A thunderclap filled her ears, and the radio went silent.
Four firefighters entered dispatch at a run, their faces drawn. Mazanti made sure the door shut with barely a click, and none of them made a sound. Even the phones stopped ringing.
Lexie only knew one thing—she needed to be with him. The only thing that kept her in her chair was the fact that she didn’t trust anyone else to be on the radio right now. She couldn’t lose him this way. The same way.
She couldn’t.
The radio blared into activity. Tox yelled, “Get the rescue here, Darling! Code three!”
As if she’d send the ambulance in any other way. As if they’d respond any other way. Lexie knew the crew on Rescue Two were almost as panicked as she was.
They weren’t in love with Coin, though. He was their friend, but not their best friend.
Coin was her love. Coin was hers. Other radios blared, stepping on each other’s traffic.
“Units, clear the air.” It was Lexie’s radio now. “Captain One, status check,” she said.
Tox responded, “He’s hit, Darling. In the chest. We got vitals, but his heart rate’s slipping.”
“Battalion One, copy?” She released the pedal and coughed, the sob she wouldn’t release becoming a physical thing in her chest.
“Affirm,” shouted Chief Barger, his siren blaring in the background.
Lexie coughed, trying to clear her throat.
Megan said, “Can I take the radio for you?”
Lexie just shook her head, hard. This was hers. She would do her job. Maybe if she did her job the best she could, this time she could save the man she loved. She had to. With the sleeve of her sweatshirt, in between transmissions, she wiped the tears that dripped off her cheek. Every other second, she typed as fast as she could.
She did her job.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Coin woke up in pain.
Pain everywhere. From the front of his forehead all the way to his kneecaps, as if his body was on fire. The worst was when he tried to breathe—it felt as if a ladder had been propped on his chest and the biggest guys in the department—Tox, Devo, Stu—were climbing it.
He knew he wasn’t in the dorm. He wasn’t in his own house. And with the beeping and white wall and blue curtain, he sure as heck wasn’t at Lexie’s.
The hospital.
He couldn’t remember a dang thing, though.
Sleepy. He was so tired …
But no, this was important.
If he was in the hospital, then something had happened. A fire—was that why his lungs hurt? He couldn’t remember …
It was quiet in this room with just the low beep of his heart monitor punctuating his thoughts. In the hall he heard voices, but their words didn’t make sense.
Had he had a stroke? That wouldn’t explain the pain.
Walk it back, Keefe.
He’d been at work. It had been a bad day.
Coin wracked his brain. Why had it been a bad day? Serena? His heart rate sped up—it was amplified by the electronic beeps. Was she okay? Had something happened, a car accident?
A nurse entered carrying a syringe.
“What happened? My daughter—”
“You’re awake!” The nurse, an older woman with graying hair pulled back in a short ponytail, had young eyes. “Your daughter will be so pleased.”
Relief flooded his body, pure and clean. For a second nothing hurt at all.
Lexie. Another pulse of adrenaline went though him. What wasn’t he remembering? Something about Lexie. He remembered the kiss in the cemetery, and then the night they’d spent together came back to him.
It was a wonderful memory. It was perfect. Why then, did he …
Oh.
He remembered. All of it, it came back in the space of a few seconds. The junkie with the gun, the way he’d aimed, and then fired.
What he’d told Lexie on the radio.
What Lexie had asked him to do—to leave her. To not come back.
“Where was I hit?” Coin croaked, trying to keep the despair from filling him completely, from drowning him.
“Eleven millimeters from your heart. If the man’s hand had shaken even the tiniest bit, you wouldn’t be here right now.”
If he wasn’t here, it wouldn’t hurt this bad, knowing he’d tried to win her, and lost. But that wasn’t fair—that wasn’t right. He couldn’t think that. The most important thing to think about was Serena. He had to get better for her.
“I’m going to call your daughter,” said the nurse. “She’s with her mother in the waiting room. They’ve refused to leave.” She hung another liter of fluids. “You should also know that at any given point, there are at least six firefighters out there, sometimes more. I don’t think there’s been a time that room has been empty.”
“How long …?”
“Not that long, hon.” She glanced at her watch. “You’ve been here for about twenty-three hours. You had surgery yesterday and you got moved out of recovery six hours ago. I have to say, it’s heartening to see the way your coworkers care about you. And your wife! How on earth do you work with your wife? I couldn’t work at this hospital if my Bernie worked here. I’d stab him with a pencil before the first day was out, but that said, he’d probably like it. I’ll go get them now.”
Coin tried to shake his head to clear it, but it hurt too much. He gasped and stilled. What did the nurse mean? He didn’t work with Janice. Nothing made sense. All he knew was that he wanted to see Serena, wanted to hug her, to make sure she was okay.
And he wanted to see Lexie.
Not that it would happen. He tried, he’d failed.
