Leif picked up a chair from the dining room and tore at the hole in the glass to make it big enough for us to fit through just as Jamie leapt onto the porch to lend a hand. Foss tore down my pristine golden curtains and draped them over the sill so we could get out without maiming our legs.
Elsa screamed when the fire peeked its vindictive head around the corner and raged toward us. She ducked out into the fresh twilight air, and then Leif after her. Foss put his large hand on my head to ensure I didn’t cut myself on the top edges. He fed me through to the other side, but the manly arms that greeted me were not Leif’s, nor were they Jamie’s.
I didn’t recognize the man who gripped me around the ribs. He had styled black hair, was in his mid-thirties, wore maroon suspenders and apparently wanted to be punched by the way he jerked me around long after I’d escaped the danger of the fire. He was too tall for my world. With dread I realized that somehow Undraland had found me with the intent of setting my life on fire.
I screamed as I was jerked through the air and dragged down the front steps of my wraparound porch by his unfamiliar hands. Fire shot out from his mouth like dragon’s spit and lit on the grass, encircling us from the others. I’d seen a lot of unexplainable things in Undraland, but before this day, no one had breathed fire at me.
He dropped me on the green, and I turned to face the beast with the pistol I’d clung to gripped tight in my determined hands. I pointed the weapon to the stranger’s abdomen from my place on the ground. “Let me go!” I demanded. Flashes of Tonya’s death stung me with bile that rested at the floor of my knotted stomach. I hadn’t wanted to shoot her. I had never fired a gun before that day. Yet here I was, shamefully ditching my pacifist ways as I held a stranger at gunpoint. Martin Luther King was brave. I was terrified.
He had the nerve to scoff at my gun like it was a child’s toy in my hands.
He didn’t need to fear me. I knew I was a threat to be reckoned with.
He paused when he got a good look at my face, his cocky expression mutating to confusion. “Wait, I know you,” he said, tilting his head to the side.
Then I heard a bang from the garage so loud, it distracted both of us. The SUV I’d assumed had already left with Jens and Britta inside exploded out of the shut garage, tearing the structure like tissue paper on a wet nose. The car barreled toward us with Jens at the wheel looking like a madman. The windows were missing from the car, and Jens had tiny cuts on his face and arms, making it look like someone flicked spatters of red paint across his body. Britta was in similar distress, but her fear was marred with hatred aimed at the man I had a gun on.
Jens slammed on the breaks and tumbled out of the car, hands up. “Tucker St. James!” he belted out across the stone’s throw of space between us.
The man I was ready to blow away looked toward Jens in confusion. “Jens? What are you doing here? Am I early? No one mentioned you were on the pickup shift.” He turned back to me. “I found her first, man. Bounty’s mine.”
“What are you talking about? Put out the fire! You’re burning down my house!”
The new man towering over me swooped his hands over the circle of fire that enclosed us in the little trap, and just like a magic trick, it disappeared down to cinders in no more than two seconds. “This one? This is your house?” He had the grace to look embarrassed, like he’d let out a loud belch at church, and not like he’d just almost killed us all, the jerk.
“Yes!” Jens answered, sensing that if I opened my mouth, a Tyrannosaurus Rex might spring forth and devour Tucker where he stood. Jens pointed to Elsa and Leif. “Help Britta back to her house for now. She got a little banged up.” They obeyed and Jamie followed, though I knew Britta didn’t want his assistance. Foss maintained his position two meters from me, muscles at the ready for whatever this situation was.
“This place is yours?” Tucker scratched his head in confusion. “No one told me that. I just got the orders to burn down this address and make sure the Guldy didn’t escape. Good thing there was only one inside, right?” His hulking demeanor melted into shoptalk I could barely keep up with, but I kept the gun trained on him the whole time. “She looks real familiar. Can’t put my finger on it.” He turned to me, his British accent making him appear dapper, despite his arsonist tendencies. “Did we hook up last year? Maybe at a bar outside Cleveland?”
“Do all your hookups end in gunfire?” I asked with a sneer. He merely shrugged in response, the prat.
