just us two. No interruptions.”

  “Why are you here?” Austin asked helplessly, and hated herself for sounding so pathetic. Why couldn’t this bitch fight arrive when Austin was up to it and not riddled with infection?

  “It was all about you, that is why I’m here!” Natasha started, her tone still irritated and incensed to the extreme. She couldn’t withhold her final outrage that, once again, Austin had ruined her life in some way or another. “For six fucking years, I had to listen to him whine and moan about how he wished you were there. Even when I got him to propose it wasn’t enough. He still pined over you, and you were the one that upped and left him.” Natasha let out a loud, infuriated growl, “You come back and get the fucking good life! After six years, you come back, and have it all handed back to you on a silver fucking platter!”

  “Yeah,” Austin responded with exhausted sarcasm, “This is the good life.” Slumping back down, Austin didn’t admit defeat; she just didn’t want to lock horns with this bitch. What was the point?

  “He still loves you!” was all Natasha seemed to be able to finalize it as, “Doesn’t matter what Aussie does, because good ole Tyler will forever love her and save her.”

  “What did I ever do to you to get this treatment?” Austin asked as she tried to ignore her rant. After twenty-five years, Austin wanted answers as to why she always had to bear the brunt of Natasha’s jealousy. “All I ever tried to do was be your friend!” Austin cried out at Natasha, “But you always made me feel like the third wheel with your flirting with Tyler. He wasn’t even interested in you, but you were just so persistent.”

  “You felt like the third wheel? You were the one loving on Tyler and I just sat there and took it! I thought that if I could, I would manage to win him over, but then he proposed to you and you got pregnant and everything seemed to just get serious and I felt like I had finally lost! Then I got my opportunity.”

  “And look where it’s got you now,” Austin responded exasperated. “A jail sentence, a guilty conscience and a whole lot of hate later and you’re still no better off.” Austin inspected Natasha and saw a lonely, hateful woman and she felt bad for her. “How can you be happy with that? With all of this?”

  “Believe me, Austin; I am so pleased to know that you’ll be forever scarred from that piece of trash house burning down. I am so glad I ended that for you too. However, if only it had killed you then we wouldn’t be in this mess!” Natasha shouted at her and then paused for a second, a sly grin lacing itself onto her lips. “Well, let me see, that miscarriage really did kill you first didn’t it?”

  Austin felt like her heart was caught in an icy grip at that comment and feeling as ill as she was, she didn’t withhold from letting herself cry out at that. She had felt a part of her die that night when she had started to bleed, her stomach had cramped, and crippled her body with so much pain that she knew, before she even made it to the hospital with Tom, that she had lost that baby. She didn’t need to be reminded of how dead she felt inside to know that Tyler never knew he was going to be a father because the moment of glory was stolen so quickly from them. She still felt numb as a result, a part of her would always remain that way, and she accepted that. She never expected to have it thrown at her in such a way her heart immediately iced over.

  “You do not know how happy I was to see the back of you six years ago,” Natasha gloated with a self-righteous smirk.

  “Not half as happy I was to arrest your sorry ass the other day,” Tyler scolded from behind her as he stood in the doorway, his posture stiff, his hands clenched by his side. “I really can’t fucking believe I thought you ever loved me! Fuck! I can’t believe I ever loved you! All this time you were just biding time and taking pride in the fact that you ruined someone’s life; someone that happened to mean the world to me!” Tyler laughed in disbelief at what he had just watched, “If anyone was the coward around here it was you!”

  “But I loved you enough to stick by you!” Natasha shouted back at Tyler, fearing she was left with nothing left to lose. “I loved you enough to stay here even when she left! It might have been my fault, but that didn’t matter, Tyler. I was a constant when she just left!”

  “Just get her out of my face,” Tyler spat as the hospital’s security finally made it up there. He had stood there long enough watching Austin and Natasha to know that he wanted Natasha to divulge the truth to everyone after six years of baited silence, and then he wanted her arrested again for assault.

  Tyler left the room as Jane went to tend to her daughter. He smacked the wall with a fisted hand before releasing it and running it over his head as he tried his hardest to control his breathing. He was through with this life, through with trying to make it all right, and he was through with letting Natasha cause more upset than possibly perceivable. He had lost out in this and he had no way to make it right. He felt like he would never make it right and he knew that Austin deserved that.

  He had rounded everyone up, thinking that Austin would appreciate a little gathering to lift her spirits. However, now everyone had just found out how big of a fool Tyler Armstrong really was, and for that, Tyler felt embarrassed to even be looked at.

  “Tyler, son, you need to calm down,” James spoke to his son calmly. “This isn’t going to do any good.”

  “Don’t tell me to calm down!” Tyler bellowed back and put his hands to his head, “Sorry.” He faltered apologetically, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he began to lose himself in a depressive demise. “I deserve hell for this. I’m sorry for everything.”

