Possess: An Alpha Anthology

by Anthology

  “Ms. Kendrick,” Mayor Davis chastised.

  My chin rose in response. There was zero chance in hell I was backing down.

  “Perhaps you should stop telling us why we can’t do this, and instead offer us your conditions,” Bash suggested.

  The attention shifted back to him, and I nearly gasped. The look in his eyes was pure, barely-restrained murder, and it was aimed at the very people he was arguing to save. “I’m not asking your permission. If you don’t agree, I’ll withdrawal the petition to include my new land in the city. You’ll lose the taxes. The Forest Service has already agreed to oversee the new team. I. Do. Not. Need. You. Or your understanding,” he shot at Mr. Henry. “My father died on that mountain with seventeen of his closest friends. He died protecting this town, and the work they accomplished allowed you the time to flee. I am here only out of respect for his wishes, and those of his brothers and sisters who lay with him in Aspen Cemetery. Do not mistake my courtesy, my love for my hometown, for begging. I may want the Legacy name, but I sure-as-hell don’t need it, or you.”

  The room was eerie silent as Bash stood his ground, looking at each of the members as I had, but never meeting my eyes.

  “What will it take?” Knox asked, standing next to Bash. “If we, who lost the most that day, can offer to stand again in defense of this town, in honor of our parents, then you can give us a path to do it.” He spoke directly to Mr. Henry. “That’s the least you can do, considering your were the first to evacuate.”

  Mr. Henry sagged in his chair.

  “Imagine the press, though, the criticism of allowing the same team to be reestablished,” Mrs. Anderson said with a soft voice.

  “Imagine the press when we come out under a different name because our home refuses to honor the heroes that saved it,” Ryker argued, standing on Bash’s other side.

  “You will have a hotshot team on that mountain,” Bash said, the tone in his voice final. “You can either be on the right or the wrong side of this. It’s your choice.”

  The council members talked amongst themselves, covering their microphones, leaving us all in the dark as to what the hell they were thinking.

  Bash finally looked at me, and everything else faded away. There were only the two of us in that room, locked together by a tangible connection that even time couldn’t sever. His face was an unreadable mask, still in its control, but his eyes, they burned me, entranced me, intoxicated me. They were slightly wide with amazement, but so fucking hot for me that my heart skipped and stark, undeniable need pulsed between my thighs.

  Fire and gasoline.

  God, I was desperate to burn.

  Greg sighed heavily next to me, taking his seat after conferring with Mayor Davis. “That’s why you won’t go out with me,” he laughed in a self-deprecating way.

  “What?” I asked, turning to face him. “We’re not together. We haven’t been in…forever.”

  “But he’s what keeps you from trying,” he said softly, no anger or malice in his tone, just understanding…because he was Greg.

  My gaze shifted back to Bash, whose narrowed stare flickered between Greg and me, despite Knox and Ryker both talking to him. “He’s Bash,” I admitted quietly, not just to Greg, but to myself.

  “He’s not staying,” Greg answered in the kindest tone imaginable.

  I tried to smile. “I know,” I said, looking straight at where Bash stood, wishing I was next to him instead of across the room. “But it’s always going to be him, and it doesn’t matter if he’s here or not. It will always be Bash.”

  As if saying that aloud freed me, I felt both lighter and heavier in an instant. Lighter because I knew that I hadn’t been a stupid teenager, I’d simply found my soulmate as kid. Heavier because it didn’t matter how I felt, I could never have him, not completely.

  My fingers trembled, as if the knowledge was too much for my body to process, and Greg reached across the table and squeezed my hand gently. “Okay.”

  “Thank you,” I told him, knowing I was shutting the door on something that could be perfectly acceptable to me in time, perfectly safe…perfectly…lovely.

  But lovely wasn’t what I had with Bash. It was messy, and hard, and imperfect, and so very us.

  “Well, gentlemen,” Mayor Davis said, taking his seat with the rest of the council members. “I think we have a solution.”

  All three of the firefighters tensed as they awaited the verdict. “What will it be?”

