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Chapter Thirteen

Roland

My whole damn body is a bruise. I’ve been working for almost two goddamn days straight, and after the first hour, I’d already started to regret this shit. I waded further into regret with every additional step I took into the snow piles. Hauling that shit with my arms was intense goddamn work, even with my powers helping. I couldn’t burn through with full intensity. I had to go slow to make sure the walls and roof of the tunnel I cleared stayed intact. Once, I tried to move faster, burning rather than hauling, and that shit backfired right quick. Thank fuck the Fema workers later managed to bracket the tunnels and keep them up. Fighting my way out of the snow with weaker human bodies to protect sucked.

I can’t say I didn’t care I had saved people. I did care. I do. But none of their thanks, none of the congratulations I got from the people in red running all around me, none of it meant anything compared to the text I got from her.

You’re my hero.

My heart is in my mouth. No. It’s somewhere else, but that’s not something I want to focus on in front of all these people. There’s a space blanket on my shoulders that’s really fucking stupid considering I am heat incarnate, but I guess they feel like they gotta help me by more than just staring at me while two people work on stitching me up.

I got cut up on the cars. My hands are burning but not anywhere near as badly as the pinging in my chest. That itchy spot I felt when she breathed on me, trusting and needing me, hurts. I can’t stay here.

“What? Sir?” The Fema medical staff member is looking up at me confused as hell. He’s stitching up my knee while his colleague stitches a gash in my shoulder. I’ve got scratches all over my face, bandages covering most of them by now. My hair and beard are completely mangled, but none of that’s gonna stop me from getting the fuck out of here.

“I gotta get back.” I stand up. The medical staff falls away from me, landing on their asses even though I haven’t touched them.

“We’re not finished!” The guy on the ground points at my thigh, and I see that there’s a needle dangling from my leg. I take a step. My right knee gives out. Shit.

Several people rush forward to catch me, and I feel embarrassed, but damn, I’m fucking exhausted. “Need a plane.” I’m not gonna be able to fly out of here.

“We’re planning on one ...” My COE handler is on-site, along with two COE security guards and a journalist from Vanessa’s agency. She’s a damn beast. She slept when I did—only four hours, maybe fewer than that—and she’s been up ever since. Her face looks haggard and insane, brown skin drained of almost all color. Her lips are blue-tinted, and I’ve seen her a few times putting her camera down and dipping her fingers in warm water. She doesn’t wear gloves. Can’t imagine how cold she is. She’s still on me now, never too far. I look at her and give her a tip of my chin. “Let’s go.”

She nods without hesitating, and I notice her waver on her feet as she rises to stand up fully.

I look to my handler, a middle-aged Black guy who’s built like a tank. When I first saw him, I thought he was one of the security guards until I realized he wasn’t wearing white or carrying a big gun. His was smaller and buckled to his belt. “Get us out of here.”

“Where should we take you?” He’s already on the phone. I appreciate that.

“Back ...” To my girl. She doesn’t want to see me . I had them put a hold on moving my shit, the little of it that there is from my empty-ass apartment. But now, standing here shaky as I am, I don’t want to go back to that. I don’t want to go to a generic hotel either. “Take me to my girl. Anybody asks, tell them I did this for her.”