Page 46 of Single Mom for the Firemen

“I have the keys,” I tell her, slipping them into the lock and opening the door. “And you have nothing to worry about. Mason already dealt with the cartel leader on the way here.”

Her eyes widen as she stares at the two of us. Her face is stained with tears, her lips chapped from where she’s been chewing them, nails bloody from picking at them.

But she’s alive. And beyond her, I can see Callie, curled up in the far corner of the room. She looks terrified, but she’s okay. And that’s all that matters.

“Oh my God,” Vanessa gasps, and just like that, she sinks into my arms, crashing her full weight into me as though it’s the only place in the world she wants to be right now. I hold her close, squeezing her tight against me, rubbing my hand along her back and closing my eyes as I inhale the scent of her.

“You’re okay,” I murmur to her. “You’re okay, Vanessa…”

When I finally pull back, my eyes travel over to Callie—she’s still cowering in the far corner of the room, her eyes wide as she looksbetween us. It’s almost as though she doesn’t believe what she’s seeing, and I crouch down and hold out a hand to her.

She doesn’t move. Vanessa is leaning against Killian now, her breathing heavy as she catches her breath, and he’s stroking her hair, doing his best to bring her back down to earth. But at least, on some level, Vanessa understands what’s going on here. To Callie, all of this came swinging out of the clear blue sky, and she clearly has no idea how to navigate the enormity of what this means.

I’ve been there too—maybe not at the same age, but I’ve felt what she’s feeling. That terror, that certainty that nothing is ever going to be okay again. It’s what I felt when I stood there in the smoldering ashes of my family’s home, and tried to imagine how I could ever recover. I don’t want her to feel as though nobody understands her. I need her to trust that I get what she’s going through, and more than anything, I want to be there for her.

“Hey,” I murmur to her. She jumps when I speak, clearly not quite ready for it.

“Hey, you’re okay,” I continue. I want to move closer to her, to give her a real hug and promise her it’s all going to be okay, but she doesn’t need that kind of pressure right now. No, this has to be on her terms. Because everything that has happened since last night has been anything but.

“Callie—”

“It’s okay, I’ve got this,” I promise Vanessa as she takes a step forward to stand at my side. She rests a hand on my shoulder, and Callie’s eyes dart to it at once—it seems like the promise of her mother’s approval is all it takes for her to see this clearly, and at last, she takes a step toward me out of the dark and shadow.

“See, you’re going to be alright,” I murmur, and I hold out a hand for her. Finally, she gingerly reaches out to take it. As soon as our fingers touch, it’s as though a dam breaks inside of her. Her eyes well up with tears, and she dissolves into sobs. Vanessa drops down on her knees and wraps her arms around her daughter, pulling her in close and rocking her slightly, doing everything she can to ease the pain.

But the whole time, Callie keeps hold of my hand. As though she can sense that I understand where she’s coming from, that I understand some part of how she’s feeling. I squeeze it tight, knowing that I might not be able to lift the weight of everything that’s happened from her shoulders completely, but glad that I can go some way to helping, even when it feels impossible.

Vanessa kisses her daughter on her head and tightens her grip on her again. I can see her lips mouthing the wordsorry,and I wish there was some way to assure her that there’s nothing for her to be sorry about. But I doubt she’d believe me, even if I told her that. The guilt of this shit, it lives with you for a long time, no matter how much you might try to deny it. The best you can do is embrace it and hope that you can prove to yourself and the people you care about that you want to make things right.

“We should go meet Mason,” Killian remarks, after a long silence settles over the room. “The cops are probably here by now. No doubt they’ve got questions for all of us.”

Vanessa straightens up at last. I can see how drawn she is, how exhausted, but she nods.

“Good,” she mutters. “I want to tell them what happened. I want to make these bastards pay for what they tried to do to my daughter…”

“Mommy, what’s a bastard?” Callie asks, with all the sweet innocence that only a little girl using curse words she doesn’t know the meaning of can muster. Her question breaks some of the tension in the room, and the three of us laugh.

“I’ll tell you some other time, baby,” Vanessa replies, scooping her up into her arms. “In the meantime, let’s get out of here, okay?”

And with that, she heads for the door. I can hear people talking outside, no doubt Mason having made it here with the cops, and I’m sure there are a million questions we still have to answer. But right now, all I care about is that we got Vanessa and Callie out of this in one piece—and I don’t intend to let anything else bother me. They’re safe. That’s all that matters.

And now, whether I like it or not, I have been faced with just how much I care about them. But what I’m going to do about that? I can figure that out later.

24

VANESSA

“Thank you for your cooperation, Vanessa,”Officer Danforth, the woman who has been leading my interview for the better part of the last hour, tells me with a nod. “We’ll be in touch if there’s anything else we need to ask you. Is that alright?”

“That’s fine,” I reply, reaching for the cup of now-cold coffee from the vending machine outside. It’s pretty much just brown water with no caffeine kick at all, but it’s something, and God knows I need it after everything that happened.

“I’ll give you a moment,” she tells me, patting me on the shoulder as she leaves the interview room. “Your daughter is waiting with the brothers outside.”

“Thanks,” I mumble, pinching the bridge of my nose between my fingertips and letting out a long breath. I’m still trying to make sense of all this, but I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to completely comprehend everything that went down from the moment we arrived back at the cabin last night until now.

We’re safe. We’re safe, and I know that’s all that matters, but damn if I’m not turning myself inside out with guilt and griefabout everything that has gone down. I know it’s ridiculous, to feel so sad about something that could have gone so much worse, but whatever safety Callie might have once felt, it’s been entirely ripped away from us. She’s never going to have the same trust in me again, not after what I allowed to happen, and I have no idea what it’s going to take to build that back up—if I have the barest hope of doing it at all.

She’s out there in the waiting room with the guys right now. They came along with me to the police station when they found out that they wanted to conduct an interview about everything that happened, though I tried to tell them that they had already done enough. They weren’t having it for an instant—which I should have guessed, I suppose. After all, they took on the damn cartel to get my daughter and me to safety.

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