  “You made quite a show here. Four of you standing up for your own Legacy. We’re not immune to the display, especially when it comes from a quarter of the surviving children of that team, and when three of you are willing to form a new team—to stand in for your fathers.”

  Bash tensed, and I knew why—he wasn’t planning on standing in for his father. Not here. Here was too much, too close. He wanted to honor his father’s memory, but he wasn’t putting that same patch on.

  “We think it should be up to the legacies. We made the mistake earlier of speaking for you when we have no right to. We won’t make the same mistake twice. You plan for a twenty-member team?”

  Those hazel eyes narrowed. “That’s the plan, but we can function at eighteen within mandates.”

  “At least half of your team—”

  “Sixty percent,” Mr. Henry called out.

  Mayor Davis sighed, but too many of the council members nodded for him to disagree. “Fine. At least sixty percent of your team must agree—”

  “Done,” Knox agreed.

  “—by being on your team. If you want a Legacy Hotshot team, then you will have one comprised of legacies.”

  Bash’s jaw locked and the other two men shook their heads. “That’s not possible.”

  “Emerson?” Mayor Davis asked.

  “No!” Bash shouted.

  “It’s okay,” I said to him, “he’s asking me to talk numbers.”

  Bash stepped back, but didn’t lose any of his tension. He looked like a coiled spring, ready to launch at the next person.

  “There are sixteen legacy kids,” I started, doing the math in my head. “If you have a nineteen-member team, you need twelve of them on the hotshot team. Eleven if you go to the minimum of eighteen.”

  Bash shook his head. “This isn’t right.”

  “These are our conditions. You can only do it with overwhelming, physical support from the legacies.”

  “So you can have your perfect press,” Knox spat before Bash silenced him with an upraised hand.

  “There’s only twelve of us even legally old enough to do it,” I argued. “Damien Lee is the next oldest, and he’s only seventeen, and do you expect little Violet Carpenter to join up at nine years old? She never even met her father.”

  “You asked for a path to do this,” Mayor Davis said after cringing at the numbers. “I’ve given it to you.”

  “How long do we have?” Bash asked. I could already see the gears turning in his genius mind.

  “I think the memorial ceremony would be a fitting deadline,” Mr. Henry said.

  Two weeks. What. An. Asshole.

  “That’s ridiculous. I have a fully-trained team lined up and ready to step in.”

  “Your money won’t buy this, Sebastian,” Mr. Henry argued. “You want this town to reopen this wound? To bleed? Then we’ll see what your blood is made of.”

  It’s in my blood.

  The others… so many of them were already firefighters.

  I turned my notebook to a fresh sheet and started to scribble. Indy was on a team in Montana, and the only girl at that. The Maldonaldo brothers… Lawson… that would give them seven… Braxton wasn’t a hotshot, but still a firefighter in Chicago, but his sister was still so young.

  Bash looked up at me and I gave him an almost imperceptible shrug. It was close. “Well, we’ve taken up enough of your time,” Bash addressed the council. “I think I saw Mrs. Greevy outside, pretty upset about a stop-sign.”

  I groaned.

  Bash walk
ed out with Knox and Ryker…and without a backwards glance. Damn it, that was getting annoying.

  As soon as the door shut, the room burst into argument. Everything was up for grabs, the validity of such a team, if there was a need for it, if the funding was legitimate, how the town would handle another tragedy…the impudence of this younger generation.

  The longer I sat there, the more sick I felt, until I couldn’t bear to stay silent any longer. I stood, remarkably calm for the turmoil raging inside me, and pushed my seat under the large table. Then I placed my files, minus my doodled paper, in front of Mayor Davis.

  “What is this?” he asked me, looking up in confusion.

  “I quit,” I said, clear and without so much as a waver.

  “You what?” he sputtered. “You can’t. The town needs you.”

  “The town. Right. I’ve dedicated the last ten years of my life to helping the town, and I always will. I am a Legacy girl through and through. And while I applaud your selfless service, all you talked about was the town, the press, the finances.”

