Fire Away

by R. L. Syme

  Aidan tapped the steering wheel. “I completely forgot. Yes. We need to go back there.”

  “Are you ok?”

  “I’m just wired now. Jeff… I mean, what he said about Jane. If that’s really true, what she did…”

  Claire touched his arm and he stared at her hand. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not that. It’s just… she wasn’t like that with me. Dirty, I mean. She never really seemed to like sex at all.”

  Claire’s hand flinched and he sighed. “I shouldn’t be telling you these things.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said, snuggling under his arm again. “Nothing about Jane can surprise me anymore. And I’m not a prude.”

  His body began to remind him that he wasn’t a prude either, but he tried to think of things other than how Claire’s hair smelled and how much he wanted to stop the truck.

  “This means that there was more than one affair, though.” Claire’s voice was breathy, almost quiet.

  “I keep telling myself that’s a good thing.”

  Aidan switched on the radio to drown out his thoughts and his desire. It was stuck on KSMW, one of the local country stations, and a mellow ballad.

  I felt it then and I know it now.

  You are my future, let me show you how.

  Love’s walkin’ in…

  Claire looked up through those long eyelashes and reached up to kiss him. Aidan took his foot off the accelerator and they coasted past the hospital, down Old Tyler Road for longer than he would have liked, but he couldn’t tear himself away from Claire’s kiss.

  Someone honked and Aidan looked up to find himself driving off the road. He corrected and laughed. “Girl, you tear me up.”

  She sighed and leaned into his chest. “I know the feeling.”

  The ballad faded into an upbeat guitar riff. This song was familiar and had the great old Texas theme of trucks and girls and beers and good times. All the things he’d missed out on, getting married early and then losing his wife the way he had. It just hadn’t been what he’d expected.

  They cruised into town, listening to music, his arm around a beautiful girl, like nothing else in the world existed. Like nothing was in chaos, inside or out.

  Lights at the Steer, Croy, and Mills office said someone was still at home. Aidan reached for the laptop, but Claire had already grabbed it and opened her door by the time he had the truck off. She bounded across the street and through the door, ahead of him.

  Somehow, it seemed strange to be so excited to be with her, to be here, like he should be afraid. But he couldn’t bring himself to let that in.

  He followed her into the attorney’s office and by the time he caught up, she was in Yumi’s office with the computer open, explaining things to his lawyer. He had to admire the wide smile on her face when he caught her looking at him.

  She really believed they could do this.

  It was starting to rub off on him.

  Yumi smiled and offered him the seat next to Claire. She had changed into a high-necked black dress. Looked like a party dress of some kind.

  “Are we keeping you, Miss Croy?” he asked, sitting.

  “Aidan, you’re my client. You can call me Yumi.” She placed her pencil crisply on the desk above her legal pad. “Claire has been telling me that you’ve made some discoveries. I should warn you. Your finding evidence could taint the process, so from now on, I want you to bring me everything you think might be relevant and let me turn it over to the police.”

  “The Jeff thing turned out to be a dead end, anyway.” He waved his hand. “Not a waste of time, but not a lead.

  “It really would be better to let the police handle these things.”

  “We just wanted to show you the emails we found. See if they’re relevant.”

  Claire re-entered the login information and Aidan held his breath.

  ***

  The inbox page loaded and Claire put the computer on Yumi’s desk with a triumphant sigh. All three of them leaned in, but Claire couldn’t stop looking at the emails.

  There were at least seven different names repeated in the visible emails. All were men, and the subject lines made Claire’s cheeks heat. Aidan’s smile faded and Yumi looked away.

  Before Claire knew what was happening, Aidan’s fingers had moved the mouse up to one of the emails and clicked it open. The username read blazer and the email was blocked out. The text of the email was short and Claire almost couldn’t process it, it was so strange.

  It was full of expletives, sexual positions… Claire didn’t know what else because she had to look away.

  Aidan continued to click and both he and Yumi were silent while they read. After several minutes, Yumi began to scratch notes.

  “Go back to that one, there,” she said, but Claire couldn’t bring herself to look at the screen again.

  “I saw that.” Aidan clicked a few times. “Well, that’s got to be the guy. Doesn’t it?”

  “I’m not certain. I’ll have to print out each of these emails and turn them over to the prosecution. We have a tech guy on retainer here who can probably help us find the source of the email address, but it will take some time.”

  Yumi scratched on the pad again and Claire breathed deeply, trying to steady her heartbeat.

  “I just don’t understand, though. It can’t be Jeff because we just talked to him, but this guy, this youngish715. That has to be him. His last name is Young, and the details match what he told us this afternoon.”

  “Tell me exactly what he told you.”

  Aidan recounted Jeff’s story, blurring out the bits that Claire still couldn’t bring herself to believe.

  Her sister. A married woman and practically a teenager. Not only had she been cheating on her husband, but with multiple men. At least one of them was an adult man who had been sleeping with her since she was a minor.

  And apparently that was only the tip of the iceberg.

  Claire thought the room was going to spin out of control. She put her head between her knees and tried to breathe. Soon, Aidan’s hand was on her back, stroking from her hair down to her waist in methodical motions. She couldn’t hear what he was saying because her pulse pounded in her ears.

