And here was Fletcher Gates, of all the people in the entire world the one most likely to try to rescue her, telling her, after a manner of speaking, that she might not need to be rescued at all.
Chapter 9
“We’re friends,” Fletcher said, laying down a three of clubs on the discard pile.
Red snatched it up and made a sound of disbelief.
“What?” Fletcher asked, even though he knew exactly what Red was going to say.
“You don’t fall out of love with a woman like that. She’s the kind that’s impossible to shake.”
Fletcher shook his head and said nothing as Nick drew his card, slid it between two others in his hand, and grinned. Nick Baxter had the worst poker face in the world, even when they were playing gin rummy. But he didn’t seem bothered to hear Red talking about Fletcher and Hadley as a former couple.
Fletcher wondered if Red was blind to the fact that Nick was crazy about Hadley, or if the old guy’s attempts to get Fletcher to fall in love with her again were some kind of nudge that Nick should find someone else. Either way, it felt awkward to talk about her in front of Nick.
“It’s been a long time since we were together,” Fletcher reminded Red. “And in all those years, I’ve gotten over her. Trust me. And she has definitely moved on from me.”
Nick gave Fletcher a nod of support, or maybe he was telling Fletcher that it was his turn.
Sitting around this metal-legged table playing cards in the station still felt like cheating to Fletcher. They were at work, so they should be working, not playing gin. At least checking hoses or working out to stay strong. This “relaxing” put Fletcher on edge. At the BLM there was a different kind of downtime. It was called winter.
But Red assured him this was good for them. “We’re building our team,” Red said. “Connecting. You can’t lift weights and wash the engine all day.”
In truth, Fletcher itched for action. His month in Greensburg had included only three fire calls, two of which were located in other towns and by the time his team had arrived on the scenes, only cleanup remained.
He’d visited four elementary schools to give presentations about fire safety. After the first one, the chief had determined that Fletcher was the point guy for these things. Kids loved him, teachers swooned, and the pictures in the local paper made good PR.
But PR didn’t flush his body with adrenaline. Not like gearing up and fighting a fire did.
Fletcher found himself composing jokes about starting dumpster fires just to have something to put out, but he never said anything like that aloud. You didn’t joke about those kinds of things. People worried.
So he spent hours polishing the engine and lifting weights and beating Red and Nick at cards.
If he occasionally found himself stopping into Second Glance to look for a gift for his mom, there was nothing to read into that. It didn’t mean anything other than Hadley’s shop had the best gifts. And that there were uncharted possibilities for how things could go badly wrong in that building. Whatever he felt when he was with her was different than that missing adrenaline surge. Very different, he told himself. Totally different.
But how, he now wondered, was it possible that he wouldn’t have known she’d still live in town? How could he never have asked about her? How had he avoided hearing stories about her for the years he’d been gone? How had his mother never mentioned her own friendship with Hadley?
How could she have come back into his life as a surprise?
Fletcher was rarely surprised. He wasn’t sure how to handle it, to be honest.
Hadley continued to treat him with careful friendliness. Careful in the way she avoided seeing him in her shop until he stepped directly in front of the register, careful to avoid touching him, as if she knew exactly what the feel of her hands on his skin did to him. Careful to never be alone with him. Careful to make it clear that she could be polite, occasionally even friendly to him now, but she was uninterested in reigniting any past flames.
The old Hadley had made it clear when she was interested in him. Subtlety was not part of her toolkit. Her current pleasantness told him what he needed to know: he was welcome to play with her dog in the park and he was welcome to spend a few dollars in her shop now and then, but she had no intention of returning to the past.
Unfortunately, the past never left Fletcher. It parked somewhere between his brain and his heart and hovered there, reminding him daily, hourly, how it had felt to be Hadley’s guy, how his years with her had been his best years. Not in the vaguely pathetic “glory days” way of some guys who linger in the receding glow of high school stadium lights, but in the fact that when he was with her, he had become the best version of himself. He had learned to work hard, to open his mind to new ideas, and to think of someone else (maybe a specific someone else) before himself. Fletcher had liked himself best when he’d been Hadley’s.
So where did that leave him now?
Oh. Right. Losing at cards.
He sat up straighter in his chair and refocused on the game. Red and Nick rehashed details of a baseball playoff game that Fletcher tried for a second to care about. Within a few minutes, he was back in control of both his wandering mind and the hand of gin rummy.
When the alarm bell rang, Fletcher leaped to his feet, feeling every missing part of him come crashing back into place.
As if they did it every day, the team surged to the engine, took their places, and headed out into the autumn afternoon.
Fletcher, behind the wheel, switched on the lights and siren. He felt his focus tighten on the street, the next turn, the step directly ahead. Beside him, Nick handled the extra-vehicular communications, and in the back of the engine, men passed gear, checked connectors, and gave complete concentration to the work they all trained for.
The GPS led Fletcher to a farmhouse at the edge of town, but the men could see and smell the smoke several minutes before they arrived on the scene. A generations-old wooden barn engulfed in flame steamed, smoked and crackled, with a stubbled field to the east and a series of outbuildings to the west.
