by Patty Blount
Gage studied me until I squirmed. “Okay. Stow your gear, then come back to the field. They’re gonna present the trophy.”
Yay.
He took a step, then turned back and scratched the back of his neck. “Um, look. I know you probably have, like, real friends, but if you ever need to, like, talk or whatever—”
Oh fuck me.
“Yeah. Thanks.” I cut him off before this ended in one of those awkward guy hugs.
“Okay.” He took off at a jog. “Oh, um, nice ink!”
I smoothed the paper out, frowned at it, and read it over. When I was done, I closed my eyes and clutched the note to the tattoo on my chest.
“You okay?”
I jolted and spun, my breath almost choking me. Amanda stood with a hip braced on somebody’s car, arms crossed over her chest, and damn if that wasn’t a crime against nature. “Yeah.” I carefully refolded the paper and tucked it deep into my pocket.
“Really?” She laughed once. “Doesn’t look like it.”
My spine snapped straight, and I put my back to her. “Let me rephrase. Nothing to you.” I whipped back around when I realized she must have been standing there for a while. “How long were you watching me anyway? You got some kind of thing for my naked body?” I dropped my voice low and peered at her from under my lashes, and she snapped off the hood of the car like she’d been shot from a rifle.
“Get real.” She flipped me off, her cheeks going pink, and strode away.
“Hey, come on, I was kidding.” I pulled on a clean shirt and topped it with a hoodie bearing the PROUD AND READY emblem that I found in Matt’s box of stuff in the basement.
I caught up to her back on the field, where the juniors were gathered around an older guy in uniform.
“Congratulations, Lakeshore Junior Squad,” he said, handing a small silver trophy to Amanda, who grinned and held it high over her head like it was the freakin’ Stanley Cup.
Hands slapped my back, applause rang out, and cheers of “Yeah!” echoed around the field. I smiled so hard, my facial muscles began to burn. In the chaos of cadets still in turnout gear, congratulations and high fives from a bunch of people I didn’t know, I lost sight of my own crew. I scanned the area but didn’t see Dad anywhere either.
That didn’t bother me at all.
I shrugged and started walking to the car, a kind of heavy warmth settling in my limbs. Suddenly, the air was shattered by a loud crack.
“You don’t know anything about me or my son, Cadet. Dismissed,” my father shouted.
I whipped around, vision narrowing, blood pulsing, and found my father jabbing a finger at Amanda’s face over near Engine 21. I never gave my body the command to move, never thought about it.
I just…did.
In a split second, I was standing between them, pinning my father to the truck by his throat.
Chapter 16
Amanda
After the training facility chief awarded us our trophy, I’d scanned the crowd, pissed off to find John Logan didn’t even bother to stick around. I finally found him over near Engine 21.
I’d had enough of this bullshit.
I strode over to him. “John.”
He looked up from the clipboard he carried, shifted his weight, and waited.
So I dove straight in. “Whatever’s wrong between you and Reece? Fix it.”
His jaw went tight. “Excuse me?”
I was too pissed off to find the right words, the right tone. “He’s trying. We’re all trying. Everybody’s trying. Except you.”
“Oh really?” John’s voice held that tone it always did right before he popped. Usually, it was at Matt. Occasionally, it was at Max or Ty. But never at me.
Until now.
“Our squad—the squad you now instruct—just won this month’s trophy. And you don’t even bother to stick around and give your cadets a high five. Is it really so hard for you to actually give your kid a compliment?”
John spiked the clipboard to the ground, and the sound was deafening. He pulled in a lungful of breath and let it out in slow motion, like he was doing his best to control his temper, but the tension in his arms, in his shoulders, told me that plan wasn’t working so well. “You don’t know anything about me or my son, Cadet. Dismissed,” he shouted right in my face.
I glared at him, arms crossed, and finally shook my head. Fine.
I turned away, just in time to avoid a seriously pissed-off Reece Logan, charging straight for his father like a bullet train. In a heartbeat, he’d shoved John up against the side of the truck, T-shirt bunched in his fist.