  She may never get used to the thought of her sister doing these things. And now that Yumi knew, they would certainly come out in the trial.

  But it was the truth, wasn’t that the point? Only the truth was going to set Aidan free, and the truth was, her sister wasn’t the person any of them thought she was.

  And the truth was going to come out.

  Claire finally began to breathe in a regular rhythm and Aidan left his hand on her back.

  “I know this is a lot to take in, Claire. And I hope we won’t have to use any of it. In fact, I’m hoping that some of this discovery will lead to having the case dismissed. But I’ll need to continue to go through these emails and see what’s here.”

  Yumi came around the desk and knelt in front of Claire, taking her hand. That same reassuring smile brightened the lawyer’s face. “I will do whatever I can to try to protect your sister’s privacy, even in all this.”

  “Do you think the diaries would be enough, without these emails?” Aidan still had his hand on her back and Claire warmed all over.

  “You should leave all of the diaries with me, just in case. I’ll make copies and then we can turn them over to the prosecution.”

  Claire clutched at her purse just as Aidan said, “You have everything that we found.”

  “I should be going,” Yumi said. “My daughter has a piano recital in about fifteen minutes, but I’ll be in touch.”

  “I’m sorry to keep you.” Aidan stood and shook Yumi’s hand. Claire went up with Aidan and felt her feet shockingly solid under her. She smiled and said goodbye to Aidan’s lawyer.

  Claire felt a little hazy as she walked with him back to the truck and resumed her seat beside him. He put his arm on the back of the seat as they drove and she considered moving back to his side, but
something still hadn’t quite clicked inside.

  “How is it possible to be so close to someone and not know them at all?” Her own voice sounded distant as she asked.

  Aidan shrugged. “We’re all hiding something, aren’t we? Jane was hiding more than most, I think. But no one can always be everything you think they are.”

  “What about you?”

  The scrunch of his eyebrows, the turn of his mouth… somehow, it scared her. “I am not hiding anything.”

  “But you were.”

  “To protect you.”

  Claire felt the sting of tears slink up the back of her throat and burn behind her nose and eyes. “And it resulted in what? Me not really knowing my sister? Thinking we were close, thinking she was herself with me, and now… what? I find out she’s a stranger, and you think that doesn’t hurt? What exactly were you trying to protect me from?”

  Aidan’s eyes hooded and he sighed. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have hidden things from you after Jane died.”

  A few tears slipped onto her cheek, slicking a path and falling onto her shirt. “And I wish she hadn’t hidden things from me when she was alive.”

  “You would rather have learned about these things from her?”

  Claire opened her mouth, but no words came out. She didn’t know the answer to that question. They turned onto Aidan’s driveway and she saw her squat little car sitting along the gravel’s edge, next to the creek.

  The sun sat on the edge of the horizon in a red haze, just about to sink down into the night. Claire tried to reconcile her feeling of betrayal with her memories. This was the sunset that Jane would have seen every night. And the last night she’d seen it, had she known it would be her last? Or was someone else responsible for her death?

  Perhaps the more important questions were not about the nature of the sunset, but the nature of Jane’s heart. Did she hate her life so much that she ended it? Did she love someone too much and put herself in danger? When did she stop loving Aidan?

  She watched him as she followed him into the house. The broad set of his shoulders, the slim-hipped swagger of a man in cowboy boots, the big, muscular hands that felt so good, so strong. So right.

  How could anyone ever stop loving Aidan?

  Claire had found that exceptionally difficult, even after almost ten years apart. She couldn’t stop loving Aidan if she cut out her own heart. The girlhood infatuation had never really faded.

  They sat at his kitchen counter and Claire just watched him as he poured them each a glass of water and then sat with the canvas bag, packing all of the items inside it once more.

  Claire sipped at her water. She tried to imagine the house the way it had been, back when Jane lived here, but she couldn’t see much in her mind’s eye anymore. There had been a big, square kitchen in the front and the master bedroom beside it. You entered the house through the kitchen, much like the construction of Aidan’s new home.

  But the details were lost on her. She could only remember the feeling of being in the house, not the experience. How strange that it had been so long that her memories were faint and inexact.

  Aidan finished packing the canvas bag and tied the handles together. He walked the bag to the door and let it fall over some old boots. “I should take that in to the lawyer, just in case.”

  He came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. “Thank you, Claire. I wouldn’t have been able to handle all of this without you here.”

  She swiveled around to face him and leaned into his hug. “You would have survived,” she said into his chest.

  Aidan tipped her chin up and held her gaze. “I’m not sure I would have. I was a shell, Claire. And in some ways, I still am. But finding you again has given me a reason to live that I haven’t had for a long time. You always believed in me. Probably blindly, at times, and I… I need that back.”

  Her heart plummeted toward the ground so fast, she had to breathe just to keep herself in equilibrium. “What are you saying, Aidan?”

  “I’m saying, when this is all over, I want to live again.” His eyes flickered between hers as though asking for permission. Then he dropped his mouth to hers and kissed her.

