Up In FLames (Eternal Flame Book 2)

by Peter Styles

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  Up In Flames

  (Eternal Flame Book 2)

  Peter Styles

  Important information…

  This book, “Up in Flames” is the second book in the Eternal Flame Series. However, this book and every other book in the series (more books coming soon!) can be read as a stand-alone. Thus, it is not required to read the first book to understand the second (as so on). Each book can be read by itself.

  Contents

  Important information…

  Prelude

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Preview (Eternal Flame Book 1): Fear of Getting Burned

  Prelude

  Even after years and years, people can still surprise you.

  I’d been with Nicky for seven years before things went sideways. To me, “going sideways” had always been an inherently bad thing and had brought with it a lot of images of alcoholics and Paul Giamatti and bleak camera angles, but when it actually happened, I realized what it really meant: your entire world getting so fucked up all at once that it feels like you dove headfirst down a rabbit hole so strange it would rival even the strangest revival of Alice in Wonderland.

  Nothing about Nicky and I had ever really been normal, but it was easy for me to forget that when we were alone together. We had two separate lives and came together at home, safe, secure, and happy in our own little personal void. We had carefully constructed a bubble around ourselves; I stayed away from the rough edges of his world, and he avoided smudging the clean lines of mine.

  But when everything did, in fact, go sideways, all edges and lines disappeared, and the bubble popped. And when it did, it did so violently and without interest in what would happen to the people inside of it.

  And it all started, as too many things in my life did, with a fire.

  Chapter One

  The guys were crowded around the TV, yelling. “Come on, Ramirez!” one of them shouted, “Throw the damn ball!”

  I scowled and tried to dig myself deeper into my cot, but nothing helped. I’d left my headphones at home, which was usually the only way to get away from the other guys in the fire house, so I was left gritting my teeth and listening to them watch whatever sport they were so into.

  My friend, Remy, turned to me with a wide grin spread over his angular, deep mocha face. “Yo, Tim, what are you doing over there?”

  It may as well have been a rhetorical question—Remy was my only friend at the fire house, so he knew exactly what I was doing—but for the benefit of the rest of the guys, I explained, “I’m trying to study.”

  “Study?” Another one of them, Louis, whipped around and frowned at me. “The fuck you studying for? You’re out of college.”

  I sighed. “The GRE,” I said. They should have known by that point, but anything that didn’t involve booze and girls never stayed in their heads for long. “I’m trying to go back to school, remember?”

  “Oh, right. The anatomy thing.”

  I tried not to roll my eyes. “I mean, it’s microbiology, but sure, let’s just go with anatomy.”

  “And you can’t take a five-minute break?”

  “I’ve only read like two chapters in the past five hours!” I snapped.

  “But we’re your friends!” Louis complained. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I wouldn’t have described any of them aside from Remy as friends. “You should chill out, have a beer. Come on, just hang out with us.”

  “I really can’t, Louis. I take the test in three weeks. I’m down to the wire. It’s officially crunch time.”

  Remy snorted. “You’re the only person on Earth who refers to three weeks as a cram session.”

  “Maybe so,” I said, turning back to my book. “But I really want to do well. I want to get into a good school. Like State.”

  “State?” Louis wrinkled his nose. “Nah, man, you got to go to U of M! Fuck those Spartan assholes!”

  Like a lot of people in Michigan, Louis had surprisingly strong opinions on colleges that he didn’t go to, especially considering he dropped out of the one he did attend. It never had anything to do with school; instead, it was all about each school’s respective football team. In the eyes of my co-workers, and most other Michiganders I knew, preferring one over the other was enough to start a family civil war.

  Fortunately, I paid no attention to sports, and I paid even less attention to Louis. I turned back to my book. “Could you guys just try to keep it down?” I sighed. “I can’t afford to fail this test. Literally. It’s nearly a hundred bucks just to take it.”

  “Sounds like a rip-off,” Remy commented.

