Combust

by K. Bromberg

  “Do you know how badly I wanted to say ‘my fire pole’?” I scrunch my nose, still not understanding. “At the fire station. You showed me how you work, and I want to show you where I work. So I was going to say I wanted to show you my fire pole as a joke.”

  I roll my eyes because he’s acting like such a little boy, but I can’t help my smile. “C’mon, you can do so much better than that.”

  “I can?”

  “You can. You’re a firefighter. Don’t women fall at your feet?”

  “They fall at my feet?” He looks to his socks and then back up to me as if to say no one is there. “If you can do so much better, let me hear it.”

  I put my hands on my hips and purse my lips as I try to think of one. “How about, I’m a firefighter, I see your pussy needs rescuing.”

  “Can’t deny having heard that before, but it sounds all sorts of hot coming from you.”

  “It’s sad that I’m one-upping you, and I’m not a firefighter.” I throw down the challenge and wait for him to think of one.

  “Find ’em hot, leave ’em wet.” His eyes are laden with amusement as those dimples of his wink. “Or two-in, two-out is the safest way to do it.”

  “Is that so?” I laugh as he rises from the bed.

  “Definitely. It’s important to hit your target with a loaded stream. It’s always best to get yourself positioned on top of her when she’s hot.” That tone is back in his voice, liquid sex with a bit of gravel mixed in.

  “Oh, the man can talk a good game.”

  He steps closer to me, and his smile falls a fraction as he chuckles. “It isn’t talking a good game you should be worrying about. It’s if a man can back it up with his actions.”

  “Can you?” No doubt he can.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” He lifts his eyebrows and then heads toward the doorway.

  “Where are you going? To play with your hose?”

  “Not as good as mine,” he says but keeps walking down the hall as I step after him. “It’s late.”

  “You going to bed?”

  “Nah.” He pauses and turns to face me. “I’m going to work on the playroom.”

  My neck feels like it just encountered whiplash. “It’s almost two in the morning.”

  “And? It isn’t going to build itself, now is it?”

  “What’s the rush?”

  His feet falter just the slightest bit, but it’s all I need to tell me there is something about his extravagant shed that he isn’t telling me. “Sometimes it’s easier than trying to sleep.”

  With that, he heads for the back door, and a few minutes later I hear the pounding of the hammer.

  It isn’t the sounds of the city I’m used to, but it’s definitely a symphony of its own for me to write my lyrics to.

  My eyes burn from exhaustion. From the long hours I put in last night on two songs, only to be interrupted by Grady when he was at my door and then again when another nightmare ripped through him long after the hammer stopped pounding.

  I’d been on my way to his room when he woke up, and I’d silently retreated back to mine to let him have his privacy.

  I heard the clink of the ice in his glass.

  And I’m the one who, at four in the morning, pulled the blanket over him where he slept on the couch after it had slipped off and fallen to the floor.

  So now I’m doing the only thing I can think of to help him. The one thing my Italian mother would do if she were in my shoes. I am going to cook for him.

  Antipasto. Lasagna. Cannoli.

  My stomach rumbles at the thought as I unload my groceries on the belt at the checkout stand. Of course, the tabloids catch my eye with their outlandish tales that are so far from true it’s laughable.

  I know that.

  Yet, I still stare when I see a picture of Jett. The hurt still real. The heartbreak still raw.

  It’s an old photo of a performance I remember, but US Weekly says it was from last week. At least that helps with the sting of the headline below it.

  “Jett’s Wild Weekend with Women Galore.”

  “Hey, aren’t you the one who’s staying at Grady Malone’s house?”

  The chipper demeanor from the woman behind me is enough to stop me from picking up that magazine and torturing myself with the article inside. I look over to an inquisitive expression set on round cheeks and wide eyes of a tall brunette.

  “Yes.” I’m not sure what else to say.

  “I saw you with him at the farmers’ market the other day.” Well, at least there is a reason for her to know me. “And I’m his sister-in-law’s best friend.” She holds her hand out to me. “Desi Whitman.”