Each movement of the team, directed by Red, led the men to careful, precise efforts. A line of men unwound the hoses on the preconnects, allowing several of the guys to start attacking the outside of the structure as soon as they parked the truck.
Red mastered the deluge gun, pointing a heavy stream of water toward the front wall of the barn. On his signal, Fletcher kicked in the steaming door and ran inside. Every training instinct accompanied him. Every drill, every test, every simulation cleared Fletcher’s mind of all but the burning barn surrounding him. His legs propelled him forward, and from inside his helmet, he scanned the interior of the barn for people or animals.
One entire wall was stacked with bales of straw, which appeared to be the location of much of the flame.
“Doesn’t look like it’s spread too much,” Fletcher said into the headset.
“Roger,” Red responded. “Keep going.”
Pushing farther into the building, he saw wooden stalls with tack hanging from the walls, grateful for the peaked roofline that drew much of the smoke upward. Even so, very little light filtered through, and his headlamp spotlight tracked in careful arcs around the darkened structure. Near the back wall, Fletcher found a man and a teenage boy fighting to pull a horse out of its stall.
Fletcher gestured to the boy to open the rear door and get out and away, then guided the older man and the frightened horse toward daylight. The kid ran toward them shouting about two more horses, and Fletcher directed the man to stay as far from the barn as possible; he returned to release the remaining animals.
The horses in the other two stalls reared up frantically as Fletcher approached them. He couldn’t blame them, but he didn’t have time to make friends with them, either. Pushing past the huge animals, he pulled out a hatchet and slammed it into the back wall of the first stall. Splintering the aged wood, he pounded against the slats until they broke away, drawing smoke out into
the barnyard. He managed to get the horse turned around and pointed toward the light, trusting it to its instincts and its owners.
The last horse screamed in protest as Fletcher approached. Legs rearing, it kicked and stamped. “I know you’re scared. It’s all right,” Fletcher said. “I’ll get you out of here, but you’re going to have to trust me.” He held one gloved hand toward the horse, hoping that it would sense his intentions.
Fletcher knew very little about horses, but this one did not seem to take to him.
“Give me a little room, would you?” Fletcher tried to place his hand on the horse, but the animal was not having it. The substantial head crashed into Fletcher’s own, knocking loose his helmet and making him see stars. Fletcher’s vision tunneled to black for a few seconds, and he stood in place, his hands out, praying he wouldn’t fall. “Come on, buddy. That’s not nice. Give me a break, will you?”
He murmured to the horse for a few more seconds, grateful when the light of the fire crept back into his field of vision. “You really rang my bell, you know? Now it’s time to step out of here. Come on, let me through.” Fletcher continued to speak calmly, taking steps toward the back of the stall at every opportunity. When he successfully smashed the wall apart and the horse broke through into the yard, Fletcher couldn’t help himself.
“You’re welcome, you ungrateful beast.” He might have added a few other adjectives, but he did it under his breath.
Fletcher pulled his helmet back on and reported into the dangling piece of his headset that the structure was cleared and received his next instruction. As he moved through each assignment in concert with his team, he felt the gratification of successful and important work.
Only after the flames were doused and the smoke had cleared did Fletcher allow himself to notice the pain in his head. Inside the engine and driving his crew back to the station, his left temple throbbed. He could feel the pulse in his eye. He pressed his fist into his left eye to push the pain back, and the guys in the truck jeered him for the rough, jolting turns. Nick didn’t say anything, but Fletcher saw him watching.
As they let the guys off the engine and backed into the bay, Nick said, “Are you…?” but Fletcher cut him off.
“It’s fine,” he said. “Nothing.” He tried to shake his head, but dizziness overtook him.
He knew it was not nothing, but he didn’t want to be benched.
After a hot shower and a sandwich, Fletcher made his way back to the engine bay to help clean, restock, and prep the engine for the next call. Handing gear up from the storage lockers to the guys inside the truck he felt the pain in his head throb and recede every time he looked from the ground up. Maybe that was a good sign, he thought.
One at a time, the guys on the crew were brought in to report to the chief. Savanna’s voice called them over the intercom, and Fletcher didn’t think he imagined it when her voice held more venom saying his name than it did saying any of the others.
“Dude. She hates you,” Nick said, laughing.
“No kidding,” Fletcher said.
“Glad she doesn’t hate me,” Nick said, grinning. “I couldn’t live with that.”
Fletcher tossed the bag he was transferring into the waiting arms of the guy in the truck and jogged back toward the chief’s office. When his feet thumped against the floor, his head felt like a rattle. He slowed.
Walking past Savanna’s desk, he noticed that she was studying her computer monitor so she wouldn’t have to look at him. He said, “Thanks.”
Now she looked. She glared at him. “Thanks for what?”
He didn’t know, really. He was only trying to soften her fangs. “For always doing such a great job. We wouldn’t last five minutes without you,” he said, giving her what he hoped was a winning smile.
She made a growling noise, but she didn’t spit on him. So, win.
“Fletcher.” The chief welcomed him into the office. “Red tells me you’re injured.”
So much for preliminaries.
“I’m fine.”
The chief cleared his throat.