“Loos, put down the gun. It’s alright. Just a mix-up.” Jens walked slowly over to us, stepping across the black ring of Tucker’s handiwork and kneeling at my side. He gently placed his hands on mine, lowered the weapon and delicately extracted my fingers from it. “This is my friend, Tucker St. James. I think I told you about him, right?”
My head whipped to our house, which was still on fire. “Are you kidding me with this? I don’t give a crap who this smackhole is! Our home, Jens! Call the fire department!”
“Oh, right. Tuck?” Jens jerked his head toward our wrecked home after slipping the gun down the back of his pants, letting it cradle firmly at the small of his back. “There’s a problem with your paperwork.”
Tucker winced with chagrin, like he’d accidentally farted during his grandmother’s tea service. “Whoops. Sorry about that. My bad.” He clapped his hands twice, like summoning a puppy, and I watched through the picture window as the fire obeyed, first sitting like a good boy, and then playing dead. Black smoke billowed out through the broken picture window in a thick column.
“Whoops?” My low tone was deadly as Jens helped me to my feet. “Whoops? You nearly killed me! You burned my house! Whoops? I’ll end you!” I lunged for him, tackling the tall, muscular man around the waist with all the force I had in me. I was just as shocked as he when my fury actually knocked him backwards onto his rear. I grabbed hold of my rare advantage and sat up on his stomach, punching him as many times as I could before Jens extracted me from his buddy.
“Hey, I do know you!” Tucker exclaimed, sitting up as if my attack was only a swat from a cow’s tail. I loathed the strength of the Undrans. It was a disproportionate advantage. Tucker grinned at me. “You’re #5603! Jens’s charge in the flesh. You’re Hilda and Rolf’s daughter, yeah? I knew it.” Like an old high school friend just shooting the breeze, he snapped his fingers as the puzzle began to make sense. “They probably botched the paperwork because I’m usually your clean-up. I’m on a bounty run. They must’ve gotten the information wrong. Probably sent me your current address so I’d know the next place to clean up when it was time. Printed it out on the wrong order sheet.” He grinned, standing to tower over me once again. “That’s embarrassing.”
There was a lion in me, and I desperately wanted to set the beast loose so it could tear the “whoops” idiot limb from limb. His crisp light blue dress shirt was rolled at the sleeves, with maroon suspenders framing his V-shaped torso. His slim-fitting pants were rolled at the ankle, and underneath my rage, I mused to myself what a strange outfit it was for an arsonist to wear. He looked like he belonged on the set of Newsies. “Jens,” I spat in between gritted teeth, “get your little friend the smack outta here before I murder him where he stands.”
“You alright?” Jens inquired, checking my body for burns or cuts.
“No! Would you look at the… Can you even… He broke my house!”
Jens waved Tucker forward. “Come on, Tuck. Help me clean it up.” He kissed my forehead, and I cringed. “It’s fine, Loos. Misunderstanding. Tuck’s the best there is. Reliable fire elves are hard to come by.”
Tucker adjusted his left suspender and stretched his arms over his head. When his hands came down, one of the fingers he clearly wanted broken reached out and touched the tip of my nose. “I always pictured you taller. Never saw you up close.” He shrugged. “I guess that’s what they get for mixing genes. Huldra and wind elf. Ah, well. Runt of the litter didn’t turn out too bad.”
And then the lion escaped. I didn’t mea
n to let him out, but something about the condescending way Tucker tweaked my nose after almost murdering me set me off. As he passed by me, I jumped atop his back, punching and slapping every inch I could get my hands on. “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!”
Tucker extracted himself from me, dumping me on the ground. I sprang back up, but Jens, of all people, restrained me before I could claw at him again. “Hey, Mox. It’s okay. Tuck’s not a bad guy. Just got some bad information. He’ll help us fix the house.”
“Touch my face again, and you don’t want to know what, elf boy!” I threatened, lunging against Jens once more.
Tucker chuckled. “Spitfire, that one.”
Jens yanked me back before I could strangle Tucker by his smug little suspenders. “You have no idea.”
Fourteen.
