HEART OF FIRE

by Venez, Sedona

  “Maybe.” Her eyes shifted away then back to me.

  I looked at her a little more intently. Years of living with my father, with his outbursts, had trained my brain to recognize the slightest difference in someone I was close to. I’d gone through the therapy—it was part of encouraging my buddies from the Army to get help for their problems. And, in fact, I’d had a therapist tell me he was sure that part of how I’d come through my deployments without getting PTSD was because all the trauma of my childhood had more or less inoculated me to it. But it had left me with the hypervigilance, if not the other symptoms.

  “What’s up?” I asked. Barb brought our drinks to the table, so Kendra couldn’t answer right away. We took sips of our beers, and I kept waiting for her to tell me what was going on.

  She sighed heavily. “My sergeant is trying to push hard for me to come back.”

  She’d mentioned him calling once or twice, but judging by the unusual tension displayed on her face, there was more to it.

  I leaned forward. “How is he pushing?” I asked, trying to keep my tone as neutral as possible. “And are you saying that you want to go?” She isn’t just going to run away to NYC, is she? Without giving us a chance at more?

  “I’ve got a great record,” Kendra revealed. “He wants me to go for the evaluation next week, then a stint on desk duty depending how the psych part goes.”

  I clenched my fingers around the beer bottle. “So, you want to go back next week?” I demanded.

  “I don’t know if I want to go back at all,” Kendra protested. “But honestly, I’m not sure if agreeing to take the job here is the right thing for me.”

  “So why does it matter if your sergeant is pressuring you?” I countered. “Can’t you tell him to back off?”

  “Can we enjoy our meal before we get into an argument about this?” Kendra picked at the tablecloth and then sipped her beer.

  I took a deep breath and made myself calm down. “I’m just trying to understand.”

  Barb brought our food to the table. The service at McDuffy’s was always quick.

  “Let’s enjoy our meal,” Kendra suggested. “Then we can discuss what I will do.”

  “Fine,” I replied.

  I took a bite of my burger, making myself focus on the taste of it—fatty, meaty, and delicious. I watched as Kendra started in on her meatloaf sandwich.

  Kendra avoided eye contact with me as she ate, and the silence between us stretched. What should have been an enjoyable meal with the woman I adored was turning into a nightmare.

  “Okay,” Kendra said finally, setting her food partly aside. “Can you let me explain everything to you before you react?”

  “Yes. I’ll do that,” I promised, putting down my burger and eating one of my fries.

  “The long and short of it is that I don’t know what I want to do,” Kendra said. “I feel like I owe a lot to the NYPD.”

  “And?” I said.

  Kendra’s eyes narrowed.

  I shrugged. “I’m not reacting. I’m just prompting.”

  She carried on, “I want to end things in New York on a high note.”

  “So, you’re going back.” Anger flared at the thought of losing Kendra, but I refused to rant and rave like I’d always seen my father do when shit didn’t go his way. I’d fought for years against the idea that something destined me to be like him, that I had anything in common with that man at all, apart from the bad luck to have some of his genes and to have spent my childhood around the asshole.

  “I have to,” she snapped.

  I snorted. “You mean, you want to.” I took a sip of beer.

  “You don’t under—”

  I cut her off. “And what about us?” I arched a brow. “Are we going to do that whole long-distance relationship thing?”

  Her shoulders sagged. “Lukas, long-distance relationships never work.”

  “Right.” I narrowed my eyes. “So, just like that, we’re done.”

  “Lukas…”

  “Kendra, you mean the world to me.” My voice was husky. “And I’m willing to fight tooth and nail to make our relationship work.” Reaching over, I grabbed her hand, weaving my fingers through hers. “You know why?”

  Tears glistened in her eyes. “No,” she rasped.

  “Because I can see forever with you, Kendra Powell.”

  “Fuck. Lukas, don’t make this hard for me.” She bit her bottom lip.

