He Bet My Life and Lost Me Instead novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Grill
The grill at the company retreat catches fire and Dylan puts smoke in Nina's inhaler for a bet; she plays the recording to the whole company and tells him she is leaving, and Lydia hands her a new inhaler as Sam says: Don't.
The grill at our company retreat caught fire at two in the afternoon, with forty people watching.
Just before it did, Lydia had sat down next to me with a paper cup of iced tea.
"I picked up your refills when I did mine," she said, and slid a new inhaler across the picnic table. "Saves you the trip."
The label was a plain white sticker with my name typed on it.
I thanked her and put it in my bag.
She was the only person at work who remembered I needed anything.
Then the grease caught.
The fire ran up the side of the grill and black smoke rolled across the lawn toward our table.
Five years ago I dragged Dylan out of a fire on the nineteenth floor of a tower.
My lungs have never been right since.
One breath of smoke can shut my throat completely.
Dylan walked past me.
For one second I thought he was coming for me.
He took Lydia by the elbow and led her out through the haze, one hand over her head.
"Your inhaler's in your bag on the table," he called back. "Get it yourself. Lydia's right. It's psychological. You only think you need it."
I crawled to the table, my vision going to grey static.
I found the rescue inhaler he'd handed me in the car that morning and pressed down.
It was not medicine.
It was smoke.
I dropped to my knees in the grass and called him.
Lydia answered, laughing. "She really did it? Dylan, I win."
Then Dylan's voice came on, gentle as ever. "Be good. I'm taking Lydia back to the city. You'll have to get a cab home."
He thought he had won an argument.
He had just lost me.
A young guy in a stained apron pulled me upright.
His name tag said Marco, and he was in his early twenties.
He had been flipping burgers for the catering company all afternoon.
"Ma'am? Ma'am, can you hear me?"
I gripped his wrist, and all I could make was a thin whistle.
He saw my lips and his face went white.
"Does anyone know first aid? She can't breathe!"
Nobody moved.
Two vice presidents stepped backward with their beers.
The finance director smiled at him. "Dylan said it's psychological. Give her space. Attention makes it worse."
Marco swore and dialed 911.
The dispatcher said the park was outside the city and the nearest ambulance was twenty minutes away.
I didn't think I had twenty seconds.
Marco saw my phone in the grass, screen still lit, and snatched it up to find my emergency contacts.
There was one name.
Dylan.
In five years it had never crossed my mind to add a second.
It rang a long time before he picked up, music playing softly behind him.
"Nina?"
"Sir, I'm with the catering staff," Marco said. "The woman you were with is in bad shape. Her lips are purple. Where is her medicine?"
The line was quiet for two seconds.
Then Dylan sighed.
"I switched what was in the canister. Lydia said a couple of hits of smoke would help desensitize her."
"What?" Marco said.
"I know how it looks. This isn't the first time. It's a trauma response. The more you panic, the more she'll feel she needs rescuing."
He sounded patient.
He sounded bored.
"Get her away from the grill and sit her down. Tell her to breathe slowly."
"She's going to die!"
"Nina." Dylan raised his voice a little, speaking to me through the phone. "I know you can hear me. You can do this. I'll make you shakshuka tomorrow, your favorite. Okay?"
"She's not faking it," Marco shouted. "Sir, she's not..."
The call ended.
Marco stared at the dead screen.
Then he pulled his own phone from his apron pocket, and I saw its red recording light was on.
"I hit record when he said psychological," he said, his hands shaking. "I've got all of it."
He folded his jacket under my head and ran toward the park entrance to wait for the ambulance.
My phone buzzed in my palm.
It was the executive group chat.
Dylan had posted a photo of twenty executives in front of the grill with their beers raised, Lydia in the middle, soft in the afternoon sun.
The caption said: Proud of the team for facing their fears today. Special thanks to Lydia.
Flame emojis flooded in.
Now that's leadership, someone wrote.
The boss has excellent taste, wrote another.
Nobody mentioned me.
I was lying on the same patch of grass where they had taken the picture.
When the paramedics finally came, one of them held an oxygen mask over my face and told me to look at him.
His jacket said Chicago Fire Department, and his name tag said Novak.
Marco's recording had landed in my messages while I was on my knees.
I used my thumb, and I sent it to the whole executive chat with one line: Here is what your boss did to my inhaler.
Dylan arrived at the hospital that night with a plastic tub of shakshuka and a smile he must have practiced in the elevator.
"You sent that to the whole company," he said from the doorway of my room. "You're embarrassing yourself, Nina. Let's fix this at home."
"I'm not going home," I said. "I'm leaving you."
I did not take the food.
I did not take his hand.
So I stepped out of his life in front of the nurses.
Behind him, Lydia came in holding a white paper bag.
"I brought your new inhaler, sweetheart," she said warmly. "Take it. I filled it myself this morning."
I reached for it.
A large hand closed over the bag before I touched it.
It was the paramedic from the grass, and he had not gone home.
"Don't," Sam Novak said.
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