Love Inspired August 2014 – Bundle 1 of 2

by Ruth Logan Herne, Allie Pleiter

  Heather felt her jaw go slack. “You know?”

  JJ laughed softly. “I’m his big sister. And your eyes light up when you talk about him.” She nudged Heather. “Even when you’re complaining about him. That’s a contradiction I’m very familiar with.”

  “At first, I was so sure he and Simon would end up a disaster—no offense.” Heather put her hands to her cheeks, certain she was blushing like a teenager. “And then I thought he was exactly what Simon needed. And now...I have no idea.”

  “Well, he’s not done yet. Mr. Hot Wheels is a bumpy ride—I don’t have to tell you that. But his heart is in the right place on this one, and I think Simon has a few things to teach Max.”

  “I think so, too.” Heather recalled the energy in Max’s eyes when he talked about Simon—the boy brought out something extraordinary in Max. It was close to the unforgettable glow she’d seen in his eyes when he’d looked at her that night on his porch. There was so much tenderness in that man that the world never saw. Could she bring out something extraordinary in Max? She knew he was bringing new and marvelous things out in her.

  “I think you’re really good for him, Heather. I admit, I was nervous at first—Max was a veteran heartbreaker before the accident—but I think God’s up to something here.”

  “Oh, I...”

  “He was really touched by the knitting ladies, you know. I’m sure he never admitted it, but he talked about them for half an hour when I saw him the other day. Alex and I have been trying to drag him to church again since the funeral, but you made it happen.” JJ pulled in a deep breath. “Can you imagine what God could do with a guy like Max? The people he could reach? The lives he could change?”

  She’d had the same thought herself. Max never did anything halfway—if his faith ignited, it would be spectacular. “He told me he’s still angry at God for dropping him.”

  A sister’s heartbreak filled JJ’s eyes. “I know. What did you say when he told you that?”

  “I told him I believed God caught him just in time.”

  Affection replaced the heartbreak in JJ’s features. “What did my little brother say to that?”

  Heather took a deep breath. “He kissed me. Actually, I think I may have even kissed him first.”

  JJ blinked back tears, something Heather hadn’t seen this tough warrior of a woman do very often. “I was wrong, Heather. I think you’re good for Max. Really good. Don’t give up on him when he makes a mess of things, okay? He needs you.”

  I think I need him, Heather thought. But he needs You most of all, Lord. You’ll have to shout loud to get through to Max Jones.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Max’s wheels skidded on the firehouse floor as he zoomed in one of the open bay doors. The older guy everyone called Yorky looked up from the supplies he was shelving. “Hi, Max. JJ’s in the kitchen.”

  Max knew the way, but his path ended up being blocked by the tightly packed tables in the dining room. After a conversation with Simon an hour ago, Max was angry enough to knock over every table in the county, but that wouldn’t solve anything. Frustrated and stalled, he resorted to yelling “JJ” until her head popped out of the pass-through window from the firehouse kitchen.

  She’d either talked to Heather or Brian, because she already knew. Her expression said that loud and clear. Fine. He wasn’t in the mood to recount the gruesome facts anyhow. She took her time coming out of the kitchen, wiping her hands instead of looking him in the eye. Without a word, she moved a series of chairs so they could sit at the farthest dining room table. “You want a soda?”

  As if that would help. “No,” he snapped. “I do not want a root beer to make it all better.” He liked the stuff, and the firehouse was always in full supply of Gordon Falls’s official beverage, but he wasn’t even remotely in the mood.

  “I’m sorry about what happened to Simon.” After a second, she added, “Aren’t you supposed to be in Iowa today?”

  “I was.” He didn’t want to offer any further explanation than that.

  JJ frowned. “I know you’ve invested a lot in that kid. I’m really sorry he got a week of detentions. Doesn’t seem fair, does it?”

  Max ran his hands down his face. “According to Heather, it’s all equal as far as the school’s concerned. Kikowitz’s mean left hook is just as punishable as Simon’s weak attempt to fight back.” He looked up at JJ. “Am I wrong for being glad Simon tried to stand up for himself? If it was me, I’d have slugged the guy, too.”

