Sparks Will Fly: Park City Firefighter Romance: Station 2

by Daniel Banner

  So fast she almost missed it, Blue’s hand lashed out and into his father’s face, who immediately released the collar. Abuelita was right! He’d decked his dad in the face!

  Next, Blue spun back to where Lucy now lay on the ground and charged forward in full Hulk mode, taking out three of her assailants on his first sweep through them, then proceeded to clean up the rest of them with more punches and some impressive wrestling throws.

  Quicker than seemed possible, he was helping Lucy up from the ground. Trying to help her, but she was slapping away his offered arm.

  Where was the delay? Where was that 30 to 60 seconds where she had been on her own while he did who knew what?

  Lucy backed up the video. From the time Blue stepped up next to his dad until the first hand touched her was about two seconds. Eight seconds after that, Lucy was on the ground, and just one second later, Blue had reached the circle and was mowing down the other guys. Eleven seconds was the entirety of the incident once the first guy had touched her? She would have sworn it was closer to a minute.

  Once again she played it back, watching closely to see if anything had been cut, but the video was complete and unedited.

  Blue hadn’t abandoned her. The second he realized she might be in trouble, he had come toward her. True, he had taken care at first to get away from the two little men who had tried to stop him with hurting them, but once Lucy was really scared, he hadn’t hesitated to use physical force to send them flying away like the pesky boys they were.

  Even his father hadn’t delayed him more than about three seconds, despite his best efforts. Blue hadn’t wasted time talking to him or trying to wrestle out of his grip. And he hadn’t lashed out blindly like the real Hulk would. He registered that it was his dad keeping him from her, and with just enough time to show that it wasn’t a gut reaction, he decked him.

  Then he’d rushed to her aid, as if she was in mortal danger, which was exactly how she’d felt at the time. Looking back, and seeing the video, she got a different feeling. It wasn’t fun by any means, and even watching again she was praying for a hero to step up, but there was no risk of death or rape or any of the other unlikely scenarios that had played through her mind when the incident had happened.

  Then again, there was no audio now. And there were the tears rolling down her cheeks as she relived it. And there was Blue, standing over her after vanquishing half a dozen attackers and holding out a hand.

  Lucy had been wrong this whole time. Yes, she had told herself that she was apologetic and took the blame, but there had been a lot of blame in her for Blue letting her suffer on her own at the hands of his friends. And blame for him not reaching out to her to explain himself. When really, out of everyone involved in the situation, he was the only one who had done nothing wrong.

  So why, why, why had he been so silent?

  Lucy was done sitting around and waiting. She was going to find out as soon as humanly possible, and if it turned out that what Blue’s dad had said about Blue not wanting to see her, so be it. But Lucy would not sit and wait any longer.

  Now, if she just had a plan.

  21

  Lucy had to find Blue, and quick. She couldn’t wait until the weekend. She didn’t even want to wait until she got off work.

  Maybe, just maybe, he was going to be in New Mexico before Friday, what with all the legal issues and upheaval in his family. She started with news sites but those only made her feel worse about the situation because it was focused on the negative and the media blew everything out of proportion. She tried the Doña Ana County Court system for information on upcoming trials or arraignments but that was a quick dead end.

  Lucy didn’t know any of the Blue’s Clues’ contact info. She considered looking up the Park City fire station phone number, but if she did catch Blue or one of the guys who knew him, it would be too easy for them to hang up on her or ignore her again.

  What else could she do? It wasn’t like she had a tracker on him that could tell her his location at any given time. If Blue Reed was a bigger celebrity, then maybe the public would track him. But hey, it was all relative, right? It didn’t take much to be a big celebrity in a small town.

  Facebook? Lucy had an account but hadn’t used it in months, and as far as she knew, Blue wasn’t on at all. It wasn’t like he would be uploading status updates about legal proceedings or anything anyway. So what did Blue use? Foursquare to check in? Not that she knew of. Instagram? Nope. During Questival one of the other guys on his team had done the social media challenges because Blue wasn’t really on any of them.

  So how did she harness the power of the former-celebrity loving people of Las Cruces? Where did celebrity-crazy people share their run-ins or gossip about pseudo-celebrities in real time? Twitter? It was worth a try.

  A search for Blue Reed turned up pages of instant results, and Lucy started scanning them. With him back in the public eye, apparently the conversation about the greatest New Mexico State quarterback of all time was a hot topic. Lucy found herself feeling quite proud to see Blue as most people’s favorite.

  After scrolling through a couple dozen tweets, she saw a promising one: #BlueReed landing at the LC airport. Hot as ever! #AggieUp.

  Lucy did not want to Aggie Up, but she couldn’t argue with the tweeter’s assessment of Blue, looking all handsome and manly walking down the concourse in the airport. And of course, along with the feelings of—love?—for Blue, she felt extreme jealousy of the woman who had seen Blue and posted about him.

  Shoving aside the distracting jealousy, she checked the date, hoping against hope that it was a recent photo and … success! The tweet was from earlier this morning! Blue was in Las Cruces right now!