  “Good thing you’re not paying for it, then.” He wasn’t completely wrong—college and college-based expenses were usually way overpriced—but it wasn’t like I had a choice. It was either pay for the test and try to get a good enough score to get into a decent school, or I would just stay a firefighter forever. Most of the guys I worked with were satisfied with the latter, but I wasn’t one of them. I’d always wanted more than that.

  It didn’t hurt that we were paid a pittance, and I had food to buy and a house to rent. A degree could mean a job that I not only liked, but that actually paid me in something more than extreme danger and Monopoly money.

  Louis tweaked up the volume on the TV, and I groaned. “Come on, man. Don’t be a dick. I cannot fail this test. You can just watch this shit later on YouTube.”

  Louis glanced at the door to our bunk, watching something through the window with a none-too-friendly grin. “Speaking of failures,” he murmured, and the door swung open to reveal my boyfriend, wearing a friendly smile and carrying a reusable shopping bag.

  Louis, Remy, and the rest of the guys exchanged knowing smirks.

  I was no stranger as to why. Nicky’s charm wasn’t exactly universal, especially among the guys in the fire house. We all spent most of our time working our asses off whenever possible, so the other guys didn’t really have much respect for someone who did nothing but sleep, sell weed, and try to build a music career. More than once, Louis had pointed out—with a fair amount of disgust—that Nicky didn’t even grow the weed himself, making him even less useful, apparently, than the guy he got his product from. Even Remy, who tolerated Nicky out of respect for our friendship, had often referred to him as “a very cheerful idiot.”

  It wasn’t that I didn’t understand why; hell, if I didn’t know Nicky so well myself, I might even think their arguments had merit.

  As it was, though, I wasn’t exactly a fan of listening to them talk that way about the guy I’d been in love with for the better part of a decade.

  “Hey, guys!” If Nicky sensed any animosity, he didn’t show it. He gave all of the guys his easy, brilliant smile. Skinny as he was, he was amazingly put-together. His big gray eyes sparkled like stars, his teeth were straight and white, his skin was almost entirely flawless, his nose was straight and thin in spite of the multiple breakages it had sustained, and his mop of wavy chestnut hair was cut into a fashionable jumble on the top of his head, fading into the shaved sides. He was the perfect combination of pretty and handsome. His perky, admittedly dumb personality may have been alienating, but his appearance was universally pleasing. Everywhere we went, people pressed their numbers into his hands. It was a little bit like dating one of the Beatles.

  The rest of the department had grown immune to h
is physical charms, though. He had accidentally forgotten who my superiors were at every single department function, messed up equipment by playing with it, and generally treated everyone like best friends without knowing them at all so many times that everyone I worked with was, it was safe to say, tired of him. They didn’t realize that all of these mistakes were made in total innocence; they figured he couldn’t possibly be that clueless and that there had to be some kind of malicious intent behind it. I couldn’t convince them that it was a combination of bad luck and natural overexcitement that led to all of those problems.

  A couple of guys spared a glance over their shoulders for Nicky, and Remy grunted in response to his greeting. The rest of them ignored him.

  “Hey, babe.” I sidled up to him, nervous. I didn’t want to risk anyone treating him poorly; seeing him hurt was like seeing a puppy used as the ball in a game of soccer. “What are you doing here?”

  “Thought you might be hungry.” He fished around in his bag and pulled out a sandwich, chips, and a salad. I noticed a couple of the guys shooting furtive glances at the food. Most people would have thought the messily-wrapped food had come from some hipster deli, but I knew better; Nicky rarely ate premade food. If he was bringing me food, it was going to be something he’d made himself, and it was going to be delicious.

  I gave him a smile. “Thanks, babe.”

  “Of course!” He turned to the group on the couch. “Hey, Louis, I’ve got your stuff with me. You want it?”