“Do not,” he said in a low tone that sent shivers skating up my back, “ever take out your fucking problems with me on her or anybody else on this squad.” Teeth clenched, neck muscles corded, breath snorting from his nostrils, Reece looked ready—and able—to tear John in half.
“Reece! It’s okay. Back off.” I tried to break them up, but Reece’s arms were like iron bars.
“Hey, hey, cool off, guys. Let him go, Reece.”
Firefighter Jimmy Haggerty shoved his way between father and son and managed to back Reece up a few steps.
John’s lips curled into their usual smirk. “Not bad, Peanut. You’ve been lifting.” He smoothed out his shirt and picked up his clipboard.
“Stop with the Peanut crap, Jackie.”
John’s eyebrows shot up.
My mouth fell open.
Who was this guy?
“Okay, okay, enough.” Jimmy led John to the truck. “Reece, why don’t you guys take off? Logan, get in the truck,” he said to John.
John held up his hands in surrender, still smirking, and climbed aboard without a word. Reece glared after him for a moment and then strode away.
It took me almost a full minute to close my mouth. By that time, Reece’s long legs had taken him halfway across the damn lot.
“Hey, Reece! Wait up!” I didn’t catch up to him until he’d reached his car.
“What?”
Tired as he was, as we all were, I was totally amazed to see the temper that still sizzled in his eyes. I never saw Reece as much of a fighter. He seemed more like a sulker.
Until now.
“What?” I echoed, grabbing his arm. “You really have to ask? What the hell was that back there? You want to get kicked out?”
“No.” He knocked my hand away. “Why the hell do you care anyway?”
I dropped my eyes to the ground. I lifted one shoulder and said only, “I didn’t like the way your dad ignored my squad because he’s—”
“Your squad?”
“Yeah. Mine. J squad is all I have that’s mine.” They took me in, made me one of them. Was it really so selfish to want to keep it? To protect it? I caught site of the emblem on my T-shirt. PROUD AND READY. Damn it, they should be more than just words. “What your dad did isn’t right. Everybody pulled together to help get you trained up. We all did great today and deserved some applause for that.”
“Well, maybe you should tell him.”
“I did.” I looked away, my face burning.
He continued to seethe and then blew out a long slow breath. With it, his temper finally faded. “I’m sorry.”
I didn’t want him to be sorry. The truth was he didn’t have anything to be sorry about. But I was hot, hungry, and too damned tired to argue over it. “Okay, I guess we all keep forgetting you’re new.”
Reece gave me the side eye. “Trust me, he’s completely aware of that.”
His words, or maybe it was the look in his eyes, squeezed my heart. I always thought families loved each other just because—that they didn’t have to perform feats like this…this twisted audition Reece was doing for his dad. But I didn’t say anything. What did I know about families?
I turned, shielded my eyes against the sun, and wa
tched Engine 21 pull out of the parking lot.
I used to like John Logan. After Matt died, John cleaned out Matt’s locker and never uttered his name again. I’d tried to talk to him about a month after the funeral. I’d asked John if we could do a memorial event for Matt, but John’s mouth went thin and a hard look came into his eyes—a look that screamed hatred and fury. I’d stopped talking midsentence, the closest I’d come to one of John Logan’s legendary temper displays—until today. But John just shook his head and said memorials were a damn waste of time and had no point. Anybody who could forget Matt Logan had something wrong with them, and no memorial would ever be able to fix that. I couldn’t argue with that logic, so I’d dropped the subject.
That hard look in John’s eyes never faded.
With Reece in our house, that look just kept getting harder, and it completely broke my heart. Reece was trying so hard.
No one had ever tried for me.
I glanced back at Reece. The look in his eyes never faded either. The looks—John’s angry and Reece’s so painfully sad—were like some kind of symbiotic life-form, each feeding the other, or feeding off the other.
I clenched my fists. Stupid. Stubborn. They were so damn lucky and had no freaking clue.
