by Dizzy Hooper
"Come on." Duke claps Walker on the shoulder and starts to steer him down the hall toward his office. "We've got business to discuss." He casts one awful glance over his shoulder at me. "And some personnel files to update, clearly."
"Clearly," Walker agrees.
And that's it.
Paralyzed, my mouth numb, I watch the two of them walk away all but arm in arm. Everything I've built over the last two months shivers in my mind, threatening to shatter like the glass in a house aflame.
My head spins.
What the hell is happening. I mean, like—what the actual fuck?
How long has Walker been talking to that piece of shit? When he hired me—did he—
Did he know?
My eyes sting violently.
Was this all a set-up from the start?
Walker hiring me, with my record—that always felt fishy to me. I figured the department here in Butt-Fuck Egypt was just desperate for anybody with a certification. My first day, when I asked Walker about it, he made it out like he could read behind the lines of my file, but what if he didn't need to read that closely? What if Duke had already read him in?
Would anybody really be that heartlessly cruel?
Leaving me to die wasn't enough for Duke. He got me blacklisted at every station in the greater Chicago area.
And then—what? He got me assigned to this dump just to give me false hope?
I made a life here. I—I—
I fell in love. With five incredible men.
But was that just a part of the ruse?
After everything that's happened to me, I didn't think it was possible to break me. At this moment, I'm pretty fucking close to the edge, though.
I stare after Walker, begging with my eyes. But he doesn't so much as cast a backward glance my way as he leads Duke to his office. The door quietly clicking shut is as loud as a gunshot in my heart.
I don't understand how he could do this to me.
I stand there, frozen, breath ragged, but I can't get enough air.
And then a hand grazes mine.
"Heidi—"
Fuck. I'd forgotten Corey was even here, but with jolt I remember.
I remember Walker isn't the only one involved in this bullshit scheme.
I jerk backward, rejecting Corey's touch. Staring him down, I let all the fury and rage growing inside me boil over. "Did you know?"
"What—"
I fling my hand down the hall. "Did you know he was coming?"
"I mean. Yes. I—"
The world spins on his axis.
I trusted every single person on this crew. Walker most of all, but then Corey—Corey who I never imagined could lie to me, any yet he has. This entire fucking time, he's been lying through his teeth. Hasn't he?
Just like everybody else.
How could I have been such a fucking idiot.
"I tried to explain," Corey starts, but nope. No way.
I'm not staying to hear any bullshit.
Duke betrayed me. My whole entire squad back upstate turned on me.
My parents left me alone in this world. Too strung out on drugs and too stupid and careless to even cook them properly. They didn't care that their own daughter was upstairs from the disaster just waiting to happen.
Over and over and over again, the people I depended on let me down.
And nothing's changed.
I let a near-death experience take down my defenses. I let Sal and Jaquan into my body, and then I fell into their bed. Into their confidence and into their lives.
I let some pretty words from Corey convince me that he gave a shit about me. I let him make tender, sweet fucking love to me.
I gave Walker and Street access to every goddam part of me.
I told them my story. I made myself open and vulnerable to them in every way I could imagine.
And it was all a lie.
All along, it was leading to this.
"Fuck you," I spit out. "You lying sacks of shit. Fuck every single goddam one of you."
And then I'm running. I hear my name being called, Corey's voice echoing down the hall. Sal and Jaquan are talking in the distance, but it's just noise in the static that fills my brain.
I fling open the door to the garage and run headlong into a wall of muscle, but I don't give a fuck. I shove Street out of my way.
"Whoa—whoa whoa whoa—" Street grabs my arm hard enough to bruise, fighting to spin me around, but I know what I'm doing.
I use my own momentum against him, flinging him into the wall. In his surprise, he lets go, and that's all I need.
"Heidi—" he calls after me.
And I turn. For one fucking second, I look back at that scarred, angry man who I had the audacity to imagine gave a rat's ass about me.
My own rage threatens to abandon me, leaving me stripped bare in a way I wasn't, even when I was naked and letting them all have their way with me. An overwhelming sadness threatens to drown me.
My vision blurs, and my throat burns. "How could you?"
He blinks, confused. But then he seems to remember himself. Clarity dawns in his gaze, and yeah, that's all I needed to know.
He was in on it, too.
Whatever he might have to say for himself, I don't stay to listen to it. I've been burned enough times, by enough people. These guys aren't going to get one more piece of me—especially after I've already given them my body and my heart.
I'm not going to let them see me break.
I turn. I run.
And I don't look back.
Because if I did, I'd never have the strength to go.
44
As I break the speed limit heading back to my apartment, the hysterical thought occurs to me that leaving the station in the middle of my shift might be enough to get me fired. But then I remember that Duke is here to help Walker alter my personnel file—that he just said as much out loud. I'm already as good as gone, so what harm can a little more dereliction of duty really do?
Fuck. I'm really, truly never going to be able to work as a firefighter again after this.
And somehow, that's what pushes me over the edge.
