My shoulders sagged.
He put a hand under my chin and lifted my face. “Look at me,” he demanded.
I looked up.
“Do you think this was me?”
“No,” I said, ashamed of the catch in my voice. I really didn’t think he did this, but I was scared and I was so very tired.
“Can I touch you?” he asked, his voice calm.
I looked up, surprised that he didn’t sound angry. I nodded.
He yanked me forward, folding his arms around me and standing up, bringing me with him. My feet touched the ground, but they didn’t support me. His arms, his body kept me up. He wrapped himself around me like I was a hand and he was a glove. I clung to the front of his shirt, praying he wouldn’t let me go. When his grip tightened, I sighed in relief. His clean scent encompassed me, pushing away some of the smoke, and tears prickled my eyes.
When the emergency trucks swerved into the lot, my muscles tensed at the thought he would release me, that he would push me away and deal with the fire.
But he didn’t.
He didn’t let go. Not once.
Even when some of the men he must work with came running up—addressing him by his last name and exclaiming over what happened.
He spoke calmly over my head, telling them everything he knew and telling them I wasn’t ready to talk. He didn’t seem embarrassed to be holding me so close in the center of a parking lot. He didn’t act like being seen in a vulnerable position like this wounded his pride at all.
He just stood there in the center of chaos with flames blazing, water spraying, and the shouts of responders all around, and he was completely still.
He was the anchor to my drifting boat. The roots to my growing tree. Without him, I surely would have floated away into some kind of unreachable place within the confines of my brain.
No matter how much I wanted to deny it.
Not matter how much I could say it wasn’t true.
There was no getting around it.
This wasn’t an accident.
The first light of day peeked through the sky when I stepped out of the police station after several hours of questioning. Even after the hours of invasive questions, I knew no one had any clue what was going on. The fact was I didn’t have anyone in my life. There was literally no one. And that meant whoever was doing this had motives I didn’t know about. Motives I didn’t understand.
The police couldn’t offer much comfort. They only assured me they would be investigating and warned me to be very careful in my daily life.
Gosh, really?
I was muttering to myself, trying to decide what to do next, when I looked up.
His truck was parked at the curb.
He was leaning against the door, looking smoky and rumpled. His arms were crossed over his chest and he watched me with a heavy stare.
“Holt?” I said, stepping forward. “I thought they released you a couple hours ago.”
He pushed away from the truck. “I’ve been waiting for you.” He opened the passenger door and motioned for me to get in.
I noticed my bags sitting on seat. “Is that my stuff?”
He nodded. “It reeks of smoke. You can wash it at home.”
“Home?”
“My place.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but then I closed it again. I was shaken up. I had nowhere to go, my car was still sitting at the motel, seized for possible evidence, and I didn’t want to be alone. If he was offering me a place to stay, then I was going to accept it.
I climbed into the truck and turned to face him. “Good girl,” he said.
Before he could slam the door, I caught it with my foot and glared at him. “Good girl?” I mocked. “Do I look like a dog to you?”
He smirked. “No, Freckles, you definitely do not.”
I crossed my arms across my chest and glared at him.
He sighed. “Give a guy a break. I’m tired.”
“Me too,” I said, dropping my attitude.
After he settled behind the wheel, he lifted a pink drink in a clear cup out of the cup holder in the center console. I hadn’t even noticed it was there. He extended it to me and I took it.
“What’s this?”
“A strawberry smoothie. I figured your throat is probably sore.”
It was sore. And it felt very dry. I took a sip of the drink and sighed as the fruity sweetness exploded on my tongue. It’s thick and smooth texture slid down my throat with ease. “Thank you,” I told him, the words falling flat to my own ears. They just didn’t seem to be enough for everything he’d done for me.
He motioned to a white paper sack on the seat beside him and said, “I got you a blueberry muffin, too.”
“You didn’t get anything?”
“I already ate it.”
I sipped the smoothie while he drove, my body feeling boneless against the seat. I was so incredibly tired. The adrenaline that surged through me earlier that night had long ago been used, and it left me feeling drained and empty.
“The medics said you looked okay,” Holt said, watching me out of the corner of his eye.
I nodded. “I’m fine.”
He lapsed into silence and we said nothing else until we were inside his house and he was handing me a towel for my shower.
“Your hand,” I said, noting the raw-looking scrapes and cuts on his knuckles and fingers.
Flashbacks of him punching in the broken window at the motel rushed my brain. I gasped, and the towel in my hand fell to the ground and covered my feet. “Where else are you hurt?”
He shook his head. “I’m not.”
I grabbed his hand and brought it back up, studying the damage done to his skin. Lightly, I traced my finger along the edge of one of the more jagged cuts. “They need bandaged,” I murmured.
He shook his head. “Bandaging cuts like these on a hand is practically useless. The bandages would just fall off.”
