by R. Linda
We were silent for the longest time until Nate finally broke it. “What are your plans this week?”
“We’re making small talk now?”
“That’s what friends do. They talk about small things. Or important things. You choose. I don’t care. We can sit in silence in the freezing rain until our noses fall off if you want.”
“I don’t want my nose to fall off.”
“Then why are we up here?”
“It’s a good place to think, and the view is beautiful.”
“Hate to break it to you, friend. We have no view.” He gestured with wide arms at the darkness surrounding us. I couldn’t hide the smile on my face from the way he called me “friend.” If I wasn’t careful, I’d get too comfortable with him and let my guard down. I couldn’t let that happen. For his sake and for Brody’s.
“Not tonight, but in the daylight or a clear night, it’s pretty spectacular up here.”
“Are you inviting me back?”
“What? No. I, umm…” I wasn’t inviting him over again, was I? No. It was too much. Having him so close made my brain turn to mush and made me want things I had no business wanting.
“I thought we were friends.”
“We are,” I agreed reluctantly. Friends.
“And friends hang out at the top of water towers.” He squeezed his arm around me. “You’re shivering.”
I hadn’t even realised I was cold. “I’m fine.” I was enjoying the warmth of his arm around me, and if I was honest, I didn’t want to move.
“Come on. Let’s get out of this rain. You can show me the view another day when the sun is shining.”
Nate stood and held out his hand to help me up. I stumbled on the wet surface and slipped backwards, but he tightened his grip on my hand and pulled me forward into his warm, hard, very firm chest, his other hand sliding around my back to steady me.
“Whoa, you okay?” he asked, looking down at me.
I froze, unable to speak, and stared into his dark as night blue eyes. All rationality was gone. Rain was dripping down his nose, cheeks, over his lips. His tongued darted out to lick the water away. My lips parted, and mimicking him, my tongue swiped over my bottom lip.
“Harper?” His voice was so soft as his head lowered so close to mine I was breathing in his breaths.
One kiss wouldn’t hurt anyone, right? Right?
One kiss was nothing.
People kissed all the time, and it didn’t mean anything.
It was harmless…
Only it wasn’t. Nothing was harmless when it came Nate Kellerman.
“I’m okay,” I said finally. The half a step I took back out of his arms almost physically hurt, but the daze he had me under was finally lifted, and I could think again.
A mask of indifference appeared on Nate’s face, and he smiled as he rolled the wet blanket into a soggy ball. “Good. Can’t have my new friend falling off a water tower.”
Nate Kellerman was going to be the death of me.
Chapter Seven
Nate
“Sit down,” Indie ordered and bounced on her feet with her hands behind her back while Linc stood beside her, quietly watching.
We were at our parents’ house for Sunday night dinner—a new thing our mother was trying to implement now Indie was home and we were all living separately. It had been a week since I sat with Harper in the rain on the water tower, though I admittedly returned to the roadhouse a few times through the week, with the excuse that Johnny’s burgers were so good I couldn’t get enough of them, in the hopes of catching my new friend Harper. If I kept this rate up, I’d end up fat.
There was something about her that I couldn’t shake. As hard as I tried to forget about her, I couldn’t. I wanted her, plain and simple, and I shouldn’t because I knew Brody did too. He talked about her all the time, wondering whether he should call her and see if she wanted to hang out, then second guessing his decision to call her because what if she didn’t see him that way, and then what if she did. He was like a teenage girl, and he just kept going round in circles. Ordinarily I’d tell him to man up and ask the chick on a date just so he’d stop going on about it, but since it was Harper he was talking about, I’d kept my mouth shut. As terrible as it was, I didn’t want him to have the opportunity for a second chance, not that I thought Harper would date him again because I was sure she wanted me the same as I wanted her. I just didn’t want to risk it.
“What’s going on, Indiana? Dinner will burn if you don’t hurry up,” my mother said as she perched on the arm of the sofa beside Dad.
