by Finn, Emilia
“Not funny.”
“How many times has she been dumped? How many times has she had a chance to fall down on her own, then cry on her own?”
“She doesn’t ever have to fall on her own. And she especially doesn’t have to cry on her own.”
“Believe it or not,” I whisper so that he’s forced to come closer, to concentrate harder, “it’s good for a woman to figure shit out for herself. It’s good for her to know she can take care of business on her own. It’s empowering and invigorating—especially if not long before, she was certain she couldn’t.”
“Like what?” he challenges. “What thing did you do that you’re so proud of?”
“Well, I moved here, for starters. I moved shitty old furniture to the curb, when usually, it would take two men to lift that stuff. In another town, another time, I would have called friends in to help, males I worked with. I’d have sat and watched, I would have heckled, and studied my nails while they did the heavy lifting.”
“Because you’re a high-maintenance diva.”
“And yet,” I counter with a smirk. “You’re in my bed right now, in-like with every high-maintenance hair on my head. And for the record, I moved that furniture out of here on my own, when before, I was certain I wouldn’t be able to. I have scratched floors because of it, a few dents in my doorways, but I did it, I kicked ass, and now I know I can move a whole couch on my own.”
“I’m proud of you.” Slowly, Mitchell slides his hand along my thigh. “I’m turned on by the mental image of you yeeting a giant couch out your front door on your own. But just because you can do that doesn’t mean every woman can or should.”
“And just because you can control your sister’s every move and dietary need, doesn’t mean you should. But remind me again why we’re talking about another woman while we’re in bed together?”
“I don’t know!” Mitchell laughs. “It just happened.”
“Seems to me,” I move a hand under his shirt and up to finger the small thatch of hair at the center of his pecs, “you’re so obsessed with fixing her, that you can’t function on your own. Your conversations continuously turn to her, because you’ve spent your life that way. And now that she’s a grown woman, you don’t like it, because change is hard, and unpredictability is tiring you out.”
He makes sounds of displeasure in the back of his throat; grumbles that quickly work to sever those in-like feelings he thought he had. “Should I write you a check for that compelling therapy session? Or can we pretend like it never happened, and you go back to minding your own fucking business as far as my sister is concerned?”
“Oh look,” I cheer dryly. “Grumpy Mitch is back. Ever consider that people tease you because you make it so unbelievably easy to do so?”
“That says more about those people than it does about me,” he counters. “Makes you mean.”
“Makes you a whiny baby sometimes.” Pushing up to my elbow, then my hand, I lean over his thick form and press a kiss to his chin. “Tell me about your job.”
There are two people inside this man’s brain. One of them wants to turn to jelly and sink into this bed with me. But the other, the traumatized one, wants to find the trick in everything I say and do.
His eyes narrow. “Why?”
“Because I’ve never known a first responder before. It interests me.”
He sighs. “I ride in an ambulance and slap band-aids on stupid people every single day. Sometimes, when Luc is feeling less frisky, I get to drive, too.”
Smirking, I press a hand to my heart and faux-swoon. “I feel your passion for your work, Mitchell. It’s palpable and beautiful like a rainbow.”
Relaxing and pulling me down until my chest rests on his, Mitchell reaches up and touches the hair that falls into my eyes. “I work closely with the fire department,” he murmurs. “Every single time they’re called out, we go. But that doesn’t work in reverse.”
“Makes sense. Not all emergencies include fire, but every fire is an emergency.”
“Right. I hate being called out to domestic disputes.” He groans. “They’re the worst of the worst, because it’s always the innocents who are hurt.”
“But don’t all emergencies affect ‘innocents’?”
“Yeah. But many emergencies are accidents. Domestic disputes are not—and worse, the injuries are caused by the very people who are supposed to protect them.”
“That makes me angry,” I grunt and lay my chin on his chest. “I hate those people.”
“Same. I struggle really hard to patch a child up because their daddy took a swing. More often than not, Daddy is somewhere nearby, and my hands itch to pay the prick back.”
