Page 221 of Sinful Like Us
I can’t even hear my own blood-curdling wail.
Maximoff picks me up. He carries me further away from the fire, but the pain follows, attached to me like a parasite. I bury my face in his shoulder, and when we’re behind a parked SUV, I vomit.
Gravel digging in my knees, I puke until nothing else comes out, dry heaving, and Moffy tries to help me stop. I dazedly touch the shirt on my body. Baggy, a men’s crewneck.
I’m wearing his shirt. And his dog tags.
I fall back into Moffy. He catches me, and I curl up into a ball.
“I love him,” I cry. “I love him…I love him.”
My biggest regret is not saying it enough.
47
JANE COBALT
It feelslike eternity that he’s gone.
I can’t count the seconds, the minutes. Every passing moment extends into utter oblivion, and I calm behind the SUV.
Enough to stare blankly at the road, numb and hollowed.
“Janie!” Maximoff pulls me to my feet.
“What…?” I follow his gaze to the collapsed, burning townhouse. As firefighters hose down the battered structure, the garage door slowly begins to open.
Is it…?
Thatcher emerges with an unconscious Tony. He’s cradling him in his arms.
I run towards him. Air pumping into my crying lungs. I feel out-of-body, like I’m floating, and to my left, the SFO bodyguards release their weight off Banks, and he races towards his twin brother.
First Responders pry Tony out of Thatcher’s clutch—taking him to an ambulance—and Thatcher nearly stumbles forward, but I come beside him.
I hold his waist.
Banks holds his other side, and we bring him to the second ambulance. Soot is smeared across his face and body. Skin eaten on his right shoulder. He’s badly burned.
Thatcher coughs, “I found him like that…a rafter knocked him out.” It must’ve taken him a while to carry Tony to the garage. He hacks up a lung. “I’m fine.”
“Like hell,” Banks says.
I can’t be upset at Thatcher for risking his life for Tony. It’s engrained in him, and to tell him to do differently would be to tell him to be less of who he is. I’m angry that it had to happen.
I’m angry at the circumstances.
I think Banks is too.
Thatcher takes a seat on the back of the ambulance. His hand—his hand is in mine. He seizes my gaze like he’s implanting me in his memory.
I’m crying all over again. “I love you, I love you. Don’t go anywhere.Please.”
“I won’t.” He brings me closer to hold me, but I won’t let him with his third-degree burns. I don’t want to hurt him.
“No. You need a hospital.” I flag down a paramedic, but I keep my hand in his.
Light touches his serious eyes.