  I was sure I was falling in love. Not that I had any examples of a loving, healthy relationship—my parents’ marriage had been toxic and volatile. All I had were my gut feelings that Kendra was a woman I could love and protect for the rest of my life. But thinking about such a commitment was too soon for me and for her.

  “You are my woman. And before you walked back into my life, I didn’t give a shit about having a woman in my life. In fact, I wanted to spend my life alone.” The last part sounded selfish as fuck, but it was the truth. “You’re the first woman I’ve ever wanted more with. But my feelings can’t be one-sided. Want me too.” I pulled my hands away from hers.

  “I do, Lukas. I’m just not strong enough to walk away from what I know to walk into the unknown with you.”

  “Okay,” I said flatly.

  “Okay?” She frowned. “That’s all you have to say?”

  “Yes.” My heart hammered. “I won’t force you to want us. You either do or you don’t.” Each word was like a stab to the gut. “I told you how I feel…” And she hadn’t reciprocated, which was very telling. It was fucking with my head that I’d misread our whole relationship, that I thought we were actually building a solid relationship that went beyond just fantastic sex. “And what I want, which is you.” I paused. “I want us, but you don’t. And if you’re expecting me to fly into some asshole rage about it. I’m not that kind of man, Kendra. I’m not like my father, who forced my mother to give up her dreams just to be with him and cater to his ego.”

  Kendra replied immediately, “You don’t understand how scary this is for me to decide about my career based on our relationship. I’ve spent years focused on my career and making detective, and then some asswipe comes along and shoots me, taking away what I’ve worked so hard for. I can’t even fucking hear firecrackers without losing my shit. And now you expect me to give up my life in New York too?”

  “I don’t expect shit, Kendra. You’ve made your decision, and I will not argue about it.” My cell buzzed. Shit. It’s the chief. “It’s a text from the fire station. There’s a big fire at the plant. I need to go in.”

  “Duty calls.” She sighed heavily. “We’ll talk later.”

  I signaled for Barb, our waitress, who came over quickly. “Check, please,” I demanded.

  “Be right back,” she chirped before hustling away. She was back in a jiffy, giving me the check.

  I stared at Kendra while peeling out enough cash to cover the amount of our meal plus tip. “I don’t enjoy leaving like this.” It bothered the hell out of me that I’d had to leave before we’d finished our discussion. Her deciding to leave was still fucking with my head, but it was her decision whether I liked it or not.

  “I understand.” Kendra looked at me. The disappointment on her face was almost worse than anger.

  I scooted my chair closer, leaning in. I kissed her slow and easy like we had all the time in the world. But we didn’t. Kendra was leaving town, and I couldn’t stop her. Breaking off our kiss, I stood, walking away from her…forever.

  14

  Kendra

  “What is Pride and Prejudice?” the Jeopardy contestant on the TV asked. I snorted.

  “It’s Sense and Sensibility,” I told Grandma.

  I sipped a glass of water Grandma had insisted I needed. I had gotten out of the habit of staying hydrated while I was working, but Grandma had brought it all back with her insistence on glasses of water several times a day. “Good for the kidneys, good for the liver, good for the spleen, and great for the skin,” she always said.

&nbs
p; “I’m sorry,” Alex Trebek told the contestant. “The correct answer was Sense and Sensibility.”

  “You should go on the show,” Grandma said, giving me a proud look. Even before I’d lived with her when I was young, she’d encouraged me to read as much as possible. And when I’d moved to her place after Mom had died, she’d insisted on my reading fifty books a year, one for almost every week. I got the occasional pass on longer books and sometimes made up for lost time with short ones, but on average, I made it through. I was the best-read detective in my precinct, and even after college, I still read at least twenty books a year.

  “I’d bomb in that Art History category,” I pointed out. “Books, I know. History, I’m good at. Psych and Criminology, I’m great. But I’ve got big gaps.”

  “Just make some of your books more well rounded,” Grandma suggested.

  I smiled, shifting in the chair I’d taken. It was a ritual from my childhood, watching Jeopardy with Grandma either during or after dinner, talking about the categories and the contestants. But I felt off tonight, despite the familiarity. I was leaving in a few days, and frankly, I’d miss her something fierce once gone.