  How long would he be there? If he was in the airport this morning, when would he leave? If this was his first day off, then he’d have to be back at work on Saturday morning. So, Friday at the latest. But was there a chance he’d be leaving tomorrow or Thursday?

  Yeah, anything was possible.

  Lucy had piles of work to do, but it would be there tomorrow and she could make up hours any time this week. Today only one thing mattered. She took 30 seconds to tidy up her desk, then tucked her phone into her purse and bolted from the office.

  Leaning around into Janice’s cubicle, she said, “I’m taking off for the day. If anyone needs me, I got my cell.”

  “Where ya going?”

  “Driving down to Las Cruces.” Lucy could tell her nerves were showing.

  Janice picked up on the magnitude of the trip and swung her chair to fully face Lucy. “Is that a good thing?”

  “I don’t know,” said Lucy. “I hope so. I want to think so. I … actually I have no way of knowing.” The more she thought about it, the worse it got. “I’ll let you know tomorrow!”

  She darted away and Janice called, “Good luck!”

  Lucy would need it. She still had no idea where to go when she got to Las Cruces, or what she would say to Blue if she actually tracked him down.

  At least she had over three hours to figure it out.

  22

  Blue was already sick of talking to people and giving his side of the story, and he was only halfway through his meetings for the day. The Las Cruces Police and the district attorney meetings were over, but he still had to sit down with the Reed family lawyers as they tried to figure out how to best spin the story.

  Even though the antagonistic meetings were over, and this afternoon’s would be in favor of the Reeds he was not looking forward to spending more time thinking about the incident in general, and specifically what it meant for his relationship with Lucy.

  What was he even thinking about a relationship? He had no way to even get a hold of her. They were in the same state now, but might as well be a million miles apart. After Blue’s conversation with Nikola yesterday he’d tried texting and calling again. Same response—nothing. He was blocked.

  In a world that was so connected, where 10,000 miles meant nothing, why was 223 miles like l
iving on another planet?

  Blue pulled into his dad’s driveway, but didn’t get out of the rental car. More hours of talking about something he wished he could forget still lay ahead. If only he’d handled it differently, it might not have turned out like this between him and Lucy. The second she walked into the skybox, he should have run to her, escorted her away, and … that would have avoided the entire incident.

  He should have seen. He should have anticipated. He should have avoided it all. What good were his years as a quarterback if he couldn’t do those things? What about his current job? If he didn’t anticipate and act on the fire ground, people would die.

  All of his training, all of his college years should have prepared him to recognize the threat and react.

  Blue’s dad appeared on the front porch, obviously wondering why Blue was still sitting outside. At least it got Blue out of the same thought spiral he’d been going down for the last ten days.

  His dad had wanted to go to the interviews this morning, but Blue insisted on going alone. The purpose of the trip to Las Cruces was to help his dad and brother, but there was still a lot of healing left to happen between them. Spending hours this afternoon listening to everyone rationalize why the Reeds were justified and someone else was to blame would not make him have better feelings toward his family. Especially when he knew Lucy would take a lot of the blame, and Blue would spend most of the day defending her and they would keep pushing and insulting her, then a fight would break out and they’d be worse off than when they started.

  How had he not seen that when he’d agreed to come back to Las Cruces? Yeah, it would have just led to subpoenas, but maybe some more time would have helped.

  His dad tapped his watch and spread his hands to ask what was up. The police interviews had gone longer than expected and they were late for the meeting with Carl and his ilk. And for the whine-fest where everyone would say how great the Reeds were and how wicked Lucy was. When all Blue wanted was to talk to Lucy and tell her he was sorry.

  That’s really what was eating him up inside, he realized. There had always been a chance that things wouldn’t work out with Lucy, but he couldn’t stand the thought of it happening like this, with so much unsaid between them. The thought of leaving it unresolved was unthinkable. Why wouldn’t she just stop blocking him? With one click on her phone, she had put up the most effective virtual offensive line known to man.

  But wait. What if he went after her in the real world instead of going after her through her phone only? He wasn’t a one-play guy. He could be creative, try something unexpected. Like that fire yesterday, when the new guys had fiddle-farted around with the door instead of just bashing it down. And when bashing the door didn’t work, just bashing down a wall. If it was a real wall between Blue and Lucy instead of an electronic one, he’d flatten an entire building using nothing more than his fists. If he had to go through fire to get to her, he’d do it. Just face the fire and get burned if it got him closer to her.

  So what was stopping him now? Two hundred-twenty-three measly miles?

  What else? Some meetings with a bunch of people he didn’t feel like listening to all day?

  “Twist my arm,” muttered Blue, starting the car and throwing it into Reverse. As he backed out, he rolled down the window. “Sorry, Dad! Something came up! Be back late.”

  Blue didn’t wait long enough to hear his dad’s answer. Albuquerque was calling to him.

  23

  Lucy had been on the road for about two hours and still didn’t know what she’d say to Blue to get him to talk to her. First off, she had to find him. The obvious place to look was at his Dad’s house. That was a daunting thought. If she had any other option in the world, she’d take it, because she realized there was a chance of inciting a whole new incident.

