Page 139 of Burn

When the alarm goes off at the station, I’m ready and willing to give my life to save a nameless face. But why is it I can’t seem to tell Mila I love her? If I can risk my life for someone else, I should be able to tell the ones I don’t want to live without how I feel for them, right?

It’s Sunday night and I’m sitting on the couch with Jacey, telling her all the reasons why I can’t love Mila and knowing I do.

My problem is, I don’t believe in fairy tales anymore. Mila does. I see it written all over her face. How can someone like me give her a fairy tale?

“If you love her, tell her, Caleb. Don’t wait,” Jacey says me, her focus on a book in her lap about what to expect during your first trimester of pregnancy.

“I—” My words falter, stopping short of what I’m about to say. She doesn’t want to hear the words “I don’t know how” again. If anything, they meant nothing to her anymore after everything she’s been through with Evan.

“Just tell her how you feel, Caleb. I’m speaking from experience here. This sucks. This not knowing where you stand until suddenly it’s too late.”

“I don’t know if she feels the same way,” I admit, showing my vulnerability. If Mila doesn’t feel the same way for me, then what?

Jacey snorts and closes the book. “Don’t be an idiot. She loves you.”

“How do you know?” Deep down I have a suspicion Mila loves me.

“I see it on her face. She loves you.” Then she gives me that side-eye. “And you’re too much of an asshole for her to stick around if she didn’t love you, sorry.”

There’s certainly truth to that.

“I’m scared.” Never have I admitted this before. “I’m scared because me being in love comes with me disappointing her and her resenting me for the things I can’t give her.”

“What makes you say that?” Jacey chokes out in disbelief.

I shrug.

“Caleb, life is really short. I know I keep saying it, but it’s the truth. It’s really fucking short. Tell her. Tomorrow you may not get the chance.”

Her words hit me right in the heart. Evan never got the chance to right the situation with Jacey, and for that, guilt hits me because here I am being given a chance to right my situation and scared of the consequences if I can’t give Mila what she needs.

Maybe it’s because I feel guilty about what happened to Evan, and I would be lying if I didn’t say that part of me died in that fire with him. Another part died with my parents and Wyatt. What parts did I have left to give Mila? The parts that drowned himself in whiskey and fucked his demons away?

She deserves better than that.

Given everything that’s happened to me over the years, I know feeling guilty is the worst part about death. Maybe it’s meant to be.

Just like I’ll never forget my family, I’ll never get over Evan’s death. Ever. Even now in the week following the fire, I wake up in cold sweats and remember him like he’s right there with me, but he’s not. He’s gone.

The dream I have of him is one where he’s lying there just like he was after the first explosion, talking calmly to me, cool and collected as he always was. Fearless. And I walk away from him.

I don’t know why I walk away. He’s screaming for me to stop, but I keep walking for some reason.

I wake up in tears, and with a little more of my heart damaged. Sometimes I’m afraid to sleep. Afraid of what I will dream about.

Because there’s one dream about Mila I have usually right after that one with Evan that shakes me to my very being and tests my will to survive anything else happening. The one that has me holding the words I love you at bay.

The dream I have is one of Mila and takes hours to get over, and I can’t go back to sleep after it.

In the dream, she’s standing with flames surrounding her, and she takes her hand with my heart in it and throws it in the flames. Only it’s not just my heart, it’s both of ours, as if to say they’re burning together. I call out to her, tell her I can save her, knowing I can’t.

And then I’m standing beside Evan’s grave. Only it’s not Jacey I’m holding, it’s Mila, and I’m the one who’s died. In horror, I watch as they hand Mila my helmet, same charred edges as Evan’s had. When I look closer, it’s Nixon holding her, his arms wrapped around her as I’m lowered in the ground.

I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to let that happen.

The thought of losing Mila before I ever had the chance to have her in a normal sense, terrifies me. Her standing before my coffin is an image that haunts me, a fear I’ll hold with me forever.

The dreams got me thinking about Mila a little more, and I know, since that day in her apartment where I showed up drunk, she’s probably just as confused. I haven’t been the same, and there’s so much we haven’t talked about. But every night she comes by my apartment and stays with me, gives me her body, her heart, whatever I need with no demand in return.

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