“A love like you guys have just doesn’t blow out.” She held my stare, begging me to see. “It just gets lost in the fire sometimes.”
As she spoke, I wanted to tell her that she didn’t understand what we were going through, and that she had never been through something like this.
But then again, maybe they had. Maybe she knew all along.
You know when people tell you things and you think to yourself, They can’t possibly know how I feel. What if they do?
“What do you want?”
“I want what I’ve always wanted.”
“He wants those same things.” She knew. He had talked to her. “He does.”
Dispatch to command, do we need to call in another alarm?
Command to dispatch, no . . . we’ve located the firefighter.
* * *
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Jace
I WOULDN’T have put it past Axe or even half the other guys in the firehouse to have made a move on Brooke, had they been in my position, and been that vulnerable. We were both hurting. But that wasn’t me. In no way did I think of Brooke like that.
It kind of frustrated me that people would think that little of me.
Brooke would have never stood for it, and I would never go there. I smiled to myself, thinking of the beating Brooke would have handed down to Axe had he tried something. It would almost be worth seeing. Almost.
“I need to get going,” Brooke said, giving Jayden’s bag from the other night back to me. “Any time you guys need me to watch the kids, let me know. It’s nice having their laughter in the house.”
“Okay.” I walked her outside, gave her a hug, and then went back into the station where Axe and Denny were standing, staring at me. Things were kind of starting to get back to a lighter atmosphere around here, so naturally I looked around to see what they had fucked with and if I might be under attack.
“You puttin’ out fires in your friend’s house now?” It was just like Axe to ask that. I knew it’d been coming for days, too. On Saturday she’d come by and brought the guys chocolate cake. Afterward, we talked outside for about ten minutes. The boys took that as a sign I was moving in.
Any other guy might have. Not me. Some people might not believe it, but men can resist temptation when they want. To me, if you cheat on someone, you were going to anyway. Temptation aside, it takes a different mindset to do that to another person. I wasn’t that type of guy.
“Fuck you, guys.”
They followed me inside the kitchen and wouldn’t let up.
“Would you ever—” Denny’s eyes went wide. He knew he’d said the wrong thing.
“Don’t fucking ask that.” I shoved Denny back against the fridge. “Brooke is Logan’s wife. Always will be.”
“You don’t make moves on your boys’ wife, ex-wife, girlfriend, ex-girlfriend, or sister,” Axe pointed out, as if I didn’t know.
“I never made a move on her, and I wouldn’t.”
“Yeah . . . okay.” He gave a sarcastic nod and started to walk away. I took my helmet from the floor by my bunker gear from the last job and threw it at him.
He turned around, then smiled, rubbing the back of his head, and walked back to my dad’s office. If he hadn’t just made lieutenant, I probably would have throttled his ass.
The other guys seemed to understand I wasn’t the type of guy to step out on Aubrey, and with Brooke of all people, but I also think they knew I wasn’t exactly stable these days. Who knew what I would have done had they kept busting my balls about this.
“It’s not all about you, asshole,” Axe said to Kasey as they both walked into the lounge. “Grow up and get over yourself.”
My brother wasn’t the easiest person to get along with. Most seemed to understand that, but Axe was just like him. They clashed for obvious reasons. It also might have had a little to do with the fact that Axe made rank before he did.
Denny looked up, his face flushed. He obviously wanted to say something but didn’t.
When Kasey was out of the kitchen, I smiled at Denny. “How many times do you think he says ‘asshole’ in one day?”
“Probably about as often as everyone else in this house.” He rolled his eyes.
“I once counted.” I closed the magazine, pushing it forward. “He said it forty-two times in one afternoon.”
Axe walked back into the kitchen, the fridge opening soon after. “You should be worried that you counted, not that he said it.”
“How’s your dick, man?” Denny asked Axe, smiling.
“My dick is none of your concern, kid.” He rolled his eyes. “But never forget to wear your underwear under your bunker gear. My dick has rug burn.”
Slowly turning the pages of the Sports Illustrated magazine on the table, I didn’t look up when I said, “And on any given day the word ‘dick’ is said in this house at least 273 times.”
Denny laughed. “That’s . . . strangely accurate.”
“Did you clean the bathrooms?” Axe watched Kasey walk in again. It was only ten, and they were at each other’s throats again.
“Are you talking to me?” Kasey turned on his heel, blue eyes blazing.
“Yes.” Axe wasn’t letting up. His burly arms crossed over his chest.
I wished Logan were here right now. He’d love this shit. Denny looked at me, smiled, and pointed to Kasey, silently holding up a twenty-dollar bill.
As we nodded, our bet was agreed upon.
“Listen, asshole.” Axe stepped forward, uncrossing his arms. “I don’t see no stripes on your shirt, so I don’t have to listen to you.”
The thing about these two was they are both right. At least, they think they’re right. Tell either of them they’re not, and heated words are exchanged.
Kasey gave a bitter laugh. “Watch who you’re talking to.”
“No, I don’t think so.” Axe looked over at Kasey for a minute. “I’m done talking.” And then he punched him. Big mistake.
