Standing Outside the Fire

by Jillian Neal

  Before she could debate listening to the voicemails, the phone rang in her hand. She jolted and tossed it back in her purse. Jamie glanced her way like she’d truly lost what was left of her mind. She retrieved the phone again and relief washed over her, restoring a little of her good sense. “It’s Becca.” She answered before voicemail could pick it up again.

  “Hey, listen, I’m so…”

  “Do not apologize! This is the coolest thing you’ve ever done. I’ve waited my whole life for my big sister to grow a pair and you finally did. Where are you? No. Wait. Don’t tell me. I suck at lying. How long are you staying out of town? No. Don’t tell me that either. You should’ve seen everyone’s faces. It was priceless. Also, I may have told Ed to suck it, which I know wasn’t nice, but then I also called him a twat-waffle. Because he is. And I decided I don’t feel bad about it. If a guy’s a twat-waffle someone ought to tell him.”

  Having no idea how to respond to any of that, Charlie’s mouth continued to gape but she produced no sound. Finally, she came up with, “You called Ed a twat-waffle?”

  Jamie choked on the sip of Dr. Pepper he’d just taken as he burst out laughing.

  “Yes, I did. Because he pisses me off with the way he treats you. He acts like you’re lucky to be with him when it should be the other way around. Plus, he’s so controlling. Gross. He’s lucky you even gave him the time of day. It’s about time you realized your worth.” Charlie wasn’t entirely certain that was why she left, but she knew better than trying to reason with her sister. It would be more productive to beat her head against a brick wall. “But now you’re finally with Jamie, and this is exactly what was always supposed to happen. I am so fucking excited for you. Plus, as your little sister you owe it to me to tell me everything about you and Jamie in bed. The boy has a reputation as I’m sure you know. Save a horse, ride a Holder and all.”

  “Bec,” Charlie huffed, “that is not going to happen. Ever. Why would you even think that?” The sucker punch of disappointment in her own belly brought her up short. Where had that come from? That wasn’t allowed.

  “Why?” Becca whined.

  Why? Charlie rolled her eyes. “You know why.”

  “No, I know the shit you tell yourself and anyone else who asks—it would ruin our friendship, you could never be in a relationship with a firefighter after what happened to Mom, he wouldn’t be interested. But those are lies, and you know it. Bottom line is that you won’t let it happen because you’re scared.”

  “I am not scared,” Charlie gave the reflexive answer primed on her tongue.

  “Bullshit.”

  “Becca, I’m hanging up now. You’re being ridiculous.”

  “Am I?”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “Tell me this then—you spent all freaking morning in your dress staring out the window into the parking lot. Who was it you were looking for? On your freaking wedding day, Charlotte, who were you searching for?” Her family only called her Charlotte when they wanted to make a point. And her sister had one, damn her. “That’s what I thought,” Becca stated triumphantly. “You’ve done the hard part. He’s right there beside you. He is always right there beside you. He always will be. I don’t give a bull’s hindquarters what Dad says about him. Stop being afraid to live. Stop doing what you think everyone else wants you to do. For once in your life, take a chance on something. He’d never let you down. But even if it doesn’t work out, you’ll be okay. I won’t let you not be okay. Plus, you’re stronger than you give yourself credit for. You and I got out of that fire. Mom wouldn’t have wanted us to just survive. She’d want us to be happy. Now, I love you. I miss you, but do not come back home until you’ve got your shit figured out. God, if you won’t do it for yourself, do it for Mom. She was a badass, and you are too, when you let yourself be.”

  Chapter Nine

  Charlie sat in the Hi-Way Diner not really tasting the food, though she was sure it was delicious. She’d lost her voracious appetite.

  There was a loud group of guys in the back-corner booth. They had to be ex-military. They all had the look. They seemed to be having a good time, cutting up and joking around. One of her favorite pastimes was occasionally eavesdropping on strangers. She liked to make up backstories for the people she encountered. In her made-up stories, everyone got to have a happy life. They got to fall in love and have babies and marriages never ended and there were never fires. There were never scars.