  “Hi,” I say as I shake her hand. “Sister-in-law?”

  “Yes. The only one there is. Officer Sexy’s wife.”

  “Officer Sex—oh, Grant. I’ve met him.” This time my smile is sincere.

  “How can you forget meeting any of the Malone men? I mean, it’s as if they were put here to show the rest of us we’ll never reach their level of perfection.”

  I laugh as I remember my thoughts of a Malone sandwich the other day. “Ain’t that the truth?”

  Her grin widens. “Well, it’s nice to meet the woman in Grady’s life.”

  “We’re not—” I begin to correct in an effort to keep up my I’m-with-Jett charade, but her next words have mine dying on my lips.

  “He deserves the best after everything he’s endured. Such a horrific thing to go through. I mean . . . they were best friends, and he couldn’t save him. God, can you imagine?”

  My head reels with this new information, but I keep my smile plastered on my face, feeling slightly guilty for wanting more details when it’s obvious Grady would have told me himself if he wanted me to know.

  “No, I can’t. It’s just terrible.”

  She loads a gallon of milk and a bunch of bananas on the conveyor belt behind my order. “Grant said he’s been doing better lately. I’m thinking that’s because of you.”

  “I can’t take any credit. I haven’t done—”

  “Oh, shush.” She swats at my arm. “If I was doing a Malone man, I’d declare it outright. Wave a flag over my head. Write it in smoke signals. Girl, you want to claim him fast before someone else does. If they do, I have a feeling they’ll never let go.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” I say as I laugh and hand the clerk money for my groceries.

  “Well, you keep that man of yours happy, and I’ll stay over here and keep dreaming about one for myself.”

  “There’s always Grayson.”

  She licks her lips and rubs her hands together. “I think I kind of scare him.” She laughs and waves her hand. “I’m a bit forward if you couldn’t tell.”

  “Didn’t notice,” I joke as I grab my three bags. “Nice to meet you, Desi.”

  With that, I leave the store, my mind buzzing about Grady Malone, my curiosity growing by the second. I think about him all the way home. The burns. How he couldn’t save his best friend. The emotional scars I’ve seen. The gruff exterior hiding them.

  Every part of me rails against searching Google, but the first thing I do when I walk in the door is drop the groceries on the counter and head for my laptop.

  I can’t resist.

  I search Grady Malone and Sunnyville, finding page after page of accolades and charitable deeds by the youngest of the Malone boys. There are a few articles on the trouble he got into as a teen, but it’s the newspaper articles from two years ago that have me catching my breath.

  “Tragic Loss of one of Sunnyville’s Finest.”

  “Today we are a city in mourning,” says Mayor Dan Jensen.

  Tragedy struck the Sunnyville Fire Department last night in the four-hundred block of Crosby Court. Firefighters entered the engulfed Cooper Warehouse to check for occupants and knock down possible internal accelerants. During the search, a section of compromised ceiling fell, trapping firefighters Grady Malone and Drew Brooks inside the building. Despite t
he efforts of fellow firefighters, they were unable to reach them in time. Drew Brooks succumbed to the injuries he sustained from the fire. Grady Malone remains in Sunnyville General Hospital, where he is receiving treatment for third-degree burns to his back.

  The cause of the fire is still under investigation.

  Drew Brooks leaves behind a wife and three-year-old son. Services for him will be announced at a later time.

  I stare at the article from two years ago, my mind filling in assumptions that only answers from Grady can confirm. I click on the next article, which is about the funeral service, and then the next, which is an update on Grady’s condition. One about the cause of the deadly fire—inconclusive. And yet another with a picture of Grady leaving the hospital with his brothers on either side of him and a man, who I can only assume is his father, pushing his wheelchair.

  The nightmares make sense now. The words he shouts. The groans of agony. The discomfort with his scars. The glassy-eyed fear he wakes up with that takes time to clear away.

