Page 89 of Slow Burn
The smell of smoke. The faint growl of fire. Heat all around him.
Cole cracked his lids, just enough to see. Light still seared, but it didn’t drop him flat this time.
“Jocelyn,” he rasped, her name sluggish on his tongue.
Her sob broke like glass. “Thank God, Cole.”
He wanted to pull her in, shield her, carry her out through the flames if he had to. Instead his thoughts slid around, half-formed, fighting the pounding in his head. How long had he been out?
“Your place is on fire.” Jocelyn’s voice was strained, her body shifting.
Cole blinked through the haze. She was pulling at his bound ankles.
“We have to get out of here. If I get these, will you be able to walk?”
Heat licked at his neck—indignation or fire, he couldn’t tell. It was a fair question, though. His head felt split open.
“I think so.” He tried to look around, hissed when pain clawed at his skull.
Jocelyn hacked as the smoke thickened around them.
Cole craned his neck but couldn’t see past the couch across the room. “Where’s Ward?”
“Down. Or dead. I don’t know which.” She gritted her teeth, glancing over her shoulder as the smoke curled lazy but heavy around them, the fire roaring louder by the minute. Cole’s lungs bucked against it, every cough stabbing his skull.
“Bedside table,” Cole rasped. “Knife.”
Her gaze met his. A beat of hesitation. Then she stumbled across the room holding her arm over her face against the heat. She fumbled at the drawer, fingers frantic.
Flames clawed higher—curtains, walls, his TV stand. Everything he owned turning to fuel. He glanced at the door, only a few feet away, useless fury grinding in his chest.
She scrambled back to him. Without a word, she slashed through his bindings. The second the ties snapped, she hauled him upright. His legs buckled, nausea gnawing at his gut, but he forced himself forward.
The fire was faster. A wall of flame burst up near the door, heat driving them back for a moment.
“The door’s on fire!” Jocelyn screamed.
Cole clenched his jaw, shoved forward anyway. The windows were worse. This was their shot. He drove his boot hard into the door. The wood cracked, buckled, gave way.
Outside, flames raced down the steps, bright orange, greedy. Ward hadn’t just lit the apartment—he’d fed the whole place to the blaze.
Cole’s chest seized at the sight. His apartment. His restaurant. His whole damn life burning. But none of it mattered except the woman at his side. He wrapped Jocelyn close, shielding her with his body as he forced them down the stairs.
The fire chased, hungry. Heat blistered his back. Jocelyn shrieked. Cole didn’t let go, didn’t slow. The back door gave after a desperate shove, and daylight poured through. He pushed her out first, stumbled after, the two of them spilling into fresh air and autumn sun.
He shoved her farther, clear of the flames, until the back fence blocked them. Smoke and pain took their toll, sending him to the asphalt.
“Cole!” Jocelyn dropped beside him, hands clutching at him.
“I’m okay,” he rasped, hauling her in tight against him, anchoring himself with her weight. “I’m okay now.”
And with her safe in his arms, for the first time since waking, he believed it.
thirty-four
“The blazing fire makes flames and brightness out of everything thrown into it.” - Marcus Aurelius
When Cole went down, a fresh wave of panic spider-webbed in Jocelyn’s chest. She wouldn’t have thought she’d have the capacity to be scared after everything that had just happened, but watching him lose all color and sink to the ground terrified her more than anything in her life.