Fletcher started again. “I took a head-butt from a horse, but I’m feeling much better.”
The chief nodded and pushed a button on his phone. Savanna’s voice came through, at least Fletcher was pretty sure it was Savanna’s. It was sweeter than he ever heard it.
“Help you?” she said through the intercom.
“Who’s here from EMS?”
“Rogers and Duckworth,” she answered.
“Send them in here, would you?”
“You bet,” she almost sang.
Maybe it really was only him, Fletcher thought.
Chief Grantham asked a few questions about how the team worked together on the fire, and Fletcher answered truthfully and positively.
At a knock on the door, the chief summoned the EMS guys into the office.
“Gates here had a run-in with a horse,” he said. “I want you to have a look.”
“Sure,” the taller tech said. He motioned for Fletcher to get up, and he seemed to take a great deal of pleasure at looking down at Fletcher. He’d heard it was always like this—so much competitive energy between EMS and firefighters.
“Where’s it hurt?” Duckworth asked.
“Just a bump on the head,” Fletcher said.
“Mmm,” Duckworth said, managing to broadcast doubt in the syllable. He pulled out a flashlight and shined it first into one eye, then the other.
Fletcher willed his pupils to dilate.
Duckworth prodded a bit, probably more than he needed to, and then nodded his head. Quietly, he said, “You took a big hit. I imagine that hurts more than you’re saying.” For the first time, he looked directly at Fletcher. “You’re going to rest for a few days, and you’ll be great.” He turned to the chief. “It’s a bump on the head, but it’s a big one.”
Chief Grantham laughed. “Big head, or big bump?”
“I’d bet both,” Duckworth said. “He’s concussed.” He turned back to Fletcher. “Go see a doc if it affects your vision.”
Relieved, Fletcher thanked the EMS guys as they left. A few times over the past couple of years, smokejumpers had been injured badly enough that they’d had to lay off for the whole season. Fletcher didn’t know what he’d do with himself if he got sent away. He’d feel completely useless.
“You need rest now,” Chief Grantham said. “Go home.”
“I can sleep here for a couple of hours,” Fletcher said. “No problem.”
“A couple? How about seventy-two?”
The chief turned toward his computer and was typing up some notes.
“Seventy-two? Hours?” Fletcher couldn’t keep the disbelief out of his voice. “Sir, I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. You’ve got a concussion.”
“Maybe just a little one,” he said.
The chief shook his head. “Don’t be a hero.” He turned back to give Fletcher his full attention. “Look, I count on your brains as much as your speed and endurance. Your head took a thumping. You need to rest it.”
Fletcher tried again to protest. Grantham stopped him with a glare.
“Go home. Don’t come back until Tuesday at the earliest. Rest.” The chief didn’t seem to realize that Fletcher really was fine.
“But sir. That’s not necessary. I’m good. I’ll just take it easy, play some cards with Red.”
Chief Grantham’s face grew more serious. “Nobody stays who can’t give one hundred percent. There’s no shame in it, son, but you can’t carry your weight for a few days.” He leaned over his desk. “Enjoy it.” It wasn’t a suggestion.
Fletcher’s instincts to argue fought with his habit of subjecting himself to his boss.
“Yes, sir.”
Fletcher stood and left the office, avoiding Savanna’s eye as much as she avoided his. He grabbed his bag from the locker room and slipped out a side door, not interested in seeing any of the guys.
He wanted to hit something. How could
he let this happen? He’d been weak and let himself get hurt, and now his team was down one man.
A voice in his head told him that they could wash the engine and play poker and watch baseball playoff games just fine without him, but he knew that it was more than being sent away from the station.
The team had been working as a unit. It was a good fight today. They were seamless, united, effective. And now he was out. Even if only for a few days.
He was leaving a hole. Someone else would have to fill it.
Worse, someone else could fill it.
He was replaceable.
The force with which that series of thoughts hit his bruised brain surprised him. Fletcher didn’t consider himself shallow by any means, but he was not a complicated guy. He had a job to do and he did it.
But now, at least for a time, things changed. He had nothing to do. Correction: he was instructed that he had to do nothing.
He felt ashamed.
What was he without his work?
Driving through town, he felt like hiding. He pulled up to his mom’s house and slunk to the front door. The idea of being unnecessary nearly undid him. When he opened his parents’ front door, his mom was sitting on the couch reading a book.
Her eyes flew to him in a look he’d seen so many times over the years—the look of panic when she knew there was a call at the station. He’d seen her look at his dad that way so often when the plan was disrupted. Coming home early, coming home late, all of it served as a constant reminder to her that this job was dangerous.
“Are you okay?” she said, unmistakable fear in her voice.
“Fine.” He wanted to assure her, but mostly he wanted to actually be fine. He slumped into a chair by the fireplace and closed his eyes.
“Fletcher?” she said.
He nodded without looking at her. “All fine, Mom,” he said.
After a few minutes, Rose stood up and walked out of the living room.
He heard her speaking softly on the other side of the wall. She was on the phone. Fletcher stood up and walked into the kitchen.
Always You: A Sweet Romantic Comedy (ABCs of Love Collection Books 5-8) Page 26