  JJ offered a melancholy smile. “You did, back in school. Twice, if I remember right.”

  Max laughed darkly. “I beat up Noah Morton for leaving you at the homecoming dance, didn’t I?”

  “Not your best moment, but you meant well.”

  “He’s going to keep baiting Simon—I know he is. The kid’s a predator, and he’s picked out Simon as the weakest of the herd. Someone needs to teach that bully a lesson.”

  “That someone is not you. The last thing Simon needs is you deciding to show Jason that a guy in a chair can throw a decent punch.”

  “Do you know how much I want to?” Max planted his elbows on the table, hands fisting at the thought of what Jason had done to Simon for no reason other than pure meanness. “If I saw him across the street right now, I could—”

  JJ put her hand on Max’s arm. “But you won’t. Max, Simon looks up to you. What you do now is going to teach Simon how to deal with the world. Look, you’ve made some progress with Brian—he told me so just yesterday. You’re helping Simon. Don’t blow it all to pieces over someone like Jason Kikowitz.”

  Max rested his forehead on his upright fists. “I’m just so...mad. We work so hard to give people an equal shot and guys like Kikowitz can wipe it all away in ten minutes.” He’d always wondered when his passion for Adventure Access would rise to the level of Alex Cushman’s, but he hadn’t counted on it happening out of sheer vengeance. He doubted this was the kind of motivation Alex would condone.

  “Go take the boat out, go shoot hoops with the guys here until you’ve burned it off, but burn it off. Don’t show Simon the wrong way to handle this.”

  Max simply groaned. He really wasn’t in the mood for a big-sister lecture.

  “We just had a training session, so there’s a bunch of the younger guys out back. Go shoot hoops.” As if to drive the big-sister thing home, she stood up and planted a kiss on the top of his head. “It’ll feel good.”

  He knew what would feel terrific right now, and it wasn’t the condoned plan of behavior, that was for sure. Anger boiled up in him like a furnace fire, heating his thoughts and shredding his patience. This thing with Simon and Kikowitz touched on so many parts of his life, he couldn’t seem to escape it. He couldn’t outthink it, couldn’t solve it, couldn’t appease it; he could only endure it. While he had a lot of physical endurance, his emotional endurance had pretty much run dry in the months since he’d fallen off that cliff.

  “Hot Wheels!” Jesse Sykes waved to him from under the basketball hoop that stood at the little concrete yard in the back of the firehouse. “Good. I need somebody I can beat.” He bounced the basketball straight at Max.

  Max caught it in one hand, aimed and sent it through the hoop. “You mean you need a beating to take you down a notch.” The sound of the ball clanging through the chain net was satisfying. They started a rousing game of one-on-one, which eventually became two-on-two as some of the other guys came out to join. Without making a big deal out of it, these guys always found a way to make Max feel as if he fit in. It just made him ache harder for Simon to have the same experience.

  He missed two shots in a row because his thoughts were tangled around Simon’s plight, losing the game for his team. Jesse reached into a bin and tossed Max a towel. “What’s up with you?” Jesse asked, wiping the sweat fr
om his own brow.

  At first Max hesitated—talking about it would just make it all surge back up. Only these guys knew Brian Williams as one of them. They knew Simon, and many of them had taken a shine to him like Max had. Maybe they could help the boy feel as if he wasn’t so alone. “It’s the thing with Simon Williams.”

  “Oh, man,” said Wally Foreman, collapsing on a bench that sat at the edge of the concrete. “Heard about that.”

  “I had Kikowitz’s older brother in my class when I was in high school,” another guy shared with a grimace. “Big and mean runs in the family, if you know what I mean.”

  “I’ve never seen Williams so mad,” Jesse said. “That kid means everything to him.”

