Page 53 of Sharp Lies

The first floor was on fire. I couldn’t see from here how bad it actually was, but that part didn’t matter. The fact that there was a fire below us meant we had to move.

I turned and rushed back to the bed, grabbing clothes as I went and letting my eyes skim across the room around me. What would Warren want to grab? What had I brought up here with me? I needed to wake Warren up, gather whatever we could, and—

I stopped just short of the bed, my eyes on the man in question. I’d thought he was asleep, but that wasn’t true—or at least I didn’t think it was. He was curled up in the fetal position, his back to where I’d been sleeping, and I could see from here that he was breathing hard enough that he was nearly hyperventilating. His back was rising and falling way too quickly to be healthy, and when I rushed to him and turned him over, I could see that his lips and eyes were pressed tightly shut, the air hissing through his nostrils as he tried to breathe.

The moment I had him on his back, he curled up again, his arms right against his chest and his legs drawn up over them.

He was having some sort of panic attack. From the smoke? Did that happen? I guessed maybe so, considering his attacks came from memories of what had happened when he was at war. Smoke could definitely be a trigger. There had to have been a lot of it around, what with the explosions and everything.

How was I supposed to handle this? When I’d found him in the basement, I’d just held him until he came out of it, but we didn’t have time for that right now. We had only minutes to get out of here, and my boyfriend—could I call him that?—was in the midst of a panic attack and totally unresponsive.

Well, I’d just have to get him to respond.

I put a hand on his temple and started rubbing him, then climbed right into bed with him and pulled him to me. “Warren,” I said calmly. “You’ve got to wake up, baby. We’ve got to get out of here. Can you hear me?”

A slight moan told me that he could, and the fact that he’d responded told me I was doing the right thing to reach him.

“Okay, I’m glad you’re in there. We’ve got to go, though. You’ve got to come with me. And I need you to be able to walk because I’m not strong enough to carry you. I mean, I could try, but that would probably result in both of us falling right down the stairs, and that’s just not my idea of a good time.”

A huff of laughter, and his legs started to stretch out.

“That’s right. Come on, Warren. Come back to me. I need your help here. Didn’t you promise to protect me no matter what?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Open your eyes for me then and let’s get out of here. There’s a fire on the first floor, and we’re going to be in trouble if we don’t move.”

At that, he came suddenly awake, like his brain had just been waiting for that information.

“There’s a fire?” he hissed.

“There is. I don’t know how bad it is, but I can see it from your window. It’s pretty smoky up here, too. We’ve got to get out of the house.”

He looked around quickly, like he was thinking the same thing I had about figuring out what we needed to take, but then we heard a tremendous crack and something falling downstairs, followed by the roar of the fire.

Warren didn’t wait. He grabbed my hand, jumped out of bed, and made for the hallway outside his room.

***

THE ENTIRE FIRST FLOOR was burning, and when we got to the top of the stairs, we both paused for a moment, searching for a way through the flames.

“There!” he shouted, pointing to one of the front rooms, which was somehow still free of flame.

I nodded, and we started down the stairs. It wasn’t going to be pretty, and I didn’t want to get trapped in that room, but everything else was on fire, and we didn’t have any other exit. If we could get into that room and it had a window...

We ran down the stairs and toward the room we’d spotted, ducking as low as we could go to avoid the flames. I’d never felt anything like it in my life. The fire was so hot, so voracious, that I wondered if my skin was actually melting off my body. Would we even make it to the room? If we did, were we going to stay alive long enough to figure out how to get out of there? I wasn’t ready to die yet. I’d just found someone I thought could be my forever, and now here we were, running through a burning house and trying to get out alive.

We got into the room and paused to look around. The place wasn’t as safe as we’d thought. One wall was already lost to flames, and they were licking along the hardwood floor now, making quick work of it. But there was a window in the outer wall, and outside of that, I could see the clean, cool darkness of the night.

That was our way out.

Before I could say anything, Warren was sprinting for that window, leaving me to follow. He took a giant leap and burst right through it, glass exploding around him, and landed in a somersault on the porch. Then he held a hand out and gestured madly for me to follow him. I ran for the window and jumped as well, not caring about the glass or the chances of being cut.

He’d sacrificed his own body to give me a way out of the house, and I wasn’t going to miss the chance for escape.

When I got outside, he grabbed me up and ran across the porch, his body bent over mine to protect me as much as he could, and when we got to the driveway, we found not only the fire department and EMTs, but also my mother. The EMTs took one look at the pair of us and decided that Warren was in worse shape. They grabbed him and pushed him toward the ambulance, where they got him onto a gurney, gave him an oxygen mask, and started checking his body for wounds.

I started after him, determined to stay by his side, but stopped when a hand darted out from behind a nearby truck and grabbed me.