“Why?” Gavin nudged her knee with his, needing some kind of contact, no matter how brief. “I’d rather forget the bad stuff.” He might have uttered those words in a teasing tone, but he meant them. He wished like hell he could forget some of his own dark memories. The scarred flesh on his shoulder tingled, threating to pull him into memories better left undisturbed. Gavin cleared his throat and focused on Jordan. “Why on earth do you want to shut out the good times?”
“I guess it hurts less to think about the bad stuff,” she whispered.
Turning her large brown eyes to his, Jordan got that look on her face, the one that told him she was contemplating whether or not to say what was on her mind. Damn. That look tore at his heart just as much now as it did back then. Probably more.
“Because every now and then, when I remember what it was like to have my father hug me, sing softly, and kiss the top of my head, the ache in my chest gets so big, I think it might swallow me whole.” Straightening her back, Jordan stared out at the street. “I go back to that house every day now, not because I want to tell him off, but because I want him to tell me he still loves me. It’s crazy, isn’t it?”
“It’s not that crazy, Jordan.” Crumpling up the brown paper bag, he tossed it into the garbage can by the bench, then turned his attention back to her. “He’s your father.”
“And I married a man just like him.” Jordan wrapped up her sandwich with more force than necessary and slapped it on the bench between them. “I think that’s what’s bothering me more than anything else. I went and married a son of a bitch, and gave my daughters a bastard for a father. Is this their future, Gavin? Are they going to be sitting around one day wishing that their absentee father would love them?”
“I don’t know the answer to that. But I do know that you are a much different woman than your mother.” He held up both hands and quickly added, “Don’t get me wrong. I think Claire is a sweetheart, and I give her a hell of a lot of credit for sticking it out with your father all of these years, but—”
“It’s okay, Gavin.” Her hand drifted over and settled on his knee in a familiar, reassuring gesture. He stilled beneath her touch and she must have felt it, because she pulled her hand away quickly. “I mean, I know what you’re saying. My mother stayed and I didn’t. I left Ted because I didn’t want my daughters growing up in a loveless household with a drunk. It’s a terrible way to live.” She settled her hands on the edge of the bench on either side of her thighs, her shoulders hunched. “Ted barely paid any attention to the girls one way or the other. After I had the children, he barely even noticed I was there.”
They’d been having lunch every day for the past two weeks, and this was the first time she’d really opened up to him. Prior to this, she would steer the conversation toward him or his parents’ upcoming anniversary party, his brothers or his job, anything but herself. The fact that she was talking to him about this stuff gave him hope. He wasn’t a big one for talking out his feelings, but he was all for the idea of Jordan opening up. The more she shared with him, the better the odds that he could convince her to give him, to give them, a second chance.
“He sounds like a real prince.” The bench creaked in protest as Gavin leaned back. “This Ted guy must have been nice at the beginning. You never did tell me how you met him.”
“It’s not that exciting a story.” She lifted one shoulder and rolled her eyes. “I was on my home from an audition, and I literally bumped into him at the bank. He was handsome and charming…at least at the beginning. We had a whirlwind courtship and got married at City Hall about three months after we met. At first, I thought I’d hit the jackpot, you know? He was rich and handsome, and he seemed wonderful. But it didn’t take long for me to figure out that he wasn’t the guy I thought he was.
“He blamed the pressures at work for why he drank so much—that or entertaining clients. Ted always had one excuse or another. Anyway, a little over a year into our marriage, I was going to leave him. But by then I’d found out I was pregnant with Lily, and Gracie came along a couple years after that.” She sighed heavily and whispered, “I didn’t want to get a divorce, Gavin.”
“I imagine most people don’t.” Jealousy reared its head like the ugly monster it was. “You loved him. I get it.”
He fought the surge of envy as she spoke about her ex-husband, the man who’d been given the gift of having Jordan as his wife and squandered it. Gavin felt like a jackass. Hadn’t he asked her to tell him about this? He had officially become a masochist.
