by Wild, Nikki
“Stop calling me that,” I muttered, pushing to my feet all on my own. “All I’ve got is some burns on my hand. I’m not crippled.”
But Gunner wrapped his arm around me anyway, supporting my weight as he eased me into the black leather seat.
The feel of his bicep against my back brought me back to the way he’d pulled me out of that fire—how he’d just slung me over his shoulders like a sack of potatoes and got to work on saving us both. He hadn’t even hesitated. Not for one damn second. Where the hell was this guy back when Jim had been beating the shit out of me? And where had he been since?
Gunner closed my door and I buckled in as he came around to slip into the driver’s seat. He looked over at me, at my bandaged hand. “You tell work you’re not coming in?”
“No,” I spat, folding my arms. “I don’t have a phone. Everything I had went up in fucking flames, remember?”
“You can use mine,” he offered. Before I could give him my answer, he’d dug it out of his pocket and shoved it in my face. An iPhone. Of course it was. “You can always Google the number.”
“I know how smart phones work,” I said, snatching the phone from his hand. I was rewarded with a throb of searing pain from my first-degree burns. This is going to take some getting used to.
“Careful, baby,” Gunner said. “Burns like that can be nasty. Especially on your palm. Too much moving around and you’re gonna make it swell up again.”
“Good thing they prescribed me pain pills.” I swiped my thumb over his touchscreen. “I need to drop off the order before we go home. You have a pharmacy nearby?”
“I do.”
“Great. Let’s stop there.” I hesitated halfway through dialing the number. “You know, work isn’t such a big deal. I can_._._._I dunno, go in and scrub counters, or something. With my good hand. It won’t be a problem.”
My stepbrother snorted. “Did you hit your head? Your apartment burned down, baby. The whole fucking building. You need a day off or two. You need to heal.”
“I need money,” I snapped. “Some of us don’t have it so good, Gunner. Some of us are just barely scraping by. We can’t all afford Mustangs and iPhones.”
“C’mon, Tanya,” Gunner said. “I’ve got a few years on you. You’ll be where I am one day. Hell, maybe you’ll do even better.”
I shook my head. “Whatever.”
“Doesn’t matter, anyway,” he continued, “because you’re not paying one red cent for those meds. I’ve got you covered.”
I groaned. “You can’t be serious. I don’t need any charity.”
For a second, my stepbrother went quiet. Behind his lips, he ran his tongue over his teeth. When he stopped at a red light, he said, “It’s not charity if I owe you.”
I shook my head again and tapped my best friend’s number onto Gunner’s screen.
Chelsea—it’s Tanya. Apartment fire yesterday. Not coming to the club. Let Gino know.
It wasn’t until I was sitting out in the parking lot of the CVS while Gunner ran my prescription inside that I heard back from her.
OMG!!! Saw the news! U ok sweets? L
I texted her back.
Hand is fucked up. Be careful what u say. On my stepbro’s phone.
Her answer was one I’d expected.
Uhhh who??
But I didn’t have time to explain, or even the inclination to. Not over text, anyway. I sent her back a dismissive text reminding her to let Gino know I wouldn’t be in, then promised to call her later once I’d gotten a phone of my own.
Then I deleted all our texts, because the last thing I needed was Gunner asking me more questions about my job—like what kind of club his baby sister was “waitressing” at.
It’s none of his damn business, anyway. We all do what we gotta do to survive. Some of us run. Some of us stay behind and clean up the mess. And then we find some way—any way—to make things work.
Running apparently paid off a hell of a lot more than staying did, though, because when we finally made it to Gunner’s house, I could see that life had been a lot kinder to him than it had been to me. First off, he actually had a house. It was little, sure, but it was nice—a cutesy bungalow that didn’t look at all like I’d have expected. The teal door matched the shutters and the soft, canary yellow of the façade reminded me of that time our family had gone to the Keys. Maybe that’s what the house was supposed to remind Gunner of, too—happier times.
He pulled into the drive and cut the engine. “Home sweet home.”
“Firefighting pays well, huh?” I asked bitterly.
Gunner shrugged. “Well enough. It’s just me, so_._._._”
He got out of the car, but before he could come around to my side, I opened the door and got out on my own. It was a little fuck you to whatever ideas he had about being my big hero. Of course, it didn’t help that I’d told him he was just yesterday.
Gonna have to watch my mouth while I’m on those pain pills.
“I got the door,” Gunner said, bounding ahead of me with his keys in hand. I sighed through my nose, looking up at the swaying trees dotted around his property.
No place I’d ever lived had trees. Not since Jim’s house.
“C’mon in,” he urged me. “I made up the spare room for you already.”
I climbed up onto the stoop. “Thought you said you had a pull-out couch?”
“I do. But my baby sister needs a room of her own, yeah?”
I rolled my eyes. “Jesus, Gunner. Stop fucking trying so hard.”