  “It’s our job to look after Legacy,” Mrs. Anderson argued.

  “We are a small town, Mrs. Anderson. We fight for everything we have, and we’re proud of that. But one of the benefits of a small town is that you’re not just here to serve an entity but her people. When you talk about the school, you know it’s Mr. Hartwell you’re discussing, that you grew up with. The same goes when you talk about parking in front of the Chatterbox. You’re discussing Agnes, not just the traffic implications. We’re not nameless faces, and neither is Sebastian. You knew our fathers, loved our fathers. This isn’t just a town matter, it’s an intensely personal one, and as it involves my family, I won’t work for you anymore. It’s out of the question. Consider this my resignation.”

  I turned on my heels and concentrated on not ruining my exit by falling on my face. Greg grinned up at me and nodded his support as I passed.

  “If you walk out that door, the town of Legacy will not pay to send you to London,” Mayor Davis threatened.

  My stomach plummeted, but the warning only served to solidify my choice. “When I walk out this door, I won’t need an internship to learn how to run a city. You can do that on your own without my impudent generation.”

  I swallowed the pain of losing that little piece of my dream and walked out of the door.

  There was only one place I wanted to be, and it wasn’t with that group of tight-ass pricks.

  Chapter Seven

  Bash

  Slam. Slam. Slam. The sounds echoed off the gym walls in the lower level of the Clubhouse. Great, her little nickname sticks.

  I threw my weight behind every punch, rocking the seventy-pound bag before hitting it again, and again.

  Fuck them and their mandates. I didn’t need them or the town’s approval. I owned this land, the very area where they died, and I could do with it what I damn-well wanted to. Hell, I owned half that fucking town if I wanted to call in favors on the money I’d gifted and the notes on what had been lent.

  I didn’t need them.

  They needed me, damn it.

  All. Except. One.

  Emerson.

  My fist slammed home one last time, trying like hell to get out all my rage, my frustration, but more just took its place. This bag had been rocking the last half hour, I was soaked in sweat, and I still couldn’t get it all out.

  “Ready to talk about this yet?” Knox asked from the doorway, composed as usual.

  “No.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Hitting that bag isn’t going to change a damn thing, Bash. I say we get a drink and get laid.”

  “One,” I said with a punch, “it’s barely noon.”

  “Wicked opens at eleven,” he retorted, spinning keys in his hand.

  “Two.” Another punch. “Sex is the last thing I need right now.”

  “Bullshit,” Knox coughed into his hand. Prick.

  I held the bag and looked at him with raised eyebrows. “Fine. Let me restate—the last thing I need is an in-town hookup when I’m leaving as soon as this shit is set up.”

  “Right, because that’s what you’d have…right? A random in-town hookup? Jesus, brother. I’ve been in town four fucking hours, and I’ve already had to put on a condom just to protect myself from the outright eye-fucking you were doing in that council room.”

  “Do not go there.” I pointed at him. “Not today.”

  “Where? To the obvious? How about we add a number three. You’re unwilling to get laid because you’re holding out hope that the one thing you fucked up in your life will forgive you.”

  “Why would she care who I fucked?” I shot back, throwing my fist into the bag again.

  “Why would you care if Greg Roberts is sleeping with her?”

  My fist skimmed the side and I stumbled, catching myself on the bag. “He’s not.”

  “You so sure?” He walked over to the bag and held it. “I saw that little handhold he pulled this morning. He lives here, you know. He could have her. Marry her. Give her a house full of little Legacy kids that will go to Harper’s preschool and have picnics and shit.”

  Screw the bag, Knox’s face was next. “She’s not sleeping with him, now fucking drop it.”

  “Don’t push this shit, Knox,” Ryker warned as he walked in.

  Knox, as usual, didn’t listen.

  “How the hell could you know that? You’ve been here a week. Hell, she could be sleeping with him right now.” he prodded.

  “Because I know the look in her eyes when she wants someone, you asshole.”