  “I feel for Simon,” Wally offered. “Hard to live something like that down, you know? Kid’s gonna hear babysitter called after him in the hallways for years.” A little geeky himself, Wally’s eyes went hard and narrow. “I hated high school.”

  Jesse leaned in. “I hate to say it, and I’d never tell Brian how to parent his son, but I was glad to hear that Simon stood up for himself this time. That kid needs to strike back and strike hard if he’s ever going to be able to hold his head up at that school. Guys like Kikowitz feed on this stuff unless you shut them up.”

  The churning in Max’s gut was growing by the minute. “I can’t tell you how much I want to string that kid up by his expensive sneakers and show him he’s not as tough as he thinks he is.”

  Wally raised one eyebrow. “So why don’t we?”

  Jesse stilled. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying we should show Kikowitz that the Gordon Falls Volunteer Fire Department looks after its own. You mess with Williams’s kid, you mess with us. I’m not saying we should hurt the guy, just give him reason to think twice before he gets into it with Simon again.”

  “Let Simon know we’ve got his back.” Jesse nodded.

  Stop this, a little voice in the back of Max’s mind whispered. It was far too easy to ignore it. “I don’t think Brian would go for it.” Some part of him knew the weakness of that objection.

  “Who says Brian has to know?” Wally grinned. “Probably better if he doesn’t, actually.”

  “I’m in,” Jesse said. “I’d happily put Kikowitz in his place. A little community service, if you ask me.”

  This is wrong, the little voice began to shout. It sounded way too much like Heather. Well, all Heather’s ideas and spiffy activities hadn’t helped Simon one bit, had they? Bullies only spoke one language, and Max had been fluent at his age. He’d know just how to pick on Kikowitz’s weak spots. He’d tell the guys how best to frighten Kikowitz but stop them before they went too far. Simon would know there were more people on his side. “Appealing as it sounds, we can’t hurt him. This has to be a warning, not a payback. And I can’t really be involved.”

  The three other guys looked at him.

  “But I can drive.”

  * * *

  Heather rested her head in her hands the next morning and tried not to cry. The only grace was that Jason Kikowitz’s father had railed at her on the phone rather than coming in to personally convey his outrage at what had happened last night.

  “I agree this is an awful development, Mr. Kikowitz, but as it didn’t take place on school property, I’m not sure what I can do.” A group of three young men—and there was little doubt in her mind who at least one of them was, even though she couldn’t quite yet figure out how, since no one had yet mentioned a wheelchair—had cornered Jason in the parking lot of Dellio’s diner last night and pushed him around, shouting threats should he try anything else against Simon Williams.

  “Jason tells me the hoodlums that roughed him up got into a dark car with flames painted on the sides,” Mr. Kikowitz growled into the phone. “He said you’d know who owned that car, Ms. Browning. Do you?”

  The “yes” of her reply felt like thorns in her throat, sharp and wounding.

  “What are you going to do? I demand you do something about this!”

  That was just it—this problem was so enormous and so painful she couldn’t even think of how to respond. It was as if Max had handpicked the worst way to betray her trust, the most painful act to shred everything that had grown between them since that night on the porch where she’d told him he wasn’t broken. She was wrong. Max was broken, and he’d now broken everything else within reach.

  “Are you listening to me?” Mr. Kikowitz yelled. “Do I have to take my son’s victimization up with the police?”

  Victimization. While what happened to Jason was wrong in every way, did his father really see his son as a victim? Did he have no sense of how Jason had begun the chain of events that had brought everyone to this awful place?

  “No, Mr. Kikowitz, I hope that won’t be necessary. I’m glad Jason wasn’t hurt. Where is he now?”

  “He’s at home of course—he’s been suspended for the rest of the week, remember? Besides, why on earth would I let him back into school after a thing like this?”

  “Believe it or not, I think school may be the best place for him right now. I might be able to arrange an in-school suspension given the circumstances. It would give me a chance to talk to him about all this.”

  Mr. Kikowitz snorted angrily. “I’m not about to send him.”

