I wish I could be as trusting of the future. I wish I could say it’s all worth it to be with Sebastian. But it wouldn’t be fair of me to put him through it. Eli still gets to live his life, no matter what happens. If we have another sick child, he gets to visit him in the hospital and go home to Monica at the end of every day. I’m the one who will be sleeping on a cot in the corner. I’m the one who will spoon feed him. I’m the one who will hold him when he cries after they put a feeding tube in his stomach because he’s too sick to eat. I’m the one who will hold him until he takes his last breath. I’m the one who will be incapable of loving anyone but the child in the hospital bed.
I know all of that because it’s already happened. Eli says we drifted apart. He claims it was him as much as it was me. But the truth is I just didn’t have it in me to love Dahlia with everything I had and still have any leftover for Eli. It was my fault that we broke up. And I’m not about to let history repeat itself. I’m not about to let Bass fall in love with my child only to have him lose both of us.
“Ivy?”
I look up to see Holly trying to get my attention. She nods toward the other side of the bar. I look over and see Bass staring at me. My eyes immediately fall upon the two seats flanking his. One is occupied by a woman who is clearly with the man on the other side of her. The other seat holds a guy who’s even bigger than Bass. He looks like he could be a firefighter, but I don’t recall meeting him at the firehouse. Then again, I wasn’t interested in anything other than being in Bass’s arms when I was there that day.
I know I have no right to feel relieved that he’s not here with a woman. But I am.
“Are you okay?” Alder asks. “Who is that?”
“It’s Bass.”
“No shit?” He looks over at him, appraising him like any big brother would. “He can’t take his eyes off you, Ivy. Maybe you should go talk to him.”
The guy to Bass’s right is trying to get his attention, but Bass keeps waving him away.
I can’t help but gaze back at him. He doesn’t talk to his friend. He doesn’t take a sip of his beer. He just stares at me. And I stare at him. It’s been well over a month since I’ve seen him. I swear he’s gotten even more handsome. His hair is slightly longer, and he must have had the past few days off because he has heavy scruff growing on his face.
I remember in Hawaii, he liked to let his facial hair grow because he said he always shaved for work. I loved the feeling of his scruff beneath my fingertips. Against my lips. Between my legs. I close my eyes briefly, savoring the memory. When I open my eyes again, I see Bass staring at Eli. But his demeanor has changed. He’s not looking at him with a sad longing—he’s looking at him like he wants to kill him.
Then Bass finally takes a drink. He quickly swallows his half-full beer and slams the empty glass back down onto the bar.
“Holy shit,” Alder says. “If looks could kill.”
“Yeah,” Eli says. “And seeing as I’m the one who’s likely to get killed, can you please tell the guy the truth already, Ivy?”
“Stay out of it,” I turn around and tell all of them. “I mean it.”
When I look at Bass again, their backs are turned to us and he and his friend are talking to a few women. The woman in front of Bass puts her hand on his chest and laughs like what he said is the funniest thing she’s ever heard. I feel sick watching it.
I get up off my barstool. “I need to use the ladies’ room.”
“Want company?” Christina asks.
I shake my head.
When I get to the bathroom, I wet a paper towel and blot it on my cheeks. Then I turn to the side and stare at myself in the mirror. At fourteen weeks, I’m looking plumper, but I’m not yet showing. Good, because I’m not prepared to have that conversation with Bass. If I’m lucky, I can avoid him for the next five months. Or maybe forever. Because I hate feeling the way I’m feeling after seeing him.
Everything inside me wants to ask him to take me back.
But I can’t be that selfish.
I take a deep breath before I go back out to the bar. I vow to turn my stool the other way and not look at him for the rest of the night. Perhaps I can convince my group to go elsewhere. Because just knowing he’s here is hard. And knowing he may be going home with another woman would be pure torture.
I get two steps out of the bathroom when I all but run into Bass’s chest. I have to put my hand up against him to keep myself from colliding with him. And when his smell permeates my senses, I almost fall to my knees.