  “And she wants you?”

  “Knox…” Ryker growled.

  “Yes!” I shouted. “Nothing has changed between us. Six fucking years, and it’s still there. So if you’re asking if I want her—if she wants me—then my answer is yes, but I’m an adult now. I don’t get to fuck her and leave her like I did when I was stupid and young.”

  “Right,” he nodded in sarcasm. “Because you’ve grown up.”

  “You’re one of my best friends, Knox, but I will lay you out.” Menace dripped from every single word because I meant it. No one got to question what was between Emerson and me. Ever.

  Ryker backed up a step. Knox moved one closer. “She looks good, man. Then again, she always has. I watched her grow up over these last few years because I’ve been here more than, oh…never.”

  “Knox.” Now I was the one growling.

  “How do you think she snuck out of your mom’s house after you left her in your bed? She called me. How about that first boyfriend about a year after you left? When she got stranded at that party in Gunnison while I was home for the Fourth of July the year after you left? She called me. She’d just broken up with that first post-Bash boyfriend, bawling not because she’d slept with him—”

  All of my anger turned to ice, my muscles locking.

  “—but because he wasn’t you,” he finished.

  “I knew about him,” I said, my voice calm and even. Knox’s eyes flickered to Ryker who nodded.

  “Good. Because you’re a god damned brother to me, but what you did to her? Fuck man, did you even look back once before sticking your dick into everything that moved out there in California? She deserved a hell of a lot better than you. She still does.”

  I swung.

  All six-feet-plus of Knox hit the ground, his body smacking into the mat.

  “Fuck,” Ryker sighed, moving in closer in my peripheral, no doubt to break us up if I went after him in earnest.

  Rage swirled hot, potent and just under my skin, looking for a place to break through.

  “I didn’t touch any other woman for a year, you asshole. How could I? She was all I saw, thought about, tasted. She was my fucking air, and then suddenly Ryker shows up at the team telling me she’s screwing some college douchebag. She moved on, so I did too.”

  “You left her! You broke her heart, and you don’t get to judge whomever she feels like fucking, because you had her, and
you tossed her ass out like some badge-bunny skank.” Knox shouted up at me, propped up on his elbows.

  “You think I don’t know that?” I shouted. “You don’t think I regret that choice every damned day? I would give just about anything to go back to that day, to not take that call that I’d made the team—to tell her where I was going, to give us a chance. It was the biggest mistake of my life, and it’s not exactly easy being within the same town as her, or anyone she’s considering…” I shook my head, unable to finish.

  “You’re one loud son-of-a-bitch when you’re pissed,” Knox grinned up at me. “Is your office really as sound-proof as you claim?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” My eyes narrowed. Maybe I’d hit him too hard. “Yes. Soundproof. That way I can do business while I’m here.”

  “Well, that’s good.”

  I swung my gaze to Ryker, who shrugged. “He’s trying to tell you that Emerson is in your office upstairs.”

  “She what?” I yelled back at Knox.

  “She got here a few minutes ago.” He stood and clapped me on the shoulder. “I just wanted to remind you that you still love her, that way you didn’t walk in there and royally fuck it all up again.”

  Words. I had…none.

  “Yep, I thought so,” he laughed. “Shower. You smell. Then remember as you castrate yourself thinking that you can’t really have her, that you going back to your team in California isn’t honoring our fathers, it’s just the grown-up version of running away from home. The home where our team is under fire. Now, I think Ryker and I are going to take Harper some lunch.”

  “A.k.a., leave you alone with Emerson,” Ryker added as they walked out.

  Emerson was here. Right. Now. I used the adjoining shower and washed the sweat off me as quickly as possible, tossing on a pair of clean workout shorts and nothing else before I jogged up the staircase onto the main level. I saw her through the glass of my office on the corner, looking out over the valley beneath us, the home we’d both fought so hard to protect.

  She was so damn beautiful, silhouetted against the mountains, her curves a stark contrast to the peaks above us. She was everything good and right about coming home…where I couldn’t stay.