  “Dude!” Louis’s face went pink, and he cast a furtive glance around the bunk. “Man, you can’t just come in here and talk about that shit! I told you to drop it off at my apartment!”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “No buts!” Louis hissed. “Jesus, you idiot, if I get caught with weed in my bunk, the captain will have my ass!”

  Nicky’s face fell with guilt, and I turned to glare at Louis. He had reason to be mad—he wasn’t wrong, after all, and he would be fired in no time at all if the captain knew he’d ever so much as been in the same room as weed—but I couldn’t stand to see Nicky hurt. “Knock it off, Louis,” I growled. “It was a mistake.”

  Nicky fiddled with the bracelets and wristbands he always wore, biting at his lower lip. “I’ll drop it off at your place on my way home,” he promised.

  “Good.” Louis sighed and ran a hand over his face. He turned back to the TV, grumbling. I squeezed Nicky’s shoulder gently, and he shot me a grateful smile.

  The captain had impeccable timing, as always; he walked in right as the conversation ended. Nicky’s expression brightened again, excited at the possibility of having someone new to talk to. Captain Malcolm’s expression only hardened further, deep lines forming in the dark skin on his forehead. “Nicholas,” he said, standing up straight. I knew he was trying to be intimidating.

  Unfortunately for him, Nicky was never one to be intimidated. “Hey, Cap!” he said happily. “How’s the wife?”

  I winced, and the furrows between Captain Malcolm’s brows grew even deeper. “We’re getting a divorce,” he said coldly. “I believe I told you that at the picnic.”

  “Oh.” Nicky looked mortified. “Ah, shit, Cap. My bad. I totally forgot.”

  Captain Malcolm glanced at me, his eyes cold as steel. “It’s quite alright,” he lied, and I knew I was going to get an earful the second my boyfriend left.

  “Well,” Nicky said, patting Captain Malcolm on the shoulder, “there’s plenty of fish in the sea, right? I’m sure you’ll find someone soon. Big tough guy like you? Someone will snatch you up right away.”

  Captain Malcolm stared down at his shoulder as if trying to will it off his body.

  “Nicky, babe,” I said gently, “thanks for lunch, but you know I’ll be home at seven tonight, right?”

  “Fuck!” Nicky’s voice wasn’t angry, just mildly annoyed, but cursing was pretty much always his go-to. He snapped his fingers. “I thought that was tomorrow. Oh well.” He planted a kiss on my cheek. “I guess I get to see you twice today!”

  “I guess so.” I couldn’t help but return the grin. So I thought my boyfriend was cute, even when he was annoying the hell out of my co-workers. Sue me. I kissed the top of his head. “I’ll see you later.”

  “Okay!” he chirped. He turned to Captain Malcolm and gave him an exaggerated but good-natured salute before bounding out of the door. There was a faint squeak, and I knew that—even though he’d been told not to at least fifty times—he’d taken the pole down.

  Captain Malcolm glared at me. “I told you to keep him away from here, Chen,” he said.

  Uh-oh. Last name usage was never a good sign. For some people, that might have signaled camaraderie, but that wasn’t the case with our guys. I shrugged helplessly. “Sorry. I told him, but it seems he forgot. He’s got that brain thing, remember?”

  “Oh, you mean how he doesn’t have one?” Louis sniped, and I shot him a glare.

  “I remember.” Captain Malcolm’s words were clipped. “You, however, do not have a ‘brain thing.’ It’s your job to keep him out of here.”

  “Of course.” I wanted to argue, but I knew better; no one argues with their captain. “I’m sorry, sir. It won’t happen again.”

  Both of us knew that was a lie, but it was one he accepted with no fanfare. As much as I tried not to toot my own horn, I knew I was his best worker, and it wasn’t like he was going to fire me over my boyfriend being an occasional annoyance. I wasn’t going to try to push it, but I wasn’t going to go out of my way to make Nicky feel shitty about the whole ordeal, either.