“Well, we have something we want to tell you.” She reached for Linc and pulled him close, his hands circling her waist and coming to rest on her stomach.
No.
Fuck, no.
“You better not have knocked up my sister, man,” I growled and stood up.
“Sit down, son,” Dad said and pulled me back into my chair.
“Relax, she’s not pregnant.” Linc held his hands up and shifted so he was standing beside her with an arm around her waist. I narrowed my eyes at him.
“But we are getting married,” Indie announced holding up her left hand and flashing a diamond on her finger.
“And it’s not a shotgun wedding?” I asked stupidly, but my mind was a little slow on the uptake. I stood up again.
“No, you idiot.” Indie rolled her eyes.
“Oh, my baby’s getting married.” I was shoved to the side to make room for my mother to charge at Indie and Linc, wrapping them both in a hug and smothering them with kisses.
I shook Linc’s hand and congratulated him when Mum finally let them go. He eyed me warily, still unsure whether I was actually okay with them together or if I’d murder him in his sleep one night. Sure, I was protective of Indie. She was my little sister, so it came with the territory, but if she was going to marry anyone, I was glad it was Linc. I knew she was safe with him, and he’d make her happy. In fact, they’d both been deliriously happy since my parents’ second wedding in Fiji.
“I’m happy for you.” I pulled Indie into a hug.
“Yeah? You’re not going to go all big brother on me and beat up my fiancé, are you?”
“No.”
“How did he propose?” Mum was gushing like a giddy schoolgirl.
“I didn’t.” Linc frowned. “I had it all planned out, a grand gesture, romantic and all that, but she beat me to it.”
“Indiana, you did not propose?” Mum placed a hand on her heart in shock. She was a little traditional like that.
“I did. It just sort of happened.”
“When?”
“Last week. On the way home, in the car.” She laughed. “Very romantic.”
“We wanted to tell you first before we announced it to everyone else,” Linc said, pulling two small silver envelopes out of his back pocket.
“What’s this?” Mum twirled the paper in her hands.
“Open it and find out,” Dad said.
I opened mine and slid out a small white card. It was an engagement invitation.
“You’ve already planned an engagement party?” Mum’s eyes were wide, and she sounded disappointed.
Indie nodded. “We want to celebrate as soon as possible.”
“But I can help plan the wedding, right? Because I’m good at that. Look at the second wedding your father and I had. We can hire Lavenia again, and she’ll look after everything.”
I groaned. I knew exactly what my mother would be like. She’d bulldoze the whole thing and plan it all to her tastes. It would be extravagant and over the top.
“Umm, well…” Indie paused and winced. “We just want something simple and small. And we’re not in a hurry.”
“But, you can’t—”
“Leave it alone. If they want help planning their wedding, they’ll ask.” Dad placed a hand on her arm to calm her down.
“But—”
“Leave it alone.”
“We’d love your input, Mrs. K,”
Linc said, nudging Indie in the side and shooting her a glare.
“Sure. It’ll…be…fun,” Indie said stiffly, forcing a smile.
“Oh, excellent. You won’t regret this.” She ran upstairs, muttering to herself.
“Oh, no! What have we done?” Indie whispered as she glanced over her shoulder.
“There goes your quiet wedding.” I laughed and walked into the kitchen to grab a beer.
“I’ll reel her in, sweetheart,” Dad said, following me into the kitchen.
I handed him and Linc a beer, and Indie helped herself to some wine.
“Dinner is going to burn.” She checked the oven and turned it off. “Where is she?”
“I’m right here,” Mum announced as she walked into the kitchen holding a giant folder.
“What is that?” Indie eyed the folder that landed on the table with a thud.
“My wedding folder. Samples, images, contact phone numbers, websites. Everything you could need for a wedding can be found in here.” Her smile was bright and wide, and her eyes sparkled with happiness as she flipped through the folder.