A fight was brewing. One that’d been overdue for a long damn time. But then I noticed something in his front yard. Something I couldn’t take my eyes off of once I’d seen it.
“Holy shit.” I pushed past him. “You got a dog?”
I practically jumped the chain-link gate to get to it. Fuck, that was a handsome creature if I ever saw one. Big, brown eyes. A perfectly soft, silky coat of cocoa-colored fur. Those black patches glimmered in the sun as he bounded toward me, all ears and paws.
“Shit, Tanya!” Gunner hissed, pulling me away from the dog with my back against his front. “Keep back. He’s my guard dog.”
For just a second, the warmth and the hard planes of my stepbrother’s body sent chills racing up my spine. He had to be ripped. Every muscle was evident. Every bulge. Including, I noticed, the one between his legs. The one pressed right up against my ass.
“Knock it off,” I said, wrenching away. Gunner stepped around me to intercept the dog but it just ducked under his arms and came straight for me.
I didn’t worry for a second. Maybe we’d never had one growing up, but I knew a thing or two about dog behavior. And this one was absolute shit at protecting anybody. Or maybe he just knew I was cool.
“Jax!” Gunner grumped when his dog leapt into my arms. “Leave her alone!”
I took some snide satisfaction in knowing that Jax didn’t give two shits about what his owner had to say. That dog was all over me, kissing my face, twirling in circles, and wagging his tail so hard it hurt.
It was all fun and games until he accidentally whipped his tail into my injured hand. Then my stepbrother grabbed his collar and hauled him back toward his doghouse while I stepped outside the gate.
“Sorry,” Gunner muttered when he returned. “Jax gets too excited sometimes.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Especially around women.”
“Sounds like the perfect dog for you,” I answered.
Finally, I turned and stepped inside his house. The inside was just as nice as the outside, quaint and homey, not at all like the Gunner I knew. There weren’t many pictures, though. Not of people. Just some art that looked like he’d picked it up at a garage sale, or maybe the Goodwill.
Hardwood floors, though. Those were spiffy. “These the originals?” I asked him.
“Yup,” he said, closing the door behind us. “This little bungalow was built back in the twenties. It needed a fair bit of reno, but it was a steal.”
So, my stepbro
ther fought fires, saved lives, and fixed houses. Of course he did. His competence infuriated me.
Who the hell was he to go off and have a full life while I stayed home with his piece of shit dad—the one who’d become my responsibility when his son just walked out on him all those years ago?
“Must have been nice,” I said, peeking my head into the kitchen. I wasn’t surprised to find it just as quaint as the rest of the house—though it made me no less furious. From what I could tell he barely even used the thing for how clean everything looked. “You got to enjoy living for yourself all these years.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, and I heard him stop short behind me. I wanted to smile, a sick sense of satisfaction filling me as I felt the proverbial knife cut right through his little hero act.
“I just meant that not having a drunk, lazy, deadbeat dad holding you back must have made things really easy, that’s all.”
I couldn’t stop myself, a feeling a sense of vindication began rising up inside of me the more I let myself talk. It was like I’d opened the dam holding back years’-worth of resentment.
“That’s not fair,” Gunner said, his voice wavering slightly. It was almost like he’d expected me to just forgive and forget after all this time—after all, he pulled me out of a burning building; what was a decade of abuse and loneliness compared to that?
“Fuck fair,” I snapped, turning around in one swift movement. “I don’t give two fucks about what you think is fair, Gunner. You don’t get to talk to me about what’s fair when I had to spend my fucking childhood cleaning up the mess you left behind.”
“I had to—”
“You had to what?” I snapped, taking a step closer to him. Comparatively, Gunner towered over me, but I wasn’t about to let something like size diminish my righteous fury—I deserved this after all those years. “Leave your only sister behind so you could go be a hero? Play firefighter with your buddies? Live in your nice fucking bungalow and forget we even existed?!
“I spent the years I should have been playing with my friends outside—years I’ll never get back—playing nurse to your shit-faced drunk of a father while he berated me and called me worthless. What you should have done was actually been there for me—like a real brother would have.”
“I couldn’t stay there, Tanya. Not after what he did,” Gunner said, doing his best to hold out against my anger.
“What he did to you?” I asked, letting out an incredulous laugh. “What do you think he did to me after you left?”
“It isn’t my fault what he did to you!” he said, raising his voice to try and match mine. “What he did wasn’t because of me.”
“But you could have taken me away from him! We could have left together! But instead I woke up that morning alone, without the only person I had left in the whole wide world who loved me.” I looked away from him, my eyes turned down toward my clenched fists. “First I lost mom then you abandoned me, and that’s enough for me to never want to speak to you again.”
I turned on my heel, making my way toward the open door to what I assumed was Gunner’s bedroom.