The guys—Walker and Street and Corey and Jaquan and Sal. They lured me into a relationship that was never real. They convinced me to let down my guard and show them a kind of vulnerability I've never shown to anyone before. They fucked me in every position and combination imaginable, taking me raw and filling me up with their come.
They've stolen my last scrap of faith in humanity, in trust, in love.
They've stolen my life.
One last chance. This town and this station—they were my only shot at proving myself. Duke smeared my name and ruined my career.
Another town firing me for the same kinds of bullshit charges?
I'm done. Finished.
I'm never going to get to suit up again.
The only thing I ever wanted in this life was to help. I wanted to be the hero I was always waiting for as a child. I wanted to save people.
For the past five years now—minus the time Duke had me thrown off the active duty roster—that's exactly what I've been doing. Getting back to it, here, in this backwater town, breathed new life into me. It gave me hope.
It was cruel.
My vision blurs, but I grip the steering wheel tighter and force myself to stay on the road.
If there's anything I never imagined the guys on my shift to be, it's cruel. But how can I deny the evidence?
By some miracle, I make it the rest of the way home, even through my angry tears. I park my truck in a spot that's too small and ding the door on a light pole and I just don't fucking care.
I storm into my apartment, slamming the door behind me. I forgot my coat in my rush, so I don't have anything to take off. I don't have anything to do.
Coiled energy winds tighter and tighter inside me. I'm a spring compressed to its limit. I'm a house full of old newspaper stacked next to a creaking, clattering stove.
Any second n
ow, I'm going to blow.
For a few minutes, I stomp around the place aimlessly. Then I head to my dresser and start to take out some clothes. I really don't own that much. I could be packed up again within a couple of hours and over the state line before nightfall. Fuck knows where I'd go.
Maybe I could outrun all of this bullshit. Yeah, my references are shot, but someone, somewhere must need an emergency responder. My mistake this time was staying so close. I should have gone farther, to a place where Duke could never follow—a place where he couldn't have raced ahead and cut me off before I even started.
A place he couldn't touch.
Only that doesn't exist, does it?
Because what he did to me is never going to go away. I thought I blacked it out, but it was there, all along. I bear the scars, inside and out, and you can't run away from that kind of shit.
And what's worse…
I can't run away from my guys.
Fresh tears pour from my eyes, and the whole room spins.
Fuck them. Fuck them for making me care about them. Fuck them for worming their stupid, gorgeous, perfect, lying asshole selves into my heart.
I sob, my whole chest caving in with the force of the tremors.
How could they do this? Through everything? How could they have lied and lied and never once let on?
They made me believe that they cared about me.
But all along, they were working with the man who ruined my life. They were his friends. He called Walker son.
And yet…
Abandoning the stack of clothes I was about to start packing up, I drop in a heap to the floor. I look around at my crappy little studio apartment.
Two months ago, I moved here with a few boxes full of stuff crammed into the bed of a rusted out pick-up truck. I bought just enough to make the place livable, and that was it.
My eyes burn as I take in the changes that have happened since then.
It's so much more than just livable now. It's still not exactly a home, but there are touches here and there. Walker was appalled by my lack of a decent fry pan, and he bought me an entire set. The extra motorcycle helmet that Street left here for me is sitting by the door. Corey and I picked out some little ceramic mugs at a fucking craft fair at a farmer's market that he took me to. Sal left a blender, and Jaquan brought a stack of extra towels so he and Sal could shower and dry off after they fucked me on the floor here, and seriously. Each of the guys has left some item of clothing here or another. I've left my stuff at their places, too.
Our lives are entwined.
They weren't just using me—were they? If they were, could it ever have gotten this far?
Even through my cloud of fury, a voice of reason in the back of my head keeps whispering.
No.
No, none of the crazy conclusions I've been drawing makes sense.
They're good men. Faithful, honest men.
This plot I've cooked up in my head between them and Duke…
There has to be some other explanation.
But I search and search in my mind, and I can't find it.
Am I being blind? All my life, everyone I've ever cared about has found some way to screw me over. Am I projecting that onto the guys now?
Should I have stayed and at least heard them out?
Indecision threatens to tear me apart. Was what we had together—that strange, fragile, amazing, impossible love affair I was having with five perfect men… Was it ever even real in the first place?
If it wasn't, how did I let myself be fooled so easily?
If it was, am I really willing to throw it away without a fight?
The thousand questions racing through my mind aren't nearly enough to calm my raging.
But they are at least enough to make me stop packing.
Three minutes later, when my phone buzzes in my pocket, they're enough to make me look at what it has to say.
And it seems impossible. My last crew literally left me for dead in a burning building. They didn't come back for me when I fell. They didn't visit me in the hospital.
They certainly didn't call me fifteen times in the last thirty minutes.
I scroll through the list of missed calls. Most of them are from Corey, but there are a few from Street and Jaquan and Sal, too. Walker is conspicuously absent, but he was the one taking Duke back to his office, so maybe I shouldn't be so surprised by that.