“How about we leave the wedding talk for another time?” Dad shut the folder and slid it out of her grasp. “I’m hungry, and you’ve worked hard on this meal. Let’s eat and get through the engagement party before you start planning the wedding, okay?”
She agreed reluctantly, putting the folder on the counter and shuffling around the kitchen getting the food ready. Indie breathed a sigh of relief and gulped down her wine.
“You might want to look into eloping,” I said quietly.
“It’s crossed my mind.”
“Say the word, Ace, and we’ll go,” Linc said.
“Really?” Indie spun to look at him.
“If that’s what you want. It’s your day, so you can choose.” He kissed her head. Yeah, I was totally fine with their relationship as long as he kept putting her first.
“It’s our day. You have to want it too.”
“All I want is you to be happy.”
“All right, you two, give the sappy crap a rest.” I cringed and walked over to give Mum a hand, not wanting to witness any more.
Linc just laughed.
***
I was a sucker for punishment. Two days after Linc and Indie announced their engagement, I found myself at the roadhouse again, in the hopes of seeing Harper. After such a dark and depressing day, I really wanted to see her pretty smile and cute button nose.
“You look like crap and smell even worse,” Johnny said when I walked in. I was beginning to like the guy. He was brutally honest. I knew I looked a bad and had definitely smelled better. The soot and scent of smoke was in my skin. It would take more than one shower to wash this day off.
“Yeah,” I sighed and sat on a stool at the counter.
“What can I get you?”
“Tequila?” I was only half joking. He raised an unimpressed eyebrow and grunted. “A milkshake’s fine.” I slumped over the counter and rested my head on my arms.
“Rough day?” Leaning down under the counter, he pulled out a beer then flipped the top and slid it across to me with a nod.
“The worst.”
“I’ll get something to eat too,” he said and pushed through the kitchen doors. “You got a visitor.”
Harper peered around the door, her eyebrows pinched together. “Nate?”
“Hi, friend.”
She rolled her eyes. “What are you doing here?”
“Wanted to see you.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re friends, and I had a terrible day.”
She leaned on the counter in front of me, a look of concern mixed with surprise on her face. “And you came to see me? Why not Linc or Brody?”
“They don’t have your smile. And I kind of need something bright to break through the darkness.”
Her mouth pulled up into a smile, and pink tinged her cheeks. She ducked her head and tried to hide behind her hair.
“Walk with me?”
She nodded. “Hang on.” She darted out to the kitchen and came back a few minutes later with a brown paper bag and two bottles of orange juice. “Let’s go.”
I drained my beer in a quick few mouthfuls and threw the empty bottle in the recycling.
I didn’t know where we were going. The roadhouse was on the outside of town with nothing around for miles, but Harper seemed to have an idea, so I followed her.
“The water tower?” I asked as we rounded the back of the diner and began to trek through the field. Taking the brown bag from her hands and peering inside, I inhaled the scent of fried meat and potatoes and groaned, suddenly hungry.
“Not today.”
We walked past the water tower and continued through the knee-high grass in the direction of a large willow tree at the back of the property. The sound of water trickling became louder the further we got from the diner, until finally we reached the shade of the willow tree on the bank of a stream.
Harper sat on a worn patch of grass and folded her legs underneath her.
“Come here a lot?” I sat beside her and leaned against the tree, closing my eyes only to open them again to stop the images flashing in my head, the screams echoing in my ears.
“Sometimes.” She opened the bag and pulled out a burger and fries, handing them to me before digging back into the bag for her own.
We ate in silence, which was both a blessing and a curse. I didn’t want to talk about my day. I didn’t want to rehash the details and go over it again for the thousandth time. But in the silence, the thoughts crept in, plaguing my mind with doubt.
What if I did things differently?
What if I was there earlier?
What if? What if? What if?
Rationally, I knew there was nothing I could do, but it still didn’t make it any easier.
