Walk Me Home

by Liza Kendall

“Okay, okay,” said Charlie, even though it really wasn’t. “So Jake and the rest of the firefighters evidently have things under control. Nobody got hurt, and that’s the most important thing.”

  Felicity nodded, then blew her nose. She mopped at her eyes with another wad of tissues. “But the Old Barn,” she whispered. “Is it still standing?”

  Charlie wasn’t sure. “They seem to think they can save it. We’ll know in a little while.”

  “I’m so, so sorry,” Bridezilla sobbed. “I never thought—”

  “I know.”

  “Will . . . my parents . . . they’re going to kill me . . .”

  True. But all Charlie said was, “Do you want me to call Will for you now?”

  Felicity blanched. “No! No—I don’t even know what to say to him. How can I even begin to explain this?”

  Charlie sighed. “All you can do is tell the truth.”

  Bridezilla curled into a ball, and her wailing escalated once more. “Charlie, I can’t. Everyone already thinks I’m crazy—and maybe I am. I’ve lost my mind over this wedding. I just wanted everything to be perfect, and now it’s a nightmare . . .”

  Charlie tried to think of soothing things to say. She needed to get Felicity out of here and back to the Hotel Saint-Denis, where she and her parents were staying.

  So she bent and whispered into Bridezilla’s ear. “The Braddocks need some time and privacy to talk, okay? And you probably don’t want to be here right now anyway, do you?”

  Felicity shook her head, eyes wide and full of shame.

  “Right. Then we’re going to skip the coffee and sneak out the back door.”

  Charlie led the Nuptial Nightmare outside, allowing herself one last glance toward the ghoulish orange and smoke-filled sky. Her heart pounded, thinking of Jake and his crew putting themselves in danger, and she wondered if there was a chance the fire could slip the line and eventually creep up to the main house. But in the absence of any meaningful firefighting skills to her name, Charlie knew that the best thing she could do for everyone was to get Felicity out of sight and mind.

  So she took Felicity’s hand and ran for Will’s car.

  Chapter 25

  Charlie’s pulse had just dropped back down to its normal rate when Bridezilla’s endless emotional faucets opened back up—with a vengeance.

  “I can’t marry Will,” she sobbed.

  Charlie’s brain couldn’t process this statement. It may as well have been in Swahili. She kept driving. Then she swerved onto the shoulder of the highway and braked hard. “What did you just say?”

  “I can’t get married,” Felicity wailed. “I just figured it out . . . All this time I’ve been trying to plan the most perfect wedding anyone’s ever seen, and—” At this point, her words degenerated into an unfortunate stream of howling and honking.

  Charlie gazed at her, stunned. She looked around the car for anything resembling a tissue and came up with a crumpled fast-food napkin from the driver’s-side door pocket. Wordlessly, she handed it to Bridezilla, who snatched it gratefully and blew her swollen red nose into it.

  “It’s not the dress,” she bleated. “It’s not the flowers, or the cake or the church or the pastor. Charlie, it’s the groom.”

  Even now, with the Old Barn burning thanks to Felicity’s antics, with the Silverlake Fire and Rescue crew’s lives at stake, it was all still about her. Unbelievable.

  Now she was ditching Will?

  And Charlie had to deal with her, cosset her while putting aside her own fear for Jake.

  Felicity looked like a madwoman crossed with the most pathetic orphan child ever. Her eyes were red-ringed, like a piglet’s, and smudged underneath with the last of her mascara. Her once-perfect foundation and blush had been smeared around into a greasy, liverlike yellowish paste. Her nose could have guided a sleigh, and she had gnawed off all her lipstick.

  Charlie resisted the urge to open the door and push her out onto the highway. “The groom,” she said carefully. “My cousin Will? What exactly is wrong with Will?” Do you want to return him, have him hemmed, switch out his color scheme?

  “Nothing’s wrong with Will,” whimpered Bridezilla. “It’s me, not him.”

  You got that right, sister. But Charlie didn’t say it aloud.

