Remember the Ruin - Book 2 - Wayward State

"I'm a survivor, ever since the world turned upside down. I lost everything that mattered to me in the blink of an eye, and was forced to pick up the pieces and start again. But now, for the first time since the collapse, I feel like I have a purpose, even though that purpose is vengeance.

There is a killer on the loose, a man who took everything from me. He's operated with impunity for too long, leaving a trail of destruction in his wake. But I, Dane Talbot, have finally found him, and I know what I have to do."

There was an irony in a firefighter choosing cremation as his final form. Why not bury what’s left of you in the cool soil of the earth as a final farewell, double birds to the beast in the end? You can’t get me now. That’s how he wanted to go. That seemed more honorable, somehow. But in the end, Matthew realized, Tuck didn’t have that option. His remains mostly burned on the first floor of a wasted department store in that Chicago building where they’d left him. It was a damn shame. A man like Tuck didn’t die fighting the beast. He died so that Dane could save herself. 

Matthew let out a guarded breath as he stood there in line with the others, hands clasped in front of his body, head lowered in reverence, thinking of her. He was trying not to. Every waking moment was a battle to keep her from invading his thoughts. That battle usually began with defeat before the night even began.

Tucker Johnson’s name was engraved in the marker before them. Someone spoke words. Others held their own hands clasped tightly in front of them as well, heads held down.

“She should be here. Why isn’t she here?” Owen said whispered reverently.

“Shh.”

“I don’t understand. You didn’t really explain what happened. Instead, we’re here and she’s not here and for God’s sake, why are Cal’s parents here? I mean, I know he died too, but we all hated him. And what he did to Rebecca…no one’s sorry…”

Owen kept jabbering in a low tone that he thought only Matthew could hear, but those who stood around them heard the conversation too, Matthew assumed, and either they agreed with Owen’s words and kept quiet or they refrained from letting on that they heard them at all. Meanwhile, Matthew continued to feel the knife hilt embedded in the center of his chest where the blade twisted on its own with the mere mention of Dane’s name. The funny thing was, he could feel the blade there, stabbed within him, yet no one else saw the protruding hilt sticking out of his chest. 

It had only been a week since they’d parted ways. He just couldn’t go along with her plans. He couldn’t leave his dream for her quest for revenge. In the end, he didn’t blame her. He worried like hell for her and missed her every second of the day, but what would it mean if he just quit his job as a smokejumper, just like that? Especially when that was the reason he’d left Samantha in the first place and also the reason she’d died in the end. This dream of his had cost too much already and he just couldn’t give it up to follow Dane around on her quest for revenge. Oh, he didn’t blame her for wanting the revenge. Especially after seeing what Cal did to Rebecca. But somehow dropping his own dreams lessened the value of Sam’s death. He didn’t know how to justify leaving his job when that’s all he lived for then…and now. He kept replaying the entire scenarios in his head, the one from the past and the one from the present. Nothing made sense. In the end, he didn’t think he knew how to relationship…he just knew how to jump in the middle of a blaze and to fight fires.