“No, I didn’t,” she said quietly as she stared at her interlocked fingers. “Maybe I did at first. I mean it wasn’t like it was with—” Jordan stopped abruptly.
Gavin’s gut clenched. Was she going to say, “What it was like with you”? Hope glimmered cruelly and silence hung between them as he waited for her to finish the thought and put him out of his self-imposed misery.
“It wasn’t like I thought it would be. And even though I wanted to leave, the idea of being on my own with two little girls scared the hell out of me. The really pathetic part is that I probably would have kept staying. Honestly, if he hadn’t come after me in front of the girls that night, I probably would have stayed…just like my mother did.”
“He hit you?” Gavin’s entire body tensed, and his hands curled into fists as rage simmered brightly beneath the surface. “In front of Gracie and Lily?”
This Ted asshole hit Jordan? Fury bubbled and rolled, threatening to erupt, but he stuffed it back down. Flipping out wouldn’t do anyone any good. It was bad enough to think that this Ted bastard had laid hands on Jordan, but that he would get violent in front of those two little girls made Gavin’s blood boil.
“No.” Jordan shook her head and tears glimmered in her eyes but none fell. “But if I’d stayed…”
“Right. Well then, I won’t have to rip his head off if I ever meet him.” Gavin nodded curtly and some of the fury eased from him—but not much. “He may not have hit you, Jordan, but it sounds like he was an abusive son of a bitch. Leaving him was the right thing to do for you and the girls.”
“Anyway, after that, staying with him was a far more frightening prospect than going it on my own. We all have our demons, I guess. But do you want to know what really kills me? Thanks to me, my daughters already have theirs.”
“You’re not the one who was abusive,” Gavin said tightly. “Sounds to me like Ted is the one who’s responsible for any demons. You’ve done a great job, Jordan. Your girls are terrific, and if you ask me, it’s better they have no father than to be around a guy like that.”
Before he could stop himself, he reached out and rubbed her lower back reassuringly. She stiffened briefly beneath his touch, but only for a moment before she relaxed. That infinitesimal shift toward acceptance was what he’d been looking for.
“True,” she murmured. “But unfortunately, he is their father and he’ll never really go away. Ted will always hang around just enough to make our lives miserable. Case in point, he left me a few unpleasant voice mails this week and even threatened to come here and take the girls.”
“I don’t think that would be good for his health,” Gavin murmured. “Does he know where you live?”
“He was hammered when he called, and I doubt he remembers leaving half the messages. Besides, I have full custody, and thanks to his substance abuse problem, all of his visits have to be supervised. He doesn’t love me or the girls, Gavin. He’s pissed that I left him and he didn’t win. It’s a power play. That’s it. There’s no love there. I don’t know if he’s really capable of loving anyone other than himself.”
Jordan glanced over her shoulder at him, and when her brown eyes met his, it was like a punch in the gut. The sadness that lingered there almost did him in, and it took Herculean strength not to drag her into his arms.
“I-I should be getting back,” she said, gathering her bag. “Cookie and Veronica are really busy getting things ready for the Posman wedding tomorrow, and I shouldn’t l
eave them alone in the shop too long.”
“Right.” Gavin dropped his hand, his fingers trailing briefly over the curve of her hip as she rose from the bench. “I should get back too.”
“You’ve been pretty busy yourself these days.” Jordan slung her bag over her shoulder. They walked side by side toward the intersection, and Gavin stuck his hands in his pockets to keep from touching her. “It seems like you guys are out on at least three or four calls a day.”
“We have been. It’s always busier in the summer.” Gavin stopped at the corner and pushed the button on the crosswalk pole. “Most of them are false alarms or the usual stove-top mishap, but we’ve had two more suspicious fires. Both were on the edge of town and in empty buildings, luckily. One was the abandoned gas station on Route 2, and the other was an old toolshed on the Thompsons’ property. Whoever is doing it seems to be getting bolder. They’re choosing locations closer and closer to town.”