“I don’t know what to say.” My voice was raspy.
“You don’t have to say anything. The medics already cleaned and took care of these.”
“No,” I said, still holding on to his hand. “I don’t know how to thank you for saving my life. Again.”
“Stop thanking me,” he ground out.
“I have to,” I said, looking straight into his eyes. “If you hadn’t been there…” My sentence trailed away. We both knew what would’ve happened.
“But I was,” he said softly.
“About that…” I began, wetting my lips. “Why were you there?”
“I needed to talk to you about something.”
“What?”
He withdrew his hand, reaching into the back pocket of his jeans and pulling out a folded piece of paper. “About this.”
It was a plain white piece of paper, the kind that anyone would use in a printer. I unfolded it, noticing there was some kind of writing on the inside. When I got to the last fold, I glanced up at Holt who was wearing a very grim expression. Clearly, whatever this was wasn’t good.
I pulled it open and stared down, my brain not really comprehending what it saw. I had to read the line over three times before I really got what it was saying.
My stomach clenched.
My hands trembled slightly.
You should have let her die.
“Where did you get this?” I finally asked.
“It was on my truck when I left work earlier tonight.”
The paper fluttered to the floor slowly, joining the towel by my feet. “So you got this before the fire tonight?”
“Yes. It’s the reason I came looking for you.”
“You didn’t say that.”
“I figured you were dealing with enough at the moment.”
“Did you tell the police?”
He shook his head slowly.
“But why?”
“I wanted to talk to you first. See if you knew what it meant.”
“It means someone wants me dead!” I shouted. My voice seemed to echo through the hallway.
“You’re not going to die,” he growled.
“I shouldn’t have come here,” I said, looking frantically around. “I need to go.” I spun around to rush into the living room, but the towel was tangled around my feet and I tripped, falling toward the floor.
Holt caught me around the waist, pulling me back so I was up against the solid wall of his body. The heat of him was delicious and it radiated around my fear-chilled body. “You’re not going anywhere,” he rumbled in my ear.
I struggled against him, but it was stupid. He outweighed me by a hundred pounds, easily, and was likely a foot taller than me. If he didn’t want to let me go, then I was pretty much stuck in his embrace. I slumped against him. “I’m putting you in danger by being here.”
“You’re in more danger when I’m not around.”
I couldn’t stop my snort. “There goes that ego of yours again.”
His chuckle vibrated my ear. Chill bumps raced over my scalp. “All I’m saying is that clearly this guy is a pyro. My job is fire. You’re better off here than alone.”
“But what about you?”
“You let me worry about me.”
I tried to wiggle out of his embrace so I could look at him. He only loosened his hold enough to allow me to spin in his arms. I had to tip my head back so I could stare up at him. “Do you have a death wish?”
“I’m not going to die. Especially since life just got a hell of a lot more interesting.” His fingers flexed against my hip.
“But—” I protested, but he cut me off.
“It’s obvious I’m already in his sights. He thinks we’re connected. You not being here isn’t going to change that.”
I couldn’t argue with that because it was true. After all, he didn’t receive the letter until after I checked into a motel.
“Why are you helping me?” It was something I just couldn’t understand.
His body shifted, I swear coming into even more contact with mine than it already was. He brought up his free hand and brushed back my hair, pushing it so it fell behind my shoulder. “It’s my job to protect people.”
“Is it your job to bring them home, too?” I felt a little breathless. Just beneath my ribs my heart fluttered wildly. It felt like there was a little bird inside me, flapping its wings, trying to fly.
“That’s just a perk of the job.” He smirked.
“So you do this often?” I said, feeling slightly bruised.
“Never.”
“Then why me?”
He took a few steps, backing me up so I was pinned between him and the wall. From this angle, the hall light fell behind him so his face was in the shadows. But even still, the lightness of his eyes pierced me like a crack of thunder in a storm.
“I don’t know.”
I wasn’t expecting those words. In fact, I barely heard them over the thundering of the blood in my veins. His nearness affected me in ways I didn’t understand. I felt hot yet cold. Nervous but bold. Part of me wanted to rush away and the other part of me yearned to arch closer, to slide my hands up the hem of his shirt and run my fingers across the wide expanse of his bare back.
“That’s not a very good reason to get mixed up with a girl on the run from a killer.”
He cocked his head to the side. “No?”
I shook my head.
“How about this?” he said, leaning down so his lips brushed my jaw. The stubble on his face tickled my chin. “Because even in the center of a blazing fire, my body reacted to you. Because seeing you so small and helpless in a hospital bed twisted my guts. Because the day I walked into your room and those stormy gray eyes landed on mine, I felt like there was something tethering us together. Or maybe it was because of the way you sighed and leaned into my chest the night I carried you to my bed. Your scent still lingers on my sheets, Katie.”