Light Her Fire

by Samanthe Beck

  “I don’t know what it means.” A sob punctuated the admission and her icy control dissolved. Trembles racked her body and her teeth chattered. He reached for her but she quickly stepped away. “I don’t know how to respond. This isn’t a proposal, it’s an ultimatum. It’s too much, and it’s too hard, and it’s not what I want, and I can’t…”

  Her voice rose on every word until she approached hysterical. He countered the high emotions with extreme calm. “Sit down. We’ll talk.”

  “No.” She shook her head and headed to the door. “What’s left to talk about? You may not think my feelings are valid, but they are what they are. And you won’t consider the alternative. Even if I convinced you to stay, you’d resent me for killing your perfect opportunity, and the resentment would eat at the relationship until all you had left was a bitter taste in your mouth. It’s ruined.”

  “What about the baby?” he asked softly. “What about love?”

  “Right now I can’t think past this—you made a major life decision without even checking with me. That sounds a lot like my last relationship, and I promised myself I’d never make that mistake again.”

  He couldn’t believe his ears. “You’re comparing me to Roger? Bluelick, I am not stringing you along while I figure out who I am and what I want. I know who I am—”

  “But you don’t know who I am, and you don’t care what I want.” He took her arms and turned her around to face him. She refused to meet his eyes, but placed a protective hand over her stomach.

  He placed his hand over hers. “We want the same thing. I’m asking for one compromise.”

  She lifted her eyes to his, and the anguish there almost tore him apart. “So am I.”

  He didn’t know how to respond to the impasse, other than to reiterate all the sound, logical reasons why she should be the one to compromise in this instance, but she didn’t give him a chance.

  “Josh, you have to let me go.”

  His options sucked. He let her go and watched her race down his porch and drive off until her taillights disappeared. Then he sat on the couch, staring at the ring still sitting in its box, wondering how the hell his carefully planned romantic evening had gone so completely off the rails.

  …

  Melody dragged herself across Main Street and trudged down the sidewalk toward the office. She pushed her sunglasses higher on her nose and tilted her head down to avoid the harsh light. The humid morning already promised a sweltering day. A headache brewed behind her eyes, and her stomach threatened to revolt with every step, despite downing half her large Jiffy Java to-go cup of decaf peppermint tea. Last week’s walk-to-work companions, hope and optimism, were nowhere to be found this morning. Her white-cottage dreams of a happily ever after with Josh and their baby would remain just that—dreams. Her life, on the other hand, was officially a nightmare. Unmarried, pregnant, terrified, and stuck between two options she didn’t want to consider. On the plus side, things couldn’t really get much worse.

  Something hard clipped her shoulder, knocking her several steps back and spilling her tea all over her blouse in the process. “Hey!” She looked up in time to see Justin Buchanan whizzing by on a skateboard. He turned and wagged his tongue at her.

  Lovely. She tossed her cup into a nearby trash barrel and pulled her favorite silk blouse away from her skin, recognizing a ruined garment when she saw one. Just one more ruined thing in her life, and a comparatively small one considering everything else, but her emotions were so fragile she found herself blinking back tears. Unwilling to stand in the middle of the sidewalk bawling, she put her sorry butt in gear and started walking again.

  Her cell phone chimed. While she’d like to think Josh was calling to tell her he’d slept on it and decided to turn down the job, she knew better. Ginny and Roger had been calling all morning. She’d have to talk to them at some point, she knew, but…later. Much later.

  She mined the phone out of her purse and changed her setting to “do not disturb,” then dropped it back into her bag and looked up. Her miserable heart sank into her unwelcoming stomach. Did God hate her? Roger and Ginny loitered by the front steps of the office.

  One look at her face apparently told the story. Ginny said, “Oh, honey.” Roger wrapped his arm around her, and that was all it took. The tears started in earnest. He more or less lugged her up the steps and into the building. Ginny held the office door open, and in the back of her mind she registered the fact that it was unlocked, which meant Ellie was already in.

