Page 158 of Burn

“I have nightmares about it.”

Guilt hits my chest, my muscles tightening. I hate that I can’t take it away for her. “They’ll go away eventually.”

“Do they?”

“No,” I admit. I shouldn’t lie to her because they never will. Some memories never leave you. They become part of you, the blood in your veins, the beat in your chest. That’s when you know you love someone. When it’s impossible not to see what they give you. I only hope she can see the light she gives me in the darkness surrounding her in those moments when she can’t forget. “But happiness is accepting the fact that not all tragedies end in devastation. Sometimes new beginnings come from the embrace of forgiveness.”

She’s quiet, my words wrapping around her, the flickering of the candle on the table shown through her uneasy eyes.

“Do you think you’re to blame for anything that happened that night?”

“You know I am, Mila. If I wouldn’t have got in his face, he wouldn’t have reacted that harshly.”

Dropping her eyes from mine, she shakes her head, staring at her drink of the table. “You don’t know that.”

I lean into her. “No, I don’t, but nothing you can say is going to take that away for me. It’s something I’ll always struggle with.”

“I know you will, and I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” I kiss her temple. “I have you now, and that’s all I care about. He didn’t win. I did.”

Mila has incredible strength. Who else could have gone through what she did with Nixon and be okay? I don’t mean physically either. She healed quickly but I think it had to do with her will. Her determination not to let what happened define her future, or our future.

I know fires. I know how they live, how they breathe, how to contain them, what they do, how they’ll react to the conditions in which we had them, and why they move the way they do.

Just the same, I know Mila.

This . . . fire . . . her . . . it’s my gift, and I didn’t look at it that way until recently, because she had that way about her to make me see through the smoke.

I could have had a different life, a less dangerous one.

But I didn’t. I chose this. Maybe because of what was taken from me before I knew any better, or maybe because it was in my blood to do so. I think in many ways, firefighting chose me when I survived that fire at two.

Because of it, I saved Mila’s life.

She saved mine, too.

Mila’s the life I thought I could never have.

I TAKE HER to dinner at the small restaurant inside the lodge and it’s a nice romantic evening until that lady from the bar earlier shows up, talking just as loud as she did before.

I mean, honestly, does she have no sense of volume control?

She’s talking about how it’s her birthday and she’s here celebrating, but I’m just fucking annoyed. “Why does she have to be here too?”

Mila giggles, covering her mouth with a napkin and chewing her bread slowly. “Stop it. Just enjoy my company.”

“I’m trying.” I nod, winking at her and shift in my chair to slouch to one side. “Talk dirty to me.”

Mila never backs down from anything. Now won’t be any different. Her eyes dart around the room, a tender smile forming. Setting her napkin on the table, she reaches under the table, removes one of her heels and then slides her foot up my leg.

“You like that, Daddy?”

I laugh, thinking of the lap dance she gave me. My dick stirs to life—how can it not? Every little move she makes turns me on.

Just as I’m about to take her foot in my hand and show her just how much I like it, our waitress comes by and everything goes downhill from there.

And happens rather quickly.

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