  She couldn’t get Becca’s words or her question out of her mind. Why did she make up happy stories for everyone else but never imagined one for herself? That seemed…sad. Her mother would be disappointed to know that’s how Charlie thought.

  “Hey, what did Becca say to you?” Jamie finally asked. “You haven’t said a word since you got off the phone. You look like you just walked out of a morgue.”

  How apropos. Jamie had always been able to read her like an open book. She used to love that about him. Currently, she wished she could shut herself up tight with a lock like those diaries she used to keep when she was little. The ones that had been turned to ash.

  She shrugged. “Becca said that I needed to stop being afraid to do what I want to do.”

  “Girl runs wild, but she’s got a point. All right, so what is it you want to do?”

  Kiss you. She shook her head back and forth telling herself no. “I…have no idea,” she lied, and she suspected he knew it.

  “You don’t know, or you don’t want to tell me?”

  “I tell you everything.” Another lie.

  “Except whatever’s going on in your head right now. And you didn’t tell me Captain Twat-Waffle didn’t want you hanging out with me, so you don’t tell me everything.”

  Charlie half smiled over Ed’s new rank and name. “I should probably have asked Becca if she knew where he was.”

  “It don’t matter where he is. I’ve got you. If he somehow figured out where we were and wants to come looking for you, he can come through me.”

  Rolling her eyes at that, she shook her head. “I don’t need you to protect me from the Captain. He’s completely harmless.” Her smirk at least got him to grin. His harmlessness was one of the things that had first attracted her to the idea of Ed. He was safe. Nothing to fear because there was nothing to feel at all.

  “Yeah, well, I like protecting you. Always have. Always will. Gets me hard thinking you need me.”

  Charlie was quite certain her own shock was reflected back in Jamie’s eyes. Did he know what he just said? Did he mean to say that? “Uh,” he promptly panicked. “I didn’t mean that. I mean it…uh…makes me feel…good to know that I can be a good friend. Good?”

  Holy baby Moses in a basket. Her eyes were the only part of her body not frozen. She managed a few blinks. Slowly, her head seemed to thaw, and she remembered how to nod.

  “You gonna eat that?” Jamie pointed to her mostly uneaten meatloaf. Charlie slid it across the table to him and watched him devour it all in a few bites. She suspected he was shoveling food in his face so he didn’t have to look at her and wouldn’t have to talk.

  It was just a slip. He hadn’t meant it, like he said. She should tease him about it to prove that she knew it meant nothing, but her mouth was still incapable of producing words.

  She sat in awkward silence listening to the guys in the back corner. It sounded like one of them had just told the others that his wife was pregnant again. “I thought you two were just friends,” one of the others harassed.

  Finally, it was all too much. She had to rescue Jamie. He’d rescued her a dozen times over. That particular day being the biggest rescue of them all. She owed him. “Hey, I know you were just kidding,” she offered the lie that would save them both.

  Relief softened his hazel eyes. “Yeah, I don’t even know why I said that. That’s not what I meant.”

  She wondered if any table in that old diner had ever held as many lies between the patrons as the one they were sitting at. She nodded out the next. “You were ma
d about Ed.”

  “Yeah.” Jamie leapt on that. “Guy just pisses me off.”

  “Becca says I deserve better.”

  “You do.”

  “She says I deserve someone who won’t ever let me down.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Yeah, my kid sister went and got smart on me.”

  “Then there’s hope for Wes and Dalton yet, I guess.”

  There. Now, they were talking like two old friends. She forced a smile. “They have a great big brother so they’ll be just fine.”

  “Does that mean you’re taking total credit for Becca?”

  “Of course.”

  He laughed and looked even more relieved than she felt. They were such good friends they could even overcome the mother of all awkwardness. She needed to remember that.

