Hot Ticket

“What’s wrong with you?” she asked, struggling beneath him to get him off her body.

“I don’t know.” He pressed his forehead into her shoulder, fighting tears. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. Are you okay?”

“No, I’m not okay. Get off me!”

He pulled out, and she squirmed out from under him, landing on the floor.

“Kara.”

“Don’t come near me,” she said, grabbing her clothes and heading for the door.

He saw blood on her thighs, on his cock, on the sofa cushion. It made him nauseous. Oh God, he really had hurt her. “Wait, don’t leave. I’m sorry.”

“There’s something wrong with you. Just stay away from me. I never want to see you again.” She yanked the door open and darted out of the pool house.

His heart twisted. “But I love you.”

He didn’t know if she heard him say it. The whole building shuddered as she slammed the door.

“Don’t leave.” But she was already gone.

The trip home was the longest seven miles he’d ever walked. He wished he could take it all back. Well, not all of it. Just from the moment he’d started taking his pleasure. That’s when everything had taken a turn for the worse. And now Kara hated him, never wanted to see him again. The pain his father inflicted didn’t come close to this crippling agony in his heart. He squeezed his right wrist beneath his cuff bracelet, needing the pain to take another step toward home.

As he drew closer to his house and his sure-to-be-livid father, Jason noticed something bright on the horizon. Smoke billowed into the night sky. Fire. A fire truck blared as it rounded a corner and headed up the street. An ambulance followed a moment later.

It looked like the fire was near Jason’s house. The closer he got to its source, the faster his heart thudded, until he couldn’t deny the reality. The fire was at his house. He ran the last two blocks. Firefighters were racing down the street, hooking up a fire hose to the nearest hydrant. Neighbors were coming out of their houses in their pajamas, holding each other, watching the destruction in awe. Jason stared at his burning house in disbelief, walking into the yard in a trance. Huge flames were licking from his broken bedroom window. He could hear his father in the house screaming his name. “Jason! Son, where are you?”

“Dad, I’m here!”

There was a loud splintering sound, and the roof over his room collapsed in a spray of sparks. The first jets of water from the hoses blasted into the flames, hissing as water evaporated into steam.

“Dad!”

He darted toward the house and made it as far as the porch before someone grabbed him around the waist. “Let me go,” he demanded, struggling with all his strength. “He’s still inside. My dad. I think he’s upstairs. I heard him calling for me. But…”

A pair of firemen busted down the front door. He could hear them yelling to each other inside the house. “Give me a hand. Someone’s trapped under this beam.” Eventually one of them emerged, carrying a limp body over one shoulder. “Medic! We need a medic over here.”

The charred body he laid on the ground was Jason’s father. “My son,” he murmured, clinging to the firefighter’s boot. Coherent sentences were garbled with indistinguishable syllables. “Save my son. I locked him in his room. I couldn’t get to the door. The roof collapsed.” He coughed, his eyes glazed with pain. “He’s still in there.” If it weren’t for his familiar voice, Jason wouldn’t have recognized him. His skin was so severely burned he was unidentifiable.

Jason stood over him, trembling. “I’m here, Dad. I’m okay.”

“Chopper’s on its way,” a paramedic said. “We’ll get him to the burn center as soon as we can.”

“How did you get out?” his father murmured. “Did you set the house on fire? Did you? I wouldn’t put it past you, you little punk. You did, didn’t you? To get back at me for grounding you. For tossing your stupid bass guitar in the garbage.”

Jason shook his head. “No. I didn’t do it.” He glanced up at his room. There was no doubt that the fire had started there. It’s where the damage was centered. As Jason watched, the tattered remains of a blanket fluttered from the porch roof as a blast of water unsettled it from its perch. He recognized his bedspread, half burnt. The bedspread he’d placed over the broken glass in the windowsill. And his space heater. The heater he’d forgotten to turn off after he’d burnt his wrist.

Then he realized. He had started the fire.

Jason gripped his right wrist with punishing strength, pressing the leather bracelet into his blistered flesh until his vision tunneled.

They let Jason ride in the helicopter when they learned he had no other way to the hospital. No other family. No one who cared about him. Jason couldn’t stand their looks of pity. Or his father’s nonsensical jabbering. Dad was delirious with pain and kept repeating, “It’s all your fault. All your fault.”

Jason huddled in the corner, his hands over his ears, no longer a young man of fifteen, but a scared little boy. With nothing. No one. He was alone. Alone. With no one to hurt him. Hurt him when he needed it.

They’d taken his father into the treatment center as soon as the helicopter landed. Asked Jason if he wanted to be with him. Warned him that his dad probably wouldn’t make it through the night. “You might want to say good-bye to him, son,” some doctor had said at one point.

But he hadn’t. He’d been too afraid, just like with his mother. His last memory of his father was lidless eyes staring at him blankly as they wheeled the gurney into the treatment center.

Jace started awake, his heart thudding in his chest, the image of his hideously burned father circulating in his mind. The room was entirely dark, but he could hear her breathing, feel the gentle motion of the bus. Both brought him comfort. He loved being on the road. And he loved her. His Aggie.

His hand sought Aggie’s under the covers. He clung to her fingers, feeling stupid for needing her so much, for seeking her support, while she slept unaware of his turmoil. It wasn’t as if she could do anything about the ghosts that haunted him. About the pain of his father’s memory. The guilt Jace felt. The fear.

Or maybe she could. She’d helped him deal with the pain of losing his mother. Her memory was still in the shadows, but no longer threatening. He’d found solace. Aggie had given that to him. She managed to give him everything he needed. Even things he hadn’t realized were important. When the sun came up, he watched her sleep, wondering how he’d survive if he lost her too.