  Blue’s mom lived in Hatch, New Mexico, about 45 minutes from Las Cruces. When Blue came for games and university functions he usually stayed with his dad. Today, with everything going on, it would probably be the same. If Lucy struck out in Las Cruces, she could drive up to Hatch. His mom might just be willing to help find Blue, but Lucy had no way of knowing without driving out there.

  So really her only option now was to find Jeff Reed’s house and risk another incident. Without thousands of fans around, it could never get to the level it had last time. And if Lucy had any other option, she’d already have taken it.

  Right now her option was to find a restroom. She’d rushed out of her office too quickly and her bladder had been telling her that for the last 45 minutes.

  The exit for Truth or Consequences was next, and it looked like Lucy was going to make it. When she found a gas station, she could also search for an address. That was a whole new question. Blue’s dad was rich and important enough that his contact info was probably private, but he wasn’t a big enough celebrity that random people in Las Cruces would know where he lived.

  The only real idea she had was to start by googling his name. If that failed, she really had no idea, and the three-hour drive—no, six-hour by the time she got home—would be a waste and she’d be back to an insurmountable barrier between her and Blue.

  But first, gas, a snack, and mostly a restroom.

  The drive to Albuquerque had never seemed so long. Blue hadn’t made it all that many times in his life, but somehow someone had taken the two biggest cities in New Mexico and separated them since he’d done it last. Hopefully the guardian angel who had shined that spotlight on Lucy at Questival was still on duty and could guide him to her once he reached Albuquerque. He didn’t have her address, after all, so he’d have to track her down somehow once he got there.

  Blue’s clock said he’d been on the road for an hour. One hour. That was it. When he’d realized there had been only three hours between him and Lucy, he had no idea time would crawl like this. Storm clouds overhead didn’t help, since they obscured the sun and blocked any environmental sign of the passing of time. He bumped the cruise control up a little and just kept driving.

  Billboards for T or C started showing up, which meant he was only a third of the way there. The car had plenty of gas, time was ticking, and Blue had too much nervous energy to even think about getting a soda or coffee. That city, Truth or Consequences, had always just been a town with a funny name that people in New Mexico shortened without thinking about, but today as he got closer and saw more signs, the name of the town played over and over in his head.

  All he wanted was truth. Even if he couldn’t have Lucy—the thought still made him sick—he wanted five minutes to put his heart out there and at least talk about what had happened. Once he had his chance to speak his peace, then let the consequences come. But not before.

  He was tempted to pull through the town, just drive through it, to … what? Experience it?

  No, that was crazy. He had real truth and real consequences to get to and no time to take a Sunday drive through a tiny spa town.

  The exit approached. Why did his finger itch for the turn signal? Truth or Consequences. No, truth and consequences. He’d stay on the freeway, and he’d go for the real thing.

  The exit came and went, one more tic on the path to Lucy.

  Lucy was fueled up, had some popcorn for the road, and was able to actually breathe now that her bladder wasn’t screaming for relief. She was ready and couldn’t wait to see Blue. The address search for his dad’s house, however, had been a bust. Detective work was not her forte. After about fifteen minutes on the internet searching everywhere she could think of, she’d given up, decided to trust fate, and figured she’d use the hour it took to get to Las Cruces for brainstorming more ideas to find him.

  Cranking up the tunes, she pulled up to the gas station exit and examined the street in both directions. She had come from the north but had noticed that the surface street ran parallel to the freeway for a while. If she went west or south if might be a quicker path back to the freeway since the roads into T or C came off of the freeway at an angle. Even though it was only a minute
or two either direction, she was anxious to get to Las Cruces and to Blue.

  The clouds broke overhead and the road to the north was illuminated in a golden glow. That was a good enough sign for her. She hit her turn signal and pulled out to the north.

  24

  Blue watched the T or C exit pass in his rearview mirror. What was it that kept calling to him? The name of the town and it’s bearing on this day? That had to be it. He was making something out of nothing.

  That feeling like he had a forever-long road ahead of him was gone as well, but that didn’t make any sense either. He still had about two hours to go, practically the same distance he had a mile ago. The feeling wasn’t like he’d arrived, not really. More of a vague sense of … not having a long road ahead. Maybe unconsciously he was scared and he was trying to delay.

  Get over it, Blue.

  Was he really balking? Scared to talk to her just because she was ignoring his texts, or more accurately had cold-heartedly blocked him? That still didn’t give him an excuse to be scared. When other people ran away, he ran into danger. When most people lost their minds and looked for someone to lead them through a disaster, Blue stepped up and took charge. He didn’t back down from anything or anyone.

  Yeah, it was a bunch of trite hero-talk, but for some reason he needed a pep talk just to keep driving.

  What is going on? he wondered, and looked at the faraway exit in his rearview mirror. At this point, a trip through T or C would take a lot more than a quick jog off the freeway. He’d have to go up to the next exit, flip around, drive all the way back, and then waste time driving through town when he already had everything he needed.