Chapter 17
Reece
I’m not a coward. I’m not sure what I am, but I’m not that. I used to be tired. And sad. So fucking sad. But that was a long time ago. I’d kill to feel only sad right now.
I sank against my mother’s car, unable to look at Amanda.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly, cutting me in half.
“No! No, Amanda, it’s not your fault.”
“Reece, for what it’s worth, I think your dad was proud of you today. He can’t stand it, but he was.”
I snorted out half a laugh. “He hates me, Amanda.”
Her face twisted. “No.”
“Trust me.” I snorted again and opened the car door for her. “I had all these issues when I was a baby. Colic. I didn’t sleep. I was afraid of everybody who wasn’t my mom. She says we never bonded—my dad and me.” I rolled my eyes. What a stupid word. Bond. Because I didn’t do cute shit like other babies, my dad didn’t have to love me? Blood, DNA—why wasn’t that enough? Isn’t that how it was supposed to work?
“I was about three when I figured it out. He and Matt spent a ton of time together—camping, fishing, playing catch. I used to cry and beg to join them, but—” I shook my head. This was pointless. I sounded like I was still three, whining about everything that didn’t fit my sense of fair.
I walked around the car and climbed behind the wheel, and Amanda got into the passenger seat. We sat there for a long moment, staring through the windshield at the empty parking lot. The car smelled like lemons—fresh squeezed lemonade—and my mouth watered. Suddenly, the dam burst, and words just fell out of my mouth.
“Dads are supposed to teach their sons, you know? They’re supposed to tuck them in at night, chase away the monsters under the bed, help them become men. He never did that stuff with me, just Matt.” I slammed my palm against the wheel. “I should have hated Matt, but I couldn’t. He’s the one who taught me how to bait a hook and tie my shoes and pitch a curve ball and even piss standing up. God! I miss him. I miss him so fucking much, it feels like it’s gonna kill me.”
I covered the tattoo of Matt’s name burned in the skin over my heart and squeezed my eyes shut, but tears dripped from them anyway. A soft warmth spread over my hand. For a minute, I thought it was Matt. I opened my eyes and found Amanda’s hand covering mine.
“You’re here. And you’re dealing.”
No, I wasn’t. Not really. The note in my pocket suddenly felt like a hot knife twisting in my gut.
“Matt was what held our family together. Now he’s gone…Dad’s gone. Mom didn’t even argue about it.” I shook my head.
She didn’t get it. She just kept looking at me like I was a toddler with a boo-boo on his knee.
I cursed. “Look at me, Amanda!” I waved my hand at my face. “I have his eyes, his build. I wear the same shoe size as he does, but everything about me bugs him. He will never love me the way he loved Matt, and I got that a long time ago. So I’ll settle for—” I broke off abruptly. I’d nearly spilled the truth, and that was a secret nobody was getting from me, even if she did smell like lemonade. “I’ll settle for his respect.”
She stared at me for a long moment and finally nodded. “You’re getting it, Reece. You worked your ass off, getting in shape, studying. I’ve never seen a cadet work as hard as you. Hang in there, okay?” She ended with a smile that seared itself into my brain.
Amanda had a crooked tooth.
How had I never noticed that before? One of her bottom teeth was just a little crooked, and she even had a dimple. I would have noticed the dimple if she smiled at me like this sooner. Maybe this meant she didn’t hate me.
Wow. Someone who didn’t hate me. I could get used to that. I grinned back and stuck out a hand. “Deal.”
She took my hand, shook it once, but didn’t let go. Her pulse—or was it mine?—tripped against my fingers. The lemony air inside the car taunted me, and I wanted to pull her hair out of that tight knot and bury my face in it. I could hear her breathe, feel the heat against my face each time she did. Something was happening here, something that shouldn’t, no matter how much I wanted it to. And God, I wanted it, as much as I wanted my dad to forgive me. Maybe more.
