The air scorched my lungs with each breath, thick with particles I didn't want to name. My historian's mind absurdly recalled lectures on Pompeii and Hiroshima—other moments when ordinary days suddenly turned into horrifying chaos.
I spat grit from my mouth and wiped at my eyes, now watering from the smoke. The explosion had lasted only seconds, but the aftermath would continue for a long time.
The pressure in my ears made the world sound underwater. I couldn't hear my own breathing, and it muffled the screams around me.
And Michael—
He was already moving.
His body transformed before my eyes, tension rippling through him as he launched forward. There was no hesitation. No shock or confusion breached his consciousness. He was a bundle of immediate purpose.
"Michael!" I shouted, my voice sounding distant and wrong in my still-ringing ears.
He didn't pause or turn. His figure grew smaller as he sprinted toward the marina, the thickening smoke, and whatever danger waited there. A twist of fear—different from the panic of the explosion—gripped my stomach.
I wasn't scared for myself but for him. I hadn't had nearly enough time with him.
While others scrambled away from the blast, he cut through the crowd in the opposite direction. His movements were precise and economical. He'd no doubt trained over and over for this scenario.
I saw him clearly for the first time. In the moment of crisis, he wasn't the man who had held me through the night or the stranger who had offered wordless comfort on the beach. He was someone else entirely—someone forged to respond to disasters.
I watched the set of his shoulders, the focused angle of his head, and how his hands stayed slightly open at his sides. He wasn't running mindlessly. He was calculating, assessing, and planning with each stride.
This was the SWAT officer. The first responder. The man who moved toward danger when everyone else fled.
The sudden revelation of who he really was should have disturbed me. Instead, a strange clarity washed over. All the pieces locked into place.
I thought about the watchfulness in his eyes and how he positioned himself between the door and me when we walked into rooms. I couldn't forget the nightmares that had made him twitch beside me in his sleep.
"Michael!" I tried again, my voice lost in the panic surrounding us.
I scrambled to my feet, stumbling as vertigo washed over me. Sand clung to my wet legs while I tried to follow, each step unsteady.
"Wait!" The word tore from my throat, useless.
My shoe caught in the sand, and I stumbled, losing it completely. I didn't stop to retrieve it. I couldn't. Michael was too far ahead already, his body cutting through a crowd of panicked tourists.
The boardwalk leading to the marina came into view—weathered planks that had seemed quaint this morning were now a pathway to something terrible. Heat pushed against my face in waves as I approached. The smoke was thicker, black and oily.
I reached the edge of the wooden walkway and stopped.
My body refused to move forward. My feet rooted themselves to the sand as if cemented there. I saw Michael's back as he disappeared into the chaos.
The world around me took on a surreal quality. Tourists screamed and ran past me. Resort staff shouted instructions in French and Tahitian that I couldn't understand. Sirens began to wail somewhere in the distance.
A woman clutched a crying child to her chest, the girl's face buried against her mother's shoulder, her loose cotton dress—patterned with cartoon turtles—fluttering in the hot breeze.
Heat rippled off the planks, warping the air like a mirage. Smoke clawed at my throat, thick and oily, each breath scraping raw against my lungs. My vision blurred with the sting of it.
I lifted one foot, bracing it against the first board. It creaked under my weight—a thin, ordinary sound—but it might as well have been a gunshot in the silence pressing down.
If I took another step, I'd be inside the inferno. I'd spent years studying disasters safely from the margins. I thought about the lectures I gave, the neat rows of desks, and the careful language of theories and frameworks.
History was supposed to be something you analyzed after the fact, not something you bled for.
My stomach heaved. My heart slammed against my ribs like it was trying to escape. The smoke thickened, boiling out from the docks, and an instinct to flee screamed through every nerve ending.
I stumbled back off the plank. My body chose for me. I couldn't see Michael anymore. The smoke swallowed everything. The place where he'd been was just a churning wall of black and gray.