Somehow he would have to find a way to be okay with being just friends with her. He couldn’t imagine it—being with her in dispatch and not noticing the way the sun came through the window, lighting up those red curls. Sitting next to her while they did the crossword and not being distracted by the light scent of that flowery hand lotion she liked. Knowing how far that rose tattoo went and not getting to caress it again. Hearing her speak, watching her mouth move without wanting to kiss her.
He released a painful breath and closed his eyes. That was why his chest ached so much. Not the bullet wound. It was the broken heart that hurt the most.
For Serena, he was glad he’d lived. But she was the only reason he had any gladness at all.
“Daddy!”
Coin’s eyes flew open and he smiled at the sight of his daughter, her hair taken out of her usual messy pigtails and combed neatly. “Come here, kiddo.”
She looked as if she was almost overcome with the effort of not moving, her eyes blinking faster than normal. “I can’t hug you. They said.”
“I don’t care what they said. I won’t heal without a hug. You can fix me.”
“Daddy,” she laughed. “No, I can’t. I’m not a wizard.”
“If you can’t fix it,” he started.
“I’m not trying hard enough,” Serena finished. Carefully, she leaned forward and gave him a sideways half-hug. It was enough. It was exactly what Coin needed.
“I can tell I’m already better. You think I should get up?”
“No!” Serena grinned. “No way.”
“I love you, kid.”
She shrugged. “I know.”
“Where’s your mom?”
“At home.”
He frowned. “Oh. The nurse said … Wait, your mom left you alone in the waiting room?”
“Seriously? There’s like eleven hundred million firefighters out there playing poker. I already made fifteen bucks. Mom left me with Lexie.”
Maybe they’d left something in his chest, because it suddenly felt as if Coin couldn’t breathe. “Lexie’s out there?”
“No,” came a voice at the door. “I’m here.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Lexie wanted more than anything to go to him like Serena had, to lean over and kiss him. To touch him. Her fingers itched to reach for him, to smooth the line bet
ween his eyes, to touch the stubble that had grown dark and thick over the last twenty-four hours.
But it wasn’t that easy.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi, you.” His voice was scratchy, as if it hurt to use.
“You look like crap,” she said.
“Thanks. So do you.”
Lexie laughed, surprised at how easy it was. To be here. She pushed her hair off her face. “Yeah, well. I haven’t slept in a day and a half.”
Coin took his daughter’s hand. “Serena, honey?”
Serena rolled her eyes. “I’m not stupid. But be quick about it. I want to show you my favorite new card trick. Hank taught me.” She ran out the door, whistling.
Lexie said, “Don’t worry, I made sure he didn’t use the naked lady deck.”
Coin laughed, but his face went white.
Extending her hand, Lexie gripped the rail on his bed. “No, don’t laugh. You should sleep. I should let you sleep more. You just woke up …” She turned, flustered, but Coin’s hand on her wrist stopped her.
“You’re here.”
“Of course I am. We’re friends. Where else would I be?”
A light went out in his eyes, a light Lexie didn’t know was so important to her.
“Call me darlin’,” she said, surprising herself.
“What?”
She shook her head. “Just do it.”
“Darlin’.”
Lexie’s hands started to shake.
“Darlin’,” he said again, and there it was, the light was coming back.
She clenched her fingers into fists, but the trembling got worse.
“You know what, darlin’?”
She shook her head.
“I didn’t know if I’d ever get to call you that again.”
“You probably say that to all the dispatchers.” She was glad her voice didn’t quaver like the rest of her body had decided to do. What if he didn’t remember anything? Any of it?
“Only the ones I love.”
She opened her mouth but couldn’t find the words she needed.
“Only the ones I’m in love with.”
Lexie gave a strangled laugh. “I sent you away.”
“I was going to honor that, I swear I was. It’s just that, when I was in the rig with that guy—Louis—I could see in his eyes he wasn’t going anywhere if he didn’t get his fix, and he was going to take someone with him.”
Coin’s eyes asked the question he didn’t voice. Lexie said, “He was a better shot with the bullet he put into himself. He didn’t make it.”
He said, “Yeah. I figured that. And I knew that I couldn’t leave this big old world that I love so much without telling you and Serena one more time that I loved you.”
Lexie reached for his hand. “Will I hurt you if …?”
“Nothing you can do can hurt me.”
Oh, she wasn’t sure about that. If he felt one tenth of the emotion that she held in her heart right then, then she could hurt the hell out of him with a few well-chosen words.
So Lexie chose her words wisely.
“I love you.” He opened his mouth, but she said, “Hush. I’m the dispatcher. I do the talking.” She could feel her fingers trembling in his, and his lips—the lips she wanted to kiss, over and over—curved into a smile. “I think I’ve always loved you. Since the day you cried at my father’s funeral. I think I knew that day I couldn’t love another man in the fire services. Since that day, I knew I couldn’t have you. And that’s why no one I’ve ever dated has worked out.”