“Where’re you going?” he called after me; I heard the creaking of his heavy footfalls following behind mine.
“I’m going to take a shower, Gunner. Leave me alone.”
I grabbed the edge of the door and swung it closed behind me, breathing a sigh of relief as I heard the click of the latch catching on the door. It was only a matter of time before he opened it after me, and by then I was safely inside of the master bathroom, the door locked and the water running. As I undressed, I only wished I could wash my life down the drain along with the dirt and grime.
Just as I stepped into the warm torrent of my brother’s magnificent shower I heard a loud banging on the bathroom door. I sighed, putting my facing inside of my hand in frustration before closing the sliding glass door closed behind me.
“Tanya!” I heard my brother call, his voice muffled behind the solid door and the steady hiss of the hot water all around me. I kept my bandaged hand well away from the water as I enjoyed the simple feel of it rushing over me. “Open the door, dammit!”
“I’m kind of taking a shower, Gunner,” I shouted, though I hardly cared if he heard a word that came out of my mouth. “I can argue with you later—preferably when I’m not soaking wet.”
I closed my eyes, letting the hot streams of water wash over my body, relaxing my aching muscles. Ever since the fire I’d felt like I’d never get the feeling of soot and the smell of smoke off of me, as though what had happened would leave a stain on me that would never come off so long as I lived.
My choices of soap were sadly limited to the macho men’s brands that my brother seemed to enjoy, forcing me to smell like an alpine summit until I could manage to go to the store and find some more appropriate scents. However, a wintry aroma was a price I was willing to pay for a little bit of cleanliness.
I couldn’t remember how long I’d stayed in the shower, basking in the invigorating steam that swirled around me. It wasn’t until I realized just how wrinkled my hands had become did I finally decide that I’d gotten myself as soot-free as I was going to get.
I stepped cautiously out onto the terrycloth rug laid out just outside of the shower door, feeling the course texture against the soles of my feet. I reached out and pulled down one of the towels hanging from the cute little wrack just to the side of the shower, wrapping myself up in it and covering my less appropriate areas. There was something about scratchy towels that made me feel so much better than the other soft kind ever could.
I listened for a moment after I’d managed to get my hair dry, enjoying how quiet it had gotten now that Gunner had stopped yelling. Who the hell did he think it was, anyway? Demanding my fucking time after all those years. I was intent on making him wait as long as I wanted before he ever started to earn a portion of my forgiveness.
I tightened my towel around myself, tucking the corner just under my arm to keep it all in place before pulling the door open. Instead of an empty room, however, I found my brother staring me right in the face. I almost fell backward, barely a foot of space between us as he pushed himself into the bathroom.
“Gunner, what the fuck!” I shouted, trying to push him back out and back into the bedroom.
“You don’t just get to end it like that, Tanya. You’re staying in my fucking house and I expect you to show me some respect.”
“Respect?” I asked, my eyebrows raised. “We can talk about respect when you don’t come barging in on your own naked sister. Jesus, Gunner. What if I hadn’t had a towel on?!”
I looked at him expectantly, but something in the way he was looking at me through me off guard. My heart began to thud in my chest, watching the way my stepbrother’s eyes roved over my body. All at once I became acutely aware of all the places my towel clung to my curves, leaving less of my body as mysterious as I had ever planned.
“Gunner! Get the fuck out! What are you, some kind of pervert or something?” I asked, hoping that I’d make him mad enough to actually leave. I self-consciously crossed my arms across my chest. Despite how strange I knew it was, I couldn’t help but get a thrill at the way he’d lingered on my cleavage.
“Fuck you, Tanya,” Gunner said, shaking his head, his hands up in the air in a gesture of mock surrender. I watched him turn and leave, my heart still beating like a humming bird’s. I’d had men stare at me countless times whenever I worked the stage at the Domino, but out of all those times I’d never felt so_._._._ excited by the way someone took me in—not in the way Gunner had just done.
Chapter 4
Gunner
What the hell is her problem?
I couldn’t stay inside for another second without screaming my head off, and despite how much of a bitch Tanya was being, she didn’t deserve that after the last few days. I’d never been the nicest person in the world, but I was trying to be better. If not for myself, then for her.
I needed some ai
r, some space to collect my head and figure out how I was going to deal with my temperamental stepsister crashing in my spare room.
Just yesterday she’d been all cuddles and hugs, thanking me for saving her goddamn life. And now, all of a sudden she’d done a complete one-eighty and decided that I was the scum of the Earth. Granted, today she seemed much more sober than she had when I’d come to see her in the hospital.
I climbed into my Mustang and pulled out of the driveway, heading back to the firehouse. After hearing about what happened with Tanya the chief had told me to take the day off, but I couldn’t come up with a better place to go to. Firefighting was my life, but considering that it was also the only thing in my life, I was starting to think that maybe that wasn’t such a good thing.