by A. J. Downey
That’s why you hired lawyers and PR people, dipshit. I thought at myself savagely. I wasn’t completely helpless, I just felt that way. I had reminded myself of this no less than a dozen times when Backdraft came back.
“Sorry about that,” he said, setting a pile of clothes beside me. “Took me a minute to find things that might actually fit you but I wanted to load your clothes into the dryer first. These are Angel’s, but they’re the closest thing we’ve got to fit you.” I smiled and blushed a bit but he’d already propped one of my feet on his knee. He unrolled a ball of socks and I laughed. They were huge.
“These, unfortunately, are mine. Just going to have to deal.”
“I don’t mind,” I said softly, in a bit of wonder, as he rolled one down on itself and slipped it over my toes and over my foot. He was actually kneeling, at my feet, dressing me. I shook my head to dispel some of that wonder and said, “You don’t have to do that.”
“I want to,” he replied gruffly, and I could see it was somehow important to him, taking care of me right now, so I let it go. I mean, I knew I was perfectly capable of dressing myself, but this was really nice. I’d never had anyone do anything like this for me before.
He continued administering his sexy brand of care and I let him, confessing quietly, “You’re really turning me on, right now.” He laughed and it was genuine. The icy layer of bereft sadness cracked, some of it falling away. Somehow, despite how awful his night had started out, his heart was already on the mend.
I wished I could be half so remarkably resilient and vowed at some point, to try and learn his secret.
He didn’t stop with the socks, either. He dressed the rest of me with the same level of care, occasionally pausing to press a light butterfly kiss to various points on my body, finding erogenous zones I didn’t even know I had. Each time he elicited a reaction a tiny smile raised the corners of his mouth, as if he were carefully taking notes. I marveled at him in disbelief, that there could be a man as perfect, as heartfelt and soulful as one of the heroes in one of my books. Not only that he was real, but that he’d found me and wanted me, despite the awful cloud of bad luck that seemed to follow me.
“Talk to me, baby,” he murmured and I shot a look to the locker-room door. He sighed, nodding and said, “No one’s listening. It’s just you and me, and I need to know what’s going on in that head of yours.”
“Take me somewhere,” I begged quietly. “Somewhere where it’s just you and me and no one else.” I hated how it sounded like I was pleading, like I was begging for something unfathomable.
“Captain is going to send me home anyways. A guy has a rough call like that, this close to the end of his tour, it ain’t no thing to do it. I have plenty of time-off built up to cover a few hours. Let me grab your clothes in a bag and we can get out of here.”
“You’re sure?” I asked, barely wanting to breathe.
“I’m sure. I think you need me as much as I need you right now.”
I nodded and he slipped back out, only this time, it was with my hand in his and me following. I wasn’t about to let him face anything else alone tonight. I mean, I’d come here to comfort him and instead, here he was taking care of me… or maybe you’re doing something new. You know, like acting as one half of a healthy relationship. Maybe you’re taking care of each other.
Wasn’t that a thought?
I called Veronica and told her I was going somewhere with Backdraft while he talked with his Captain and a few of the guys. She was on the fence and I felt instantly bad about putting her in such a precarious position.
“On the one hand,” she said with a long-suffering sigh, “I’m glad you guys are doing you, and getting some time together.”
“On the other?” I asked, slightly amused, knowing what she was going to say.
“Don’t get caught by the media, please?”
“I’ll try not to.”
“Where are you going?”
“His place, I think. Lord knows, I really don’t want to be in mine.”
“I hear that. Good lord, the only place I feel safe changing is in the bathroom, now.” She sounded as creeped-out as I felt, and I sighed.
“I hear you. I want you to put the condo up for sale.”
“You’re sure?” she asked, stunned.
“I have had nothing but rotten luck since moving into that obsidian tower.” I shivered. “I’m sure, and no, I don’t know where I want to go. Maybe something subterranean like a hobbit hole or something.”
She laughed. “You need windows,” she said flatly.
“You’re right, I do, with lots of light.”
“Come to New York,” she begged, and I stared from where I leaned against one of the trucks up into the loft where Backdraft talked with the rest of his crew.
I shook my head, realized she couldn’t see it, and said to her, “Indigo City is my home now, and I won’t be run out of it completely. Besides, New York is great for a visit, but would drive me even more nuts than I already am.”
“You’re not as crazy as you think you are,” she said softly. My personal assistant was gone, my best friend was in residence. “You’ve just been through a lot. I don’t think anyone would be taking any of this well.”
“Feed Jaspar and Marigold for me?”
“Do you one better, I’ll give them lots of love from their momma.”
“Thanks.”
“No problem, you be careful.”
“I will.”
“Bye.”
“Bye.”
I ended the call and when I looked back up, Backdraft was gone and there were a whole bunch of curious and sympathetic stares in my direction. I felt my face flush, but the loud sound of boots hitting concrete made me jump. I turned and Backdraft was striding in my direction from the brass fire-pole.
