Page 24 of Bottle Shock
My pulse spikes. “Do you know which units?”
He flips open a small notepad. “Last I heard—120 through 125.”
For a moment, everything goes quiet.
Elyse’s townhouse is 122.
“Jesus Christ,” I whisper, my voice catching.
The officer starts to say something else, but I don’t hear him. My brain’s already filling in every possible worst-case scenario. Smoke, flames, sirens. The place I’m living in now, gone up in smoke.
Just when I started to think my life wasn’t a complete dumpster fire, the universe decided to literally torch it.
CHAPTER 6
Gavin
DON’T TELL ME YOU NEED ANOTHER KEY
“It still smells like fire.”
Lily waves her hand through the air, nose scrunched, as we head for the door.
I swear I can cook, but dinner got away from me last night. I had a million things on my mind, and not one of them was the chicken on the stove. It burned to a crisp. Luckily, that was the worst of it—and Lily was more than happy to use it as an excuse for drive-through nuggets and fries. I caved, because sometimes you have to pick your battles.
“I’ll leave the window above the sink cracked. That should help,” I tell her.
She nods without looking up from the tablet she’s clutching, which might as well be a teenage eye-roll in seven-year-old form. It seems she’s already mastered selective hearing
I ease the window open, the hinge groaning, and avoid glancing at the scorched pan soaking in the sink. I’m pretending it’s salvageable, but we both know it’s not.
No one warns you the worst part about being an adult is figuring out what to feed yourself for therest of your life. Add a kid to that, and mealtime becomes an Olympic sport—only worse, because you never win.
Except Sunday dinners.
Those are sacred.
Every week, no matter how chaotic or busy things get, my family gathers at my parents’ house. My mom or Shane usually takes the lead in the kitchen, and it’s the one night I can shut my brain off. Lily gets to be the center of attention, and I get to breathe.
I used to dread the idea of routine—thought predictability was another word for boring. But somewhere along the way, I started craving it.
The days of hopping on planes to chase adventures across the globe—Spain, Croatia, Argentina—feel like they belonged to someone else entirely. That version of me lived out of a suitcase and thought freedom meant never staying in one place long enough to unpack. Now I live by alarm clocks and school calendars, and as much as I sometimes miss that restless energy, I wouldn’t trade what I have for it.
You can grieve who you were and still be grateful for who you’ve become.
Lily skips ahead of me as we walk the short stretch down the gravel road that connects our property to my parents’. Her loose hair bounces with every step, her pink backpack swinging off one shoulder even though she insisted she didn’t need to bring anything. The late-summer heat presses against us, thick and heavy, but the air carries a sweetness—the first hint of harvest.
The grapes are just starting to soften, sugar levels creeping up as the vines drink in the last stretch of sun. Every breeze smells faintly of fruit and dust.
“Think Grandma made dessert?” Lily asks, twirling in the middle of the road.
“Probably.” I grin. “Likely something that involves enough sugar to keep you awake until midnight.”
She giggles, that pure, unguarded laugh that still sounds child-like. She’s the best thing I’ve ever done, and some days, the scariest.
When we reach the porch, Lily doesn’t bother knocking. The screen door creaks open and she bolts inside. Before I can even shut it behind me, she’s in my dad’s arms.
“There’s my Lily Bear,” he says, voice booming. “Now that you’re seven, I might finally let you take the Grand National for a spin.”
