by Peyton Banks
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Heart of Fire
Blurb
A friendship torn apart by fire…
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Lukas was my best friend, the first kid to greet me when I moved from NYC to Vermont.
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We never got past friendship, but when he disappeared shortly after his mother’s tragic death in a fire, I always wondered if we could have been more.
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Back in New York City, working the beat, I got the wind knocked out of my sails—and found out what happened to the boy I’d known.
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Even when we tell ourselves it’s just catching up between friends, I can’t deny that Lukas feels like home, even more than the place I grew up.
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But I can’t be the carefree girl I once was.
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I can’t trust myself to know what I want, or how to get it anymore.
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I can’t trust anyone, even my grandmother, to understand my scars.
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What happened to me as a cop haunts me, makes me question whether I chose the right career—but when a crime spree starts in my hometown, I can’t help but jump in.
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And when Lukas shows me his scars, I know he can handle mine.
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With a career with the NYPD beckoning me back to the city, and obligations pulling me back home, how can I know whether things with Lukas can even work, no matter how much we care about each other?
Prologue
Kendra
I woke up when the car slowed down to a stop, trying to remember when I’d fallen asleep. I rubbed at my face, looking around me. Grandma was still in the driver’s seat, looking just as steady as she had when we started. How does she do that?
I sat up and saw that we were finally getting off of the freeway, after five hours of driving. She used to do this once a month, before… I felt my eyes stinging and I closed them for a second or two so I could stop myself from crying.
“We’re almost there, baby girl,” Grandma said, and I opened my eyes to focus on her.
“I’m just glad we’re off the freeway,” I told her. I tilted my head to one side and then the other, trying to get rid of the kink in my neck.
“We’ll get your stuff in the house and I’ll heat some dinner for us,” Grandma told me. “I have a feeling that you’ll settle in just fine.” She turned at the light, off of the freeway and onto the road into Wampanoag, the tiny little town she lived in outside of Burlington. The sun was just starting to go down, making everything golden and beautiful.
I’d been sleeping most of the drive and as we got close to Grandma’s house, I felt guilty because I’d left Grandma to deal with the drive pretty much on her own. “I’m sorry I slept so much,” I said.
“You’re a growing girl, you need your sleep,” Grandma said, her voice cheerful. “I had the radio for company and it’s better to have someone else in the seat next to you, even if they’re not much for talking.”
“Still,” I said.
Grandma shook her head. “None of that,” she said. “I know good and damn well that you’ve been missing sleep the last six months over your mama.”
My eyes started prickling, stinging again and I sniffed hard, trying to keep from crying yet again.
“I miss her already,” I whispered. “I’m so stupid.”
“No, baby,” Grandma said, taking one hand off the steering wheel to reach for mine and squeeze. She didn’t take her eyes off of the road, but it was like she was looking at me. “It’s not stupid to miss her already. It’s been a good couple of weeks since…” I heard her voice catch in her throat.
“It’s okay,” I stated. “You don’t have to say it.”
Grandma nodded and took a deep breath, waiting for the light to go from red to green.
I looked out through the window, trying to make some sense of everything. My whole life had been a blur for months, going to school without knowing if Mom would be at home when I got out for the day or if she’d be in the hospital again. Going to appointments with her for chemo, then eventually just going straight to the hospital from school because she’d started living there. Grandma came down from Vermont as much as she could, so I could go back to the apartment and get real sleep. Eating pizza, getting Mom the Otter Pops she liked because her mouth was too sore for anything else. Doing my homework in pokey, slumped hospital chairs, reading my English assignments out loud to distract Mom from the pain.
It was weird to think I would never return to the apartment back in the Bronx. Everything I’d chosen to keep was in the car and I wasn’t on vacation, or just visiting. I wouldn’t be able to just run around the corner to get Chinese food from the Hans if Mom didn’t feel up to making dinner. No more stopping in to say hello to the Feldman’s on my way to school and getting a free cup of orange juice to go with my breakfast sandwich, with Grandma Feldman pinching my cheek and slipping two cookies into my pocket before saying, “one for you, one for your mama.”
When we’d buried momma, Mr. Papadopoulos had let us cancel the lease on the apartment with no fees, since we were only breaking it because Mom had died. We’d sold off the furniture we couldn’t take to Grandma’s house and there had been enough money for movers to get the rest of the stuff which would get to her place in the next few days. Grandma had said we’d just let Mr. Papadopoulos keep the deposit since he was so nice about the lease-breaking fee.
“What would you like for dinner, baby girl?” Grandma asked me. She must have noticed I was about to cry again. “I’ve got some pot roast in the freezer, or some of that Salisbury steak you always like. Or I can stop by Lucky’s and get us some fried chicken on the way.”
“Salisbury steak is good,” I said.
Rubbing my eyes, my thoughts raced back to my old life. I’d said goodbye to all of my school friends the week before—after Mom’s funeral. They all had my phone number and my address and we could still talk online—Grandma had Internet at her place, even if it was in a little town—but it wouldn’t be the same. Everything about my life had changed when Mom got sick and then died.