“Ready to go?” he asked and I nodded. I put on my jacket, and braced for a cold ride. A bunch of the guys came down and the garage doors started to go up.
“Hang on, they’re going to run interference with the trucks and sirens,” Backdraft said.
“They have a call?”
“Naw, grocery run.”
“This late at night?”
“Welcome to the city, baby. Got twenty-four hour just about everything.”
I huddled against his back and put my arms around his waist, trying to make myself as small and inconspicuous as possible. I winced as the lights and siren started on the rig nearest us, the blare of the horn going off as Backdraft started his bike. The trucks drowned out the sound of the bike starting up and when they turned out of the driveway we hid behind them and turned the opposite direction.
I realized, belatedly, that I’d actually never seen Backdraft’s place and I had no idea where it was or what it was like. I smiled and held on, looking forward to seeing this new piece of his life.
He took several turns to get us going in the right direction and wove through city streets. It wasn’t a very long ride, even with the added turns to get on the proper track. He pulled off to the side and signaled for me to jump down. I did and stood on the curb in front of a stretch of old brownstones as he backed the bike into a space between two cars just big enough to fit the bike and leave them ample room to get out without hurting it.
I’m not going to lie. I was really hoping that it was one of the old brownstones that he lived in, rather than the rundown, tired old apartment tenement across the street. He reached out and took my hand, the bag of my still-soggy clothes, that he’d pulled from one of his saddlebag storage-things on the bike, in his other one.
“Which one is it?” I asked and he grinned.
“Don’t get too excited,” he said. “It’s that one up there.” He pointed.
“You really live in an antique brownstone?” I asked.
“Yeah, restoring it myself, outside has a lot more curb appeal than the inside, babe. I’m almost embarrassed to bring you inside.”
“Really? Why?”
“You’ll see.”
He stuck the key in the lock of the weathered front door and twisted. I wanted inside and off the sidewalk before we were caught, before we were seen and I am afraid I may have crowded him a little. He depressed the latch and swung the door in and let me go through where I stopped.
“Oh, wow…”
It was like a literal bomb had gone off in here. Holes in the walls revealing the skeleton of the building, insulation dripping from them like ticking from a stuffed bear. There was no rhyme or reason to any of the wallpaper or paint that still clung to the walls and the wood floors were in dire need of sanding.
“Is that even legal?” I asked, but I couldn’t help but smile. He followed my gaze toward the ceiling and the exposed electrical dribbling out of it where a light fixture used to be.
He laughed and said, “First story has no power running to it currently.”
“How long has it been like this?” I asked, but my eyes were no longer seeing what was but rather what could be.
“I’ve owned it around two years, started on the third floor and am working my way down.” His voice was soft, careful, and I dropped my eyes to his face.
“It has so much potential,” I said. “What are you going to do with it?”
His smile broke out across his face and was so infectious I felt an answering one of my own blossom out of my awe at the place. He drew me closer by the hips and considered me a moment, his expression growing serious, the smile he had fading.
“I want you to do me a favor,” he said.
“Of course,” I murmured.
He stood aside and looked around and said, “I want you to tell me what you see for this place.”
I swallowed hard and asked, “How do you mean?”
He swallowed hard and searched my face in the dark, but the streetlights shining through the windows was plenty to see by. I saw him lose his nerve and I didn’t want that. I didn’t want him to and I didn’t want to second guess everything. I wouldn’t. I mentally punched my mother and the way she raised me in the face and grabbed onto the moment with both hands, clinging to it for dear life.
I put a hand on his chest and asked for him, “You mean if I were to live here? Like, our future together?”
He smiled and it was different. So timid and shy for him and I realized just how precarious we were, how fragile this moment was and I ached so fiercely. Like we were back to being ‘just friends’ when I honestly hated it. I didn’t want ‘just friends’. I wanted him and a chance to explore a life with him and what that would be like. I didn’t want these assholes or my neurotic mess of anxiety to win, and so I sighed and put my imagination to good use.
“Give me the tour, let me see the whole thing.”
“Bottom to top?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
He took my hand and led me gently up the hall to a door and opened it: the stairs leading down to the basement. I smiled and he took out his phone and used the flashlight function. I went down the stairs to the first landing and looked out over the wide-open space down here. He went all the way down to a nook behind the stairs and I heard him open a dryer. I drifted down all the way, until my boots settled on the gritty concrete of the basement floor.
“Man-cave,” I said and he laughed.
“Seriously?”
“Oh, for sure! A bar over there, a pool table over there with the red felt, not green, and a big-screen TV for all the sportsball your manly hearts could desire.”
He straightened and twisted the knob on the dryer and hit the button. It started to tumble and he came back to me, drawing me back against his chest.
“What do you think?” he asked, looking up at the ceiling. “Finish the beams or just drywall it?”
“Mm-mm, neither! What about pressed tin or copper? Like the old-time saloons?”
“Expensive shit,” he said.
