started causing trouble months ago, before they'd gone to Crave. I should’ve tracked down all three of them somehow after they attacked Heath on campus. I should’ve beaten their asses before they had a chance to throw the brick.
Should’ve. Should’ve. Should’ve. And now Stella’s was gone.
Stella’s was gone, and I was not okay, and I couldn’t have Heath watch me fall to pieces, not when he was supposed to look to me for strength.
“I can’t do this,” I said. “Us.”
“What?” Heath asked in a small voice.
“I just can’t.” I couldn’t explain it. I didn’t have the energy. I couldn’t lean on him. Not after everything I’d fucked up. “Just go home, okay?”
“Dante,” Heath said, in that same pained, small voice.
I didn’t look at him—I knew it’d hurt too bad. I knew whatever expression was on his pretty face might make me reconsider, and I wasn’t going to risk it. I had too much on my shoulders right now for this sweet, magnetic distraction—I had to focus on the Crew, and rebuilding Stella’s, to make sure we didn’t go under after all the hard work I’d put in to keep us going all these years. “Please. Just go.”
He withdrew his hand. After a painful, silent moment of waiting, he stood up and left the cab without another word.
For a long few minutes, I was alone in the ambulance, numb. Then someone banged on the side door and marched in. “Yo,” Tru said. “You all right?”
“Fine. Not hurt.” I sat back on the bench.
Tru was half inside the ambulance, half out, with one foot on the steps and the other on the asphalt. He was a little pallid, with bags under his dark eyes, hair in a sloppy bun like he’d just rolled out of bed. He probably had. “You know that’s not what I’m asking.”
“Well, how the fuck do you think I am?” I snapped.
Tru wasn’t fazed. “Heath just left. He barely gave a statement to the fire department.”
“Not his statement to give, anyway.”
“So you did send him away,” Tru said. “Okay.”
“Leave it,” I said.
“Come on,” Tru said. “Let’s get this over with so we can go home.”
I nodded and followed Tru outside, grateful that he wasn’t pushing. I knew from the careful, considering look in his eye that this wasn’t the end of that conversation, though. But he knew when I wasn’t ready to talk.
It was a little calmer than it had been when I’d first stepped into the ambulance. The fire appeared to be mostly controlled—it was more an orange glow than anything, but it was still pouring dense, choking smoke. Tru led me to one of the two fire trucks parked, where Dad, Star, Eli, and Nix were standing with a handful of firefighters and police officers. All of them looked stressed and tired—but Dad especially so. He looked
One of the firefighters squared his broad shoulders and ducked his chin at me in greeting. His sandy blond hair was tousled with sweat, and there was ash dusting his cheekbones, but his gray eyes were sharp and attentive. “You’re Dante?”
“Yeah. That’s—was—my bakery.”
“I’m Beau, I’m here with the fire department. I’m just gonna ask you a few questions about what happened.” He nodded and motioned for us to step around to the back of the truck, away from the crowd and the sight of the smoldering building. Beau caught the eye of a police officer and waved him over, too.
Tru stood at my side as Beau asked me a series of questions about what had happened. I explained the series of events as straightforwardly as I could—it felt almost like a bad dream, like I was narrating something that happened to someone else. It was easier with Tru at my side, his steadying hand on my shoulder a grounding sensation that kept me from completely losing it.
Once I’d finished giving my statement, Beau shook my hand—Tru’s, too, with a familiarity that suggested they’d been talking before Tru came to get me—and stepped away with the police officer, throwing over his shoulder, “We’ll be in touch.”
“Well, that part’s done,” Tru said. “Means we can get out of here, at least for a few hours.”
I sighed and scrubbed a hand down my face. “Then what?”
“Dunno,” Tru said with a shrug. “We wait for Beau or the cops to contact us and let us know when we can come back and start… trying to recover what we can, I guess.”
“Doesn’t look like there will be much left,” I said.