It still hurts, though.
Finally, at the bottom of the long list of alerts, there's a single text message.
I open it with shaking hands.
It's from Corey. Four words, but they stab clear through my ribs.
Come back, Heidi. Please.
Another message comes through.
Please.
And another.
Trust us. Please.
I half-thought I was all cried out, but a fresh wave of tears somehow manages to wet my eyes. The lines of text on the screen waver and blur.
Trust us, he wrote.
And isn't that really what this all comes down to?
Ever since the day I first set foot inside that station, the guys been asking me to trust them. I resisted and resisted, until finally I couldn't anymore. One by one, they showed me that they were worth the risk.
It's like a fist, reaching into my chest and squeezing hard around my heart.
They've taken so many leaps of faith for me.
But all I needed was one sign that they might be willing to turn on me, and I was out the door.
That says a hell of a lot more about me than it does about them.
Weakness and exhaustion and a bone-deep hurt I've been nursing my entire life threaten to swallow me.
But maybe I have a little bit of strength left.
Maybe I have the will to take one final leap of faith of my own.
These men deserve it.
And maybe—just maybe—I do, too.
45
My drive back to the station is a hell of a lot slower. I second guess myself at every traffic light and stop sign. One flick of my blinker and I could be headed in the opposite direction. The state line isn't all that far away.
But neither are my guys.
Corey's plea keeps echoing in my head. Come back, he wrote. Please. Trust us. Please.
And just like always, I'm helpless against his open earnestness.
He's worth taking a chance on. They all are.
I tighten my hand around the hard plastic of the steering wheel.
One chance for my five men against the weight of all my history with abandonment—not to mention my history with Duke fucking Hopkins. I'll listen to them. I'll let them try to explain what they could possibly be thinking. I'll give them a chance to salvage the place they made for themselves in my home and in my heart.
But one false move and I'm out of there. I trust them, all right. I'd burn for them.
But I'm not willing to let them burn me.
As it turns out, it's a good thing I'm dragging my feet. There are an unusual number of cop cars on the road. I frown as I pass another idling just around the corner from the station, checking my speedometer just in case. They must have some ticket-writing quotas to fill today or something.
I put them out of my mind soon enough, though. I hesitate in the turn lane to head into the station's lot, but traffic is moving around me. I can't wait forever.
I make the turn and park my truck exactly where it was this morning, right next to Sal's Jeep. My throat grates at the memory of pulling in together and piling out. Of the lingering kiss Jaquan planted on my mouth as he pressed me into the side of the truck before we all headed into work, laughing and talking shit about football. Everything seemed so easy then, so normal.
Now that whole life I envisioned for myself and my five men is hanging by a thread.
I walk out onto that thread, though. It's a tightrope beneath my feet, and there isn't a net. Trusting it to bear my weight, I make my way into the station.
Corey is waitin
g for me right inside the door. He must have been watching from the window. He's on me in an instant, reaching for my hand, but I jerk back.
Nope. I'm willing to give them all a chance, but I'm not willing to let them try to pacify me. They don't get to touch me until I'm satisfied.
I'm trying so hard to trust them. But if I let them get their hands on me?
Then the one I really don't trust is myself.
Corey drops his arm, his throat bobbing. "Okay, I get it."
"Do you, though?" Fuck. I can't keep the hurt out of my voice. "I trusted you."
"I know." His eyes are a liquid brown. "I know how much that means for you."
Yeah, I feel that one right in my chest.
I brush it off, though, unwilling to dwell on my infinite amount of baggage. Shaking my head, I cross my arms. "So tell me what the fuck is going on."
"Hold up, stick with us just a little bit longer." His hands twitch at his sides, like it's all he can do to stop himself from reaching for me. "This is going to be better to see than to hear."
What the hell is he talking about?
"Look—"
"Just a minute, I swear." He pulls out the walkie talkie he apparently had hooked into the back of his belt. Pressing the button, he speaks into it. "She's here. Come on. Let's go."
And I don't know what I'm expecting. I'm so turned around, literal snakes could slither out of the wall and I don't think I could be any more surprised and confused than I already am.
Pangs of angry hurt keep reverberating through my ribs.
Being asked to wait like this—it's making me as touchy and nervous as I was back in my apartment, with nothing to do and nowhere to go. Corey's pushing me. They all are.
The tightrope beneath my feet stretches to the point where it's about to snap.
Just before the tension can hit its breaking point, heavy footfalls in the corridor sound out.
I whip around to find Street leading Jaquan and Sal toward me. Still no sign of Walker, and I don't care about that. I don't. Street's expression is flat-out murderous. Jaquan's is as severe as I've ever seen it, his whole face distorted by the lack of his easy smile. Sal's spine is ramrod straight, his fists clenched, and I brace myself.
These guys have been nothing but kind and welcoming to me. They've teamed up on me, sure, but only in the bedroom, and basically only at my request.