“Hello, Ivy,” he says callously. “Having a good time tonight?”
“Hi.”
He laughs bitterly. “I haven’t seen you in almost two months and that’s all you have to say?”
“What do you want me to say, Bass?”
“I don’t know. How about, ‘How are you, Sebastian? I hope you’re doing well after I led you on and then kicked you to the curb.’ Or maybe ‘Thanks for the flowers’.”
I look up and lock eyes with him.
“Don’t look so surprised,” he says. “I know you knew I sent them.”
I nod. “I guess I did. But I couldn’t … I’m sorry.”
“Everything okay back here?” Alder says, coming up behind me. He holds his hand out to Bass. “Alder Greene.”
“Bass Briggs,” he says, shaking Alder’s hand. “I was just saying hello to Ivy. I was about to wish her and … Eli, is it? I was just about to wish them well.”
Alder shakes his head. “Eli’s with Mon—”
“Alder.” I put a forceful hand on his arm. “Would you please wait back at the table?”
“Ivy.” He stares me down with that brotherly look of his.
“Alder. Please.”
Alder looks from Bass to me. “Fine.”
Bass watches him walk away. “He seems nice. And protective of you. I wish I could have gotten to know him.”
“Don’t you have some girls waiting for you back at the bar?” I ask, a little too curtly.
He narrows his eyes at me. “Do I detect a hint of jealousy? Funny thing, coming from the girl who dumped me.”
“Bass, don’t make this harder than it already is.”
“Oh, I can see how hard this is for you,” he says, motioning out to the bar. “You out with your friends and your—what is he now, boyfriend? Fiancé?”
“Stop it.”
“A word to the wise. Next time you want to play the grieving mother card, do it with someone who doesn’t give a flying fuck, okay?”
Tears prickle the backs of my eyes. “That’s not fair, Bass. I told you from the beginning that I didn’t want it to go beyond Hawaii.”
“Yeah, well, that’s not what you were saying in the end, was it? What was it you were saying then? Oh, right, you were saying how much you loved me. What a load of crap.”
“It was true,” I say, using all my willpower to keep the tears from falling.
He snorts. “Goodbye, Ivy.”
I sink back against the wall as I watch him go into the bathroom. Then I go find Holly and have her walk me home.
~ ~ ~
“Push, Ivy,” the nurse says. “Just a few more minutes and your daughter will be here.”
Something is different. Something smells different. It doesn’t smell clinical, like a hospital. It smells like flowers. It smells like daisies.
I open my eyes, and the ‘nurse’ is wearing a fireman’s uniform. I look around to see firemen all around me.
Someone squeezes my hand. “It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay. Push.”
I look up and expect to see Eli, but it’s not him. It’s Bass. Bass is holding my hand, urging me to push.
He kisses my hand and when I look at it, I have a ring on my finger. I’m married.
This is all wrong. He can’t marry me. “Bass, no.”
“It’s okay, Ivy. Daisies gonna make everything better.”
I stare at Bass, wondering how he knows about Dahlia’s dying words. I didn’
t tell him, did I? Then I sit up, remembering my daughter and everything we went through, and I squeeze my legs together to try and keep the baby inside me.
I look over at the table to see vase after vase of Dahlia’s favorite flower. I’m overwhelmed by the earthy smell of them.
“The baby is coming,” Bass says.
I see him push my legs apart and then I watch as he pulls a pale, lifeless baby out of me. He holds the limp baby in his hands and looks down on me a broken man. “Why did you let me fall in love with you?” he screams. “With her? You did this to me. How could you?”
He holds the lifeless baby out to me, placing her on my chest. The weight of her crushes my heart and causes me to lose my breath. I want to cry, but I can’t. I can’t because I knew this was going to happen. Nobody believed me, but I knew.
“I’m sorry,” I chant over and over, holding the blue baby to me while I stare at a sobbing Bass. “I’m so sorry.”
