Still, he rushed, searched, fumbled through the disorder from one room to the next.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Fear crushed, as suffocating as the smoke that filled his lungs. He pulled his shirt over his face, his eyes wide and unseeing, the world a blur of fire and white-hot pain.
It didn’t matter.
He pressed on.
Pushed.
Forever passed.
A second.
A moment.
Misery the time that ticked on the clock.
A roar rose from the depths of him. “Where are you? Please. Fuck. Can you hear me?”
The whooshing of the flames screamed back.
He was on his knees. Blind as he searched.
Torment wailed.
As loud as the sirens he heard coming in the distance.
Tears blurred, burning against his charred flesh.
No. Please. No.
I jolted to upright on a choked gasp.
A rasp of pain.
Fevered, my eyes darted around to take in my surroundings. My senses were shocked to find I was no longer tumbling through the years that tormented me, but rather my ass was in the comfort of my own fucking bed.
Pale ribbons of pink streamed in through my bedroom window, a slow dance of warmth, while I felt like I was being burned alive.
Sweat soaked my flesh and my sheets while my heart raged with grief.
The scars on my back screamed like they were still red and raw.
Those? I could handle.
It was the ones written on my conscience, on my heart, embedded in my blackened soul that made me feel like I was getting torn apart.
I sucked for air. To draw oxygen into my lungs when they felt like they’d been charred and singed and scorched all over again. Like I was back in that day that had turned to the darkest night.
It was the moment my mind always returned to. Where the dreams lured me into a nightmare that’d been real.
It was when I’d lost my soul. My purpose. My right.
My head dropped forward, and I focused on trying to slow the rampage in my heart, the chaos that raged.
I deserved it, though, so what the hell did I expect?
Yet, still, I tried. Tried to be better. To pay a penance for the sins that could never be made right.
I’d wait—wait for the day when maybe it would be enough.
Lumbering to standing, I started for the shower. I knew I was fucked when in an instant a face infiltrated my mind.
The face of a girl who had spun me into a thousand mangled knots.
The one who’d be downstairs in the office when I got there.
The one I couldn’t seem to scrape from my thoughts.
There was something about this Salem. Something dangerous. Something I should avoid. And I was the masochist who wanted to find out.
TEN
SALEM
I’d been working at Iron Ride for the last three days.
I’d been right.
Darius had been pissed.
But even though he’d been all surly and grumbly and annoyed, there was enough work to make him forget why he was upset at me in the first place.
Hell, there was enough work to keep us all distracted for the next five years.
After the interaction with Jud on Monday morning that had left me completely rattled? That was precisely what I’d done. I’d thrown myself into getting the office whipped into shape and tried to pay as little attention to the man who rocked my whole world every time he got into my space.
Stoically trying to pretend like each smile wasn’t driving me mad.
Like each smirk wasn’t making me contemplate things I had no business contemplating.
So, I dove into the stacks of receipts and contracts and unpaid invoices, doing my best to organize them, to make sense of them, inputting them into the accounting software and trying to get it to balance since there had been no less than fifteen unanswered emails asking for that information from Jud’s accountant.
Not to mention the number of late notices I’d sent out on Iron Ride’s behalf to customer accounts that had never been paid.
My spirit had both lifted and sank with the amount it was adding up to, and I’d barely made a dent.
It only made the man who owned these floors like a hunter more mysterious. His life beat clearly found in the pulse of the motorcycles and cars he restored. I peered through the glass door that separated the lobby from the shop to where he was at the far, opposite side.
He was knelt over, his big body this force as he worked the metal.
My stomach tightened.
I guessed I recognized it, why it would be so easy for this part of his business to slide.
He was an artist.
A sculptor.
A crafter.
His care wrapped up in the rugged, fierce beauty he had to offer.
He shifted, and his shirt stretched over the wide, wide expanse of his muscled back.
My mouth went dry.
Before I stared so long drool would drip onto the desk, I forced myself to return my attention to the computer where I was inputting his positives.
None of this mess appeared to be hurting him, anyway.