  “You’ve got nothing to apologize for,” Nicolas advised Tyler with an even tone. “This is not your fault. Austin being here is not because of you. You saved her that night.” Nicolas knew exactly where Tyler was going with this and he needed to stop the young man’s thoughts from darkening.

  “I let this happen though,” Tyler said mournfully as he looked at Austin’s father. “I helped kill a part of Austin, and I might as well have fucking packed her bags six years ago as well!” he huffed out his exhale and looked over their shoulders into the room; he was feeling remorse and guilt begin to build like bile in his throat. “This isn’t how my life was supposed to turn out!” he said as he dropped to the seat beside him and put his head into his hands. “I should have a wife and children by now. I should be chief and be
proud of all of my achievements. I should have loved Austin more than I did! I should have been there for her and I let her down! I was a failure, and that’s all I’ll ever be to her.”

  “Tyler,” Austin said as she stood just outside of her room, ignoring all of the protests to get back into bed, allow the nurses to check her over, and have her dressings changed. She was being ignorant of the damp bandages and her soaking pajama top, because in that moment, it wasn’t only her that was caught up in this mess. Tyler was stuck in it too and he always would be.

  Austin clung onto the doorframe, her legs shaky from misuse. The only strenuous therapy she had been given was to make sure she kept full mobility of her burnt arm, but the amount of drugs administered to her system had kept her so weak and tired she didn’t have the energy to get up and gallivant around. Standing now was a struggle, but she needed Tyler to come back to her. He was her incentive.

  “Get back in there, Aus,” Tyler scolded her lovingly. “Get changed and I’ll be in, in a minute.”

  Shaking her head, Austin accepted support from her mother to remain stable as she stepped out from her room for the first time in what felt like an eternity. “In the six years I was gone, I always checked in to see what you were up to. I lied to a point when I said I didn’t. It was always you that filled my thoughts; it was the memories that I had with you that got me through the day. I might have felt like I lost you, but when I was gone, I realized you gave me so much and I just left it all behind. In the end it didn’t matter about the baby mostly because you made me into who I am. My thoughts were just consumed with what you were up to and what you were doing now.” She gulped her emotions away, “I wanted to come back the second I left, but I felt like I had burnt every bridge possible. Then one day I just knew I had to come back.”

  “What did make you come back?” Tyler asked cautiously. He really did what all the answer.

  Austin smiled weakly as she let her reserve disperse, “You.” She then began to cry as everything came to a head. “You don’t know how much I wished that dream was mine. I want nothing more than to be married to you and have your children, but I lost your child once, Tyler. I don’t want it to happen again.”

  “It won’t happen again,” Tyler said and watched Austin falter all the more. He realized that his wording didn’t make it seem like they had a prosperous future ahead of them. Running a hand across the back of his neck, he looked at her with sincerity. “It won’t happen again, because this time, I will do everything to make sure you know how much I love you and want you, and when you get pregnant, I will make sure that no one ever so much as touches you.”

  Standing there, Austin felt herself give a genuine smile at the prospect of her future. All she could see was a happy life in Point Arena. This could really be happening now.

  “I don’t mean to interrupt,” Austin’s lead nurse, Alice, interrupted with a small smile, “But this is disturbing some of the other patients and, Austin, we need to change those dressings as soon as possible,” she alerted Austin, “Not only that, but you’re due for a new dose of medication and your vitals need to be checked.”

  “C’mon, Aussie,” Tyler said as he stepped in, “Let’s get you changed and comfortable.”

  “Someone will be in to change the bedding in a minute or two,” Alice told them politely.

  Jane looked at Alice and smiled, “I’ve got it sorted if you’ll show me the bedding. We’ll make sure Austin’s settled for you to change her bandages.” Jane watched as Alice nodded and she followed her as Tyler gently guided Austin back into the room and sat her on the edge of the bed.

  He looked to Austin and smiled at her, he put his hand to her face to wipe the pearls of fallen tears, the moment he did; he felt her fevered skin and frowned. “I cannot wait to get you home so I can look after you better.”

  “Is that a promise?” Austin teased tiredly as her entire energy reserve faltered.

  “One that I will make to you from today to forever, Sunny,” he said with such certainty and for once he looked forward to the future. Tyler was through with living day to day now because he didn’t have to. He could plan ahead and smile at the idea of forever.

  “I’ll believe it if you bring me an ice cream bonanza Strongson style,” Austin asked meekly, not sure if Tyler would remember the creation they had made one night when the power went out during a freak thunderstorm. The freezer had no power and so they had decided to eat most of the perishable foods. The ice cream bonanza had become somewhat of a tradition, stupidly named after them both. It was a memory that Austin still kept close to her heart. She even sat, late at night, with a bowl of ice cream just to remember Tyler. They had combined their names to create a dish that was purely theirs and theirs alone and she had tried to keep it alive every single day.