  “Will is an amazing guy,” Felicity said. “He’s handsome and charming and successful and p-p-perfect for me on p-p-paper.”

  “But?”

  “He’s so proper and uptight—”

  “Will?” Charlie folded her arms. “Will and three other lacrosse players put paper bags over their heads and streaked across the football field during his senior year of high school. Is that too uptight for you?”

  “Charlie, don’t take this wrong—”

  “How am I supposed to take it, Felicity?” Charlie asked, her temper rising. She was done with soothing, done with tact, done with this crazy girl who was risking Jake’s life—and the other guys’ lives—for the sake of her narcissism.

  “Will is my cousin,” said Charlie. “I’m the one who introduced you two in college, and I’ve watched you manipulate him for years now. You hounded him for a ring, threw down an ultimatum, and got him to propose. You’ve been planning and replanning this wedding for over a year now, you’ve driven everyone in this town crazy, and today you set the Old Barn on fire! Now you’re saying you want to switch Will out, like one of your dresses or a party favor? Are you kidding me?”

  “You don’t have to be so mean,” Felicity whined. “I already feel bad enough about everything.”

  “No, I’m not sure you do. Will loves you. Do you get that? Do you understand that you don’t order that from Bloomingdale’s? And you don’t return it on a whim.”

  “Please stop with the sarcasm. This isn’t a whim,” Felicity said miserably. “I’m sorry that I’m upsetting you, but it’s really not right. I can feel that it’s not right. And wouldn’t you rather that we figure that out before the wedding than after?”

  “Sure. Whatever you say.” Charlie drove Bridezilla the rest of the way to the Hotel Saint-Denis in total silence and only remembered as she pulled up to the building that they were in Will’s BMW. “I need to stop by the apartment and get some decent shoes before I head back to the barn,” she said. “Tell Will I’ll leave the car in front with the keys in the ignition.”

  Felicity got out and then stared at her own feet, unable to meet Charlie’s gaze.

  “Please don’t hate me,” she said.

  Charlie sighed. “Look, Felicity. I’m not very happy with you right now, but I don’t hate you. I just feel really, really bad for my cousin . . . and incredibly uncomfortable that I know this before he does. Why don’t you take a little time to think about it before you talk to him? Are you sure that this isn’t just a bad case of prewedding jitters?”

  Bridezilla shook her head. “I—I don’t think that’s what it is.”

  “Well, only you know what’s in your heart. But if you’re truly not in love with Will, then you can’t marry him. It’s not fair.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. That’s why I can’t go through with it.”

  Charlie looked at the woebegone would-be bride. “Okay. Then you have a really hard conversation ahead of you. And though a part of me wants to smack you, another part of me respects you for having the guts to tell him.”

  Bridezilla nodded, then sniffled and cleared her throat. “Thank you for all your help . . .” She shifted her weight from one foot to the other.

  Charlie waited for her to say that she was praying for the crew and the Old Barn.

  But all Bridezilla said was, “I guess I probably won’t see you again, at least not anytime soon.”

  Wow. Just . . . wow.

  Charlie shrugged, then shook her head. “Probably not,” she said in the kindest tone she could manage. She couldn’t bri
ng herself to hug her. “Take care of yourself, Felicity.”

  Once she got to the apartment, Charlie ditched Will’s BMW and flew through the door, flipping off her pumps and peeling off her skirt and blouse as she ran down the hallway to Granddad’s bedroom. Within moments, she was zipping up a pair of battered boyfriend jeans and pulling on a sweatshirt, jamming her feet into sneakers, and running back out the door. She threw herself into Progress and gunned the engine. The wheels squealed in protest as she backed up and rumbled out of the parking lot.

  She pressed the pedal to the metal and drove the virtual antique as fast as it would go, roaring back toward the Braddock homestead, deeply afraid of what she’d find.

  Was everyone okay? Jake and the guys, battling a five-alarm fire—with the added horror of it being Jake’s own family’s property. With the added stress that—intentionally or not—Charlie had just demolished their paychecks.

