Fire licked the staircase, and the stairs gave way when I stepped on them to get upstairs. I don’t know why I felt like I had to get up there, but I just knew. Maybe it was the way the steps were on fire, in a straight line, and that could only happen if it was set intentionally. I gripped the hot rail of the staircase, my palm burning from the touch, but it wasn’t enough to stop me. I lifted myself up with my good arm, I pulled myself up the rail, doing my best to go around the steps. The rail groaned, threatening to give.
“Easton! You crazy fuck! Where are you?” Keaton, a fellow firefighter yelled from the main entrance, but I was already gone in the black smoke.
When I got to the top, one room had the fire leading to it. She was in there. I knew it. I ran down the hall and saw a smoky bathroom with an old fabric shower curtain. I ripped it off its hinges and dunked the nasty curtain in the toilet. Water would help prevent the fire from touching my skin. I wrapped it around me and ran back to the room. I didn’t even hesitate. I jumped through the portal of flames, and when my feet landed on the ground, it was like I was in another realm when I saw her on the bed, tied, with that fucking psychopath laying on her with a smile on his face.
I picked the man up, and he didn’t move, he was unconscious. I didn’t want to feed the fire by throwing him out the window. Oxygen would get in and let it rage. So I did the second-best thing, I tossed him in the flames and started to untie Luna. He woke up though, screaming for his life at the top of his lungs. I ignored him and hissed as I untied Luna from the bed. The rope was on fire, and her wrists had started to burn.
I laid the curtain over her and got to work on her ankles when he gripped my wrist with his hand that was on fire, and I yelled in agony and kicked him off me.
“You can’t take her from me! Nora, my sweet Nora!” he yelled, and the flames made their way into his mouth, silencing him forever as the fire burned him from the inside out.
I picked up Luna, leaving the soaked curtain on her and jumped back through the fire portal, and Keaton was there.
“Take her. Her first!” I said, and, with a grim expression, he lifted her into his arms and slid down the rail like they did the pole at the fire station. I tried to do the same, but the smoke had gotten to my lungs, and I couldn’t breathe. I leaned right until I was halfway down the rail, and I fell six-feet. My cast shattered under me as my arm broke my fall.
Suddenly, I was being lifted into the air and carried out into the fresh air. Someone dropped me on the ground. The last person I expected to see was Vincent. He slapped my face gently, concern on his brows. “You crazy bastard!” he said, laying an oxygen mask over my nose. I gasped as it rushed through my lungs. Fuck, that felt good. “You have burns on your hands, second-degree all over your body. You stupid asshole. I should have let you burn in there for your stupidity!” he yelled.
I didn’t think he would have cared, honestly.
Another person fell beside me, and when I turned my head, I saw Luna, her eyes fluttering as she stared at me. “Heaven,” she croaked.
I reached for her hand and shook my head, trying to tell her we were alive.
“I love you,” she said before her eyes rolled back into unconsciousness again.
I wasn’t sure if I was dreaming, if I was in heaven, or if I lived in reality, but I smiled and drifted off to sleep. I’d die a happy man knowing Luna loved me. Nothing else mattered.
Nothing.
I woke up to the sound of beeping again. It was starting to become my pet peeve. Beep. Beep. Beep. It was so annoying. When I woke up, the familiar hiss of the oxygen mask cooled my nose, and when I tried to take it off, I couldn’t. My hands were wrapped, and I had a new cast on now.
“Hey asshole.” Evan got in my vision, and that was when I noticed his black eye. In the distance, I saw Ethan waving. I tried to wave back but couldn’t move.
“I have too many people I love in this damn unit,” my mom said.
“Me too,” Ms. Nightingale said.
“Mom?” Luna’s voice brought me out of my stupor, and I turned my head to see her curling her hand around the rail. “Easton,” she called out for me. “Easton!” she said again, but I couldn’t speak. My throat was killing me.
“He’s next to you, Star,” her dad said, and Luna turned her curly mess of a head to me and grinned.
“Easton,” she said and reached for me, but I couldn’t move my hands. “I love you,” she said again, and my chest broke. Tears dripped from my eyes, and I wanted nothing more than to tell her I loved her back.
I took the mask off and licked my dry, chapped lips. “I love you,” I replied, my voice so hoarse it was nearly unrecognizable.
Zeke waited in uniform to take her statement since she was awake.
There was so much going on; I almost couldn’t focus.
“Are you okay with talking?” Zeke asked, taking out his notepad.
She inhaled through the mask and stared at me, waiting for me to give her the go ahead. I nodded, and she took the mask off and licked her beautiful lips. “He got me from the hospital. Ethan. Water bottle,” she spoke in choppy sentences to make it quicker. She didn’t want to strain her voice.
“Okay,” Zeke cleared his throat, obviously the emotion getting to him.
“Woke up. At Hampton. Man called me Nora.”
“What did you just say?” her mother asked in horror, her big eyes wide with fear and her hands trembled as she covered her mouth.