Page 12 of Hot Shot

“Hey, don’t worry—I’ve got all this,” I say to his back.

“Thanks, man. You’re a pal.” He manages to open the gate with his elbow, and it swings shut behind him, closing with a snick.

For a moment, I linger under the pretense of checking the fire for signs of life even though I know it’s dead. The boxes and bins piled around the remnants of the fire seem to be full of mundane items—clothes, dishes, books…the kinds of things you’d see if someone were moving. None of it means anything to anyone but Cass and Davis. But I bet there’s a story to every single item, a story I don’t know about a girl I don’t know.

Not true. I know the girl. It’s this ex-life of hers I don’t know. A whole entire life she had with another man.

And this is all that’s left of it.

The siren yelps once from the front of the house, and I hiss a swear, glancing over the place one more time to make sure there’s no threat of fire from the dripping pile of char. And as I make my way to the gate, I wish for a moment that I could take the last ten years back.

CHAPTER 4

ALWAYS THE BRIDE

CASS

Wilder leans over me like a prince about to kiss me awake, brushing a lock of hair from my cheek.

“I never stopped loving you, you know,” he whispers. His breath is warm against my lips.

“Really?” I whisper back, my mouth slightly open, hoping he’ll take it.

“Never. And I never will. Not in a million years.”

The smell of smoke and fire invades my senses, a web of electricity crackling across my lips as he inches closer, and?—

My alarm blares from my phone. I gasp myself awake, shooting up so fast it feels like somebody nailed a spike into my temple.

I groan, one hand flying to the offending temple and the other batting blindly at my nightstand for the source of the harshest, loudest sound in the entire world. When I find it, I crack one eyelid and silence it before flopping back in bed.

I smell smoke and wonder why.Oh yeah, the bonfire.But I have no recollection of how I got in bed. We were burningDavis’s stuff. There was a pillow—no, a pile of pillows. Some clothes. Textbooks? And then I?—

I shoot out of bed again.

Wilder.

Wilder was here.

And I was naked in the backyard.

“Oh my God,” I whine, sliding back into bed and pulling the covers over my head as the worst of it comes back to me in flickers. “Nonononono…”

He’d carried me upstairs and put me to bed, leaning over me just like in the dream. I glance down at the silky whiteBridekimono I’d been planning to torch, the word embroidered on the breast. Now it’s smudged with soot, ruined completely.

I like it so much better this way.

Muffled voices carry through my closed bedroom window, and I poke my head out of the covers, eyes shifting. Who the hell is here? And why are they here? My mouth is cardboard and my head’s pounding, but somehow I manage to sit up and slink out of bed, following the voices which I fully realize now are outside. There is much blinking and stumbling and handrail gripping, but by a miracle’s grace, I make it downstairs in search of ibuprofen and a gallon of water.

The daylight’s blinding as I step into the kitchen. The fridge feels a million miles away, but I teeter in that direction, grabbing a cup I left on the counter last night and filling it to the top. Greedily, I chug it, panting while I fill it up again. There’s ibuprofen in the junk drawer, and once I pop as many as I can without needing an ER visit or a fresh kidney, I dodder toward the back door, frowning.

When I get a good look outside, my eyes widen.

Jessa, I expect. My cousin Remy, I’m not shocked by.

But the sight of Wilder nearly drops me.

God, he’s gorgeous in his Roseville Fire Department gear—a navy baseball cap, navy tee with their logo on his rock hard chest. Matching Dickies that make his ass look like a goddamn renaissance sculpture. His hair is a little longer than it used to be on top, a little darker than the caramel I remember, now more of a dusty brown. His jaw is sharp and perfect beneath the shadow of twenty-four-hour stubble, his lips wide and dusky. I watch like a greedy, greedy girl as he picks up a box of Davis’s stuff, his biceps bulging, testing the integrity of his tee sleeves.

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