“You really think someone in town is setting fires deliberately?” Jordan asked as they crossed the street toward the shop. “That seems crazy, Gavin. Who would do that?”
“A crazy person, but I can’t believe it would be anyone who lives here,” Gavin shot back. He stepped onto the sidewalk and instinctively rolled his left shoulder, the scarred skin feeling tighter than usual. “You’d have to be insane to intentionally start a fire and invite that monster into the world. Make no mistake about it, Jordan. Fire is a living, breathing monster that eats everything in its path. It doesn’t discriminate or feel pity or remorse. All it does is burn.”
His jaw clenched as he fought the surge of fury mixed with shame that bubbled up as sinister memories from that day in the barn reared their ugly heads. He stared at the firehouse, his voice gruff and strained as he recalled the worst moment of his life.
“If you’re not crazy, then you’re a stupid kid who doesn’t know any damn better. But stupidity is what gets people killed, and no matter how many times you want to go back and fix it…you can’t. Some mistakes can’t ever be atoned for.”
Wrapped up in the dark tangle of memories, Gavin squeezed his eyes shut as faint echoes of Jimmy’s screams filled his head. He’d tried to get to him, to pull him from the flames like he had with Ronan and Tommy, but he couldn’t. The flames had been too hot and the smoke so thick he couldn’t breathe. Even all these years later, Gavin could still hear the boy screaming for his brother.
The only sound worse than Jimmy’s screams had been the deafening silence that followed.
Gavin gritted his teeth against the stomach-churning memory, but the fury dissipated slowly when soft, warm fingers curled around his clenched fist. He stilled and opened his hand as Jordan tangled her fingers with his and inched her lithe body closer, pressing it gently against him. Flicking his eyes open, Gavin immediately caught Jordan’s empathetic stare. Bit by bit, the tension seeped from his body like smoke.
“You were children, Gavin. Babies really. And it was an accident. A horrible, tragic accident,” Jordan whispered, her other arm linking through his, pulling him closer still. “Gavin, that fire wasn’t your fault. You have to know that. Especially after doing what you do for a living.”
Looking into her compassionate face, he wished more than anything that what she said was true. Just as that thought rippled through Gavin’s mind, his attention was captured by a flicker of movement behind Jordan. Tommy Miller came shuffling toward them with his familiar, off-kilter gait. His scars, unlike Gavin’s, were visible and covered almost the entire right side of his body. Gavin caught his eye only for a moment before Tommy acknowledged him with a shy nod and climbed quickly into the van with the school’s emblem emblazoned on the side. The engine roared to life, and the muffler sputtered and coughed as he backed out of the space.
Tommy was always cordial to Gavin. Even back then, he never came right out and blamed him for Jimmy’s death. No one did. Tommy and Ronan never ratted him out, but they didn’t have to. Gavin knew the truth. He was the one who had stolen the cigarettes and matches from his father’s nightstand. If Gavin hadn’t done that, there never would have been a fire in the first place.
It had been his fault. Plain and simple.
Jordan must have sensed the shift in his demeanor because she held him tighter, her breast pressing against his bicep, taunting him with what he couldn’t have. Maybe he didn’t deserve to be happy. Maybe being this close to Jordan and not being able to have her was the universe’s way of punishing him.
Tommy drove away down Main Street, and a pall of guilt bloomed around Gavin like a plume of black smoke so thick and heavy that he practically choked on it.
“Like I said,” she murmured. “We all have our demons, Gavin.”
“Maybe,” he said tightly in a barely audible tone. “But you didn’t kill anyone.”
“No.” She tilted her chin, daring him to defy her. “And neither did you.”
“Tell that to Tommy Miller,” he said flatly.
Jordan blanched at his tone, which sent a pang of guilt flickering through him. What the hell was he doing? She didn’t need to deal with his baggage. The woman had plenty of her own crap to wade through, and here he was dumping his nonsense on her like some sappy dope on a talk show. Feeling stupid for allowing himself to get sucked into the darkness, he shrugged.