“I have an idea,” Grandma said, stopping at another light. “I’ve been thinking about it the last bit. How about if we do something fun, just the two of us, every year on the day your mama passed? Your mama wouldn’t want you to have a whole day of being sad—this way, we can remember her the way she was before she got sick and think about her with happy thoughts.”
I smiled. “She’d like that,” I admitted. “She made me promise…” I felt that weird feeling in my throat, like it was closing up and I coughed to clear it out. “She made me promise that I wouldn’t remember her being sick if I could help it.”
“I promised her I would do whatever I could to keep your mind off of her like that,” Grandma told me. “I figure we could do all the things she loved on that day, every year.”
I nodded. “That would be good.”
Finally, we turned onto Grandma’s street and I sat up a little more in my seat, stretching my legs as much as I could so I get out of the car when she parked in the drive.
We passed the different houses, and I spotted Grandma’s, tucked between two others, the only one with the lights off.
Grandma pulled into the driveway and put the car in park and stared at me. “I can’t promise it will ever stop hurting, baby girl,” Grandma said. “I can’t imagine it ever stopping hurting for me. But it’ll hurt less and less the farther away you get from it.” She reached out and gave my hand another squeeze and opened the driver’s side door.
I got out of the car and went straight to the back door on my side, to grab my backpack when I heard a thump, followed by a high-pitched ringing. Grandma waved at the young boy across the street who was bouncing a basketball. “
Hi Lukas,” Grandma called out.
“Hi,” the tall, gangly boy returned.
I waved at him. He scowled at me while bouncing his ball.
“Well, that was rude,” I mumbled.
Grandma opened the other door, took out the little suitcase I’d packed, and we both went into the house together.
1
Kendra
Years later…
When I pulled up to Grandma’s house, I had to do a quick double-check. Although I’d driven up to her house probably a thousand times—maybe more—since I first learned to drive, it had been years since I’d seen the place.
I spotted the old pear tree next to my grandmother’s battered old mailbox, shaped like a 1950s era pickup truck. I’d never understood why Grandma insisted on keeping the mailbox—why she’d repaired and painted it again and again, instead of ever replacing it, but it made it easy to find her house, set back a bit from the street. I maneuverer my SUV onto the driveway, feeling the cramp in my leg, as I pressed harder on the brake. Son of a bitch.
I put the car in park and shut off the engine, taking a deep breath to steady myself. It had been weeks since my ‘officer-involved shooting incident,’ the wound was healed but had been severe. My bulletproof vest had caught the shot the perp had aimed at my chest, but my thigh still had a deep scar from the second shot he’d gotten off as my partner had knocked him down from behind. The physical therapist told me I could expect to get full function back, but I bet it would keep aching for the rest of my life, just a token of my service to the NYPD.
I got out of my vehicle and stretched my leg, hoping to ease the cramp along the scar tissue. I looked around me and almost without thinking my gaze went to a spot across the street. There was a house there, newer-looking than all the other ones on the block. Brick facade, little garden boxes in front of a bay window, stained glass inset on the front door, white trim. I frowned, rubbing my leg, trying to work out the house and why it looked so different from what my memory told me would be there.
It hit me all at once. The last time I’d seen the house on that plot, it was ablaze. Whoever had bought the property had just bulldozed the wreckage and built fresh, which was why it looked so out of place amongst the older homes on the block. The fire…
I stopped rubbing my leg, remembering that night and remembering the family that used to live in that house. More than the family, the kid they had. The first person to welcome me to the neighborhood when I’d been a sad, scared thirteen-year-old who’d never lived outside of the Bronx. Who’d helped me navigate the suburban middle school Grandma enrolled me into, ripped out of the cramped, crowded, noisy New York Public School system. Lukas. I sighed and rubbed at my leg again.
I heard the screen door open with a creaky groan and turned to see Grandma coming out of the house.
“Hi Grandma,” I called out.
“Hey baby girl,” she returned with a huge smile.
Most people had mistaken Grandma for my mother when I was growing up and even now, at seventy-five, she didn’t look old enough to be a grandmother, much less the grandmother to an adult twenty-nine-year-old woman. Grandma only had a few strands of silver in her neatly braided hair and while her ebony hued skin had some wrinkles, they were what you’d expect on a woman of fifty-five, maybe sixty. Grandma had taught me her secret when I was a teenager—every day she washed her face with black soap then smoothed on Shea butter. She also drank eight glasses of water every single day starting with a big glass first thing in the morning.
Grandma made her way down the walk to my SUV, pulling me in for a big hug. Clutching her back, I inhaled her familiar scent of lavender. God, I missed her.
Pulling away, Grandma pinched my cheek before stepping back and moving toward the back of my SUV. “Open the back,” Grandma ordered. I rolled my eyes before clicking it open, limping a bit as I tried to stop her from yanking my luggage out. I knew it wouldn’t work—I would not talk her out of it but I had to try.
