Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 92536 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92536 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
She grinned back. “He’s in good hands, Tate. Promise. I’ll give you two a minute, but we’ll be rolling out of here in five. Tate, you’re welcome to ride with us.”
“Thanks, Risa.”
She nodded before gathering supplies to stow away.
“A friend?” Liam asked.
“We went to high school together.” Tate rested his forehead against Liam’s, probably smearing more soot on his face. He’d be as dirty as Liam if he wasn’t careful. “Luxe…”
“I know.” More tears fell. He didn’t have the energy to fight them. The only good thing about crying was how it helped clear the smoke residue from his eyes.
“That was too close. I can’t lose…”
“I know,” he said again. The thought of the reverse, of someone harming Tate, sent a shudder through him. “I can’t either.”
Tate’s arms went around him in the gentlest of holds. “Is this okay?”
Liam rested his chin on Tate’s shoulder and his bandaged hands on Tate’s back. He’d love to bury them under his man’s shirt and feel the warmth of his skin, but it’d be a bit before he could do that again.
“Just let me do this for a few minutes,” Tate whispered.
“You can do this forever.”
“I’ll hold you to that, Luxe.”
They stayed like that, with Liam perched on the edge of the gurney and Tate between his spread legs, wrapped up in each other.
Liam watched as firefighters battled the blaze, blasting it with powerful streams of water. The men and women worked together as a well-trained team, with the leaders directing and others carrying out their orders, no questions asked.
The building was a total loss. Flames engulfed the entire first floor, shooting out of the nonexistent storefront windows and lighting up the night. The sign he’d loved so much hung by one corner, half charred and unusable.
His heart felt much the same, blackened to a crisp and permanently damaged.
Everything he’d worked for, everything he’d built burned into a smoldering pile of ashes. The crushing weight of failure pressed down on him. He’d set out to prove something to himself and the town of Swan. He’d moved there and opened the studio to show the world that homophobic bullies didn’t scare him. That the world had changed, and Swan, Oklahoma, needed to wake the hell up and get with the program.
But he’d failed.
One backward bigot wiped out all he’d worked for with nothing more than some accelerant and a spark.
Maybe his plan had been a fool’s errand all along.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
LIAM BARELY SPOKE after they loaded him into the ambulance, and Tate hated it. It was the quietest he’d ever seen his boyfriend. The silence had Tate worrying hard.
He’d tried to coax a flicker of a smile or laugh, but every attempt had failed. And now, the cops were there asking invasive questions and making Liam describe every terrifying moment he’d endured in great detail.
Tate sat beside the hospital bed, holding Liam’s wrist above the bandages. He stroked his thumb back and forth across the delicate bones.
“Can you describe the injuries you sustained?” Officer D’Amico asked. He was the older of the two cops who’d showed up about fifteen minutes ago and could have come straight from filming a Western gunslinger movie. The man was probably in his late forties and had a graying bushy mustache and a large cowboy hat to complement his tan uniform. A chunky silver belt buckle completed the Wild West sheriff vibe. So far, he’d been professional, though his displeased gaze strayed to Tate’s hand on Liam’s arm more than Tate liked.
“Um, smoke inhalation, obviously,” Liam rasped as he gestured to the oxygen tube in his nose. His voice still sounded rough and ragged.
They’d switched out the mask after he’d been assigned a room. They also gave him a little gadget to help keep his lungs open. Liam was supposed to inhale ten times every hour on the hour, trying to make a little blue ball rise to a specific level inside the toy. Every time he did it, Liam ended up coughing so hard, and with so much force it left him weak and shaking until the next time to play the sadistic little game. The doctor promised it was normal, even good, as it helped him cough up the toxins, but every second of watching Liam suffer enraged Tate.
“I have a large burn on my right palm and some burns on all my fingertips,” he said, showing his bandaged left hand. “Other than that, I have some minor scrapes, bruises, and small burns pretty much all over my arms and legs. A lot of hot pieces of ash singed my exposed skin.”
D’Amico’s partner, the much younger Officer Carmichael, scribbled a furious novel of notes on her notepad. She couldn’t have been more than a few years out of the police academy, though Tate wouldn’t be surprised if he found out she was a rookie. Aside from the rank insignia, her uniform matched D’Amico’s. She was shorter than his five-foot-tenish by only a few inches and had her strawberry blonde hair pulled back in a tight bun without a single flyaway.