I feel helpless. I feel useless. I’m a goddamn fireman, but I know I can’t go in that house right now. It’s minutes, maybe even seconds from collapsing, but everything inside of me is telling me to just run in there. Who cares if I burn? Who cares if I don’t make it back outside? I know if anyone is in that house, there’s no way they’re making it out alive, and if she’s in there, I don’t fucking care what happens to me. I will go in there with her and I will never leave her side again. As I stare at the house, the images that flash through my mind are like the worst horror movie ever made. Her gorgeous red hair burning away, her smooth skin melting from her body, her full, pink lips that kissed mine so many times pulled back and frozen in a scream of pain.

Oh, God, I can’t take it! It hurts too much!

Dax tugs on my arm, pulling me further away from the fire, and I stare powerlessly at the house where Phina grew up as it burns to the ground. She’d be happy about this if she were standing next to me now. She’d be overjoyed that the place of her nightmares was finally going to be gone for good and she wouldn’t have to think about it ever again. I can almost hear the sound of her laughter telling me it’s about fucking time someone torched this place to the ground. I try to laugh, but it comes out as a sob. I need to hear her laugh again. I have to hear her laugh again, there’s no other option.

The cop from earlier at Phina’s house runs up to Dax and I force myself to turn away from the fire to hear what he has to say.

“Sir, we found Castillo’s cruiser parked next door. We already checked inside and canvased most of the houses in the vicinity. A neighbor across the street said she saw a man carrying a woman inside about thirty minutes ago.”

The confirmation that she was in that house a half hour ago doesn’t mean anything. I won’t let it mean the worst. I hear shouts coming from the back of the house and I head off in that direction, refusing to believe that she’s anything but okay. She’s strong and she’s a fighter. There is no way she would put up with fucking dying. She’d stomp her foot, look death in the face and tell it to fuck off.

Dax runs after me, shouting my name, but I ignore him. I come to a dead stop at the edge of the lawn when I see two firemen covered in black soot carrying a body bag between them as they race away from the house.

I won’t panic. I won’t fucking panic!

It could be Jackson. It better fucking be Jackson in that bag.

Please, God, don’t take her from me.

I hold my breath and stare around the corner of the burning house, waiting to see a glimpse of her gorgeous red hair and her beautiful, unhurt body being carried in a fireman’s arms. My heart beats erratically and I clench my teeth to keep my screams at bay, squeezing my arms as tightly as I can to the sides of my body to stop it from shaking. Seconds pass, but they seem like hours before I finally see the bright yellow reflective stripe of someone’s turnout gear. He’s walking backwards in this direction and I start moving towards him. I watch as one man suddenly morphs into two when they both turn their bodies sideways, another black body bag suspended between them.

My legs give out from under me and I don’t even feel Dax’s arms go around me to stop me from hitting the ground. My screams finally let loose and I close my eyes, turning my face towards the sky as I let the sound of my heart breaking in two fill the night air.

I killed her.

The beautiful, smartass firecracker that exploded into my life with the force of an atomic bomb – she’s gone because of me.

All those moments spent fighting with her were a waste of time. Time that could have been better spent getting one of those rare laughs that were just for me, memorizing every freckle on her nose and showing her just how much she meant to me even though I fucked it all up in the end when she needed me the most.

From the very first time I tasted her lips, she was mine. With that cherry red lip-gloss and her hands on her hips, all sass and snark and attitude – she was mine but I fucked things up with her that time too and that damn graduation party.

Who the fuck knows at eighteen-years-old that the girl he felt up at a party would turn out to be his entire world years down the line? I sure as hell didn’t. I drank too much and I didn’t even get to remember what should have been the best fucking night of my life. I kissed those perfect lips, slid my hands up her tight shirt and tried not to blow my load when she moaned into my mouth. Then, I blacked out, forgetting all of the important things and walked away the next morning like the cocky little punk I was and tried to forget about her. I thought I’d done a pretty good job of it until four and a half months ago, when I saw her again. All that bullshit I’d spouted off to my best friend about how it’s unnatural to spend your life with one woman…fuck, what I wouldn’t give to go back and beat the shit out of that stupid asshole who thought he knew everything.

Eighteen weeks spent fighting her continued brush-offs and fighting with her when I should have been on my knees begging her to never leave me.

Eighteen days spent learning about what made her into the woman she was and trying my hardest to prove to her that she was worth more.

Eighteen minutes spent praying to a God I’d never believed in, begging Him not to take her from me.

Eighteen seconds too late.

It seemed like an eternity waiting on that front lawn for one of the firemen to carry her alive out of that house, but it only took eighteen seconds. Eighteen seconds between the first body bag and the second that ended my life as I know it.