Rubble and Trouble
The urge to punch Tucker did not subside even after he sucked all the smoke out of the house, helped Jens wipe down the walls and surfaces of the kitchen, and boarded up the front window with Foss.
I felt anguish from Jamie as Britta broke up with him, as opposed to her original plan of leaving him a breakup note to read when he awoke. I retreated from the Tucker/Jens reunion show and moved upstairs to pack a bag for me and one for Jens, since half our house wasn’t livable. Every window was opened, but the air still stank of my burned hopes and dreams.
As I placed item after item in the duffels, I worked on painstakingly placing bricks in front of the damaged wall Jamie and I had built together over time in our minds to offer the other a bit of privacy. Doing it by myself wasn’t easy, but after half an hour of total concentration, I managed enough of a wall that I didn’t hear his every thought unless it was shouted. That took my stress level down a decibel, which did my temper a world of good. When I had more time, I planned on reinforcing it some more if Jamie hadn’t kicked it all down by then.
Foss knocked a knuckle on my door before pushing it open. “Window’s boarded up. Need any help before I take off?”
I sighed. “No. Thanks for doing that.” When he turned to leave, I noticed his limp. “Here. Have a seat. Let me look at that.”
“It’s fine. Just a little burn.” His macho argument clashed with his actions as he sat on my bed and rolled up the singed leg of his jeans. “See? It’ll be fine.”
I spun on my heel and dug the first aid kit out of our bathroom. When I knelt between his knees, I could feel his careful study of me as I got out cream and a bandage to cover the burn. “Does this hurt?” I asked, pressing on a bit of flesh on the edges of the wound.
Foss ignored my question. “You were going to let yourself burn.”
I shrugged. “It seemed inevitable. Didn’t want you to have to go down with me. I’ve already wrecked enough of your life.” I stood and locked the bedroom door so we wouldn’t be interrupted. I slid my gloves off, exposing my sparkling arms so I could rub in the cream. I was gentle with the scorched flesh, but I really took my time massaging his calf and the massive muscle that swallowed his knee.
He moaned and forgot his brief interrogation, which suited me just fine. “That feels incredible.” Foss rarely sat down for more than three minutes at a time – so engrained in him was the admirable work ethic. It was nice to see him relax, if only for a moment. That I had a hand in unwinding him? It was a heady privilege I did not take lightly.
I placed the bandage on the wound and kissed his knee before rolling his jeans down over his leg. “There. All better.”
Foss leaned forward and grabbed my chin with his forefinger and thumb, lifting my face to meet his serious gaze. “I won’t let anyone kill you. We’ll find a solution.”
Before I could answer with a blow-off “okay”, he leaned forward and kissed my lips. He swallowed my soft whimper, and I savored his indulgent moan as our lips made quick work of ruining our attempts at being just friends.
That same familiar confusion and heat spread through me, starting at my lips and trickling down to my toes. We’d tried not to kiss since our divorce, and had only slipped up a few times. I’d convinced myself our separation was a good thing, but as Foss sucked on my lower lip that had lost all sense of decency in the exchange, I couldn’t recall my reasons why. He tasted like comfort and vice, and I missed the manly smell of him. I loved the way he breathed in my face, and the soft delicious noises he made when we kissed that almost sounded like he was capable of vulnerability. I loved him, and hated myself for the crime.
He slid onto the floor and tipped me backward so I was lying beneath him. I made sure my mental door was slammed firmly shut to keep Jamie out.
Our kiss reached a new height of indecency as the escape from the fire fueled our passion with the panic of almost losing each other. “Never again,” he murmured between kisses. “Never give up like that.”
I had no words. I knew reason would soon press down upon me, and I didn’t want to waste the precious seconds with talking. I wrapped my legs around Foss’s waist and held his face as we made out like teenagers until my conscience screamed too loudly to be ignored.
It was an effort, but I ended the kiss, pulling my head away from his to catch my breath and attempt to capture my common sense, which seemed to have escaped me. “I… we can’t… divorced now. I’m with Jens.”
