The First Steps (A Hunter Hayes Fanfiction, Book 1 of the Hardships Saga)

Chapter Sixteen

❝blue (pronounced blu: or bloo), adjective
the colour used to describe a sunny day's sky, the ocean, or a loved one's eyes.❞

She dreamt of being carried in warm, solid arms. She was safe, she knew, no matter how much fire was around them. This person would keep her safe. Today was not her day to die.

She could hear him, though. The cries of pain, the rise of panic in his own breathing, and how he was coughing.

"Hunt, no..."

"I'm not leaving you," he was trying to say, but the roar of the fire was making her unable to hear him. She could feel his chest vibrating with every word, and she still felt safe.

She felt debris falling on her, and then suddenly, she was on the grass, breathing fresh air. It took her a little while to start breathing properly again.

And suddenly, bliss. Pure, unadulterated bliss. She didn't know what it was, she didn't know if she was dying and going up to heaven or whatever else it could be. But this feeling of sweet pleasure was something to be reckoned with. The only colour she could see after the red of the fire was the blue of the sea. A perfect blue, blue that held the secret of life and beauty itself. And the taste, oh God, the taste. Was there a way to describe that taste? Sweet, yet smoky, and perfectly balanced.

But then the feeling ended, and there was an explosion, before she shuddered awake to find herself in the hospital room. She was finding it hard to breathe again, and fumbled for the nurse's button to try and get her Nebuliser. Once the nurses had come in and had her all set up with her mask, she breathed deeply, and thought about her dream.

It all made sense, really. Hunter had been carrying her out of the fire. He had cried out in pain for some reason, and she tried to tell him no, to just leave her behind to burn because it was no use, but he refused to. Then he managed to get them out somehow. But then what was the blissful feeling before the explosion? What could that possibly have been?

Once she could breathe easy again, she wanted to sleep, but found that whenever she closed her eyes, she saw fire. She was exhausted, and she didn't want to see fire anymore. She wanted nothing more than to see that beautiful blue that she had imagined when they had gotten out of the fire.

Hunter was probably still recovering in his own ward. He had stayed with her until at least eleven pm, so he had sat there the whole day with her, staying with her through all her tests and whenever she needed some sort of injection, she gripped his hand for support. He had always been there for her, but by the end of the day, he looked so pale and shaky that the nurse forcefully wheeled him away because she was worried for his wellbeing. In a way, Lilly was glad about that. Hunter was too precious to her to hurt him like that.

So then why had she hurt him? She couldn't understand, for the life of her, why she didn't want to be with Hunter when he first told her of his feelings for her. She could still remember the first time she had ever realised how attractive Hunter really was, back when they were sixteen. She wasn't sure what it was, though, really. That gangly frame, the glasses, the braces, but the sweet smile he always had on his face... That smile had helped her through a lot. When he was gone, she remembered his smile to remember him. She got better because she thought of him.

But now he didn't want her the same way. Did he? What had he come over for? Was he just trying to apologise? He could have just done that over the phone, couldn't he? But he was more of a gentleman than that, Lilly knew. So had he come bearing gifts? She would ask him, she decided. She would ask him when he was awake.

The next day came around, as Lilly paced around her room. She only had a couple of minor burns, so she was only really in for her breathing problems. Her asthma, which had been lying low for the past two years, had suddenly flared up after the fire; part of the reason she couldn't find her inhaler when she really needed it.