  The little boy and the woman from the farmers’ market—Drew’s wife and son.

  I immediately feel like an ass for the conclusions I jumped to. My unfounded anger at Grady for not owning up to having a child. My distrust of men rearing its ugly head from both my father’s and Jett’s betrayal.

  Lesson learned. Irrationality stemmed.

  The scanner goes off. I jump at the sound and reach to turn the volume down, but it only serves to reinforce the magnitude of what Grady’s been through and how much he masks. Putting myself in his shoes, I understand the dark moments that glance through his eyes. His use of his sexuality to avoid talking about anything to do with it. The survivor’s guilt that most nights I’m sure wages war against the memories competing for which one gets to take the biggest bite of him.

  My stomach churns, and my heart hurts for him. Feeling like I’ve betrayed him by searching, I close my laptop but the pictures of Drew and Grady that accompanied the articles remain fresh in my mind.

  Needing something to busy my hands as I process his hurt, I head for the kitchen and begin to unload groceries. With a quick check of the clock, I know I have about an hour before he’ll be home from helping his brother. The least I can do is make him a nice meal as an apology for a judgment I passed on him that he knows nothing about.

  “You really should lock your doors, you know.”

  The voice stops me in my tracks. That voice. The one that owned my thoughts and heart for over two years.

  My heart wrings. My spine stiffens. “I’d only lock them to keep you out, and since I wasn’t expecting you, I didn’t think I had to. Don’t worry, as soon as you leave, I’ll run out and buy padlocks.”

  I turn to face him, and the visceral punch to my system is staggering. His dark hair is in his signature messy disarray. His eyes are brown and unrelenting as they stare into mine. And then there’s that mouth of his. One side is curled in a cocky, you-know-you-still-want-me smirk.

  It feels like months since I’ve seen him—smelled his cologne, heard the rumble of his voice as I lay my head on his chest, get that nod that he used to give me from the stage to let me know he knew I was there. At the same time, it feels just like yesterday—the hurt, the anger, and the disbelief all like a fresh wound bleeding inside me.

  “How’s Tara?” It’s my only defense against the tumultuous feelings rioting around inside me.

  He half laughs, half smirks. “I told you, there wasn’t anything there.”

  I chew my tongue as I stare at him. Disgusted. Hurt. Confounded. “That’s comforting. So you threw away a two-year relationship with me for something where there wasn’t anything there?”

  “That’s not what I meant. You know how it goes—”

  “Actually, I don’t know. How does it go?”

  His eyes harden at being questioned. At not having an answer on the ready. “C’mon, babe.”

  “If she was nothing, then the picture in People Magazine of you two at Starbucks was . . .?” I need to stay on the defensive because the longer he stands there, reminding me of everything that has been familiar for so long, the more my heart hurts.

  And the angrier I become.

  “Nothing.” He shifts his feet and folds his sunglasses to hang from the top of his shirt. “It was an old photo from an innocent lunch meeting. The tabloids recycled it.”

  “Innocent, my ass.” I lift my eyebrows. “And the Rolling Stone article?”

  “You saw that?” Confidence returns to his expression in that one simple phrase.

  “Yep. Sure did.” I cross my arms over my chest and rest my hip against the counter as it dawns on me that Jett thought I would read that and all would be forgiven.

  “You read that part about—”

  “Yep,” I reply without even knowing which part he is referring to, because it doesn’t matter. None of this does. What he did with Tara is what matters. Not his words after the fact. “Too little. Too late.”

  He shifts his feet and looks around when I don’t budge on my glare. “Look at that, all the fixings for a real Italian meal. You did know I was coming, didn’t you? Ava promised she wouldn’t—”

  “It isn’t for you,” I say to stop him while silently cursing my agent for letting him know my whereabouts.