Truer words have never been spoken. Because I know exactly what he’s going through. And I put him there. I brought him into my hell and now he’s paying the price.
The nurse tries to take the baby from me, but I don’t let her. “No!” I scream, holding my daughter against the belly from which she was just born.
A bright light comes on, startling me. I open my eyes and look around. Holly is sitting on my bed and I’m protectively holding my stomach.
“Ivy, are you okay?”
Hot tears are flowing from my eyes as I frantically look around my room. “I have to … I need …”
Holly grabs the fetal Doppler from my dresser and brings it over. She lifts up the shirt I’m sleeping in and runs it over my lower belly until we hear it. Whoosh whoosh whoosh.
I finally take a breath and sink back into my pillow. “I’m okay. Bad dream. You can go back to bed.”
After Holly leaves, I keep listening to the baby’s heartbeat. I listen for so long, my hand goes numb holding the wand to my belly. But it’s soothing.
Finally, when my need to pee overtakes my desire to keep lying here, I get off the bed. On my way to the bathroom, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. The T-shirt I’m wearing is far too large for me. The short sleeves fall to my elbows and the hem almost touches my knees. I look like a waif of a woman wearing it. But somehow, I know it’s the only shirt I’ll ever sleep in.
And as I walk away from the mirror, I look behind me to catch a glimpse of the back of the shirt with Bass’s last name printed on it, knowing this is the only piece of him I’ll ever be able to have.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Sebastian
It’s a conundrum sometimes, being a firefighter. When you are in the middle of a life-and-death situation, you can’t let emotions overtake you, so you try to shut them out and do your job. But at the same time, it’s those emotions that make us work so hard to make the rescue. It’s those emotions that have us wading through smoke and flames to find a missing child. And it’s those emotions that have us risking our lives to save the drug dealer who got high and passed out, allowing his cigarette to start a fire. Because that idiot is someone’s father, son, or brother. And no matter what happened before we got there, it’s a life. And that life needs our help. And we’re there to give it, no questions asked.
But it’s days like today that really test my resolve to do the job. It’s days like today, when I have to hold back a frantic mother because her child is trapped in the back seat of her overturned car.
“Jacob!” she screams, as I tighten my grip on her.
We both watch helplessly as Squad uses the jaws of life to extricate her toddler from the mangled vehicle.
The woman’s leg is likely broken, and she has a scalp lac that’s bleeding. But adrenaline is keeping her from feeling much pain and she’s refusing treatment until her son is freed. I pulled her out of the front seat rather easily, cutting through her seatbelt after we stabilized her neck. But as I was working on getting her out, I saw her child, and based on what I saw, Lt. Cash and his team are doing a recovery, not a rescue.
As I hold the woman who is clearly in agony, not because of her injuries, but because of her child, I can’t help but think of Ivy. And it makes me wonder which is worse—losing a child abruptly and without warning or knowing that your child will die and you only have a certain amount of time with her.
Either option seems unimaginably daunting.
Then I think about Denver and how he would have reacted to this scene. I’m glad I didn’t try harder to talk him into applying to FDNY. In fact, Aspen pulled me aside after that night and told me to please not encourage him. Apparently, his fear of car accidents is even worse than she led me to believe. This, today, was hard for even a seasoned firefighter to watch, let alone someone who tragically lost both parents in an accident.
Everyone on Engine 319 is quiet as we make our way back to the station. I contemplate placing a call to the QA officer who will be able to contact the hospital and give us an update on the child. After all, Debbe did say they found a faint pulse after Squad got him out. But I remember Cash’s face when he looked over at me as I held the mother. He shook his head in a way that let me know there was little hope.
In the end, I don’t make the call. You learn early on in this job to leave it alone. We don’t always get to hear the outcomes of our rescues. We don’t get to follow the progress of our saves. Sometimes, after particularly tough runs, we do request information. But those cases are few and far between. And in this case, I prefer to think that Jacob was revived after they got him to the hospital. I prefer to think that his mother wouldn’t have to make a trip to Hawaii months or years from now because she was simply unable to move on.