Coin’s voice was rough. “Why?”
“Because not one of them was you.”
“Darlin’.”
“I’m so sorry.”
He laughed, a rusty noise, and no sound had ever made Lexie’s heart more glad. “I’m not. I’d take a couple more bullets just to hear you say you love me again.”
She lowered her mouth to his ear and whispered it to him. “I love you, I love you, I love you.” Then she moved her lips to his, and before she kissed him, she said it again, in a different way, in a way she knew he’d understand.
“Always.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
EPILOGUE
“You have to see this.”
Lexie groaned and buried her face in her pillow. “S’early. Too early.”
“No, you have to get up.”
She rolled to her side and looked at Coin through tangled eyelashes. “You keep me up all night and this is what I get?” She twisted to look at the clock on the bedside table. “At five forty-five in the freaking morning?”
“Just get up.”
“I’m going to kill you.”
“I think you gave it your best shot last night, darlin’. I’m proving pretty hardy, I think.”
“Hardy as a weed. As Bermuda grass,” she grumbled, but she took the hand he offered as he led her out of the bedroom and onto the deck.
Outside, scarlet warred with crimson as the sunrise split the sky right down to the bright blue water. Huge clouds loomed, banked with blue darkness, the red dawn spilling gloriously behind them. A storm was on the way to the island and far out on the purple horizon, Lexie could see a water spout dance.
Lexie clutched the bamboo railing. “It looks like …”
“Like the whole sky is on fire.” Coin grinned and turned his face to the dawn.
“Let’s move here,” said Lexie, staring at how the palms bowed and swayed in the tropical wind that was still warm even though it was getting stronger. The air smelled of plumeria and salt.
“I don’t have the equipment to fight this kind of fire. I don’t think anyone would hire me.”
Lexie nodded in agreement. “You don’t have the training, I guess.”
“No training to fight sky fire, no.” Coin wrapped his arm around Lexie’s waist and pulled her against him. “I have other skills.”
“That you do. Like having girls pay your way to Bora Bora.”
“Only one direction,” he protested. “And I’m paying our way back. And anyway, with what we’re going to save by living together—”
Lexie cut him off with her laugh. “I’m teasing you, my love. Hey, what time is it at home?”
“Almost nine a.m.”
“Let’s call Serena.”
Coin smiled and pressed a kiss against her forehead, warming her even more than the rising sun did. “Okay. Why?”
“Because that looks like a big storm coming.”
“You worried about the lines going down? I think it’s all satellite now, but okay …”
“No, big guy. I need you to check off your only to-do, because I have big storm plans for that hotel bed.”
“I see,” said Coin. “And you call your mom. Just to check her off the list.”
Lexie nodded. “She’s been so much better ever since I told her to back off.”
Coin said, “I think it’s me. She adore me, what can I say? What about supplies? Do we have enough to ride out a typhoon? A firefighter’s always prepared.”
“Let’s see,” Lexie said, and Coin pulled her against him, hard, showing her exactly how prepared he was. “Candles. Plenty of those in the cabana. All that wine we bought last night. Pineapple, and mango, lots. Extra bubble bath. I think we’re good to go.”
“You still sleepy?” Coin nipped her bottom lip then soothed the bite with a kiss.
She kissed him back, and after a long moment, she said, “No. But I want to go back to bed.”
“Darlin’.”
It was all Lexie needed to hear.
She glanced at the fire in the sky behind him as they went back inside.
Always.
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About Rachael Herron
Rachael Herron is the bestselling author of the novels The Ones Who Matter Most, Splinters of Light and Pack Up the Moon (all from Penguin), the five-book Cypress Hollow series, and the memoir, A Life in Stitches. She received her MFA in writing from Mills College, Oakland. She teaches writing extension workshops at both UC Berkeley and Stanford and is a New Zealand citizen as well as an American. You can find her at RachaelHerron.com.
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KEEP READING FOR A SNEAK PEEK OF THE NEXT BOOK!
Don’t miss a minute in Darling Bay! One unforgettable town, three standalone series (read them in any order!). So many ways to fall in love!
THE FIREFIGHTERS OF DARLING BAY:
Playing with fire has never been this fun…
Blaze: Tox and Grace - Book 1
Burn: Coin and Lexie - Book 2
Flame: Hank and Samantha - Book 3
Heat: Caz and Bonnie - Book 4
Or get all four together on sale, HALF OFF! Save $5.97!
The Firefighters, Boxed Set
THE SONGBIRDS OF DARLING BAY:
Nashville meets the Gilmore Girls in this heartwarming new trilogy of estranged country-singing sisters seeking true love (and their way back to each other).
The Darling Songbirds, Book 1, March 2016
The Songbird’s Call, Book 2, September 2016
Burn (The Firefighters of Darling Bay Book 2) Page 12