  “You always did like a good fight. Is that what we should do here to fix things? You yell and rage. Tell me what a cocksucker I was. Then I shout back and tell you I’m sorry and that I made a mistake but I know you still love me. Then we meet in the middle and have some of that earth-shattering sex I know you like to have when we make up.”

  I remember that sex all too well. The odd places we’d find ourselves with our clothes pulled up and shoved down, our breaths heaving, our anger spent into passion.

  Putting my hands on my hips, I steel myself against the memories that the hurt can’t wash away with so little time. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’ve come to take you back home.”

  My laugh is instantaneous and strained. “Nice try. I’m not one to be taken. Besides, there’s no home anymore. You ruined that. That one is on you.”

  “C’mon, babe. Don’t be such a hard-ass. I made a mistake. I was caught. Now I’m here to apologize.”

  “Seems to me like you’re only apologizing because you got caught. Dare I ask how many other times you made the same mistake and didn’t get caught? Or do I not want to know?”

  “You’re being ridiculous.”

  Oh, God. There were more women than just Tara.

  “And you should leave.”

  He takes a few steps toward me, that soft smile he knows always wins me over on his lips. “Let’s just stop this charade and get back to our life.”

  His hands are on my hips and mine are pushing against his chest. I revolt against the familiarity of him and the natural inclination to sag into him. “It isn’t going to work this time. I put up with a lot of your shit—your ego, your need to always come first, your mood swings. What I won’t put up with is being cheated on.”

  He angles his head and stares, trying to judge if he should believe me or not. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “Believe it or not, Jett, not all women find you irresistible.”

  “Yes, they do.” I groan at his arrogance. “Baby, you know I’m joking.”

  “Don’t ‘baby’ me and don’t insult my intelligence.” He holds his hands up as he takes a few steps back. “I asked it once, and I’ll ask it again. What are you doing here, Jett, because if it’s an attempt to take me back to Los Angeles, you can turn around and go out that door you just entered without asking.”

  Ignoring me, he walks into the living room and takes his time looking around, picking up a photo of Grady and his brothers from the bookshelf and staring at it for a beat. I wait as he sets it down and moves to the window so he can check out the backyard where the trees are close and the hills covered with grapevines are in the distance. He walks toward the hallway and pushes open my b
edroom door to peer inside before turning back and facing me.

  Just like Jett to walk around like he owns the place.

  “The label wants to know our progress,” he finally says and runs a hand through his hair. The D major note tattooed on his inner bicep jumps at the motion and draws my eyes. The one he got because he said he never would have hit the big time and become “major” if it weren’t for me. The D note is for my initial.

  “You could have called. We can discuss our progress over the phone. Just like we did when you were touring while we were writing the last album.”

  “Nah. You know I prefer to write with you face to face. Plus, I wanted to see you.”

  “Jett . . .” My voice trails off when I see his bag dropped by the front door. “Why is your bag here?”

  “I can’t stay in town.”

  “Why not? There’s no Four Seasons you can trash and get kicked out of?”

  “That’s not it. There isn’t really anything here that compares to—”

  “Oh, I forgot. You’re too good for the little people these days, just like you were too good for me.”

  “Bitter much?” He clenches his jaw. “Don’t be a jerk, Dylan.”

  “Pot meet kettle.” I raise my eyebrows.

  “I can’t stay in town because it will attract press, and then the press will figure out you’re here and wonder if we’re still together. I mean, why would you stay here while I’m staying in a hotel?”

  “That isn’t my problem. You’re a big boy. You can figure out how to smooth it over.”

  “So what? You want me to let the press know, and then I can field more questions about where you are like I had to the other day?”

  “What do you mean like you had to the other day?” Now he’s got my attention.

  “Kai was asking where you were. Callum stopped by to check in and was surprised he didn’t see you. Then he called Ava. I think.” He shrugs, referring to the label’s very hands-on CEO.

  “Why was Callum there?”

  “Because they have a shit-ton of money riding on me delivering and the person they’re depending on helping deliver it wasn’t there?” He chuckles. “That would be my best bet.”