“No Grandma. I got it.”
“You’re a guest in this house, Kendra Powell,” Grandma rebutted.
“And I’m your granddaughter, I used to live here,” I countered, reaching for my suitcase.
“You haven’t lived here in years,” Grandma insisted. “That makes you a guest in my house.”
“They’re too heavy for you,” I said, trying for another argument.
“And you with your injured leg—they’re easy for you?” Grandma asked me, turning to pin me down with her gaze. I felt my cheeks warm up, and I sighed heavily.
“You take one and I take one?” I suggested.
Grandma grinned. “That’s fair.”
I knew although she looked like she was maybe sixty at most, Grandma wasn’t as strong as she used to be. I let her grab the lighter of my two suitcases and took the heavier one for myself, balancing it against my bad leg for a second while I put my weight on my good leg before pressing the button to shut my trunk.
“Are you going to get up the porch steps okay?” I asked, shoving my keys in my pocket and following behind her. Grandma nodded without so much as looking at me.
“The day I can’t get up the steps is the day I get Martha Peters’ son Jackson to come and install a ramp,” Grandma said. “And I will probably die a week after it’s built, at that.”
I snorted, sparing one last look at the new, pretty house on the block where there had been a burned-out husk before. I shook my head and continued up the driveway and onto the stone walk toward the front porch, trying not to think of Lukas. I stepped up onto the stairs and my bad leg cramped up again, making me stumble. In an instant, Grandma had my suitcase out of my hand and her arm under me, holding me up and helping me onto the porch.
“I’m fine,” I said.
Grandma tsked, shaking her head and letting me into the house. “You should have let me take that one,” Grandma said, steering me through the front door and setting my suitcase down.
“I said I’m fine,” I protested. “It’s just a cramp.”
“Uh-huh,” Grandma said dryly. “Did they even clear you for lifting?”
I sighed. “They cleared me for everyday tasks and light chores,” I told her. “I’m just not cleared for duty yet.”
“And if it wasn’t my birthday, you’d still be back in New York, in that tiny, Brooklyn apartment, champing at the bit to at least be on desk duty,” Grandma said, picking up the heavier of my two suitcases and gesturing for me to take the lighter one.
I didn’t want to discuss this thorny topic further. “Happy Birthday, Grandma.”
“Well, thank you baby girl,” Grandma returned warmly while propping my suitcase against the couch, she took the moment to kiss and hug me quickly, before bustling off towards my old room. “Are you able to keep up with me, or should I make two trips?” she asked me, glancing worriedly over her shoulder.
I hefted the lighter suitcase and followed her down the hall, to the room I’d lived in from eighteen until college, until I’d moved out for good, years before. Following her into my room and setting my suitcase down near the door. Grandma had changed nothing other than occasionally cleaning the room and changing the bed linens since I’d last been in there. Missy Elliot posters, pictures of my friends from high school, I could even still—barely—smell the horrible perfume spray I’d spilled on the carpet.
Knowing that Grandma was concerned about my wellbeing and recovery, I mumbled, “Grandma, my job is competitive and being one of the very few black women to make detective, I have to work hard, take as many cases as possible.”
“I know, I know,” Grandma said, wiping her hands dramatically on her pants. “You had to make a name for yourself. I know my ambitious granddaughter. But all work and no play is a recipe for disaster.” She eyed me. “I just want you to slow down, enjoy life and take some time for you. And for goodness’ sake visit me more. I ain’t getting any younger baby girl.”
She was right. I’d been going full throttle at work for so long that
I forgot what was important to me, my health, happiness, and Grandma, my only family. “Forgive me?” I asked, giving her my best doe-eyed look.
Grandma laughed and kissed me again, cupping my face in her hands and peering up into my eyes. “It’s about time you slowed down, baby girl,” Grandma said. “Maybe you’ll get a taste for it.”
“Maybe,” I said while moving over to the bed and sitting down, “but my commanding officer back in the precinct is staying on top of any updates on my condition, my potential readiness to come back.” Reaching down, I pulled off my sneakers, sighing while wiggling my toes.
Grandma shook her head. “You still not listening to what I’m saying.” Marching over to me, she plopped down beside me. “I’m proud of you and how much you’ve accomplished but I haven’t heard shit about your personal life.” She pinched my cheek. “Like, when’s the last time you’ve been on a date? Or had sex?”
Grandma and I had a very candid relationship so talking about sex wasn’t awkward. “Too long,” I grunted.
She laughed huskily. “So, I’m getting more action than my twenty-nine-year-old granddaughter.”
“Sadly, yes.” I hadn’t had sex in over a year and it was a hook-up that was fast and unsatisfying. Frankly, I missed sex but wanted more than meaningless fucking with some random dude. But I didn’t have time for dating. Besides, I intimidated most men because of my job in law enforcement. “But finding Mr. Right isn’t easy.”