A loud crash from inside the building cut the firefighter off.
He swore and abandoned Mickey to intercept the fire crews exiting the tower.
Mickey watched him go, then tipped his head to gaze up at the tower block as fresh flames shot from the third-floor windows, completing a loop of the building and cutting off the upper storeys.
The dread in Mickey’s heart grew jagged edges. Sharp fear choked him. If Benito was anywhere above the third floor, it was over. He wasn’t getting out.
“Mickey!”
Mickey turned on autopilot.
Gianna ran towards him, arms outstretched. She threw herself against him as he reached for her, and he lifted her as if she was years younger than twelve. “It’s my fault, it’s my fault,” she wailed. “I made him go back for Sullivan.”
Mickey carried her away from the building and back to Rosetta. “You need to stay over here. It’s not safe that close, okay?”
Gianna nodded, still clinging to him.
Rosetta gripped Mickey’s shoulder. “Beni went back in. It happened too fast; I couldn’t stop him.”
“He wouldn’t have listened to you,” Mickey said numbly. “Just wait here. Please. Wherever he is, all he’d want is for you both to be safe.”
He peeled Gianna from his front and forced her into Rosetta’s arms. A firefighter stepped between them, throwing up a new barrier, leaving Mickey on one side and Benito’s family on the other. Another crash sounded from the building, but he couldn’t look.
He couldn’t watch Benito die.
I can’t fucking breathe.
Mickey turned away from Rosetta and Gianna and moved mechanically along the line of shellshocked residents pressed against the barrier, doing his job. He checked in with the DOSHA households, double checking against his mental list, but with every step, the pain in his chest grew.How is this happening?He pinched himself hard, praying it would wake him. But nothing changed. The nightmare remained. His worlds had collided in the very worst way. The only man he’d ever fallen for was trapped in a burning building, and Mickey would probably have to tell his twelve-year-old sister that he wasn’t coming back.
Mr Morris was still MIA too. Mickey had his son’s number in his phone, but he couldn’t bring himself to make that call either. How did you tell someone their loved one was dead?
“Mickey!” Gianna’s shriek pierced the air again.
Mickey spun back to her. “Gianna—”
She cut him off, pointing wildly behind him. “Look! Someone came out!”
Mickey turned slowly, bracing himself for the worst, and at first it seemed nothing had changed. Thirty firefighters stood between him and the door. He couldn’t see a thing. And he didn’t want to.I fucking love him too much to see his fucking body.
The realisation, though it wasn’t new, hit Mickey like a sledgehammer. He forced himself forward on ten-ton legs. He shouldered his way closer to the door. Behind him, Gianna screamed his name over and over, and then Benito’s too, and the desolation in her broken voice cut Mickey in two.She can’t lose him. She wouldn’t survive it, and neither would Mickey.
Grief had already laid roots in his gut. They bloomed with every step he took, gnarled branches that wrapped around every fibre in his body, weighing him down more than addiction ever had and ever would. But just when he thought he might drown and this pain would swallow him whole for good, the crowd of firefighters parted, revealing a cluster of soot-smeared survivors.
An old lady was carried straight into an ambulance. Mr Morris limped of his own volition to a waiting paramedic, and behind him stood a policeman, grim faced and clutching a giant orange cat.