Scorch

by Dani Collins

  Half an hour later, Jacqui came into the house as Vin was scouting dinner ingredients. He’d pulled a couple of chicken breasts from the freezer, but they were frozen solid.

  “I guess I’ll thaw those in the microwave?”

  “Oh, um, I didn’t take anything out because I’ve been meaning to ask you… You’ve been so busy I haven’t seen you.” She set down her bag on one of the kitchen chairs. “I’m going to Russ’s sister’s for dinner tonight. His parents are going to be there and I know you’re on call with S&R, but… I spoke to Rhonda. She said of course to invite you.”

  He made a face, thinking of the gossip that was already starting.

  “Please?” she blurted with panic edging her eyes.

  Vin recognized that look. She’d worn it when she had told him she was coming home and again when she had talked about emptying her bedroom of Russ’s things. She still hadn’t gone into the master bedroom as far as he could tell. She was sleeping on the couch and using his bathroom to shower.

  “Need a wingman?”

  “It’s weird, right? I’m being weird. They’re family. I shouldn’t feel threatened.”

  She’d been keeping a low profile since she’d come home, picking up the odd grocery item, but mostly going from home to the base and back. He’d heard her take a few calls, but hadn’t seen her make any, seeming reluctant to advertise that she was back.

  He leaned on the counter next to the fridge, thinking about how much the evening would suck for him.

  “No?” She sounded forlorn.

  “I feel really guilty, Jac. I’ve seen Rhonda a couple of times at the bank, but his parents? Not since the funeral.”

  “They don’t blame you!” She came forward and gripped his wrists where he had them folded across his chest. Her hands were cool from being outside. “We all know that the work is risky, that this could happen. No one thinks you could have done anything more than you did.”

  He searched her eyes, really hoping that was the truth.

  “Oh, Vin.” She breathed. “When you said you think all the time about what else you could have done, you weren’t exaggerating, weren’t you?”

  He closed his eyes, letting out an exhale that was more a jagged groan of pain. “It’s an endless loop.”

  “The counseling didn’t help?”

  He opened his eyes enough to silently ask if she was serious. “They told me to keep a diary.” He let his shoulders drop as he was honest with himself. “Actually, they said to keep a record of what I’m thinking, or, if that’s too much, to at least note the time, to track how often I think of the accident. That way I’ll be aware that I’m doing it and can make a point of thinking about something else. I get the reasoning, but…” He pushed his hand into his hair.

  “Letting go of the guilty thoughts feels like letting go of Russ, which feels disloyal and awful.” She said it with the knowledge of shared experienced.

  “Yes.” The huge cloud of inadequacy over failing his friend broke apart enough to offer the barest glimmer of sunlight. He rubbed his face, digging his finger and thumb into eyes that felt salted and painful. “I watched it happen and couldn’t do a damned thing. I couldn’t get to the ground any faster. I couldn’t get to him, couldn’t get up to him, any faster than I did. I ordered the rescue chopper. That’s all I could do. Then I probably made his injuries worse, lowering him, but I couldn’t wait for help. For a spine board and collar. I couldn’t leave him up there.”

  “I know. You did everything right, Vin. You did everything you could do.”

  Her light fingers soothed across his forearms and it was almost an irritation. His guards were all the way down, leaving him raw. His skin felt like the top layer was gone, but he needed that touch even though it blistered. It kept him here, not straining on the end of a rope as he lowered his unconscious friend in increments, through branches, sweating bullets at how painstakingly slow it was. Listening for chopper blades, listening for Russ to wake up and trash talk him for overreacting…

  He hadn’t been overreacting.

  He was trying not to let the terror and helpless rage and grief overcome him now. But he had to say this to Jacqui. He needed her to know.

  “I want to go back to before we left the base.” His voice was gritty and dry, painfully dry in his throat. “I want to tell him that we should wait for Dodson to get there. He was on his way and if we’d waited twenty minutes, the entire day could have been different. But Russ said no, he wanted to jump. He wanted to go because he hadn’t been out in a while and he had this same fucking bug, Jac. He needed to jump.”