  Roger sat her on the sofa and hovered beside her, brushing her hair away from her face and murmuring, “Mel, don’t cry. Tell me what happened. Let’s figure this out.” Ginny scurried through the waiting room and into the office. She returned seconds later with a box of tissues, a bottle of water, and Ellie.

  Nicely done, Melody. Now, for the second morning in a row, three sets of worried eyes focused on her. She needed to pull herself together. She took several tissues from the box Ginny offered, wiped her tears, and blew her nose. “I’m okay.”

  “You’re far from okay,” Ellie replied. “Those were not tears of happiness.”

  “I saw Josh in town yesterday afternoon,” Roger said. “Things seemed very on-track. I know he was planning a big evening. What happened?”

  She nodded and swallowed the lump that kept trying to form in her throat. “He proposed. Got down on bended knee, with ring in hand. The works.”

  “Wow, Mel, before you said a word about the baby?” Ginny asked.

  “He didn’t have a clue about the baby. He had other reasons for popping the question.”

  Ellie frowned. “And those changed once he learned you were pregnant?”

  “No. No. He took the baby news in stride—I think.” She shook her head and tried to get her thoughts in order. “Everything got so muddled. In the same breath he proposed, he told me he’d accepted the job of fire chief in Cincinnati. He wanted me to pack up and move there with him.”

  “Sounds like a good opportunity for him,” Roger observed in his neutral lawyer voice.

  She looked up at him, then Ginny and Ellie. Their expressions all reflected varying degrees of what is the problem?

  “I-I told him I was pregnant, and, obviously, under the circumstances, we couldn’t move to Cincinnati. Bluelick is where we belong. We have friends and family here. You guys are here.” She raised her eyes and looked at them. “I can’t picture raising this child anywhere else. But he didn’t agree. He insisted the baby represented all the more reason to go…higher-paying job and better for his career and…he just…he didn’t understand my feelings at all. He wants to go. And I don’t.”

  “So you left things in a deadlock?” Ginny’s voice carried a note of censure. “Somebody blinks first or off he goes and here you stay?”

  “I don’t know, okay? I don’t have the solution. All I know is for us to stay together, one of us has to make a huge sacrifice and be miserable.”

  “You don’t know you’d be miserable in Cincinnati,” Roger pointed out gently. “As for friends and family, it’s only a few hours away.”

  She thought about the women in the restroom at Stratton’s and squared her shoulders. “There is nothing I want in Cincinnati.”

  “Yes there is,” Ginny said softly. “Josh.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Josh walked into Rawley’s after the end of his shift Monday evening knowing full well he was at the bar stalling. He could hide in Rawley’s for days, but he couldn’t hide from reality. Ready or not, he was going to be a daddy. The prospect terrified him to the bone—what the fuck did he know about being a dad?—but excitement mixed with the terror. An angel-haired toddler with a laugh like Melody’s kept invading his brain and making him smile. It was only a matter of time before he ended up on her doorstep. She obviously wasn’t coming anywhere near his, while his resolved diminished by the minute.

  He sat at the bar and nodded to Jeb. The bartender nodded back, uncapped a beer, and placed it in front of Josh. He
murmured thanks and took a drink. A weekend apart from, and at odds with, Melody left an ache in his soul. Imagining life in Cincinnati without her—an exercise he probably should have undertaken before accepting the job—had snapped everything into focus. The prospect of a child only sharpened the view. Surprising, given he’d never pictured himself with a family—except maybe in a vague, fuzzy future—but now that circumstances had planted the picture in his head, he couldn’t let it go. Then again, she’d been full of surprises from the start.

  Surprise number one? Returning to CFD held no appeal. The move represented a step in the wrong direction, even with the promotion. Transitioning to chief there meant riding a desk rather than a fire truck, and he liked action. He wasn’t ready to give up that part of the job.

  Surprise number two? The town of Bluelick had grown on him. He’d slowly come to view the place as home. He cared about the fate of the department he headed and the town it served. Politics aside, he felt more needed and appreciated here than he’d ever felt in a bigger department. Would he be happy in Bluelick without Melody? Hard to say, but she was here, and he was happy. He could envision them raising a family here, building a future here.