  She would never forgive herself. Never. She’d allowed Granddad to manipulate her, to play her like a fiddle.

  Progress’s engine rumbled like fury beneath her, the seat squeaking with every bump and pothole in the road. Cold wind blew like malice through the poorly sealed windows, even though she’d kept them rolled up. And with each yard of asphalt she hurtled over, Charlie felt like a worse and worse person.

  Jake would never speak to her again—and who could blame him—but she had to know that he was alive, unhurt. The thought of anything happening to him scared her spitless.

  It terrified her at a primal level, in an emotional place she hadn’t even known she possessed.

  She might never get to spend her life with Jake, but she knew she simply couldn’t go on if he didn’t exist.

  How did Granddad get out of bed in the morning? How had he done so, without Grandma Babe, for the past twenty-odd years? She felt a fresh wave of grief and pity for him, a bone-deep comprehension and empathy that nobody outside the family had—except maybe Jake.

  What had it been like for Granddad, to lose his soul mate that awful night, not to mention his entire home? Still, he had to move past his bitterness. He was letting it destroy not only the rest of his life, but other people’s lives.

  Charlie stomped on the accelerator, and Progress groaned, lurched, and rattled some more. The double yellow line in the center of the road urged her on. Fence posts, mile markers, side roads, and stop signs flew by in a blur. More wind howled through the cracks. And her heart beat in her own ears like thunder. Self-hatred streaked through her like lightning.

  Jake. Jake. Jake.

  Please, oh please, God. Let him be okay. Let all the guys be okay.

  Chapter 26

  Jake couldn’t bend his mind around the fact that the Old Barn was on fire, right here in front of him. It gave new meaning to the color burnt orange as the fire raged against a sardonic blue sky, belching ominous black plumes of smoke into the air. There they hung, torpid and malignant, refusing to disperse.

  Jake and the crew had quickly determined that nobody was inside, and then he’d done an instant clinical assessment of the situation. According to his risk-benefit analysis, the collapse zone was at the east side of the building, the first part to catch fire. He prioritized an aggressive interior attack on the blaze by three crew members, as long as they stayed away from that zone.

  Old George would man the exclusion zone, keeping any curious onlookers at least eighty feet away from the structure. And Jake, along with two others, would focus on an exterior attack on the roof and the east exterior wall. He shouted the orders, and they all got to work, though for Jake himself, the scene was surreal.

  The Old Barn represented a century and a half of history: It was part of his childhood; the original Silverlake Ranch.

  And Declan . . . aw, man . . . poor Deck. He’d devoted months of dreaming and planning, hundreds of man-hours, tens of thousands of dollars to remodel the place. He’d crawled over every inch of it himself, sanding and painting and sealing every angle.

  Deck must be going insane, having to babysit Felicity.

  The fact that he was doing it anyway said that he trusted Jake and the guys to save the building, and by God, they would.

  Deck had saved the place from rot and ruin. He’d also saved it from reclamation by the bank—partly thanks to Everett. Jake would do his part, too.

  Nobody but Old George even realized what Jake had battled after the night of the Nash fire: insomnia, recurring nightmares, and depression because he hadn’t been able to get Babe Nash out in time. George had guessed, and he’d taken him under his wing. Taught him how to deal with it: by confronting fire over and over again so that it had less power to traumatize him, and learning the skills he needed to beat it. George had become a surrogate father, and was a big reason Jake hadn’t left town and lost his way, like Brandon. He was the reason that Jake was a firefighter today.

  “You got guts, kid,” George had said to him that awful night, as he lay coughing on the lawn. “You done good.”

  Now in the face of this fire at his own family’s ranch, Jake stood in full gear, squarely in the hazard zone. His eyes stung and watered behind the shield protecting his eyes, and it wasn’t all because of smoke. He blinked rapidly to clear them and aimed the powerful water hose in his gloved hands at the collapse zone near the apex of the roof, just east of it. There, a portion of the roof had been eaten through, and one of the exposed rafters blazed like Satan’s own Yule log.