  When I’d told Grandma I was going back to New York, she just said, “Baby girl, why would you want to walk away from a new beginning just to go back to a past you know you don’t want?” Deep down in my heart, I knew she was right. But the mere thought of walking away from a career I’d fought for with lots of blood, sweat, and tears broke me out in a cold sweat.

  And then there was Lukas.

  A wave of sadness washed over me when I remembered the hurt and anger in his eyes the night I told him I was going back to my job.

  I couldn’t pinpoint when our relationship had moved from just sex to more, but it had. I was falling in love with him, and that new dynamic worried me.

  What if I stayed, and our relationship went south?

  Could we go back to friendship?

  No. We couldn’t.

  I knew from the moment we’d first had sex that we couldn’t go back to being just friends. What Lukas and I had was too complex, too passionate, and too deep. We had an all-in or all-out kind of relationship, which was why it both irked and hurt me that he’d kept his distance since our diner debacle. He’d only sent me a text saying, “I’m here for you if you need me. But I’m giving you space.”

  I nibbled my bottom lip, feeling like at any moment I would break out into a hot, ugly cry. I knew what he was really doing was pulling away from me, from us. But I couldn’t blame him. At the diner, he hadn’t pulled any punches when he’d told me how he’d felt about me and what he wanted—me. Instead of telling him what I’d suspected for a long time, that I was falling in love with him, I sat there, struggling to sort through my overwhelming feelings and putting them into words that made sense.

  Stop lying, Kendra. You didn’t tell him how you felt because you were too fucking scared to reveal your feelings. It had been a big mistake not to at least tell him what I was starting to feel.

  But the real kick to my gut was the kiss he gave me that felt like goodbye before walking away from me and out of the diner.

  “You okay, baby girl?” Grandma asked, cutting through my thoughts. “You’ve gone quiet over there.”

  “Yeah. Just tired,” I told her. It was the only lie I could get away with around her, and I wasn’t sure I even convinced her—just that it was one of few kinds of lie she would play along with for me. “I think I will turn in early.”

  “Okay, see you in the morning,” Grandma replied.

  I finished my glass of water and went up to my room, grabbing the hand towel that I used for drying my face, and walked into the bathroom. I started washing my face with my favorite cleansing oil, trying to compose my mind into less stressful thoughts before I went to bed. I failed and shut off the water, disgusted with myself. I patted my face dry and reached for my bottle of argan oil, but just as I got the bottle open, I heard something.

  At first, I didn’t even know what it was I heard, but it sent the hairs on the back of my neck straight up before it even filtered through my brain. Years of training and experience rose to the surface, and I set the bottle down as quietly as possible, silently creeping out of the bathroom and toward the living room.

  Grandma shouted at the same time I heard a loud crashing, glass-shattering noise. Instead of padding out, I ran the last few feet into the living room with so much adrenaline coursing through me, I forgot all about my injured leg.

  My brain went on to autopilot when I saw some man in dirty, ripped clothes lunging for Grandma.

  “Get down!” I shouted at him in the tone I’d used countless times as a police officer.

  Instead, the man grabbed Grandma with one hand, and the other brandished a knife he jabbed in the air erratically, using it to keep me away.

  I did a quick assessment of the situation, and despite her life-and-death situation, Grandma was calm. Smart, Grandma. I didn’t need her making any sudden movements because from the glassy haze of the man’s eyes and his twitchy body, he was high on something and would hurt her.

  “Put the knife down, and let her go,” I ordered, moving within striking distance.

  I scanned the living room and didn’t see that the intruder had anything to cart away valuables with. If he’d intended on doing that, he likely would have gone for a less conspicuous entry. Either he was the worst burglar of all time, or he was the prowler Sheriff Baker and I had been tracking. But he wasn’t there to steal from us.

  The man glared at me from behind Grandma. He wasn’t even using his weapon as a threat against Grandma.