“Would you?” I ask. “Do you take things into your own hands?”
He nods. Then shakes his head. “I can’t, because if I do, I’ll lose my job and the ability to help anyone else. But there have been times…” he bites his lip. “A couple of times over the years, we’ve turned up on scene to find the attacker flying off his head from drugs or alcohol, sometimes both. Usually, that means he’s still swinging, still swearing and carrying on. Those times, I can get my own in and act like it wasn’t my fault he stumbled and fell.”
“Vigilante justice,” I tease. “Dangerous, but sexy.”
“Luc, this guy I almost always work with, he might be the closest thing I have to a best friend. He and I are tight, and he knows all this about me, so on those jobs, he usually places himself between me and our assailant. He’ll patch that guy while I help the innocent. He isn’t super friendly with his person, since an abuser is an abuser, but he also doesn’t belt the prick and act like it was a doorknob.”
“You’re lucky to have a friend on the job,” I murmur. “Someone who knows the real you. We spend a lot of time at our workplace, so to have someone you can genuinely call a friend is special.”
He stops for a moment, and studies my eyes. “Do you have that with Abby?”
“Did you seriously just change the subject to your sister again?” I push up to my elbows so they dig into his stomach. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“I’m sorry!” Laughing, he takes my elbows from his gut and brings me back down to lay on him. “It’s habit. I swear, I don’t do it on purpose.”
“How about we talk about me and you for a minute?” I lean forward, and press a kiss to his jaw. “Yes, Abby and I have that at work. I love your sister, Mitchell. I truly do, and whatever you thought I was going to do to hurt her was, is, and always will be wrong. But I’m over here, lying in bed with my secret lover, and freaking out about all of the what-ifs. Relationships terrify me, and broken men are massive red flags for this chick who is allergic to commitment. Why don’t you tell me about you? Tell me about the you that has absolutely nothing to do with Abby.”
“I always walk at the front of my shopping cart,” he admits with a blush. “I drag it behind me.”
“Like…” I frown, and puzzle out his words. “Like it’s a stretcher?”
“Bingo.” He chuckles. “And if someone is coughing, I have to stop everything I’m doing; eating, talking, shopping,” he flashes a wide grin. “My brain says it could be choking, so until I know differently, I’m in work mode and ready to jump in.”
“My hero.” I fake cough, and succeed in making him narrow his eyes. “What else?”
He rubs my back, and pretends he isn’t checking that I’m not going to choke to death. “I always reverse into parking spaces.”
“Always?”
“Always. I’ve gotta be ready to run out at any moment. And since we’re on the subject, any meal I ever make, I’m always prepared to leave it and run. Because without missing a beat, some bastard is always gonna have an emergency right when I sit down to eat.”
“Even when you’re off-shift?”
“No.” Mitchell has this smile, this perfect, sparkling grin that does things to my toes.
Pushing me off him, he lowers me to my back, then rolls on top so we’ve reverse
d positions. “I’m always on call, always ready to go, but for the most part, they leave me alone when I’m off-shift.”
Reaching up, I run the pad of my finger over a tiny wrinkle between his brows. “What circumstances warrant being called in when you’re off-shift?”
“A big fucking emergency.” He presses a nipping kiss on the edge of my chin. “Usually, it involves fire and bunches of people who need help.”
“They don’t have enough staff on each shift to cover that sort of stuff?”
He takes my hands in his and threads our fingers together. It’s sweet, my brain insists. Bordering on scary for the commitment-phobe. But then he changes it all when he slams them above my head and pins me to the mattress.
My breath catches; surprise, then anticipation, as his lips trail over my chest, up my breast, and stop on the peak of my hardened nipple.
“Oh,” I breathe out when he wraps his lips around the peaked tip. Through my shirt, my bra, I feel his warm breath, and then that warmth spreads in my stomach until I’m left breathless and taut as a wire. “Mitchell.”