A couple of guys who worked the engine tried to break it up, but Denny and I talked them out of it.
“Just let them fight,” I said. I couldn’t keep the grin off my face. “I’m tired of their shit.”
And they fought until both of them were bloody and Mike was breaking it up, looking to us for answers. “What the fuck is going on in here?”
“What?” We all looked at him like he was crazy. At least once a week a fight broke out in this house. This was nothing new.
“Stop fucking around.” He shoved Axe and Kasey apart and called them into his office.
There went our entertainment.
And there went the sirens. “Engine 10, Ladder 1 . . . Battalion 2 . . . 600 block Yessler Way . . . ”
Kasey and Axe were still fuming when we got on the truck, but they managed to put their differences aside.
“Why is the voice on the machine a woman’s?” Denny asked, referring to the operator who gave out the job specifics over the intercom. “Why can’t it be something cool like Darth Vader or something?”
Sean lowered his voice to a deep rasp. “Engine 10, Ladder 1, MVA on James Street.”
We all laughed. I never took that guy as one to have a sense of humor, but today, of all days, he made me laugh.
When we got to the job, it was a construction site where they were building a skyscraper. A guy was dangling some two hundred feet in the air by his feet, which were tangled up in a rope.
No idea what he was doing when it happened — hell, he probably didn’t know, either, but I went up there on the freight elevator and got him hooked onto me to bring him down.
“Whatever you do, big guy, don’t look down.”
He looked down.
Stupid shits always do.
“Holy shit! I’m going to die!” He started scrambling, locking his legs around mine and then knocking us into the side of the building.
There went my helmet.
“Hey, I said don’t look down, asshole!” Using my feet against
the wall, both planted firmly, I kept us from swinging back and forth. “Stop fucking moving before you kill us both.”
Just then the rope slipped about five feet. We went with it, but conveniently we were at the spot where Axe and Denny were waiting to pull us into that fourth-floor window.
I was sure the guy shit his pants.
Construction sites are dangerous. Dangerous to work at, and dangerous to save people at. I would be lying if I didn’t say I was sweating that one. Believe it or not, I’m actually afraid of heights.
Only Logan knew that, and usually he took the jobs like this. Now I had no choice, because we couldn’t trust Denny.
Look at him. He was over near the truck playing with a nail gun.
I repeat. A nail gun.
And then the ridiculous happened. The goddamn thing went off and shot Denny in the side of the head.
“Got any suggestions?” Denny asked, looking scared but in shock.
“Yeah.” I chuckled lightly, grabbed hold of his shoulders, and then turned him toward Leslie. “See that EMT over there, dude. You need to sit down.”
“What the hell happened to him?” Axe curiously watched them take the nail out of the side of his head. It turned out to be just a minor flesh wound, but still, you’re not careful and you shoot yourself with a nail gun.
“He was playing with it, and it went off in his hand,” Sean said, beside me now. He handed me my helmet that had fallen earlier.
Axe and I started laughing, Sean did have a sense of humor. Turns out I never paid any attention to it because I was too busy hoping he’d shoot himself with a nail gun.
It’s strange what you see when you finally look at it from another angle. I might not have looked at it this way, let’s say three days ago, but it was how I was seeing it right now. As the lights of the city burst on and we made our way back to the station, surrounded by the very places I’d called home my entire life, I was seeing it that way right now.
With my body pressed against the seat in the back, it felt good to be back on the truck and getting calls. Beside me, the seat was empty, as no one had yet to sit there. The boys had even gone as far as to put up a picture of Logan.
It was helping us all cope with the loss. I may have been his best friend, but Logan held a special spot on this truck, and he would forever. He left a piece of himself with all of us, in subtle ways.
He taught Denny how to be reliable. Too bad he didn’t teach him some safety tips, but he did teach him to never give up, to stay focused and be prepared.
I wasn’t sure what he taught Axe. Maybe a little humor to his hard-ass. Same went for Kasey.
And me, well, he taught me that inside a fire, always think, be fearless but think.
“YOU WILL never usually get to decide how you die, but you can decide how you live.” All four of us gathered around the table turned and looked at Axe, dumbfounded.
“That’s way too sophisticated for you,” Denny said, looking to us all as he laughed, then grabbed the side of his head in pain. Took thirteen stitches to clean him up, but an hour later he was back in the house. Again. Reliable.
“Hey . . . I can be sophisticated.” Axe took another bit of his cereal.
“No. No, you can’t.” Denny smiled as he scratched at his eyebrow and squinted in Axe’s direction. “You eat Coco Puffs for breakfast.”
“So?”
“You’re a child,” Kasey said.
“It’s who I am.” Denny and I both looked at each other as their words got heated . . . again. “I won’t apologize for that.”
“And no one will ever take you seriously on the truck because of it.” Some would venture to wonder what made Kasey so goddamn cold-blooded. No one knows. Not even Kari. But he’s not like that with her. With her he’s calm and gentle, and she’s the brash one.
Axe stood calmly and walked toward the sink. The sound of his bowl hitting the counter caused us all to look up at him. “You may think I’m a child, Kasey . . . and that I don’t take shit seriously, but I think I have a right to. And fuck you. Until you’ve lost everything, you don’t get to decide how I act or judge me.”