  Jamie tossed his napkin down on the table. “Are you ready to get back on the road? We’ve got about two more hours give or take.”

  “Definitely. I don’t want to keep Colt up. It sounds like he’s not getting much sleep as it is.” At least that was the truth.

  Jamie mentally beat the crap out of himself as they drove on in silence. What the hell? No, better question—where the hell had that even come from? The fact that it was the truth did not matter. He’d been keeping that truth from her for decades. He had to keep on doing that.

  Jesus, he needed to get to Camden Ranch and get his head together. He hoped Colt had something about a hundred proof that he could down before he crashed on the couch. It occurred to him that alcoholism wasn’t attractive on anyone, and he’d had way too much to drink over Charlie in the last few days.

  Moving on to another plan--he’d skip the booze and just hit the sack. Maybe getting a decent night’s sleep would restore his common sense.

  “I’ve never seen so much corn,” Charlie commented as the fields flew past their windows.

  “Really? I just drove you through Kansas.”

  “Yeah, but this is the Cornhusker state.”

  “True. It’ll be good to see Colt. He hasn’t been home in a long time.”

  “Do you think he still thinks of Holder County as home or does he think of Nebraska as his home now?”

  Jamie considered that for a beat. “Honestly?”

  “Of course,” she urged.

  “I think he considers Avery home. Doesn’t much matter where he is as long as she’s there.”

  Charlie gave him one of those smiles that seemed to somehow align the light of her soul with her emerald eyes like a prism. “That’s so sweet.”

  Jamie shrugged. “Just calling it like I see it.”

  “Do you think I should call Daddy?” she asked all of a sudden.

  “To tell him what?”

  “I don’t know. That I’m okay and I’m sorry.”

  “Are you sorry?”

  “That I left? No. That he spent money on the ceremony that never happened? A little.”

  “Do you want to talk to him?”

  “No.”

  “I thought we were working on you doing what you wanted to do.”

  “That’s true.” Charlie seemed relieved at that answer.

  They’d talked all the way to Lincoln, and Jamie had forgotten all about music. Managing the steering wheel with one hand, he fished his phone out of his pocket, used his teeth to hook it into the sound system in his truck, and turned on the playlist he’d made of all of Charlie’s favorite songs. He needed more of those grins of hers. They were a drug. He required another hit to keep himself sane.

  When Garth started singing, she beamed. Yeah, that was the good stuff. That was the stuff he’d tried to find in a bottle the night before. That’s why he’d kept drinking. Nothing was as intoxicating as her. “You’re the best,” she vowed.

  “I keep telling you, I know.” He winked at her.

  There was one road that led through Pleasant Glen, and it ran parallel to the train tracks. They drove past Saddleback’s Bar and Grill and both of their brows furrowed.

  “Is that a church sign they’re using to advertise the bar?” Charlie asked.

  “Looks to be.” The fact that the church sign informed everyone that a band called The Original Sinners would be performing Friday night made it all the more odd and hilarious.

  Jamie was yawning when they pulled under the gates of Camden Ranch. Exhaustion weighted both of them. He wondered how much sleep Charlie had gotten the night before.

  It wasn’t that late, but he suspected the sheer relief she must feel had let her relax.

  He followed Colt’s directions and parked the truck outside of the small cottage near the gates. There were several trucks nearby. Jamie hoped the entire Camden family didn’t feel like they needed to be there to welcome them or anything.

  He secured their luggage, which was really just her makeup bag, five Target bags, and a sack of snacks from a gas station. She tucked close to him as they made their way to the porch. It was a chilly night without a single cloud in the sky. There was a full moon, but she hadn’t seemed to notice, and he wasn’t going to bring it up. He knew she hated them.

  Charlie was doing that thing she did when she was nervous where she gnawed on her thumb nail. “You okay?” he whispered before he knocked on the door.

  “Yeah, but I feel like we’re imposing.”