  “I know.”

  When he thought he had control of his expression, he let himself look at her.

  Her eyes were wet, her expression fatalistic. “I know.”

  He sniffed back the congestion in his nose and made sure there weren’t any tracks under his stinging eyes. His face felt as though it was melting. He scrubbed it back into place.

  “Don’t feel guilty, Vin. I know it’s not that simple, but I’m telling you as your friend and coworker and Russ’s wife that you aren’t responsible for Russ’s death. He wanted to jump. No one pushed him out of that plane.”

  It wasn’t that simple. His guilt was compounded by how fragile Jacqui had become as a result. That was a big part of the reason he would do just about anything to cushion any further blows life swung her direction.

  But he had really needed to hear those words aloud. The fact they came from her gave them extra power. He took a shaken breath and opened his arms. He was already split down the middle and wide open. Pulling her in stopped up that gap. It hurt, but felt good. The pressure of her warm body eased the pain and let him catch his breath.

  He wasn’t an expert on personal relations, but he understood the embrace to be a bonding moment. Physical contact with men, elbow to elbow in mud or in a chain or on a rope, built trust that you could be in close quarters without threat. Cuddling a woman built the trust for more intimate physical contact.

  This was both of those things and more. It was a deeper kind of trust built on emotional contact. He had never in his life believed in soul mates or anything frou-frou like that, but in this moment, he knew the two of them occupied not just the same head space, but the same heart space. They weren’t alone on two sides of Russ’s death, they were side by side, facing it together.

  And out of the blue, in this quiet moment of closeness, the nagging loneliness that was his only true friend, stepped aside. For a moment, he was awash in a feeling he couldn’t even name. It was beautiful and terrifying, like the peaceful float in the air before he felt the slam of the ground below.

  He found himself smoothing his hand up and down her back, slowing to get to know the shape of her, tracing her spine, spanning across the small, sharp plates of her shoulder blades, liking the weight of her against him and the familiar smell of—

  “Is that my shampoo?”

  He dipped his nose closer to the feathery silk of her hair, inhaling again, kind of turned on by the mingling of her scent with his.

  “I like it better than mine. You’re starting to think I’m a real pain in the keister, aren’t you?” She tilted her head back, flashing a playful grin. Her arms stayed curled around his waist, palms flat and warm against his lower back.

  “I would, if you had more hair. And we lived in nineteen-oh-two.”

  They shared a grin and he grew aware of the way her pelvis was angled to brace her weight against the tops of his thighs. Her stomach warmed his goods.

  Her gaze drifted to fix on his mouth and her smile faded. Her lips parted.

  He felt his tongue move to wet his own lips. The tingle of desire crept in, gathering across his shoulders as an impulse to drag her closer, readying his mouth for the feel of hers. He started growing wood.

  Shit. He straightened off the counter and pressed her back a step. What the hell was that? Had he nearly kissed her?

  She was blushing all over and scampered to pick up her bag from
the chair. “Yeah, so, um, Rhonda’s?”

  “Sure, yeah, totally happy to score a free meal.” Score. Bad choice of words and he should not be agreeing to be her date for the evening, but he was saying anything to get them past that stupid “wanna kiss?” moment.

  All those askance looks at the station ballooned in his mind. Nice one, Kingston.

  “Thanks, Vin.” She sounded sincere, but kept her gaze down. “I’ll, um, take Mutt for a quick walk. He can’t come. Their daughter is allergic.”

  “So I have time to shower and shave.” He gave his sandpaper jaw a scrape with his palm. “Do I need a tie?”

  “No! No, of course not. But, yeah, take your time. We can leave in an hour or so. I’ll see what kind of wine is in the fridge in the garage. Save us stopping on the way.”

  They were both babbling and she thankfully put a stop to it by calling the dog into the garage. The door whooshed shut and he heard the leash rattle off its hook on the back of the door.

  Vin let out a breath at the ceiling, then took the stairs in big leaps, putting as much distance between himself and Russ’s widow as he could.

