Chapter 1

1

The building was on fire. The smell of smoke and the loud cries of distant sirens woke Oliver. What didn’t wake him was any of the fire detectors throughout his apartment and outside in the hallway.

“Goddamned landlord.”

He jumped out of bed and, breaking every rule, took time to pull on jeans, slip a hoodie over his T-shirt, and shove his bare feet into a pair of sneakers. Or maybe it didn’t break any rules at all. Oliver had never been in a fire. He’d never been nearly naked outside in early January either.

On his way out the door, he grabbed his keys and the laptop bag he’d dropped on the entry table in his hurry to climb into bed the night before, and took the steep flight of stairs down to the first floor.

Whatever the hour, Oliver was fully awake by the time he was pounding on the downstairs apartment.

“Mia?” When there was no answer, he yelled louder, pounding harder, and tried the knob. “Mia? You in there?”

He was about to test his luck at forcing his way inside, when the door flew open and an over-stuffed trash bag was pushed into his arms.

“Dickbag fucklord.” Mia’s hair stuck out like wild tentacles, but she was, at least, mostly dressed. “Did you even hear a fire alarm?”

“Outside.” They could discuss wringing their landlord’s neck from the safety of the lawn. Their building was three floors of ancient kindling—the top-floor apartment empty as of a week ago, thank God—and it could burst into flames at any minute.

Outside, firetrucks were pulling onto the street, the noise deafening so close, their lights bouncing eerily off the naked, skeletal trees that lined the sidewalks. But flames were already well on their way to consuming the top floor of their apartment block, and black smoke poured from the roof top of a neighboring building, another one of the old, wooden structure rental units that had been there since the early sixties.

“Fuckity-fuckerson.” Mia had always had a way with words. “We’re screwed.”

“We’ll at least be sleeping in a hotel.” Oliver remembered the wallet he hadn’t thought to grab from his dresser in his hurry to get downstairs. “Or on a park bench somewhere.”

He watched the chaos of firefighters pour into the yard and work to extinguish the blaze, while soaking the surrounding buildings that had yet to catch fire. And Mia wandered off in search of whoever was handing out the blankets that were materializing among the small group of pajama-clad renters.

The fight against the flames were useless after the dry, hot summer, and Oliver did a mental inventory of everything he was going to lose. If not to the fire itself, to the smoke. His bed, his couch, his X-Box—a Christmas gift to himself—all of his books, every stitch of clothing except for what was on his back.

His phone.

Fuck. How had he forgotten his phone?

A loud groan and the sudden collapse of the building’s roof sent a shriek through the onlookers and Oliver stumbled back, the size and weight of Mia’s bag awkward in his arms.

“Let me help.” Mia dropped a handful of gray blankets to the ground and gave him a hand, lowering the bag down onto the grass at the side of the road.

Oliver thanked her and shook out his arms. “What’s in there? That thing weighs a ton.”

“Scott’s here.” Mia handed one of the two blankets over to Oliver before pointing to where firefighters worked to pull a heavy length of hose across the lawn closer to where a third building had started to smoke. “Over there.”

“Of course he is.” Because that was how Oliver’s life worked—waiting until he looked like shit to throw an ex-boyfriend at him. “How do I look?”

“Like someone whose house is on fire.”

That’s what he was afraid of.

Oliver didn’t normally have an issue with bumping into his exes, but he wasn’t quite ready to run into Scott.

When he’d broken it off a few months before, Scott hadn’t taken it well.

That wasn’t to say Scott hadn’t been a gentleman about it. He just hadn’t seen it coming

And there was part of Oliver that worried he’d made a mistake. On paper, the man was perfect. A poster-boy for why everyone swooned over firemen. A real-life superhero. A nice guy with a nice smile and even nicer abs.

But outside the bedroom, they had never really clicked.

That had probably been Oliver’s fault.

He wrapped the blanket round himself and tried not to watch the firefighters in case he inadvertently made eye contact with Smokey the Bear.

“So…” A hedging Mina was never a good thing. “I called my mom and dad. They said we could stay with them.”

“Your parents hate me.” And maybe he deserved it. “Did you actually tell them I’d be coming?”

“Of course I did. And they don’t hate you.” Mia had always been a terrible liar. “Besides, who cares? We just need a place to stay for a day or two.”

Their building groaned again, shifting, something inside crashing. They both knew it would be a lot longer than that.