  “I understand. Please think it over and let me know if you change your mind.” Some petty part of her wanted to remind Mr. Kikowitz that his son had been suspended for doing what had just been done to him—in all honesty, for doing even worse, since Jason had drawn blood.

  It didn’t have much effect. “I lay this at your doorstep, Ms. Browning. I expect some solution from you before the end of the day. That’s the only consideration that will change my mind.” His voice held no hint of cooperation or concern, just pure demand. She wondered if he barked orders like that to Jason every day. How fathers and sons could tangle each other into knots. Fathers and daughters, too.

  The world was one giant ball of hurt and it wasn’t even 9:00 a.m. Heather picked up her keys and headed to the last place on earth she wanted to go: Max’s cabin.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Max was just finishing his morning coffee when he heard a car pulling into the cabin parking lot. Seconds later his door banged open and JJ stalked into the kitchen.

  “What is wrong with you? How could you possibly think that was a good idea?” Her eyes flashed in anger.

  He didn’t bother denying it. He hadn’t even made any attempt to hide what they’d been doing last night, so he simply didn’t say anything.

  JJ sat down carefully, as if moving too fast would let her temper loose. “I’ve just come from a twenty-minute meeting—no, a twenty-minute department-wide dressing down—from Chief Bradens about a certain group of firefighters who roughed up Jason Kikowitz last night. Brian Williams came storming into the department this morning furious, and I don’t blame him.” She dropped her forehead into her hands.

  “What are you doing? Reliving your glory days back in high school, shoving kids into lockers? This is beyond stupid, Max. Irresponsible doesn’t even cover it. I’m—” she looked up at Max with sharp, angry eyes “—I’m ashamed to be your sister this morning.”

  He paused, making sure she was finished. “Not your brand of tactics—I get that.” He didn’t mind taking the heat for this. Not if it called dogs like Kikowitz off Simon. If having that kid’s back knocked him off the “inspirational survivor” pedestal JJ and Alex kept shoving him on, then he’d gladly take the hit.

  “What you don’t get is how much damage you’ve done. To hear him talk, Simon Williams will be lucky Brian ever lets him out the door to pick up the mail now. Why didn’t you just paint a bull’s-eye on the back of his wheelchair, Max? Brian is convinced Simon is a walking target now, and I don’
t think he’s wrong.”

  “Simon isn’t walking. That’s the whole point here.”

  She slammed her hands on the table. “Stop that!”

  “Stop what?”

  “Stop making everything about being in that chair. This has nothing to do with your injuries and everything to do with the kind of person I thought you were. Were. Because obviously I was wrong.”

  “You would have preferred I go over and have a deep, meaningful conversation with Jason Kikowitz?”

  JJ stood up, bristling. “I would have preferred you act like an adult. I would have preferred you show Simon what it means to be a man instead of just another bully.”

  “Didn’t the army teach you never to take a knife to a gunfight? The only way to deal with Kikowitz is to back him down, JJ. Simon couldn’t do it, so I did it for him. Well, with a little help from some guys who were all too happy to give Kikowitz what he deserved. It’s not like we beat the guy up or anything.”

  “Threats. You think threats were the way to go on this one?” She blinked at Max. “You think you stepped in on Simon’s behalf. You don’t even know how wrong you are on this, do you?”

  Actually, he had known it on some level all along. It wasn’t hard to go back to being the bad guy when he was so practiced at it. It took way too much energy to be a good guy with everyone staring at him. Luke Sullivan’s “stop caring” attitude was gaining traction ever since he’d seen Mike Pembrose’s post. The whole pipe dream of a future with Heather was a bubble that was bound to pop soon; he could see that now. Life only afforded guys like him certain benefits, and being upstanding didn’t have to be one of them.

  “Alex is on a plane right now or I’d tell him to come over here and fire you this minute. You’re an idiot, Max, throwing away every good thing you’ve been given.”

  A sickening pity filled her eyes, and he hated that more than anything else she could say. “Oh, yeah, look at me, swimming in blessings.”