39. Charlie

CHAPTER 39

Charlie

T he crash downstairs startled me out of my stupor. Breaking glass could only mean one thing. The fire had reached the house. I'd hoped that keeping the house sealed up would prevent the fire from consuming it too quickly. But with the windows broken, the flames would be able to pull oxygen in, only making it burn faster. I'd known the sprinkler idea was a long shot, but now all I could do was wait for the inevitable. If I was lucky, the smoke would take me before the fire did.

"Charlie!"

I looked up, my heart skipping a beat.

"Charlie! Are you in here?"

It couldn't be. My imagination was getting the better of me. Phoenix was sitting in his apartment back in Boston. He was three thousand miles away. Maybe the smoke had gotten to me already and I just never noticed .

"Charlie! Are you still here?"

The voice came closer. I looked up as the handle on my bedroom door jiggled and then swung open. There, standing in the doorway, was Phoenix, sweaty, grimy, and looking absolutely terrified. But the moment he saw me, he smiled.

"Charlie!" He rushed across the room, dropping to the floor and throwing his arms around me. "Why didn't you say anything?!" He was sobbing. "Why are you still here? You should've got out when my parents came by! What's wrong with you?!"

"I… I was asleep," I replied slowly, pointing up at the bottle of pills on my bedside table. "I took one to calm down and I fell asleep. When I woke up… everyone was gone."

I looked up at him, those green eyes meeting mine for the first time in weeks. All at once a thousand different emotions welled up inside me and all I could do was cry.

"I'm s-sorry," I sobbed, throwing my arms around his neck. "You d-deserve so much better than me!"

"Charlie… there's no reason to apologize…"

"Yes, there is!" I shouted, pulling back from him, my hands still on his shoulders. "I said so many terrible things to you because I was scared of letting you near me. I'm so scared all the time , Nix… I feel like I can't breathe. I want you in my life so fucking bad that I can't stand it. When you're gone, it feels like everything is wrong." I paused, reaching up to wipe my face. "But the thought of letting you in and losing you… I don't know if I could survive that. I… I barely survived it last time."

"I know," he replied calmly, holding my gaze. "I know why you did it. I figured it out. And I don't blame you."

"You should . I'm horrible…"

"Charlie, you're not horrible. And I won't allow you to talk about yourself that way." He reached out, tipping my chin up with his thumb and forefinger. "I love you more than anything in the world, Charlie. I don't care if you need a therapist, pills, or a different kind of care than some people. None of that bothers me." He leaned close, his lips inches from mine. "But I can't stand to be without you anymore. I love you too much."

My breath caught, and it took me a moment to find my words. "A-Are you sure?" I asked, my voice shaking. "I don't want to hold you back."

"I'm sure," he said without a second thought. "I've been sure since that night we kissed down by the creek. And you could never hold me back, anyway. Because, with you, I feel more alive than I ever have in my life."

Tears streamed down my cheeks as I stared at him. "I… I love you too," I said at last.

He just nodded and smiled. "I know that too."

His lips pressed to mine, and all the world melted away around me. All at once I felt like everything was right. This was where I belonged. This feeling I had when I was kissing Nix… this was home to me. The one I'd been searching for ever since the accident. And now that I was finally brave enough to admit it, I was never going to let it go.

"This is a really beautiful moment," Nix said, pulling away. "And I'll remember it for my next book. But we need to get the fuck out of here."

The fire. I'd totally forgotten .

"Right."

"Grab a bag and get your necessities. We're leaving in thirty seconds. I'll be outside."

Nix pulled me to my feet, handed me my empty backpack, and left out the bedroom door. It took me a few seconds to get my head back on straight, the dizzy elation of his kiss still coursing through me. However, the stench of smoke in the air didn't allow me to linger on it too long. I ran to the bathroom first, scooping out my medicine cabinet into my open backpack with reckless abandon. My meds were the only thing in the house that could be disastrous if I didn't have them with me. Then I ran back to my room.

On the corner of my headboard hung a leather cord with the opal arrowhead fastened to the bottom. I put it on, knowing I could never lose something full of so many precious memories. I tucked it safely under my shirt before reaching for my bottle of oh shit pills.

I held the bottle up for a moment, feeling the weight of the glass in my hand. If I hadn't taken them Nix wouldn't have needed to rush back into a wildfire to try to save me. I could've been out safely with his parents. Even though I didn't take them often, I knew they'd become a crutch, especially in the past few months when things were finally starting to look better. I'd taken more than I should have to deal with good as well as bad emotions. And now they'd nearly cost me my life.

Reeling back, I chucked the bottle at the wall, the glass exploding into a billion tiny shards. The small white pills practically turned to dust with the force of the explosion. Without a glance back, I shouldered my bag and left my room, knowing full well it would be the last time I ever saw that place again. I took one last look at the house as I left, taking in those places where I'd grown up, raised by a single mother who was just trying to do her best.

"I won't forget you, Mom," I said, glancing over the living room where we used to play board games or watch silly movies. "I promise I'll learn to live again, even if it's hard."

I pulled the front door closed behind me as I stepped outside. Nix was there waiting for me, already perched on his motorcycle. I felt a rush of anxiety as he motioned for me to hop on the back, holding out the only helmet to me. But as I looked up and saw the wall of flames already consuming his childhood home down the street, the anxiety faded away. A motorcycle was nothing compared to being burned alive.

