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No shit, Tanner!
I shove Rory through the window and watch as Tanner helps her out, then I throw my leg over the sill just in time to spot the man who started the fire finally reach his fallen gun…just as the floor gives under us. I lean on the leg out of the window as Tanner, who also sees what is happening, pulls me the rest of the way out and all three of us jump from the porch.
I scoop Rory up and carry her to the waiting ambulance to make sure she is alright. She doesn’t let me go once I sit her down, tugging on my sleeve and pointing at the glass. For just asecond the roar of flames heightens and what appears to be faces form in the burning glass in the upstairs window.
“What the fuck?”
The EMT apparently sees it too.
“Is…is it…?”
Once the first floor fell it didn’t take long for the whole house to go up in flames. More and more people start noticing the faces in the window on the second floor. My sister, my captain, and several officers all look as the house burns and the faces in the window become a singed image on the glass.
The EMT says what all of us are thinking, “What the fuck is happening?”
Chapter Twenty-One
Rory
I watch as the house I had put all my dreams into goes up in smoke. But the thing that has everyone standing, looking up are the faces that appear in the window. At first, when I noticed them, I thought I had inhaled too much smoke but the look on Bennet’s face tells me he sees them too. Then the EMT checking me out turned white and asked the million-dollar question. It was just two but over time more and more faces show up in the glass.
An intriguing fact about the house clangs in my head like the sound of a ship’s bell at sea. The Snodgrass house was built by a robber baron in the late 1800’s. He built the house on the blood and tears of hundreds of people who died because of him. By the time Te comes to stand beside us the upstairs windows are full of faces.
“Are you…?” She asks the question without taking her eyes off the house.
“Seeing it? Yeah, I’m seeing it.” Bennet interrupts her and answers her all while also not taking his eyes off the house.
“Is it…?”
“I have no idea.” With this question, he shakes his head before giving her the truth. Right before the windows shatter a new face appears in the upper window close to what used to be my bedroom. The face that is staring back at everyone is one I amfamiliar with now. It’s the face of my nameless phantom, the man who tried to kill me tonight.
A shriek fills the night air that rises above all the sirens and the commotion happening around it and then the house crumbles like it’s an unsupported cake giving way to the pressure of gravity. There it is…the remains of my dream.
Fingers come up to touch my face, tipping it towards Bennet. “Are you okay, love?”
And suddenly, the dream I thought was burning in front of me morphs and changes. It wasn’t the house that made my dream important to me. It was the man…standing beside me. The man I always knew held my dreams and hopes in his hands, in his strong arms.
I nod and clasp our hands tighter. “I love you, Bennet. I don’t want something to happen without you knowing that I love you. I’ve always been in love with you.”
It comes out raspy and my voice cracks more than once as I tell him.
“I’ll love you forever.”
He gives me a serious look that has the breath halting in my throat before his lips tilt in a beautiful grin and he cups my face. “I love you too, princess. I love you too.”
His mouth comes down on mine and takes what’s left of my breath. When we pull apart, Bennet looks at the medic, “Is she alright? Can I take her home now?”
We get a nod from the guy before I am scooped up in my hero’s arms once again and carried to his car. Once we make it back to his house, he still doesn’t let me walk, instead carryingme in like a groom would carry his bride. He goes right to the bathroom where he takes all our clothes off and starts our shower.
“You’re going to marry me, aren’t you, baby?”
My eyes widen. Did he just…? Is this his way of asking…?
“And then we’re going to start a family…,” he pauses and brings his palm down to my tummy, “if we haven’t already.”
I gasp and cover his hand with my own. “And I’m going to make all your dreams come true, princess. All your dreams.”
I come into his arms as the water slushes down our entwined bodies and tilt my face up to his, “You already have my knight-in-Kevlar armor.”