  Surprise number three? He had a lousy memory—at least according to his mother. She’d called over the weekend, and it had taken her about a second after hearing his voice to demand to know what was wrong. He’d explained about the job, Melody, the baby—all of it. She’d reminded him that when his father had been offered his position with the CFD, he’d called a family meeting, discussed the opportunity, and only accepted the job after they’d voted to make the move, because his family’s happiness and well-being had always topped his priorities. She’d assured Josh his father would be proud of him for adopting the same priorities. Then she’d made some noise about becoming a grandmother, starting planning a visit to Bluelick, and he’d gotten off the phone fast.

  Tyler and Junior walked into the bar, saw him, and ambled over.

  “You look like you could use something stronger than a beer, Chief,” Junior said. “I can’t imagine why. Buchanan must be singing your praises now that he knows you were right about those fires being set on purpose.”

  “Yeah.” Buchanan had been forced to back off. The mayor might be banging heads with the sheriff soon, depending on how their investigation unfolded and whether they took a hard look at Justin, but Josh doubted they would. For one thing, they didn’t seem to be conducting an aggressive investigation of any suspect. For another, the kid definitely hadn’t set the fire at the high school, and given that all the fires had been set using the same method and accelerant, the likelihood of two separate arsonists was statistically low.

  LouAnn and Ginny walked in, and he held his breath for a moment, hoping Melody might be with them. She wasn’t. The ladies came over. LouAnn glued herself to Junior’s side. He gave her ass a pat and planted a loud kiss on her mouth. Ginny, meantime, narrowed her eyes at Josh and visually castrated him. Yeah, Red, get in line.

  “All right, then,” Junior said, and pointed to Josh. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m looking at a man on top of his game, professionally, and I’m seeing signs of trouble. This can only mean one thing. Grief from a woman.” He elbowed Tyler for consensus. “Lucky for you, I’m the love doctor, and the doctor is in.”

  Jeb brought beers to Tyler and Junior. Junior tapped his bottle to Tyler’s. “Tell him, Longfoot.”

  “I think of you more as a love sniper than a love doctor.” He turned to Josh. “But speaking of doctors, I stopped by Ellie’s office this afternoon and I saw Melody while I was there. She looked about the same as you, minus the beer.”

  “Uh-oh, Chief, sounds like you’ve got some fast talking to do.”

  “Undoubtedly,” he agreed, seeing no point in denial. “The trick is getting her to believe what I say. I need a grand gesture.”

  “Well, shit, man. French’s is less than a mile away.”

  “I tried that already. I need a grander grand gesture. Something that lets her know we are unquestionably on the same page regarding the future.”

  Ginny drew nearer. “Are you serious?”

  Because she was obviously in the know, he nodded. “The stakes are kind of high to be playing games, don’t you think?”

  She sighed and took the empty barstool beside him. “I do. This is probably going to cost me a friendship, because I promised I wouldn’t say anything, but I know what your grander grand gesture should be.”

  “I won’t tell her you told me,” he quickly promised.

  “She’ll know, but…fuck it. There’s a little white cottage on Overlook Road—”

  Just like that, everything fell into place. Simple and easy. “I know the house. She showed me.”

  “Buchanan owns it, but all he’s done is fork over property taxes year after year. I’ll bet he’d give you really good terms to take it off his hands.”

  He looked past Ginny to Tyler. “Got room on your plate for another project? I need that cottage move-in ready in seven months, tops.”

  “Local restoration is our specialty, and Grandpa Boca was a good builder, but even if he sucked, we could rebuild the place from the ground up in that amount of time.”

  Junior stared back, owl-eyed. “That’s one grand fucking gesture. Better brace yourself, Chief.”

  “For what?”

  “For the world-rocking make-up sex.”

  …

  Melody stared through the rippled glass of Roger’s living room window and watched a barge chug up the river. Moving on to some other destination. People did it all the time. For anything but plants, teeth, and her, roots were merely a metaphor.