  Tyler’s face lit up then. “I can make that happen,” he said with such certainty. “Mint, strawberry, raspberry ripple, chocolate marshmallow, rocky road, and French vanilla; topped with strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, chocolate flakes, and extra marshmallows,” Tyler recalled the sickly concoction that they had experimented with. One he had tried to repeat with Natasha, only to be met with absolute gross disgust. She didn’t even want to share it with him like Austin did.

  “You remembered?” Austin asked. She continued to remember how they shared the deadly mound of ice cream before collapsing against one another. It might have been sickly, but every time it rained, that was their first port of call.

  As the nurse and doctor came in with Jane, Tyler’s smile electrified so much that it was infectious. “With you, Aus, I remember everything. Especially when our freezer hosted a home for more ice cream than any other food,” he teased her gushingly and watched her just smile brightly.

  Austin didn’t know if it was the fever, or the drugs that were still flying through her blood stream, but again she went on impulse. She grabbed Tyler with her good arm and kissed him as though it was her only life line left. She wanted to recapture a love she had come back thinking was lost. She wanted to finally give herself wholly to Tyler now she knew there was nothing to stop them.

  Now she wanted to get home more than ever.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  NOT fair, Knucklehead!” Austin whined as she watched Tyler chuckle from his end of the bed.

  Snapping into seriousness, Tyler gave her a look, “Knucklehead?” he asked her and then moved to go towards her. “Gonna call me that again?”

  Giggling, she watched him lean in closer, “Knucklehead,” she whispered to him at his command, her voice tinkering on seductive. The moment the word ended, Tyler was kissing her. His lips pressed to hers in a heavy and hard manner. The greediness they both exhibited was almost like they were trying to make up for the six years they had lost. Austin moaned in disapproval as he pulled back, but she managed a few more kisses before letting him go completely. “It’s been a while since I got to call someone that and got a kiss for it.”

  “I never thought I’d get away from that nickname so long as you lived,” Tyler replied jokingly, but his smirk slackened as he took in her still pallor complexion, “You feeling okay? You look a little flushed, Baby.”

  “I’m fine,” she told him, batting away his concern. “Just a little warm that’s all.”

  Leaning back in, Tyler put his palm to her forehead and frowned heavily. “You’re more than a little warm, Aus. You’re boiling hot.”

  “Can I blame it on being in a fire?” Austin asked him innocently, “Or that I’m just that smokin’ hawt?”

  Chuckling, Tyler sat up slowly, “You could, but we all know you’re just trying to ignore the blatant fact that this infection won’t leave you.” He watched her groan against the truth, “Believe me, Sunny, if I could say it was down to your fiery hotness, I so would.”

  “Can we be in denial for a moment or two?” she asked him coyly, “Or at least let me believe so before you go and call a nurse in?”

  “Of course we can,” Tyler relented, knowing he
could force help on her, or give her a moment to revel that everything wasn’t quite so bad. “You know I just want you better though, right?”

  Nodding, she looked at him, biting her lip gently, “I do, but I just want to not have to live with every minute being wrapped in the fact that I’m in pain, or ill with an infection that has me completely whipped.” She looked into his eyes and smiled meekly, “I just want a little bit of peace.”

  “Soon,” Tyler spoke and was able to make it sound like a deep promise. “Believe me, soon you will get all the peace you want and you won’t know what to do with yourself.”

  “Build more computer programs,” Austin told him with a smirk. “I do miss it. It feels like forever since I sat and built a software program from scratch and managed to do good with it. That, and get lost a little.”

  “And get good money for it,” Tyler teased her back. “That new system at the PD cost a fortune.”

  Austin smirked at him pleasingly, “Can’t put a price tag on perfection, Handsome.”

  “Too right!” he exclaimed to her and then gave her a pointed look, “Now can I go get a nurse?” he watched her purse her lips with readied disapproval. “You won’t get out of here otherwise.”

  Pouting at that, Austin let her shoulders drop, “Fine.” She relented, then slumped down into her pillows. “You’re mean for pulling the going home card on me.”

  “Gotta be cruel to be kind some days, Aussie,” Tyler responded before dropping a kiss to her lips and leaving the room to get a nurse. Retreating, he watched diligently as Austin’s temperature was taken along with her blood pressure and he listened carefully.

  “Everything’s okay, your temperature’s up, but not alarmingly,” the nurse told Austin sweetly and looked at Tyler, “We’ll just keep an eye on it, but it’s always worth asking. What with you going home in a few days,” she gave a wink then excused herself, leaving Austin with the advice to rest up.