  What began as a chaste, nostalgic kiss, soon turned toward desire and promise. He had her pinned against the counter, her hands scrabbling at his back, trying to bring him closer.

  Aidan scooped her up and carried her to the couch, never letting their mouths separate for even a moment. Claire could barely breathe and she had to come up for air like a swimmer doing the breaststroke.

  An emotional part of her didn’t feel ready, yet, but her body was practically calling out for Aidan. She couldn’t stand there being any separation between them any longer.

  Something buzzed below her waist and she laughed at the ticklish feeling. Aidan groaned and rolled onto the floor.

  He pulled out his cell, and Claire laughed again. Of course it was his phone, and to her surprise, he answered it.

  “Hello?” Someone’s voice spoke frantically on the other end. “Wait. What?” Pause. “No, Will, slow down and tell me again. What happened?”

  Claire sat up and straightened her shirt, at once relieved and sad that they were so far apart.

  Aidan’s jaw went slack. “You’re kidding me. I’ll be right there.” He clicked off his phone and stuffed it back in his pants pocket.

  “What happened?”

  Aidan jumped to his feet and pulled Claire up as well. “Will got his hands on the old case file, from the first investigation. We should go to the firehouse. The Chief is gone for the night, so there’s no one to stop me being there, and Will says he found something in the accident report that I need to see.”

  Claire rushed to the counter and grabbed her purse, her heart pounding from more than just Aidan’s kisses. Every inch of her body tingled, as though her nerves were waking up, and she absently reached for Aidan’s hand as she stepped to the door.

  “I’ll drive, this time.” She smiled, almost secretly. “I promise not to drive us off the road if you kiss me, though.”

  Aidan stopped her on the porch, almost knocking over one of the potted plants as he did. But he pulled her so tight into his body, she forgot herself.

  “Ok,” she whispered as he released her. “Never mind about that. But still. I’m driving.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The plants Aidan’s mother had left him were nearly crushed after he and Claire had knocked them over, but he managed to save at least one. He just couldn’t help himself anymore around her. The longer they spent together¸ the more he wanted her and the harder it was to keep his hands to himself.

  And knowing that she wanted him, too… that was the intoxicating part. It made his freedom so much more valuable, just thinking that he might get to spend part of his life with Claire.

  It was the intangible things, he was learning, he had missed for so long—the things their friendship had contained that he had taken for granted when she was in town. The way she unquestioningly believed him. The way she never directed her sarcasm at him. The way she always told him the truth.

  And somehow, when he’d married Jane, he and Claire had gotten even closer. Like it was finally okay for them to spend so much time together. Of course, after the fire, that had led to speculation that he had been sleeping with Claire, and that was the only time he’d ever gotten in a fight to defend his own honor about the whole situation. Some asshole at Joe’s bar had interrupted a night of Aidan’s solace to make wild remarks about sleeping with two sisters at once.

  Aidan would have killed the guy if Joe and Derreck and Will hadn’t pulled him off. And he probably wouldn’t have felt remorse about it. It hadn’t been until that night that Aidan had realized how much he was going to miss Claire. But her parents had made it exceptionally clear that he was not allowed to speak to her, and that they would never be coming back to Somewhere.

  Now that he saw the woman she’d become, he wished he had gone after her anyway.

&nb
sp; But no. He had been a broken and angry boy in those years, and it had taken him a long time to become a man. Let alone a man that deserved to have Claire in his life.

  Her car smelled like her, and Aidan smiled when he took the passenger seat. She passed her purse to him, and he put it on the floor between his feet.

  “You’re sure it’s ok to go to the firehouse?” Claire asked.

  “Will said the Chief was gone, and that it would be safe for me to be there. But I can check again if you’re worried.”

  “Remember, you signed that sheet with the county that said you wouldn’t come within a hundred feet?”

  Aidan shifted in his seat. “Maybe I should send you in to talk to Will instead, then?”

  Barely any light remained in the warm Texas night, but enough shone to reveal the smile that spread across Claire’s face. “It would be a good sign, yes. That you value your life and you’re willing to make a compromise to save it.”

  He was just pulling his phone out to text Will when Claire’s car hit the crater of a pothole that marred the last little bit of gravel before Sweet Mountain met up with Carbon Road, on the way back to town. The phone sailed out of his fingers and lodged somewhere on the ground. He moved the seat back and bent over, foraging for his phone.

  His fingers kept brushing over Claire’s purse, but the phone was nowhere to be found.

  “Are you all right down there?” she asked, amusement in her voice. Aidan laughed, himself, and kept digging. He finally felt the hard case of a phone, sticking out of her purse, so he brought the whole purse with him as he sat up.

  But when he reached in to retrieve it, Claire’s eyes narrowed. He felt the thick spirals of an open-faced journal and his heart hit a pothole. He was right. The journal was one of Jane’s. It was the last one she wrote before they got married.

  And it contained probably the most evidence of her infidelity. Not to mention the insinuation that there was another man she was seeing besides Aidan.

  He held the journal up. “You kept this.”

  “Yes, I kept it,” she said with a resigned tone.

  “But Yumi asked us to surrender all the evidence.”