But I couldn’t tell him to move.
I shook my head, gritting my teeth at the pain. “I just inhaled… a lot of smoke, Goo.” I coughed some more, lowering my forehead until the side of it touched the back of his soft-haired head.
“Are you gonna live?” His voice broke, and that shredded my heart and made me feel like a selfish asshole.
I nodded again as my lungs tried getting rid of more smoke. “I’m gonna live.”
He shivered and he shook even more. “Promise?”
“Promise,” I rasped out, wiggling my arm out from between us to wrap around his back.
The sirens got louder and louder, and out of the corner of my eye I could see the flashing, bright lights as they stopped in front of Miss Pearl’s house. Before I knew it, the firefighters were circling the home, and neighbors from all over the neighborhood suddenly appeared on the streets close by. Josh came back and nudged a glass of water into my hand before promptly coming up behind me and wrapping his arms around my neck, his face pressing against the side opposite of Louie’s. He held me tight.
I gulped down the water and watched as the ambulance pulled up a couple of houses down. The paramedics went straight to Miss Pearl, who I barely noticed was right where I’d left her, next to Dallas who was holding one of her hands with Jackson hovering close by. It only took a few minutes for them to put her on a stretcher with a mask over her face, and it was about that time that another ambulance pulled up the street.
“I was so scared,” Josh admitted into my ear as Miss Pearl was loaded into the ambulance.
There was no way I could tell him I’d been just as scared as he had been.
*
I knew it was late when I finally woke up. Too much light was coming in through the curtains when my eyes finally cracked open, my hand giving more than a gentle throb at me finally being awake and able to comprehend the pain radiating from it. It wasn’t too surprising that I was alone in bed when I remembered all three of us piling on to it in the middle of the night. The paramedics had checked me over to make sure I was going to be fine—making me breathe through a mask that had the boys both crying in a way that I never wanted to see again—and bandaging up my hand after I told them there was no way I was going to the hospital.
It was after four in the morning when we finally trudged inside, and I took a shower, coming out to find Josh and Louie waiting for me in my bed already under the covers. It had been years since Josh slept with me. Years. But now… well, I understood and, honestly, I was more than a little grateful. Last night, I had gone to bed confused about Dallas’s reaction to my toolbox, and the next thing I knew, I had run into his grandma’s burning house to get her.
I was freaked the fuck out. The entire night before had scared the shit out of me. I could admit it.
If I could go back, I wouldn’t not do what I’d done, but… I could wish it hadn’t come to it. What would the boys do without me?
Sliding out of bed, my shoulders screamed in protest at what I’m sure had been their usage when I’d helped Miss Pearl out of her house. My hand started throbbing even more painfully at the burn gracing its palm. My knees only stung a little as the sheets brushed against them. I hadn’t bothered with Band-Aids on them. They were scraped, but I’d had worse.
It took me a few minutes to use the bathroom, dab some honey on my scrapes, and brush my teeth awkwardly with my left hand. My head and throat were achy and raw from the night before.
And it was right then, as I was trying to brush my teeth with the wrong hand, that I realized what the hell I’d done.
I’d burned the hand I used to cut hair.
Flipping my hand over, I looked over the area that was covered by gauze. “Fuck. Fuck!” Most of my fingers were fine, but… “Motherfucker!”
My head throbbed. My eyes got watery. I’d burned myself. What the hell was I supposed to do? I used my right hand for everything. Everything. With so much gauze on it, I couldn’t cut hair, or even hold a brush for color. I had a feeling that anything that required me to stretch the skin on it was going to cause a world of pain.
“Fuck!” I cussed again, clenching my teeth together for all of a minute before I made myself think of Miss Pearl and what would have happened if I hadn’t intervened. My hand for a life. My hand for a life and the life of a cat. It hadn’t been for nothing.
But, I couldn’t believe I had been so stupid to touch the doorknob with my right hand. Fuck.
“Aunt Di?” Josh’s voice came from the doorway.
I swallowed hard and plastered a smile on my face that wasn’t completely fake. He was still in his pajamas from the night before, and he looked like he’d been awake for a while. “Hey. I just woke up.”
Josh glanced between the hand I was holding and my face. “Are you okay?”
I nodded, not trusting my words.
“Does it hurt?”
I didn’t like to lie to them, so I nodded again.
“A lot?”
“I’ve had worse,” I told him softly, also still not lying. It was the truth. I’d been in worse pain. It hadn’t been physical, but that didn’t matter.
He didn’t look like he entirely believed me, but he let it go.
“Did you eat already?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Did Louie?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What?”
“Cereal and a banana.”
“Good.” I gestured toward him, calling myself an idiot for what had happened. “I’m pretty hungry,” I said.
Josh walked alongside me toward the kitchen, watching as I put my slippers on and watching even closer as I cradled my hand to my stomach again. But he didn’t say anything. Louie smiled at me when I spotted him in the living room sitting on the couch in front of the television playing video games. If he wanted to act like yesterday hadn’t happened, so be it. The last thing I’d been thinking about before I’d fallen asleep was what I would tell my parents and the Larsens when they saw my hand. I thought I could just not tell them, but with these two big mouths, it was going to come out at some point.
I was already dreading the comments they’d make.
“Morning, Goo,” I greeted him, taking two steps forward before I stopped in place directly in front of the television and glanced back at him.
He’d been sitting pretty high up in the air, but as I gave him another good look I realized why he seemed to be taller on the couch than usual. It was the Iron Man blanket under him that hadn’t made me look too closely at the couch, but now that I did… I realized he was sitting on something.
Sitting on someone.
It was a long man with short, dark hair, asleep faced down on the couch with a bicep covering the side of his face. And Louie was sitting on what I could only assume was his butt as he played video games.
“Are you sitting on Dallas?”