“You choking, Mooch?” Moving back up my body, he presses a kiss to my neck, only to follow it with a gentle bite. “Wanna play doctors and nurses?”
“Will you put on your uniform?” Panting, I let my legs drop open when he moves between them. “I wanna see you in the navy pants.”
“No uniform today. But I’ll take my pants all the way off this time.” Reaching down between us, he works on the button of his jeans, and because of the positioning, his knuckles brush over my clit and send electricity sizzling beneath my skin. “I wanna take my time with you. I wanna be rough, but I also wanna show you how I feel.”
“I could learn to like this.” I throw my head back and mewl at the pleasure that races to my every extremity. “I’m deeply in like with you too, Mitchell. My heart skips a beat whenever you’re around.”
“Good.” Pushing his jeans down with one hand, while the other continues to pin my hands above my head, he lowers again when he kicks the denim off.
“Shirt.” I fight his hold, try to help him with his shirt, only to resort to using my teeth when he won’t let me go. “Take this off.”
Pushing up to sit on his haunches, Mitchell lifts the fabric and brings it over his head so I’m left with an image that will last a lifetime, tattooed on the backs of my eyelids. I will dream of this, of the angry wolf, the watchful eagle, the tiger who waits patiently.
He tosses his shirt to the floor, pulls me up to sit, and gently tugs my top off, careful not to catch my hair or earrings. My shirt joins his on the floor, then he’s back in my space, pressing a gentle kiss to my lips, my chin, my throat. He’s all-consuming, he suffocates me with his very presence, but the fact I can’t breathe fails to bring me discomfort.
Whatever oxygen he takes from me, he gives back, and with it, a large smattering of like. The kind of like that makes my toes tingle and my palms sweat. The kind of like that makes my heart race faster from fear. But, the kind of like that might convince a free-bird to grow old in one single tiny town.
* * *
I wake in the dark to the sounds of Mitchell’s phone being placed on the bedside table, then the friction of a zipper hurriedly being dragged up. Streetlights outside illuminate his strong form, his thick chest, and his army of inked defenders as they keep watch.
“Mitchell?” My voice is husky and slow from sleep.
“Shh.” Kneeling onto the bed with a shirt in his hands, he leans over me, and his hair brushes my temple in the same moment his lips brush over mine. “I gotta go, but I’ll call you when I can.”
“You tried to sneak out again?”
“No.” Shrugging into his shirt, then fixing my blanket so it covers my chilled shoulder, he presses one last kiss to my forehead. “I have to go to work.”
“You’re not on-shift.”
“They need more tonight. I’ll let you know what’s up when I know.”
Despite having just been tucked in, I sit up in bed and push to the very edge so my feet touch the floor. My brain swirls with the dregs of sleep, and the beginnings of panic. “I don’t… This is…” I meet his eyes in the darkness. “Wow. I don’t know how I feel about this.”
“About what?” Sitting on the carpet, he drags socks onto his feet, then pulls on his boots. “What’s up?”
“You’re running out in the middle of the night. And we both know it’s toward something dangerous. It’s just…” I press the heel of my hand against my eye. “It’s taking me a minute to deal with that.”
Finishing with his shoes and pushing to his knees, Mitchell stops between my legs so our eyes meet on the same level. “I’m not fighting fires, Nadia. I’m not a cop. I’m not doing any of that stuff. I’m the guy standing across the street, catching folks with scratches. You don’t have to worry about me.”
“And the fact you’re running toward an emergency doesn’t mess with your head at all? Not even knowing that your brother is fighting the fire? Not even knowing that a month or two ago, you were at a job much like this, and you haven’t stopped dreaming about it since?”
“It is what it is.” Dismissive, he presses one last kiss to the center of my forehead, pushes to his feet, and turns away to leave my bedroom at a near trot.
My home is silent, not even the creaks of an old building settling into its foundations can be heard. But then that silence is broken by a “Fuck! Stupid cat. Get off me.”
