Page 7 of From the Ashes

My cellphone flashes with a notification that drags my attention back into the here and now. I blink away from my computer and frown, not recognizing the number. Before I can unlock my screen and work out what it is, I hear a rumbling sound.

For a second, my heart stops.

It’s been a long time since I experienced an earthquake. Even though old instinct kicks in and tells me this just feels like a minor tremor, I still jump up and brace myself in the doorframe like I was taught as a kid.

I’m pretty sure this theory has since been debunked. I should have gone under my desk—it’s sturdy enough—but I wasn’t sure I’d fit. Besides, my father would think that undignified to cower like a panicked woodland creature. It doesn’t matter what’s safer, I’m sure. Only that I don’t embarrass him.

Like I thought, the shaking stops before it even really begins. My diplomas rattle on the walls and one of the lamps falls onto the carpet, but all in all, it’s pretty tame. I realize that the alert that flashed up on my phone was probably an advance warning system of some kind.

I puff out my cheeks and cling to the doorframe for a second, gathering my bearings.

“Living out east has made you soft,” my father’s voice scoffs. I sigh and look up.

“You’d prefer me to stay seated at my desk and die like a man?” I drawl with a crooked eyebrow.

My father harrumphs and smooths his tie down and approaches my office along the corridor. “Just no need to make a fuss, is there?” my father grumbles, his white mustache twitching like a disgruntled mouse on his lip. “Buck up and stop being a sissy about it.”

I grit my teeth, knowing there isn’t going to be any winning this disagreement. He has very set ideas about how men and women should behave so they maintain their dignity. I guess showing relief that the roof didn’t collapse makes me a pussy in his eyes.

How tedious.

“I’m almost done with that affidavit,” I tell him to change the subject.

I’m lying. I’ve barely started it. But I know it won’t take long once I finally corral my brain into focusing.

“Good, good,” he says absently as he continues to walk down the hall of his practice, nodding at his employees as he wanders past. Like earthquakes are nothing out of the ordinary.

Well, this is California. I’d forgotten that they aren’t.

“Welcome home,” I mutter to myself with a chuckle.

If there was a metaphor for how I’m feeling right now, the world falling down around me is damned on point. I look up to the ceiling as I sit back down again.

“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” I grumble to the universe. “You don’t need to hit me over the head with it like a hammer.”

I fucked up. I knew it then and I definitely know it now. Zahir deserved a million percent better from me and I let him down. But the universe can send all the tremors it wants. I can’t changethe past and I don’t really see what I can do about it in the present, either.

I’m not sure how I’ll manage it in a town this small. But I have to at least try and stay away from the man I once loved—the man I never stopped loving, truth be told. I failed him fifteen years ago, but I can do right by him now and put my own selfish need to be forgiven aside.

He’s never going to forgive me, anyway. So I should probably just dive into this document and lose myself in work like I always do.

Well, maybe just five more minutes on Instagram.

CHAPTER 4

Zahir

“You are such a traitor, Probie,”Lili says with a snort.

It’s eight in the morning and the end of our twenty-four-hour shift. Most of us are about ready to head out. But our probationary firefighter, Teddy, is dawdling as he takes an age styling his blond hair in the mirror hanging from his locker door. So it’s kind of fair game that the other guys start laying into him about the poster he’s got hanging on the inside.

“What?” Teddy says defensively with a frown. “Cassius Garda is a legend.”

Sawyer scoffs in mock outrage. “Who played for the Seahawks for over a decade.”

“Yeah, where’s your Chargers loyalty?” Lili asks.

Sawyer arches an eyebrow at her. “Uh, I think you mean Rams.”

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