Page 236 of Ruin My Life
Crreeeaaaak.
Something overhead groans. Deep. Like a warning.
A beam. Charred black, half-eaten by flame.
It snaps loose—comes crashing down, faster than I can move. I try to roll away, but it lands on my leg, pinning my calf to the carpet.
Crack.
Red hot pain explodes up my leg.
“Fuck!” I scream, my raw and strangled voice swallowed by smoke and the roar of fire closing in.
“Oh god! Are you okay?” the woman cries, coughing as she drops beside me. Her eyes darting from the splintered beam pinning my leg to the pistol buried under my bloody hand.
She braces her palms against the beam. Tries to lift it. Her fingers slip on scorched wood and ash. It doesn’t budge.
It won’t.
It’s a foot thick, heavy enough to break bone. Maybe it already has. I can’t feel half my leg. Can barely lift my head.
If I wasn’t already half-conscious, bleeding out, maybe I’d be able to help her push it off—
But I am.
It’s too late.
“I can’t lift it,” she sobs, tears streaking through the soot smeared across her face. “I can’t—”
“Stand back,” I whisper, my voice breaking.
She blinks at me with wide, hollow eyes—then scrambles to her feet and backs away.
My hand trembles as I empty the clip into the window—BANG, BANG, BANG!—each shot carving fractures that spiderweb across one another, begging to shatter.
I drop the gun. My fingers are too numb to feel it leave my hand. “Grab that lamp,” I rasp, nodding at the antique one with the heavy brass base in the corner. “Swing it into the glass until it breaks. Then you run. Get out before this place comes down.”
She hesitates, shaking, her eyes flicking between me and the flames eating the ceiling. “But what about you?”
I shake my head. “I’m not getting out of this,” I say, my voice steady despite how broken it feels. “But you can.”
Her eyes fill again. Tears spill faster than she can swipe them away.
She looks too much like Amie. It’s a cruelty and a gift all at once. Maybe that’s why Ineedher to live.
I couldn’t save my sister.
But maybe I can save her.
Her shoulders square suddenly—fear traded for something harder. Fierce determination.
“I’ll get help. I’ll come back,” she promises, her tone hard as steel beneath the tremor.
I nod weakly. “Okay.”
She turns to go—but stops. Looks back at me, eyes locked on mine, unflinching this time.
“Tell me your name,” she says.