Kasey said nothing.
I wouldn’t doubt Axe would change things if he could.
But it got me thinking and understanding the pain of others. The pain I was causing.
Dwelling on it, pushing my problems onto Aubrey and everyone else, it was only prolonging the hurt.
When death happens, life changes. Your way of thinking is considerably different. There wasn’t a day I didn’t want to go back to that fire and do it differently. I wanted Logan back.
But I also saw what his death made me see, or was making me see now. My life for what it was becoming. The very thing that was keeping me alive, what I was working so hard to save, I was losing.
We were brave. We were doing things other didn’t. We believed things other didn’t. For the most part, I hadn’t believed that myself, and now I was seeing what it was doing to me as a person, to my personal life.
Ladder 1 to command, we’re bringing him down now.
* * *
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Aubrey
AFTER WORK I did the unthinkable.
Shopping at Northgate Mall for Christmas.
And if I thought being arrested for stalking would have been mortifying, being arrested for smacking a lady in the head with my purse for the last Rapunzel doll for Gracie would have probably been even more mortifying.
Fortunately, I survived, stopped off for Chinese food, and then got home to Jace and the kids. Immediately Gracie wanted to know what I’d gotten her.
Gracie squealed in delight, cupping her hands around her cheeks, pointing to the tree she and Jace had set up while I was gone. “I’m gonna lie right here under the tree until Santa comes.”
Jace and I both started laughing, she was so cute and excited.
Me, I was dreading Christmas a little. Every Christmas Eve we were with Logan and Brooke at her parents’ house.
Obviously this year was going to be very different. In a lot of ways.
When we had the kids in bed, Jace came to me in the living room, the lights of the newly lit Christmas tree glowing throughout.
He knelt in front of me. “Talk to me, honey. Just talk to me.” There was a look of concern on his face I’d never seen before. A look that, for someone as controlled as he was, seemed forced, but it wasn’t. It was sincere. Soon there were tears streaming down both our faces. “Don’t give up on me.”
When you finally listen, when you finally hear, that’s when the pain finally stops.
Everything has a temperature where it will burst into flame. It’s called a flash point. Jace’s flash point?
Me.
“I know this boy in you . . . but you’re lost.” My hands twitched to touch him. He looked so much like the boy I’d fallen in love with.
Pulling his eyes from mine, he glanced at my hands. “Sometimes it hurts to look at you.” He swallowed, the action forced as he blinked slowly and then found my eyes again.
“Why?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing right now.
“Because I see what I’ve lost, and it hurts.”
“You haven’t lost me.”
So many times over the last month I’ve wanted him to say something. To not only see how I feel but acknowledge it.
But was I acknowledging how he felt? Had I ever asked if he was okay?
No. I couldn’t remember doing that.
“Does it feel like I don’t care?” he asked. “That I don’t love you?”
When I didn’t say anything, he looked over at me. I hesitated for a moment but said, “I never said that, Jace.”
“If you can’t feel my intentions here, I’m doing something wrong, and I’m sorry for that. If this stops beating” — he brushed his knuckles softly over my left breast above my heart — “mine does, too.”
I’ve had two experiences with intimacy in my life. And both had been very dif
ferent from one another. Ridley was different from Jace in many ways. He had cold skin and an even colder heart. Jace is was warm. Warm heart. Warm skin. Blue eyes that melted you.
Jace was the type of guy who tested your vulnerabilities and weakened your ability to say no to him. When he stole my heart, he knew I would never be the same. He made sure of that.
I’ve seen his anger, his pride — they’ve destroyed this very room. But I’ve never seen him like this, opening up. Ever.
“If we don’t give this everything we have, we’re always going to wonder. I don’t want that. I want to know I gave everything I had.”
I looked up at him again. The moment was gone, but his eyes were anxious. He wasn’t sure what I was going to say next, and it scared him. He blinked, and when he opened his eyes again, those blue depths were full of anger and pain. Exactly what I had caused him.
“I’ve . . . lost my way. I put too much pressure on you and assumed you knew what I was feeling. I should have said something.”
“And I never asked how you felt. I’m sorry.”
Kissing my face, he then traced along my skin, slowly moving his fingertips over my features.
His lips captured mine. “Please don’t leave me,” he breathed against my tear-soaked lips, his hands sliding from my cheeks to grasp the tops of my shoulders, keeping me against his chest. “I can’t lose you, too.”
It was the type of kiss that would burn your skin. In a good way.
“Never.” When our fingers brushed, I felt it. He wanted to fix this. Right here. Right now. “I’ve always wanted you, Jace. I’ve been afraid that I would push, and you would leave.”
“I could never leave you. I’m just trying . . . to protect the one thing I can’t live without. And . . . ” his lips found mine again. “ . . . that’s you.”
“I’m scared,” I whispered to him. His eyes were on me, watching.
Long moments passed, and I began to wonder what he was thinking and feeling when I saw his intimidating blue eyes waver. He was scared, too. “I know. I am, too.”
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