  In spite of the fact that the Captain had a certain amount of appreciation and affection for me, he was apparently annoyed enough to send me down to clean gear with Louis and Remy. Louis scowled at me and knocked into my shoulder as he went by. Remy just gave me an exhausted look.

  “Great. Now he’s going to be acting like a baby the rest of the day,” Remy complained, glaring after Louis.

  “That’s not my fault!”

  “I know.” Remy sighed and rubbed his eyes. God bless him, he tried to be patient with me and Nicky, even though Nicky was way too rambunctious for him. Remy was a classic introvert and didn’t exactly love talking to anyone, even his friends, and Nicky— ever the extrovert—managed to push his buttons almost constantly. “Can’t you write him a note or something every day? Every time he shows up here, it’s like the station gets ten percent more unbearable and everyone gets more and more pissy with each other.”

  “I’m not going to leave him a note.”

  “Tattoo it on his forehead, then. I don’t give a shit. I just don’t need Louis acting like an asshole all day because your boyfriend tried to give him weed.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Okay, first of all, I’m not going to Memento Nicky. He has memory problems, but it’s not like he’s Drew Barrymore in Fifty First Dates. And second of all, it’s not like Nicky kicked in the door and asked, ‘Who wants some weed?’ Louis specifically ordered it from him.”

  “Yeah, for when he’s off duty. You can’t exactly blame the guy for not wanting to have illegal drugs on his person when he’s at work. Especially when our work is literally saving people’s lives.”

  “Nicky offered and Louis refused. That should be the end of it,” I said simply.

  But even when I said it, I knew they both had a point. Nicky wasn’t always the brightest, but he should have known better. He had common sense, after all; his issue was that he usually just did things without running it through a filter first.

  When I arrived home that night, Nicky was quietly setting the table and scuttling back and forth between the stove and the table, laying out an elaborate dinner. There was a massive, melt-in-your-mouth-tender roast surrounded by carrots and herbs, heaps of mashed potatoes, buttery green beans, brown sugar-laden sweet potatoes, thick gravy, and a thick loaf of homemade bread. I knew exactly what that all meant the second I saw it; he’d been anxiety cooking. Whenever he was nervous, he channeled that into food.r />
  Nicky’s exuberance was so bright and so obvious that most people never bothered to try to scratch at the surface of it to peek at what was beneath it, but I knew him too well. I knew exactly how afraid he was of upsetting people, and even after all our years together, he was still scared of upsetting me most of all. It was, I knew, a habit, something so deeply ingrained in him that it would take even more than our seven years together to change it, but it still wounded me to my very core.

  He didn’t meet my eyes when I walked in. When he noticed my presence, he became very still, folding his hands in front of him. His eyes darted over to look at the set of my mouth and take in my expression, but that lasted only a nanosecond before he looked instead at the floor.

  It was very quiet for several moments. I waited for him to break the silence first, but he was so tremblingly anxious that I knew he wouldn’t be able to get the words out, nor would he dare to say anything. I sighed softly. “Nicky,” I murmured. I stepped towards him, but I didn’t touch him. I waited for his eyes to meet mine, and when they did, I gave him a little smile. “It’s okay.”

  “I’m sorry,” he blurted. “They seemed pissed at you. When I got home, I remembered that the captain told me not to come back, but…” He winced. “I just feel so shitty. I’m so, so sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It’s not your fault.”

  The look he gave me was skeptical, but he didn’t argue. He rarely did. “I’d still rather they get mad at me than at you.”

  “Don’t worry.” I gave him a small, teasing smile. “They’re plenty mad at you.”

  The joke in my voice perked him up. He pressed his lips to mine in a soft kiss. “Thanks for that, jerk,” he joked when he pulled away. He looked at the table and bit his lip sheepishly. “I, uh, went a little overboard for dinner tonight, I guess.”

  “I noticed.”

  “I guess I just felt bad about interrupting you at work. I didn’t want you to be mad at me.”