As soon as we pull back into the station and exit the truck, the alarm sounds.
“Engine 319, respond to a commercial structure fire at 547 Parker Drive,” the dispatcher says.
“Shit,” I say aloud as I pull my bunker pants back on. “That’s Ivy’s flower shop.”
“Ivy? As in the girl who dumped you?” Noah asks.
“Just get your ass back in the rig, Probie,” I say in irritation.
The flower shop is only seven blocks away, but I ask Duck to drive faster all the same. As we pull up, I’m relieved that I don’t see any flames. But I do see smoke coming up over the backside of the building. White smoke, not black. And when I exit the truck, I smell something heavenly.
As protocol dictates for a structure fire, we all get a piece of gear from the rig. I grab the pike pole and head inside the building.
I see Ivy behind the counter and as we lock eyes, she goes completely ashen.
“Somebody call the fire department?” J.D. asks.
“Uh …” Ivy looks confused.
“I did,” Holly says, coming out from the back. “There was smoke coming in from the rear door. I thought it might be a dumpster fire.”
Ivy shoots Holly a look of death. “You what?”
“You stay up front, miss, and we’ll go check it out,” Duck says.
As we pass by the women, I glance over at Ivy. She looks embarrassed. She looks pissed.
In the back room, we see that the rear door is cracked open and smoke is wafting inside. And again, that smell has my mouth watering. Upon opening the back door, we see the culprit. The restaurant adjacent to their shop has a smoker going.
Noah shakes his head in irritation. “All this for a damn brisket?”
The cook looks up at the four of us, searching for words. “Uh, you guys want some?”
I pat Noah on the back after tucking my helmet under my arm. “Get used to it, bro. You should know by now that a lot of our calls end up being false alarms.” I walk over to the smoker and grab a piece of meat the cook ripped from the carcass. “And some of them come with perks.”
We head back inside, the three guys behind me all discussing how we should plan an outing to the restaurant next door. “Shhh,” I say to quiet them when I hear shouting coming from the front of the store.
“Come on, Ivy. It’s not that big a deal.”
“Not that big a deal?” Ivy says. “You called nine-one-one, Hol. Just to get him here. Did you think that somehow we would see each other again and ride off into the sunset?”
“I don’t know,” Holly says. “But somebody needs to do something.”
J.D. clears his throat as we walk into the front of the store. “It’s all good,” he says. “It was the smoker at the place next door. I suggest you leave your back door shut the next time he’s cooking outside. In fact, you should leave it shut all the time. You never know who might come in.”
“We do keep it shut,” Ivy says, giving Holly a scolding stare.
Holly shrugs. “Sorry. I guess I just forgot. And when I saw the smoke, I didn’t even think, I just called.”
Duck walks over to Holly, clearly taken with her. “It’s okay, miss. Better safe than sorry.” He gives her a second look. “Do I know you from somewhere?”
“I was at the station once,” she says, glancing between Ivy and me.
“She goes out with Justin sometimes,” I tell him.
“Oh, yeah. That’s it,” he says.
“I’m Holly,” she says, offering Duck her hand along with a seductive smile.
His eyebrows shoot up in appreciation of her flirting. “Steve Hanson.”
“Holly,” Ivy scolds. “Is one of them not enough for you?”
Holly giggles. “I like to keep my options open.”
I look over and see Ivy watching me. I notice what I didn’t at the bar the other night. It looks like she’s put on some weight, which is good since she was so thin when I met her. I remember picking her up and carrying her thinking how light she was. Her gaining weight probably means she’s healing. She is healing without me. She’s healing with Eli.
Then I think about the call earlier and the child who most likely died and the mother who was in for a world of hurt. Maybe Ivy can only heal with Eli because they share a common past. I have no idea what she went through. I can’t even begin to comprehend the depths of her pain. But he can. I can comfort her. I can sympathize. But deep down, I can’t really understand.
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