  Chapter Five

  As they got on the road to Rhonda’s, Jacqui confessed, “They were really hoping I was pregnant.”

  She was trying to get things back to normal from an hour ago when she’d given Vin that, kiss-me-you-fool invitation, and he’d veered away like she was a street beggar.

  She hadn’t meant to come on to him. Hugging him had felt really natural and nice and his mouth was so damned intriguing and kissable looking. His whole body was, well, she didn’t blame women for throwing themselves at the men from the base. They were insanely fit. All of them. Not just Vin.

  None of the rest were provoking this level of lust in her, though. Her desk at work put her right in the mix of the men, grabbing coffee and throwing down with trash talk. They tossed banter her way and some were inveterate flirts who charmed out of habit. They were good-looking and funny and she adored them all like Snow White’s dwarves.

  Except Vin.

  She wasn’t sure why attraction toward him kept blindsiding her like this. It was mortifying when he obviously thought of her as a friend. If her interest was unwanted.

  “Russ’s parents?” Vin swung his head to ask. “I guess that’s understandable.”

  “Hmm? Oh. Yeah,” she agreed morosely, looking out her side window at the herd of bighorn sheep that had come to lower ground to search out the first tufts of spring’s greenery.

  “You were, too, weren’t you?” he asked after a beat, quiet and wary, like he was treading very cautiously. “Hoping for a baby?”

  She sighed. He wasn’t the only one struggling with guilt.

  “I wanted to raise a baby with my husband, not by myself.” She picked a strand of yellow dog hair off her knee. “Single parenting isn’t easy. My parents did it for years after they divorced and they were still, you know, both alive and part of my life. They cooperated with each other as much as possible. Dad paid support to Mom. Money was okay on both sides. And even though they divorced when I was nine, Dad didn’t take that job in Florida until I was thirteen. So it wasn’t all on just one or the other to do it all with raising me. But they were both still holding down demanding jobs and had mortgages to pay. When Dad moved to Florida, it was for a really good promotion, not to get away from parenting. I always went to him for Thanksgiving and the summer, which gave Mom a break, but Dad hated leaving me alone during the day while he went to work. Which was ironic because here, Mom left me alone when she worked nights.”

  She had wanted so badly to zip her family back together. Sometimes she wondered if she had expected too much from her marriage. Had she put too much pressure on Russ to rewrite her childhood?

  “It’s been all I could do to take care of myself since Russ died,” she said wistfully. “If I was pregnant, I’d be about to give birth right now instead of going back to work. I can’t imagine that. Can you?” She turned her attention from her window to him.

  “All too vividly,” he said dryly. “I caught a baby once. You wanna talk about something that imprints on the brain…”

  She chuckled, knocked out of her maudlin thoughts into curiosity, wanting to ask more about that, but he flashed her a look halfway between empathy and a scold.

  “Being glad you weren’t pregnant doesn’t make you a bad person, Jac.”

  “I wasn’t glad.” Her heavy thoughts returned, pressing down on her so she bowed her head. “But I was kind of relieved,” she admitted with chagrin, fiddling with the tassel on the wine bag. “At the same time, I knew Russ’s parents would be devastated and… I just couldn’t take giving them more bad news and having everyone pity me, especially when there was a part of me that was okay with it. That’s why I left for Florida. I got my period and it hit me that—”

  She had to clear her throat and take a cleansing breath. Lifting her head, she looked out the window again, but didn’t know what she saw beyond the hard, cold truth.

  “Everything I thought I had with Russ was gone.”

  Maybe it had never been there. Maybe it was a blessing that she hadn’t had a child to keep that one-sided romance alive in her. Maybe it was time to grow up.

  That was the bitter thought she had bolted to Florida to avoid.

  She dug in her purse for a tissue and pushed it under her congested nose.

  “You want me to take a turn around the block?” he asked gently.

  “No, I’m okay. Look.” She showed him her dry cheeks. “I only cried twice today,” she said with mock pride.