Staring into my eyes, she licked her lips, and I was lost or maybe I was found. I didn’t know, I didn’t care, I didn’t think. I’m pretty sure the world stopped turning. My heart sped up and kept time with her pulse. A strand of hair that had escaped that tight little knot fell across her eyes, and it called to me, like the ribbon on a birthday gift, begging to be unwrapped. I tugged the band in her hair free, tossed it on the dashboard, and let her hair spill through my fingers, closing my eyes as her sweet scent filled the air. I traced the curves of her face, the dimple I’d just discovered. Amanda tilted her head, nuzzling against my palm, and sighed like I was a dream she didn’t want to end. I pressed my lips to hers, and her hands gripped my arms, pulling me closer, and when her lips opened under mine, time stopped. Our tongues touched, and my stomach flipped. It was a kiss that should have broken hearts, but mine was mended. When we finally separated, I patted my chest to make sure it was still there.
It was.
“Oh God, Reece. This is impossible.” She touched her lips with fingers that shook, and pride burned through me, knowing I was the one who’d made them shake—that I even could. “What are we going to do?” She hugged me tight, like she wanted to keep me, and I never wanted to be kept so badly in my whole life.
I smiled down at her, because impossible or not, I was too happy not to. “I don’t know, but I promise I’ll figure it out.”
A cell phone buzzed, and we jumped apart like we’d been Tasered.
“It’s the Becketts. Oh God, I’m late.”
“I’ll drive you home.” I started the car, pulled out of the lot, and drove with that grin on my face all the way to her place.
Chapter 18
Amanda
Crap, crap, shit! What in the actual hell just happened? A month ago, I hated this boy, and today, I’m kissing him?
Reece shifted into gear and pulled out of the lot. I sank lower into the seat and tried to pretend everything was cool, that my heart hadn’t just cracked through its armor. I knew better than this. I knew better than anyone just how badly love can mess you up. I’d whispered “Love you” when Mrs. Merodie tucked me in one night, and the social worker removed me from that foster home the next day. And Mom. Jesus, Mom was doing time because Dmitri, her jerk-off boyfriend, conned her into a scheme that got her caught with all the evidence while he pleaded stupidity.
Okay, he pleaded no contest, but Mom was still the one who went to
prison. She was in an upstate correctional facility that I couldn’t visit unless someone was willing to take me. Enough said.
I snuck a glance at Reece and wished I could kick myself. He’d been through hell today. And then I—oh God. He was smiling like he’d just won the lottery.
I jerked in my seat.
Me? A lottery prize.
I tried to remember a single time in my life when anyone had treated me like something precious. Something special. Only Mom had, and then she’d…stopped.
Since the day he walked into the firehouse, Reece looked at me like I was a real girl. I was never Man to him but Amanda. And yeah, I kind of liked the way he stared at me, breathing through his mouth, trying not to look at my chest.
Matt never looked at me that way. Or made me feel the way I was feeling—ready to say fuck the rules and statistics, ready to risk everything just to be looked at that way one more time.
I blew out a long, slow breath. “I live a few blocks off Upper Cedar Grove.”
He nodded. “I know where that is.” He was still smiling.
I made him smile like that.
In all these weeks, in every smile I’d seen, there was always that little bit of pain Reece couldn’t completely hide. I knew Reece could single-handedly fight a fire, save the kid, the old lady, and the puppy, and John would probably just smirk and say Matt could have done it better. If I hadn’t seen John treat Reece like crap myself, I wouldn’t have believed it. John Logan was one of the reasons this squad felt like family for me. Matt, Gage, and all the lieutenants had rallied around me, trained me up fast. I was so afraid it would be just like foster care…always the outsider, always looking in.
Oh.
The thought slammed into my brain, like a home-run swing to the head. This was what life was like for Reece inside his own family. Having to watch over and over when his dad did things with his brother instead of him, see the way his dad blamed him for the accident that killed Matt. Jesus, if Reece were a foster kid, there was no doubt in my mind John would have sent him back.