“Whatever, Jordan. Forget it. It’s not the same thing, okay?”
“You’re a piece of work, you know that?” She dropped his hand and slipped away from him as swiftly as she’d come, a flash fire going from hot to cold in a split second. “I see how it is. So it’s okay if I sit there and spill my guts to you, but the instant you have to talk about anything real, the conversation is over? You know, for a guy who claims he wants to be friends, you have a funny way of showing it. Last time I checked, friendship was a two-way street.”
“I don’t know what you’re getting your panties in a bunch about,” he groused. An older couple walking past them raised their eyebrows. Gavin lowered his voice and ran one hand over his face, fighting to keep his emotions in check. “You might want to rehash shit with your old man, but not all of us want to keep bringing up the past. What’s done is done. Okay? Drop it.”
“Fine. Consider it dropped. Thanks for lunch,” she seethed. “I have to get back to work. Good-bye, Gavin.”
Her dark eyes glittered with anger, and the harsh edge in her voice left no mistaking how pissed she was. He knew enough about women to know that saying “fine” was about the same as telling a guy to screw off. Before he could say a word, she stormed away and disappeared into the shop. He swore under his breath. He could go inside and try to explain himself, but based on the state he was in at the moment, he’d only mess things up more. She was right. Everyone had demons, and at the moment, his were fighting to break free.
* * *
Jordan had been twisted up in knots ever since her spat with Gavin, and as the clock ticked closer to closing time, she continued debating whether or not she should go to the firehouse to see him. Part of her was still pissed that he had shut her out, but the other part, the more dominant part, was heartbroken for him. She’d assumed, foolishly, that Gavin no longer blamed himself for the death of Jimmy Miller.
Gavin was strong, solid, and an immovable force, so the idea that this hulking man who ran into burning buildings for a living was still blaming himself for an accident decades ago seemed impossible. She’d stupidly thought that he’d conquered that demon, especially since he seemed hell-bent on helping her battle hers. Based on his curt reaction earlier, it was all too clear he remained a man haunted by his past.
The more she thought about her reaction, the worse she felt. It was the first time she had seen darkness bubble up beneath the surface of his typically even-keeled demeanor. Even when they were kids, Gavin seemed to hold it together. The man was the calm in the storm. When his brothers got in trouble, he was the one who came to their rescue or their defense, depending on what the situation called for. But that was typical with the ol
dest child in the family, wasn’t it? She remembered reading somewhere that the eldest was usually the caretaker, and that was a perfect word to describe Gavin.
He took care of everyone except himself.
Glancing out the window for the fifteenth time in as many minutes, she realized that his cool manner had wavered one other time today. When Jordan told him about Ted’s temper and the way he’d behaved in front of the girls, the shadow that passed over Gavin’s face had sent a shudder down her spine. For all his sweetness and thoughtfulness, something dark and dangerous simmered beneath the surface. She suspected that was the part of himself he called upon every time he ran into a burning building—and the same darkness he’d been stewing in out on the sidewalk.
This incident between them was a glaring reminder that nothing with the two of them would ever be easy or simple. Being friends with Gavin, let alone getting involved further, was a really bad idea. Individually, they had enough baggage to pack up the entire town. Twice.
The familiar lilt of Cookie’s voice pulled Jordan from her thoughts. She quickly pretended to be inspecting the flowers in the case instead of staring at the firehouse.
“So you and your boyfriend have been having lunch every day for like, two weeks. When do you two kids graduate to dinner and a real date?” Cookie asked with her typically perky energy. Arms full of flowers, she leaned both elbows on the glass counter as the door to the workroom swung shut behind her. “Veronica and I are taking bets. In fact, before she left tonight, she made me promise to text her if the chief showed up again.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” Jordan said in an unconvincing tone as she straightened up the tower in the center of the room. She adjusted the position of the various knickknacks for purchase and shrugged. “We’re friends.”
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