  Roger came in with a tray of saltines and sat down next to her on the sofa. “I’m really glad you said yes to dinner.”

  “Thanks for inviting me. I’m not exactly sparkling company at the moment.” Not even close. More like miserable, overwhelmed, and missing Josh even more than she’d feared she would. She grimaced and took a bite of a cracker she really didn’t crave but hoped would settle her stomach.

  “How are you feeling?”

  She placed her hand on her belly in what was quickly becoming a habit, and smiled. “Not too bad. I won’t complain about a little nausea, because I am really happy about the baby. I wish the rest of it wasn’t such a mess.”

  “Well, I wanted to talk to you about that, too. Mel”—he let out a breath and took her hand—“I think we have some unresolved issues, and they’re preventing you from working things out with Josh.”

  “You can’t take the blame. The painful truth is Josh and I want different things—”

  “No, you don’t. You want the same things—each other, this baby. You’re just scared of compromising…because of me.”

  “Roger.” She squeezed his hand. “I know why we didn’t work out. It had nothing to do with how much we accommodated or failed to accommodate. At the end of the day, we weren’t meant to be together. It took us both a long time to accept the truth.”

  “In your head, you know that, but in your heart, you think you made a mistake trusting me every time I said, ‘I love you, but I need…’ which in my case was always more time. You always agreed to give me more time.”

  “Yeah.” She sighed and looked out the window. The barge was gone. “I did.”

  “And things didn’t work out. Now Josh is saying, ‘I love you, but I need you to move to Cincinnati,’ and that’s sending up every red flag you’ve got. How can I convince you that compromise—even on big stuff—isn’t a sign of a doomed relationship? In fact, I’m pretty sure you can’t have a successful relationship without it. Trust him. Take a risk. Everything might just work out.”

  “I don’t know. I feel like we’re very far from working out. None of this is happening the way I pictured it.”

  “You’re focusing on the wrong part of the picture. You’re hung up on the scenery. Move your eyes to the foreground. You’ll see a man who wants to marry you and share a life with you. There’s
a baby who’s relying on both of you for love, security, safety, support…everything…the best possible upbringing you can provide.”

  The responsibility was already a familiar weight in her chest. “And you don’t think that best possible upbringing is in Bluelick, where we have friends and family who already care about this child?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe it’s Bluelick. Maybe it’s Cincinnati. Maybe somewhere else entirely. Your friends and family here are going to love and care about all of you, no matter where you live. That part of the picture will never change. You know that, right?”

  “I do.” She did, and yet the weight in her chest lifted a little as she said the words. “I just—”

  “Compromise can be scary. Change is scary, too, and Josh is asking you to accept a big compromise and some major life changes, all at once. It’s no wonder you needed time to think, but don’t let fear distract you from what’s really important.”

  “You’re saying I got scared when Josh told me about the job, and the move, and I freaked.”

  “Yes, but in a totally understandable way. He accepted a job in another state without discussing the opportunity with you first, even though he expected you to come with him. Sounds to me like he knew you’d have issues and decided it would be easier to ask forgiveness than permission. On the other hand, he didn’t know his decision had impact beyond the two of you, because he didn’t know about the baby. I think you both freaked. But now you’ve had a few days to get your head around everything. Time to stop hiding under the covers and figure this out, because it’s not just about what you want, or what he wants, it’s about finding the right compromise.”

  “I know.” She went back to staring out the window. The best thing for their baby would be to grow up with two parents, in a loving household—on that she shouldn’t compromise or sacrifice. Everything else was negotiable.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Josh walked out of his meeting with Chief Warren feeling like a hundred pounds of gear had been lifted from his shoulders. Warren had accepted his change of heart gracefully, and commended him on not letting ambition blind him to other important considerations. Then again, a man in the chief’s shoes understood better than most the importance of those other considerations. Josh refrained from telling him the decision had actually been simple once he’d pushed ego and expectations aside and thought about what he wanted. He already had everything he wanted back in Bluelick.