Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69424 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69424 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
I stepped to the side so that she could see what I’d seen.
“My house is on fire!”
Twenty-Three
Taco Tuesday sends a terrible message to our children. They need to know that tacos are acceptable any day of the week.
—Calli to Jasper
CALLIOPE
I watched in horror as my house burned down to the ground for forty-five minutes.
Jasper stayed outside, bundled completely up, as it burned.
I stayed inside seeing as the only clothes I had on my body were a pair of panties and a camisole that barely covered me.
I could’ve put something of Jasper’s on, but honestly, I didn’t want to see it from closer up.
Jasper wasn’t the only one outside, either.
There were several other men neighbors who were also outside, watching right along with him.
The fire department was approximately four and a half miles away, and they’d been trying to get to my house for the entire duration that it took for my house to burn.
They were currently stuck halfway, unable to get up a hill with the biggest truck they had filled with water.
Since they couldn’t tap into the fire hydrants due to the extreme cold—what were the odds that my house would burn down when the cold kept the firefighters from doing something like tapping into a hydrant?—they’d done the next best thing.
Only, that truck hadn’t been able to make it.
We did have several police officers watching the house burn as well, as well as the fire chief in his personal vehicle who lived, surprisingly, right down the road from us.
He was the only reason we knew that the firefighters wouldn’t be making it.
The only thing that saved Jasper’s house and the one on the other side of me was the snow and ice.
The fire had burned so hot that it’d melted the snow and ice that was nearest my house, and had kept it from getting out of control.
Jasper walked over to the fire chief that’d been checking out my truck for some reason—it’d also burned down completely—and spoke with him several minutes before turning around and coming my way.
He waited for me to back up before he pushed the door to his carport open and came inside.
“Do you want the good news or the bad news?” Jasper asked once he’d breached his house.
“The bad,” I said simply.
He pulled off his gloves, then cupped my face with his cold hands.
A violent shiver shot through me, but I didn’t make him stop.
“Your house is unsalvageable.”
That I knew.
“Everything is a total loss,” he continued.
I looked over at the large man and shook my head. “I think that I’m capable of figuring that out on my own, Jas.”
“But there’s still good news,” he said.
I sighed, not seeing how there could ever be good news when your house had completely burned down with all your worldly possessions in it.
“The good news is, your truck was what started it.”
That stupid truck.
I couldn’t believe we’d paid that exorbitant fee to get it towed here last night and it’d caught my freakin’ house on fire.
I looked at him in shock. “Could you repeat that?”
But he didn’t need to.
I’d heard completely fine.
“And there is still more good news,” he continued.
I crossed my arms over my chest and said, “What?”
“Now, you have no reason not to move to Forney for that job,” he pointed out. “You’re going to get a pretty good penny back from the insurance for the house. You’ll be able to pay off the mortgage that’s left. Oh, and once I’m done with that dealership, they’ll be paying you a hefty sum for constantly ignoring your concerns. Apparently, the reason your gas was always going low was because there’s a small leak in the fuel line. It’s been leaking onto the driveway, and into the bushes by your house. But since it’s been so cold over the last week, it’s just been building up on top of the frozen solid ice, for at least three of those days. The car sparked at some point, and the whole truck went up in flames. Then the side of the house where all that gas had leaked. The big bang and whoosh we heard that woke us up was the gas igniting.”
“I don’t…” I hesitated. “But I don’t want to move to Forney.”
He was already talking again, pulling me up into his arms and walking me backward so that I could sit on the counter.
He made sure to tuck the ends of the blanket in close to my body before he leaned both of his hands on either side of my knees and said, “You’ll live with me. We’ll rent you an apartment in Forney.”
He had it all planned out.
But still…
“We’re so new, Jas,” I pointed out. “What if you find out that you hate me?”
“I don’t think anything you could do could make me hate you,” he admitted. “And I think you know that. You’re just scared right now, and that’s okay.”