the most—what did that mean for our relationship? Was I just a project to him? Someone to teach and have fun with and romance, but not someone to build a life with, good parts and bad?
I swallowed down my sudden anxiety. This wasn’t about me. Of course he’d rely on his club more right now. We might have had an intense connection from the start, but it’d only been a couple months since we’d met. I was being ridiculous, shaken up and overwhelmed by my desire to help. But really, he should get whatever help he actually needed, not what I was compelled to give him. So when Tru, Mal, and Star walked Dante over toward the waiting ambulance, I followed, trailing a few paces behind like a kicked puppy.
27
Dante
The chaos around me seemed to be occurring somewhere else. Around someone else. Because this couldn’t be happening to me. This wasn’t real. There was still some way the flames would be put out—it’d just be minor damage. Just a little bit of cleaning up to do, and then I’d be back to work in that big open kitchen, at that big table, with music playing over the speakers and the sun rising on the horizon as I prepared the pastries for my opening regulars.
Except I knew that wasn’t the case.
The bakery was gone. Stella’s was gone. The place where I’d learned to bake—the place I’d grown up in, learned in, made my own. The place that had helped the Crew become the heart of Junee.
Gone.
Mal and Tru led me to the ambulance where a paramedic was waiting. She ushered me into the back of the ambulance and sat me down on one of the vinyl bench seats and asked me a series of questions that flew in one ear and out the other. I leaned my elbows on my knees and rested my forehead against my palms, staring down at my feet as the paramedic wrapped a blood pressure cuff around my arm.
At least I was in the air conditioning. At least it was quieter in here. At least I couldn’t see the flames, though I could hear the crackling, the firefighters’ voices, the rush of the hose.
The paramedic took a few notes on her tablet, and then disappeared from the cab of the ambulance, leaving me alone under the harsh fluorescent light.
Then the side door opened and Heath stuck his head in. “Hey.”
“Did she check you out, too?” I asked.
“Yeah. I’m okay.” He crept up the stairs to the cab and sat down on the bench next to me. “Are you?”
I wasn’t. I knew that much. I was numb—empty, like everything inside me had been burned away with the bakery, leaving behind only the ways I’d fucked up these last couple months in stark relief:
I’d let Ryder and his lackeys fuck up the Crew’s standing with Hell’s Ankhor. I’d let them attack Heath twice despite assigning myself as his security detail. And now I’d let them destroy the place most dear to me. My livelihood, the way Liberty Crew was able to stay afloat. My home.
I was a failure of a leader. How could I expect to keep Heath safe and happy when it’d been so easy for those three bastards to take everything away from me?
Heath reached out and stroked his small hand down the line of my spine.
And a small, wretched part of me thought: If he hadn’t stopped me from going outside when they’d first started mouthing off, this wouldn’t have happened.
If I had just fought them, maybe that would’ve been enough. Even if I was outnumbered—even if I got my ass beat, or stabbed, or put in the goddamned hospital, I would’ve recovered.
How was I supposed to recover from this?
“I can’t do this right now,” I said, and my voice was choked, half from the smoke I’d inhaled, half from the despair clawing at me.
“Do what?” Heath asked, and kept running his hand up and down his spine. It felt good—sweet, and soothing. And I didn’t want it. I couldn’t have this with him—whatever this was—when every choice I’d made thus far had just made things worse and worse, had put everyone and everything I loved at risk. And for what—so that I could be greedy, and soak up more happiness than I’d already had?
I should’ve kept my distance from Heath in the first place, and then he wouldn’t have been made a target. I should’ve excommunicated Baxter and Ryder and Trip when they’d first