  “Good work, champ,” he said with a wry grin, pulling up to Rhonda’s curb. “Is that why you wanted me to come here with you? You figured Russ’s parents would be less likely to bring up the lack of a baby if I’m here?”

  “I’m using you again. I’m sorry.” She wrinkled her nose.

  “I don’t mind. But listen.” He closed one eye in a wince as he turned off the engine. “I know that you and I are grown up enough to share a house without any hanky-panky.” He tilted a self-deprecating look at her. “I consulted your antique dictionary for that one. But, you know, small town, small minds. We shouldn’t be seen going out together too much. People will talk.”

  Jacqui stared at him for a couple of heartbeats, waiting for his deadpan look to break.

  It didn’t.

  “You’re serious?”

  He frowned. “Yeah,” he spoke cautiously, like he couldn’t hear everything that was wrong with what he had just said.

  “People talk about everybody. They talk about you and Tori. I heard yesterday she’s seeing the mechanic who took over the quick lube place on the other side of town.”

  “He’s her cousin. She told him about the opportunity, which is why he moved here. She’s not dating him.”

  “Exactly my point. People talk and get it wrong. Who cares?”

  “This is different.”

  “How?” She was growing really prickly with that old feeling of having all of her actions watched and weighed.

  Vin sighed like explaining himself was a chore, which got her back up even further.

  “Having a new captain has been a tough sell,” he said, sounding more like the man who kept the rookies in line than the man who’d been her friend all these months. “No one is ready to see anyone move in on Russ’s wife, especially the guy who’s supposed to be looking out for her.”

  “Is that what you are? The designated widow-nanny?” Her heart lurched.

  “No! No, Jac.” He gave her the “you’re being unreasonable” look men loved to give women. He was one suicidal mistake away from asking her if she was on her period now.

  “I thought we were friends.” Were they? She felt like her lungs were being crushed. She needed his friendship! Had she ruined things in that moment in her kitchen? Did he think she was after him and was warning her off? Oh, yay, more rejection of an involuntary infatuation. Her favorite thing.

  Her stupid eyes teare
d up.

  “Yes. Jac, yes. We’re friends. Shit. Don’t cry!”

  “I’m not crying!” She sat forward, eyes burning, arms folded, taking measured, hissing breaths through her nose.

  “I’m just saying we have to be aware of how it looks. I’m living in your house with you. You’ve hardly talked to anyone else here all winter. People are starting to turn that into more than it is.”

  Was she turning it into more? No. She would not go down that road again. He was her friend. She was allowed to have friends who weren’t women. They weren’t living in nineteen-oh-two.

  “If we know the truth, it doesn’t matter what other people think,” she muttered.

  “Yeah, it does. I need the respect of the crew when lives are on the line. I won’t have it if they think I’m acting like a douchebag, moving in on the captain’s wife.”

  “Because that’s all I am? The captain’s wife? I’m not a grown-up woman capable of deciding if I want to see someone?” She swung her head around to challenge him with a hard stare.

  “You’re not ready to start dating.” Something in the sharp blue of his gaze gave her heart a zing, heightening the intensity of this confrontation.

  “Am I not? Men are such arrogant jackasses sometimes! You don’t know what I feel. Let me tell you what you feel. You’re the one who’s not ready.” Her pulse battered her arteries like an out of control rally car. “You stupid men with your pigeon holes where you’ve filed me as ‘Russ’s widow’ and how dare I be ‘Jacqui.’”

  “Fine. Yeah. We’re not ready. Our job cost you your husband, Jac. We’re all feeling really damned protective of you. Me most of all. I would be really worried about you getting hurt if you started dating right now.”

  “Fine.” She bit out, pronouncing with exaggerated patience. “Concern noted. It doesn’t mean I can’t be seen speaking to you or any other man. It doesn’t mean I can’t move on if I feel like I’m ready. Do you have any idea how tired I am of this town owning my sexuality? You love Russ.” She mocked. “You’re saving yourself for Russ. When are you going to have Russ’s baby? Now I’m supposed to stay true to Russ even though he’s dead? Fuck that noise!”