  “I don’t think they mind. We’ll help out while we’re here.” He hoped her nerves were really about being polite and not about staying with him. They hadn’t spent the night together since the last time they’d run away to the creek when they were sixteen.

  Colt pulled open the door. “’Bout damn time.” He laughed and yanked Jamie into a full-force hug. There were several other Camdens standing in the living room. “How the hell are you?” He slapped Jamie on the back and then tipped his hat to Charlie. “I haven’t seen you in years. How are you, Charlie?”

  But Charlie didn’t answer. Jamie turned to stare at her. He followed her line of sight to the fire roaring in the fireplace. Fuck. She was whiter than a sheet and trying and failing to clutch his hand. Her arm wouldn’t seem to lift. That’s okay, if she couldn’t move, he always would. He wrapped his arm around her tight and forcibly turned her head and laid it on his shoulder, trying to get her away from the sight of the flames. “Colt,” he growled quietly through his teeth.

  Obviously confused, Colt glanced from Jamie to Charlie and then to the fire. His eyes widened in horror. “Shit. I’m sorry. I forgot.” He cringed and quick-stepped to the fireplace where he made the flames disappear with the flip of a switch. “It’s a gas fireplace. No chimney. Goes out completely when you turn off the gas.”

  Jamie appreciated his cousin trying, but he doubted those reassurances were going to be enough.

  Colt cleared his throat and went on with introductions. “This is my Uncle Ev and Aunt Jessie. And you probably remember my brother Brock from the wedding.”

  Jamie shook everyone’s hands and made his offer to Mr. Camden. “We appreciate you letting us crash here. If I can be of any help, sir, don’t hesitate. I know a thing or two about running cattle.”

  Ev chuckled but he was eyeing Charlie with a great deal of fatherly concern. “You’re family, son. You’re welcome up here anytime. ‘Sides, we seem to be running a refuge ranch for runaway brides. The thing I noticed the last time this happened was that what everyone really needed was a break.”

  Mrs. Camden beamed at them. She gently rubbed Charlie’s back when she hugged her. “We’re so glad you two are here. Now, what can we do to get you settled in? There’s some coffeecake for the morning and there’s hamburger meat and a few steaks in the fridge, too, along with a few other things for making meals. Katy said she’d drop off a few casseroles tomorrow, but you all are more than welcome to come up to the big house to eat.”

  “Who’s Katy?” Charlie whispered to Jamie. At least she’d found her voice again, but she was clearly on high alert.

  He searched the recesses of his mind, but he’d only ever been around the Camden
s for Colt’s wedding and he hadn’t quite memorized the names. “One of the brother’s wives, right?”

  Jessie smiled. “Yes, and don’t worry about keeping up with them. Just about the time I think I got a handle on the number of grandkids we have, one of them up and has another one. I’ve lost all count, and they’re my kids.”

  Everyone except Charlie laughed. Jamie had seen her like this twice before. Once when she’d come out to the ranch unexpectedly when they’d been doing some spring burning. The other when they’d attended a wedding for some friends of theirs in Tulsa. The reception had been held at some historical house, and they’d had every fireplace roaring. The fire that had killed her mother had started in the chimney one cold winter night. Her father had built a fire early in the evening and then had put it out later on. They’d thought they were safe.

  “Your ranch is beautiful,” Charlie commented robotically.

  Colt, Brock, and Ev all gave her a concerned smile. Ev nodded. “Thank you, sweetheart. We do what we can with what we have. Can’t really do more than that. It’s not quite Holder Ranch, but we get by all right.”

  Jamie wasn’t certain what to say to that, so he tried, “Yeah, well, there’s a few more of us to run all that land. Besides, my daddy and his brothers have had a competition going for years to see how much of Oklahoma they can slap the Holder brand on. I’m not sure they even know where to put the fences anymore. ‘Bout the time we get ‘em up we’re having to move ‘em to expand. It’s too much.”

  “Cattle rancher can’t ever have too much land, now can he?” Ev countered.