It didn’t lessen the guilt or the pain. Nothing could ever prepare you for it. No amount of training and practice runs and theory could ever prepare you for death.
“Want to talk about it?” Harper asked, throwing her rubbish into the brown bag and moving to sit beside me.
“No.”
She sighed and settled in against the tree trunk beside me, her long, milky white legs crossing at the ankles. She was the palest person I had ever met. Her skin almost glowed, it was so fair, yet her hair was so dark. Snow White—that was Harper, only edgier with skin-tight jeans and spiked leather boots.
“Want to walk again?”
“No.”
“Swim?”
“No.” Her questions barely registered in my distracted mind. In all honesty, I was content just sitting beside her as long as I didn’t let my thoughts run away from me too much.
“Skinny-dip?”
“No.” A tiny part of me wondered, if I’d said yes, would she have followed through and skinny-dipped with me in the stream?
“Want to make out?” She wiggled her eyebrows.
“You want to kiss me, friend?” I teased, grateful for finally getting my thoughts out of the cloud of smoke they were caught under, even if it only lasted a while.
“Will it cheer you up? You’re worrying me.” Her lips turned down into a frown as she brushed a hand across my cheek absently before jerking her arm back as if realising what she was doing.
“Sorry. I dragged you out here because I had a really, really bad day, and now I’m being a terrible friend.”
“You’re not being a terrible friend. You’re definitely not being a fun one, but I can understand that. Something happened at work, didn’t it?”
I nodded. “How did you know?”
“You look and smell like you got stuck in a chimney.” She rubbed her fingers across my forehead and cheeks, wiping away the soot that was still there.
“It was bad. The house was old and already fully engulfed in flames by the time we got there. We tried. So hard.” I paused, needing to take a moment to get my head together again.
“Nate.” Harper shook her h
ead, at a loss for words, and reached for my hand, threading her fingers through mine. That was what I needed. Comfort. No words. Her touch. The warmth of her skin on mine.
“The screams. I can still hear them. A whole family, Harper. Trapped upstairs in that house,” I ground out, my jaw clenched so tightly my teeth ached, but I barely noticed. “The smoke was so thick, we could hardly see.”
Harper’s hand tightened around mine while she wrapped the other around my waist and laid her head on my chest.
“The beams were falling down on top of us, the stairs crumbling beneath our feet every time we tried to take a step. We couldn’t get to them. The ladders were no use. The moment Richie climbed through the top story window, the floor beneath him gave out. There was nothing we could do.” I choked back a sob, and Harper lifted her head to look at me, tears in her eyes. I wiped one away when it silently slid down her cheek.
“Eventually, our captain ordered us out. It was too dangerous, and he couldn’t put our lives at risk. By this stage, the screams had stopped, and the fire was under control. There was nothing left of the house. We stood in the street and watched it collapse in front of us. They were dead. All of them because of a faulty air conditioner.”
“Nate, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to say. How to make this better. Nothing is going to bring them back or take away your pain,” Harper said, hugging herself to me.
“But she’s alive,” I whispered. I was still in shock. It shouldn’t have been possible. No one could have survived that fire.
“Who? You just said they all…I don’t understand.”
“The girl. Can’t be more than seventeen. I was outside talking to Brody. He was there, you know, to treat any victims and get them to the hospital. We were out in the middle of the road when I heard the cry. I was sure I imagined it, but it happened again. When Brody and I just looked at each other, I knew he heard it too. So we ran together into the falling-down house that was still smoking and hot to touch and searched everywhere. The captain was on the phone to the fire marshal and abusing the hell out of us for being in a dangerous building and ordering us out. We ignored him for a while and continued to look for her. We were just about to give up when we heard her again. Climbing over furniture and timber that was pure charcoal by that stage, we found her amongst the rubble in the bathroom, naked, burns to half her body, suffering bad smoke inhalation and part of the floor above holding her down.”