  “If you’re looking for prescription drugs,” I said calmly, “We don’t have any.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” His voice cracked. His grip slipped away from Grandma’s body.

  “Move, Grandma,” I barked while I attacked, striking him hard in the knees. Grandma dashed to the left and safety. The intruder instinctively put his arms out defensively as he fell, bracing for floor impact, releasing the knife, and it clattered to the floor.

  Kicking his weapon out of reach, I checked Grandma over quickly. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine, baby,” Grandma said as we watched the man scramble unsteadily to his feet. “Get the bastard.”

  I leaped forward to grab him, and I yelped in pain when the muscles in my leg rebelled against my sudden movement. I cursed under my breath as the guy made a mad dash through the house and into the kitchen. There was a door in the kitchen that led out into the backyard, and I wondered how long he’d spent casing Grandma’s place, thinking about his contingencies.

  Pushing away the pain in my leg, I chased the prowler through the house and into the kitchen, intent on tackling him down.

  I made it into the kitchen just as the asshole turned on the gas at the stove full blast, and he produced some kind of tiny bulb of liquid from a pocket on his dark cargo pants. He threw it at the stove, and the fire jumped out from the combination of leaking gas and accelerant and whatever else he’d included.

  “You son of a bitch,” I growled, rushing for him anyway. The fire was a problem, but I would take care of that in a second. First, I was taking down the asshole who’d threatened Grandma.

  I moved on instinct. Running toward him like a freight train, I banged him into the kitchen wall before letting loose a flurry of kicks and punches that I’d learned from my many practice sessions with an ex-MMA fighter I’d worked out with in New York. The intruder wasn’t much of a fighter because he didn’t react offensively by attacking me. Instead, he grunted and begged for his life. But I wasn’t having any of that shit. He’d broken in to my house, and I had the right to defend myself. I grabbed him, knocking his head against the wall several times before his eyes rolled to the back of his head. I sidestepped when his body fell to the floor, unconscious.

  The heat of the fire was raging out of control. “Fuck.” The kitchen was on fire, and it was not something I could handle on my
own. I had to get out. I stared at the unconscious man. I wouldn’t be able to handle it if I let him burn to death, especially not without facing justice for his crimes. After opening the door in the kitchen that led out into the backyard, I walked back to the intruder, yanking him across the floor by the leg. The muscles in my injured leg were protesting from the strain, but I finally made it out into the yard with the asshole intruder.

  Hearing a sound of feet behind me, I turned to see Grandma and her neighbor Mr. Seibert heading toward me.

  I smiled with relief that she’d made it out safely, but I’d know she would.

  “I called 9-1-1,” Grandma said to me.

  “Who the hell is that?” Mr. Seibert asked, gesturing to the unconscious man on the grass.

  “I’m guessing the guy who’s been terrorizing the town,” I said, finally letting the enormity of the situation catch up with me.

  “Good job,” Mr. Seibert said, nodding his approval.

  * * *

  I was half dressed and my leg was killing me, but I leaned against my SUV, proud of myself. I’d subdued and apprehended a serial burglar and murderer.

  The fire truck roared up to the house, and Lukas was the first man off it. He glanced anxiously around and spotted me as the rest of the men on the crew got to work on setting up the hose to put out the blaze.

  Lukas stormed over to me, fully geared up. “You’re okay?” he asked, reaching up to cup my cheek.

  I nodded. “Yes. But my leg is killing me,” I said. “Don’t worry about me. Go see if you can’t salvage some of Grandma’s kitchen, will you?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Lukas replied with a smile. He hurried off to the house with the rest of the firefighters.

  The police arrived hot on the heels of the fire truck, and Sheriff Baker nearly leaped out of his car, hurrying to where I stood with Grandma and Mr. Seibert, the prowler still tied up on the ground nearby. “Whoa!” the sheriff exclaimed, taking in the sight of the man bound on the grass.

  “Based on how he acted,” I said, “I think we have our man, Sheriff.”