“Not if you know where to look, and plus, if we’re pretending that I’m doing this with you, money isn’t exactly an object. I’ve invested carefully. Even if my career goes down like the Hindenburg at this point, I could sustain us beyond these remodels. Plus, I was making fairly decent money as a transcriptionist in the medical field before I turned full-time author.”
“I never knew what you did,” he said thoughtfully. “You know, before Timber.” I sighed and leaned back into him, holding his arms around me.
“There’s still so much we don’t know about each other,” I said unhappily.
He kissed the top of my head and whispered into my hair, “Got nothing but time, babes. That’s the only remedy for that.”
I twisted in the circle of his arms and looked up into his face, searching it. All I could find was love and commitment there, and I would be damned if I would let my fear of pain, for him or for me, torpedo this before it got started.
“I am so scared for you,” I confessed and he touched the side of my face.
“Now, we’re getting somewhere,” he murmured.
I bit my lips together and rolled them out, smoothing them against each other and came clean.
“I’m terrified, actually, that something like this or even worse than this is going to happen and you’ll be so hurt or get so sick of me and leave.” I couldn’t look him in the eyes. It was too hard when I was baring the darkest fears and parts of my soul. Everyone disappointed you or left eventually; I’d grown up abandoned by anyone and everyone that made a difference to me ‒ my father, my grandparents, my own mother. I was naturally skittish from a childhood filled with false constructs of relationships, paper thin, yet so starved for love it was all I could seem to find as an adult ‒ more of the same.
Until now. I felt it down to the very bottom of my heart that this, with Backdraft, was something different. The old myths of soulmates, that I’d made so much money writing about, were suddenly very real. I didn’t want to let go of that.
He gently touched the side of my face, the light from his phone’s flashlight illuminating things from where he’d rested it on the banister around the little landing. I looked up into his eyes which were just dark down here, the light leeching all the color away from them. Still, the one thing that it couldn’t take or steal was the sentiment in them. The resolve he looked at me with made more of my insecurities fall away.
“I told you. I’m not going anywhere, Lil. You don’t find this shit every day, babe, and I know it’s moving at warp speed, but none of what is happening to us makes me feel any less about you. Makes me feel a whole lot less about the world in general, but I still love you, and I still want a shot with you. I’m not letting those assholes take that away.”
“You really think that, don’t you?” I asked, my voice faint with wonder.
“What?” he asked.
“Us. That this is happening to us. Not you or me, but us.”
“Damn straight.”
He smoothed a thumb back and forth along my cheek and I closed my eyes and swore, “Fuck.” He burst out laughing.
“What?” I demanded, but I was smiling, too. I couldn’t help it. His laugh had that effect on me.
“I’ve never heard you swear so hardcore before!”
“Shut up!” I said laughing, smacking him lightly in the arm. “I swear!”
“Yeah, okay, sure,” he said getting it together. “What was that for?”
I sighed and told the truth, “This whole time, the last few days, I’ve been taking this all on myself. Like it’s all me. My fault, my problem, ‘my’. ‘My.’ ‘MY.’ When it’s not. I’ve been shutting you out, and I feel really bad about it now.”
“Don’t,” he said leaning back to look at me. “You’ve been all alone, on your own, for a real long time, Lil. That’s a tough habit to break. This is all still real new.”
“I don’t deserve you,” I breathed and he frowned.
“Stop that, you’re long overdue for someone to take care of you instead of the other way around, babe. Now I’m here to do that, so relax for me, okay?”
I pressed my lips together a
nd nodded, the tension easing from my body. I thought to myself, Dear god, I need therapy, and made a mental note that maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea, that maybe I needed to look into getting some.
“Show me the rest of the house,” I murmured, and he grinned and nodded.
The second floor was still as much a disaster as the basement and first floor, but the third floor was like stepping into another world.
“Oh, my god, this is beautiful!” I said and he flipped on a light. The classic light fixture hanging from the high ceiling cast a warm golden glow over the room. It was spartanly furnished, just a bed and tired old dresser but everything else looked smooth, polished, and brand new.
“You like it?” he asked, and I turned in wonder.
“You did this all yourself?”
“Yeah, had some help here and there from a bunch of the guys.”
“Fire or Indigo Knights?” I asked.
He smiled and said, “Both.”
“They did you proud,” I said softly.
There was a fireplace up here, and the room was all white and full of light. Pristine in a modern yet classic sort of way.
The bathroom was huge; the tub, an old clawfoot; the shower, glassed-in and modern, with a dual his-and-hers sinktop made of the same stone as the shower stall’s tiles. The floors were a white marble or granite and reminded me of a white sand beach.
Still, the bedroom and bathroom both, while beautiful, looked mostly unused and unfinished somehow. I realized there was no art on the walls. Nothing personal. As if it were finished, and a beautiful house, but had yet to be made into a home.
“You need a bigger bed,” I said softly and he grinned.
“I think your king would look better in here, don’t you?”
I debated telling him I put the condo up for sale tonight but finally decided against it. Scared that it would seem like I was moving myself right in here, which wasn’t what we were doing, I mean, right?
