Page 46 of Bullied Pretend Mate
I’m sure Phina and Valerie suffered. But there was something particularly awful about the slow, creeping nature of what I went through.
So that night, when I arrived at the ridge to join them, it wasn’t on the heels of something quick and explosive but a slow build to boiling, a pressure that I couldn’t find another way to relieve.
“Yeah,” Felix says, drawing me out of my thoughts and reminding me of our conversation about him staying in Silverville. “It does.”
I’m just here for the inheritance, the voice in my head urges. And after that, it goes on to list all the reasons why the feelings stacking up inside me are silly.This is an arrangement. Felix could never like me like that. I’m not taking a mate.
I’m going back to Los Angeles, and he’s staying here.
As much fun as this has been, our lives were never going to intertwine forever. Maybe I should just be grateful that I’ve gotten as much of him as I have. I can take that back with me to Los Angeles and revisit a little bit of it each time another romantic partner leaves me wanting more.
For now, that’s going to have to be enough.
Chapter 22 - Felix
I wake up, startled and confused, not used to the sound that’s coming from my phone. It’s the middle of the night, the moon shining in through the window of my bedroom. We decided to stay at my place last night because of the fireworks in the town square, and the fact that Maeve has to be up early tomorrow for a Zoom meeting with a potential sponsor, and wanted to get her beauty sleep.
The ringing only gets louder.
So much for that idea.
Maeve stirs next to me, lifting her head from the pillow warily, looking around for the noise. She doesn’t know what it is, either, because it hasn’t sounded in the months she’s been back in Silverville.
It hasn’t gone off a single time that we’ve stayed over at each other’s places.
Now that we have more guys at the firehouse, our little troop isn’t the only one on call. We’re there during the day, and other guys can handle emergency calls at night. If there’s a house fire or a medical emergency that requires us to be on the scene, they answer it, and we get to sleep through the night.
But the sound coming from my phone now isn’t the one for a regular, run-of-the-mill fire.
It’s the specific, shrill sound that indicates a wildfire. A fire that only our team—Xeran, Lachlan, Soren, Kalen, and me—is equipped to handle. The kind of fire that requires the special extinguisher and a million prayers up to the gods.
The alert sounding through the room bounces off the walls, flooding my bones with a deep sense of dread. A reminderof all the other times this alarm has gone off in the middle of the night. A reminder of the never-ending stream of calls, night after night, with no sleep and no reprieve.
A reminder of all the close calls. Every time, I was almost in the line of fire. Every time someone else almost didn’t make it, trapped under a tree or surrounded by flames.
“What is that?” Maeve asks, still struggling to pull herself out of sleep as I sit up, reaching for my phone to turn it off, heart already pounding at what it means. Her voice is calming to me, like a balm over my body, but it doesn’t erase all the panic.
With her here with me, I start to think through this. Find a way to look at the positives, or at least to invent some positives in my head.
Maybe it’s a false alarm. It could be that someone back at the station was doing some maintenance and accidentally set off the alarm. We’ll all roll up there, ready to go, and give the guy crap until he buys us donuts to make up for it.
Or maybe it’s just a drill. Xeran is pulling this as a stunt to keep us ready and on our toes. That seems like something he would do, and as annoying as it would be, it would be far preferable to the real thing.
The more I think about it, the more that makes sense. This must be a drill. It’s been so long since a wildfire happened that it’s probably more statistically likely. Probably just Xeran sounding the alarm, ready to double down on training if we’re not all there on time, geared up and ready to go.
I can only hope that’s what this is.
“Felix,” Maeve says, more insistent, sitting up so the moonlight falls over her body, making her glow softly in thewhite silk nightgown she wears. “Whatisthat? Is everything okay?”
“Everything is fine,” I assure her, though my voice comes out thick, rough with sleep. “Just go back to sleep.”
“Where are you going?” she asks, watching me as I yank on a pair of pants and reach for my gear back in my closet.
It’s a good thing we’re at my apartment tonight, or I wouldn’t have had it. Maybe I have grown too complacent, leaving it at home when I stayed over at Maeve’s rental.
“It’s a fire drill,” I say, because I don’t think it’s a lie. It has to be a drill. It has to be. “I’m just going to go in. Xeran’s probably trying to keep us on our toes.”
“Oh,” she says, letting out a relieved breath, settling back down onto her pillow. “Okay. Do you want me to head back to my place?”