Perspective was important.

"You take it," I said, pushing the helmet back to Nix. "You need to see. I'm not gonna have my eyes open, anyway."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah."

I got up beside him and swung my leg over the back of the bike, crawling up as best as I could. The bike tipped slightly and I cried out. But Nix righted it immediately, his legs flexing as he held both of us and the motorcycle in place. He slipped on the helmet and raised the visor, looking back at me.

"Wrap your arms around my waist," he called over the roaring of the flames that drew ever closer. "And don't let go."

I nodded, wrapping myself around him as tightly as I could.

"Don't let me fall, okay?" I called back, my voice shaking despite my determination to get out of there alive.

I was still terrified. So much more could go wrong on a motorcycle than in a car. At least in a car, it was hard to just plain fall out of it.

Nix looked back at me, his green eyes fixed on mine. "I will never let you fall," he said. "You and I are gonna be together forever. We've got too much unfinished business not to get through this alive, right?"

I nodded. "Right."

"Then let's get out of here."

Flipping the visor down, he turned forward once more, flipped the ignition switch, and turned the throttle. I jumped and nearly squeezed the life out of him as the bike started to move. But he didn't fight me. He took it slow at first, getting the bike out of the driveway and out onto the deserted street. But as soon as we were there, he picked up speed quickly, gunning the throttle to get us out of town before the flames consumed us both.

I glanced back as we neared the end of the street and saw the flames licking at the side of my house. The sprinklers were no longer running, meaning the power was out now. How it had lasted so long was a miracle to begin with. But I took one last look at my childhood home, knowing I'd never see it again in its current state. With a final nod, I bid farewell to that place and tucked my head against Nix's back as we sped toward the southern edge of town.

As we rode, I tried to focus on my own breathing and my vain attempts to keep myself calm. The entire town was on fire and I was on a motorcycle, out of all the times in my life I'd had a panic attack, this one seemed like a given. However, with my arms around Nix and his back pressed against me, I found it much easier to focus on him instead of my surroundings. We'd confessed our love to one another. We were going to be together now. That alone was enough to keep my attention diverted.

Until we began to slow down.

When we finally came to a stop, I looked up, the sudden blast of smoke making my eyes water. It took a moment for my vision to clear, a burst of hot wind pushing the smoke aside. It was only then that I realized the issue.

The southern road out of town was blocked. The woods on either side had caught fire, completely enveloping the town. Not only that, but thanks to the very hot and dry summer we'd had, everything was going up fast. That meant that several still-burning trees had fallen over the road.

We were trapped.

"What do we do?" I called over the wind and flames, coughing as I took a breath. "W-Where do we g-go?"

Phoenix stood there for a moment, turning his head side to side as he searched for a way out. Eventually it snapped to the right toward a wall of fire. I had no idea what he saw, but he turned back to me a moment later, flipping up his visor.

"Do you trust me?"

"Y-Yeah?" The tone of his voice made me feel like I shouldn't.

"Does the creek still have water in it?"

"Not much… why?"

"We're gonna follow it out."

I glanced back at the wall of fire Nix had been focused on. It burned right up to the edge of the creek, consuming homes and backyards as it went. The creek itself remained untouched. But all around it… the air there had to be boiling.

"The fire is too close!"

"There's no other choice," he replied, a tone of panic in his voice as he turned the bike toward the creek. "All the roads are blocked. "

"Can this thing go off-road?" I asked, looking down at the smooth-ish tires on the motorcycle that were definitely not built for grass and dirt. My heart was pounding wildly in my chest as adrenaline thudded through my system.

He glanced back at me, a mischievous grin on his face that I'd seen once before. It was the same one he wore that day we rode up to the edge of the wildfire. The day we got so close that we could almost touch it. The day that Nix showed me just how wild he could be.

"We're gonna find out. Hold on tight!"

Before I could argue, the bike took off and jumped the curb. I squeezed so tight around Nix's middle that I thought I might break his ribs. Any lighter of a touch and I would've gone flying off the back of the motorcycle as we rumbled through neighbor's yards, over their patios, and through smoldering underbrush to the edge of the creek.

Without missing a beat, Nix jumped the small embankment and put the bike down with a thud on the gravel-rich sand at the edge of the creek. Turning the throttle, we headed south, following the curvature of the water.

There wasn't much water left in the creek though. Even less than I remembered. It was no more than a foot deep even in the very center, burbling over rocks and around boulders. Not that I could hear it over the sound of the fire crackling all around us. Here the water and the air both were choked with ash and embers. The smoke was thick, and every breath felt like it was going to be the one that killed me. I choked and sputtered, holding onto Nix all the while as we bumped over rocks and sand.

I dared not open my eyes, the smoke causing them to tear up too quickly. However, I didn't have much choice when the bike suddenly came to a stop a minute or two later. Looking up over Nix's shoulder, I saw our doom in front of us .

There, lying across the entire creek was a log at least three feet wide. The massive tree had fallen, broken near the stump where the fire had damaged it the most. The entire thing was still on fire, the red-hot embers of its trunk hovering only inches above the surface of the water. Beyond it I could see several more trees that had fallen in a similar manner. Glancing around, I realized we were surrounded by fire on all sides. Even going back was no longer an option. The air was hot, and it burned the inside of my lungs with every breath. If we didn't get out of there soon, both of us would die of smoke inhalation. We had only minutes to live.