  He knew the signs of his own anxiety. As his breathing quickened and went shallow, he reminded himself that there was nobody inside the barn. Not even a dog. No Mr. Coffee, no Dave Nash in a wheelchair. No Grandma Babe . . . No stairs to slide down on his belly, with her on his back.

  His ribs ached at the memory, his shoulders felt the phantom weight of her on them, and his hands shook—though he told himself it was just the tremendous vibration from the water hose. His eyes stopped stinging and burning, since, to his shame, they’d overflowed. Jake squeezed them shut, effectively wringing them out to dry.

  Jake channeled cool, blessed numbness and steeled himself again for the job at hand. This was no time to lose his shit; it was unthinkable and unacceptable.

  Grady signaled to him that he and Tommy were going around the back, and Jake gave them a thumbs-up to show he understood. Mick and Rafael focused on watering down the nearby vegetation. Old George cast Jake a sharp glance, waited for his thumbs-up sign, then walked around the perimeter to analyze where they needed to focus next.

  They were bringing the blaze under control. It wouldn’t be a total loss, at least not the exterior. The interior—it would have to be gutted. Everything in there, even if it held together and wasn’t buried in soot and ash, would reek of smoke. The rugs and furniture would have to be driven straight to the town dump.

  Poor Lila—she’d chosen everything with such care, working to complement the architecture and keep the country comfort, making it just the right blend of lodge and luxury, Texas hospitality with understated elegance.

  Everett would have insurance investigators and adjusters out here within twenty-four hours. It was just how he rolled . . . and, as the majority owner, it would be Everett who would push whether or not to press charges for gross negligence against Felicity “Bridezilla” Barnum.

  Who would then lawyer up and try to fling the blame back on the family. On Lila, perhaps, for not being out there to supervise the space . . . It didn’t bear thinking of. Any of it.

  And Ace? Ace used to sneak out here to the Old Barn, climb up into the hayloft and secretly draw stuff. It was one of the only things that calmed his squirrely ass. The Austin Lone Stars probably didn’t offer him much of a chance to release his inner da Vinci. If Ace ever again graced his family with his pro-ballplayer presence, he’d be torn up over the loss of his clandestine art studio.

  To Jake himself, the Old Barn had been the cool, cavernous space where he’d worked with P
op on restoring his beat-up but beautiful classic red 1966 Mustang. He’d loved unraveling the mystery of all the parts under the hood and how they worked together to create forward motion and velocity.

  He could still smell the clean engine oil, the undercurrents of gasoline, the leather on the seats, the mustiness of the old carpet, and the rubber of the floor mats. He could hear the rough purr of the engine as Pop had started her up; he could see their old man’s toothy grin emerging from his five o’clock shadow like the sun twinkling after a storm.

  Hadn’t those been the days?

  Jake pushed away the memories and focused on saving what was left of the Old Barn, which housed so many whispers of the past.

  * * *

  At last, Charlie spied the familiar iron gates with the bucking bronco that heralded Silverlake Ranch. The fire had gotten much worse. As she hurtled through them, the scents of hell seeped through the windows, and she saw the smoke rising like an evil spirit against the sun, spreading malevolence in its wake. Some demon had melted a celestial box of Crayolas over everything: The clouds were backlit with clashing colors; they bellowed silently at the normalcy of the blue sky above, which stretched for miles, indifferent to the scene that played out below. Tangerine warred with burnt orange, red bled through mustard, bruised plum battered violet, and black smothered periwinkle.

  Charlie had never seen anything like this dreadful rainbow. And under it all was a fire of epic proportions—a fire as big as the one that had consumed the Nash mansion twelve years ago. The sight of a fire like this was almost more awful in the daylight, because it couldn’t be written off as a nightmare.

  She didn’t stop at the main house but took the dogleg toward the Old Barn. Grouchy emerged to greet her, as he did everyone, and when she kept on rolling, drawn inexorably toward the fire, he chased after her, panting. She stopped near a huge live oak about a football field away from the barn, knowing she shouldn’t go any closer.