Flopping back in bed to rest my head on my pillow, I try to ignore the anxiety that swirls in my belly when Mitchell’s truck fires up in the street outside. The engine is loud enough to be heard by someone listening out for it, but not so loud that it’ll wake neighbors.
Which is good, I suppose. We don’t want to alert the neighborhood to my middle-of-the-night visitor.
Surprisingly, it doesn’t take long after Mitchell’s truck leaves my street for me to drift off again—though, really, it would have been better if I didn’t even try. My dreams circle with fire and screams. Emergencies and tears.
Mitchell is somewhere else, across town, helping people who are hurt. He’s mending their wounds. Drying their tears. Pretending he’s not a hero.
My mind and stomach swirl, dread and worry.
But when I wake a few hours later, I open my eyes to a single red rose sitting on the pillow beside mine. Reaching out and grabbing the succulent green stem, I bring the bloom to my nose and take a deep breath.
Damn, damn, damn him for making me care.
16
Mitchell
Déjà Vu
Though I’m briefed over the radio about the scene I’m driving toward, I could still find my way, still know what’s coming for me, simply by looking into the pre-dawn sky. Orange glows high above a bunching of tall trees, and because I know most of this town back to front, I envision the house that is now ablaze.
Or, more accurately, the double-wide trailer.
Two trucks work the scene, two fire crews, and because I know Nix is on tonight, I aim straight for the north side of the fire, where I know he’ll be. Maybe in the big cities it’s not so clear-cut or easy to predict where certain first responders are going to be, but in a small town where everyone knows everyone, it doesn’t take me more than a second to figure it out.
And because Luc knows this about me, he’s the first person I see when I pull up about fifty feet from the heat.
“Rosa.”
“Yeah.” I swing out of the truck and collect whatever supplies I have at hand. The rest will be in the rig, and there are already three of those on-scene. “What happened?”
“Honestly, it looks like a home meth lab.” He falls into step beside me as we head toward the front of the closest truck. “We’re in bum-valley, where they prefer the entrepreneurial life over getting a regular job. Folks who live here steal to make money, and sell shit to make more. Any regular family who wants to live here soon learns it’s not for them, so they pick up their shit and move
again.”
“Down on their luck, or down on their enthusiasm to be a decent fucking human being.”
“That’s it.”
“Fatalities?”
“None so far, but one guy lost half his damn face. He’s already in surgery.”
I look toward Luc’s hands, his civilian clothes. “You been here long?”
“About twenty seconds longer than you. I went by the station first and grabbed the rig. We’re set up just over—”
“Mitch?”
I swing around at my little brother’s voice. His is the only one I need to hear, the only one I need when on these scenes. “Nix?”
I rush in his direction and ignore the stench of burning plastic, steel, rubber, and whatever other toxic shit is in the air. Nix is fully uniformed, helmet on, flaps down, though the visor is up.
“You good?” I ask.
“Yeah, all fine. The first crew on scene did most of the heavy lifting. Now we’re just containing and making sure it doesn’t jump to the trees.”
I glance toward the burning mobile home, the melting steel, and the flames stretching from the top. “Not much wind.”
“Nope. And we’ve had a little rain the last week, so the trees aren’t grabbing on. It’s gonna be out in a few.”
“Alright.” I back up. One step. Two. Three. And prepare to turn. “I guess I’d better get to work, then.”
“They’ve already transported the worst off-scene.” He has to shout over the noise of water, fire, and other first responders doing their job. “We’ve been here an hour already, but since they sent one bus away, they wanted to bring another in just in case.”
“And that’s the reason my ass was woken in the middle of the night? Because you fuckers couldn’t keep up?”
Snorting, Nix only flashes his middle finger—fully gloved—and steps back to his crew.
Grinning, I turn away from his retreating form and look to Luc. “Let’s get to work, I guess.”
“Neither of us are saving anyone’s life tonight. We’re just putting band-aids on boo-boos.”