“I know. I just…” He placed a row of kisses down my neck, knowing exactly the dangerous road he was going down.
I was suddenly very aware that I had been kneeling between his knees and was now supine beneath his hard body. On instinct, I turned my head to the side, stunned at my ability to finally say no to the allure he held for me.
Foss sat back and shook the spell we cast on each other off of him like a dog ridding himself of fleas. “I’m going home. I’m taking Britta. Jens is back. You’re safe.” He bent down and picked up my gloves. Then he helped me to stand and slid the navy opera gloves back up my arms as we avoided each other’s gaze. “No one’s going to try to kill you. No one’s mad anymore that you hid the arv from us. We’ll figure it out.” He ran his hand over his tired face. “I’m sick of the couch and the floor. Miss my bed.”
I’d picked out Foss’s California King. When I tested it out at the store, there was a moment I pictured lying in it next to him, curled around each other as we did when we slept together. I pushed the image out of my mind. “Be nice to Britta. Make her some tea tonight. I’m serious.”
Foss grimaced like I’d asked him to wear a dress. “I’m not doing that.”
“You did it for me the morning after Kirstie cut my hair off.”
He winced at the memory, and this tone turned sharp. “That was just for you, not anyone else.”
“Well, then do it as a kindness to me. Britta’s a mess, so you have to be nice. Whatever amount of nice you think you’re being, double it, and then you’ll be almost there.”
Foss kissed my lips again, a quick peck to reassure us both of the other’s affection. “Jamie shouldn’t have done that to you, and you should’ve told me. You were going out of your mind. I can’t help if you don’t tell me what’s going on.”
I changed the subject, not willing to discuss that open wound just yet. “Thanks for fixing the window. And you know, for saving my life. Hey, I saved you from a fire, and now you saved me from one. We’re finally square.” I chucked his arm in a way meant to bring lightness to the heat still lingering between us. “Thanks.”
“Of course. You’re my wife.” He coughed twice, embarrassed at the slip. “Were. You were my wife.”
“Well, thanks all the same. Go home and get some rest. I mean actual rest where you put your leg up and do nothing for a few hours. You work too hard.”
The faintest hint of emotion touched his features, softening the scowl that was usually stitched to his face. “You love me.”
“You say that like it’s a revelation.”
“Goodnight, lovely wife.” His voice was quiet as he said the words that had started out a joke between us, but had grown precious over time. “We’ve b
een divorced just over a month now, but it stings like it’s only been a minute.” He tapped his chest to indicate the permanent residence I’d taken up in his heart. “I hate this.”
I leaned up on my toes and sealed my sin with a kiss, sucking on his lower lip as our eyes fluttered shut in unison. “I miss you, too.” Then I released him, unable to meet his gaze that always saw through my denial. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. Goodnight, darling husband.”
Foss touched his lips with two fingers, and then kissed my cheek and left before we did anything else I would further regret. I exhaled when I heard the front door slam shut. I packed the rest of my things in silence, shoving too much into the bags when I couldn’t make proper decisions about which items to take.
Jens knew we kissed on occasion, and he’d accepted the oddity because he’d had to. But it wasn’t fair to him, and certainly not to Foss. I resolved to write that one off as a natural disaster-induced slip and start fresh in the morning. Foss was a hard habit to quit, but I was determined to turn over a new leaf.
“Baby? I’m taking Tuck out to see the orchard. You want to come with?” Jens called up the stairs.
My anger flared up, the heat in my cheeks still fresh from Foss’s kiss I now partly blamed the fire-starter for. If we hadn’t been thrown off-guard, we wouldn’t have been vulnerable like that. “Tucker can bite me! Tell him to keep his dirty hands off our fruit! And I know he’s not done cleaning my house! He can mess around after he’s finished rebuilding what he broke, and not a second before!”
“Wait, ‘baby’?” I heard Tucker say. “You called her baby! Wait, are you living with your charge? Of course you are. You have to live with your charge. But fringe benefits? Nice! Is she bankrolling this property? Good hookup, mate.” I heard a high-five that made me cringe.
Lucy at Peace Page 10