by Susan Stoker
“I love you.”
Cade sighed with contentment. “I love you too. Come on, we’re all turned around. Let me get up and take care of this condom and I’ll come back and we can nap for a while. Sound good?”
“Um hum.”
“You’re already half asleep, aren’t you?”
“Um hum.”
Cade smiled at the woman in his arms. He’d never been happier. Beth might not seem like the ideal girlfriend to some, but to him, she was perfect.
He hadn’t lied earlier when he said he’d be happy with her no matter if she overcame her phobias or not. He remembered thinking so long ago that he didn’t think it would work out between them because he didn’t want to give up his outdoor activities. But now? He didn’t give a rat’s ass about camping or otherwise being outside. He was completely honest when he’d told her he’d live in a cave with her. He loved her just the way she was.
He couldn’t imagine her doing anything that would change his mind.
CHAPTER 15
The last two weeks had been idyllic for Beth. There were times she had to pinch herself to make sure it was all real. She spent Cade’s time off with him and sometimes the guys at the station. She and Cade spent every night they could together, making love in as many ways as possible. It was as if once they’d made it to home base, they wanted to get there every night.
Beth had even shown Cade a video she’d found one night while trying to shut down a porn site that featured child porn, as well as the regular variety of videos. The clip that caught her attention was of a woman giving herself orgasm after orgasm. She and Cade had discussed at length, amazingly without embarrassment, whether or not it was real, and finally, in order to prove to her that women could orgasm nonstop, Cade had bought a Hitachi Magic Wand and demonstrated the power of the vibrator. He’d kept the thing on her clit until she’d had at least half a dozen orgasms and had begged him to stop.
He’d thrown it to the side without bothering to turn it off and had fucked her brains out, managing to wring one last orgasm from her as he took her from behind. Lying limp and exhausted in his arms, she’d had to admit that the video was probably authentic.
The bag of candles, matches, and lighters still sat in her kitchen, mocking her. Every time she stayed at her place, Beth had to force herself to stay away from the bag. Even though things were going well between her and Cade, she still fought the urge to go out and get her grill and light up another fire. Every day she promised herself she’d get Penelope to take the bag to the dumpster for her, but so far she hadn’t been able to. It was a crutch…one Beth was ashamed of, but couldn’t seem to shake.
Tonight Cade was working part of a shift for Taco, so he wouldn’t be leaving the station until midnight. Since Beth had been neglecting her late-night hacker sleuthing recently, they’d decided to meet up in the morning. That way Cade could get some sleep and they’d have the entire day together. Many times when they stayed the night with each other, they were up way too late making love and ended up sleeping half the day away.
That night, Beth woke with a jerk. She glanced at her clock, saw it was three-thirty in the morning. She’d only been asleep for about forty minutes and wondered what had disturbed her.
A scream broke through the silence of the night and Beth let out a small shriek of her own. It had sounded close, too close.
She bolted out of bed and into her small living room. She whipped back the curtains, for once with no thought to her own phobias, and saw an eerie orange glow. She knew immediately what it was; she’d seen and studied it enough recently.
Fire. And it was big, much bigger than the small fires she’d dabbled in. And close.
While she wanted to find out where it was coming from, at the moment all she was concerned about was the person behind the scream. Were they in trouble? Hurting? Being taken against their will?
Long ago Beth had sworn to herself that she’d never sit around and do nothing if she had the ability to prevent what occurred to her from happening to someone else, agoraphobia be damned.
She cautiously opened the sliding glass door and peered out. She saw a group of people standing in the courtyard pointing up at one of the apartments over her head. She glanced up.
One of the balconies on the third floor was completely engulfed in flames.
For a beat, Beth stared. There was so much more fire than she’d ever had the guts to build…although she’d been working her way up to bigger and bigger flames before she’d quit. She could see embers lazily floating off in the breeze while the wood that made up the balcony glowed bright orange.
The gathering of people was getting larger and Beth could see several on their cell phones, hopefully calling for assistance and not filming the damn thing for their social media profiles.
Beth struggled with her psyche. On one hand, she should get outside, join the others in the relative safety of the courtyard, but the thought made her shake. On the other hand, she knew if she concentrated on the fire, she’d be able to do it—but what happened when it was extinguished? She’d be trapped out in the open with nothing to distract her.
She was getting better. Cade and Penelope had worked long and hard, giving her the courage to take risks. But the longer she stood in her doorway, the more and more people gathered.
Beth whirled around and raced back into her bedroom, throwing on a pair of jeans, socks, tennis shoes, and a long-sleeve T-shirt. She stuffed one of the knives she’d bought online into her back pocket, just in case, and grabbed one of the two fire extinguishers Cade had given her “for emergencies.”
Not knowing what she was going to do with it, Beth went back to her patio and stepped outside. With her gaze fixed upward, she stood at the very end of the concrete pad. It was a compromise of sorts; she was outside, so she wouldn’t get trapped in her apartment, but she could dash back inside at a moment’s notice if needed.
Beth bit her check and concentrated on the flames hissing above her head. She could see them licking the eaves of the roof when she first heard the sirens. She wondered if Station 7 was responding, and who was on duty. Cade should be off, but maybe Pen or one of the other guys she’d been getting to know was working.
Beth purposely kept her breaths long, focusing on breathing in and out rather than on the people all around her. Hugging the extinguisher to her chest, she counted to eighty-seven in her head before she heard the first firefighter.
“Everyone back up! You need to get farther away from the building.”
One of the firefighters was shouting at the residents gathered in the courtyard. It was only a matter of time before someone noticed her. Beth’s breathing quickened in panic. They’d make her move, she had no doubt.
“You’re Beth, right? Come on, let’s get away from here.”
The voice was low and calm. She turned to see one of her neighbors. She had no idea what his name was, only that she’d seen him before. He was older than her by around twenty or so years. His hair was receding and graying, and currently tousled from sleep. His voice was melodic and soothing. Most importantly, he was holding his hand out to her.
Beth’s mind reeled. It could be a trick. Ben Hurst hadn’t been young…he was older, and when she thought about it, kinda looked like her neighbor. The man standing so patiently with his hand outstretched for her could snatch her away…except she’d seen him. She knew him. He lived there with her. Well, at least on the same floor as her. They’d made eye contact and exchanged greetings as she came and went with Cade over the last couple of months.
Damned if she did and damned if she didn’t.
She reached out her hand, hoping like hell he was one of the good guys. If not, she knew she’d never recover from being kidnapped a second time.
* * *
Cade’s tires squealed as he hit the brakes and pulled haphazardly into the first available parking spot. He was still two blocks away from Beth’s apartment complex, but with the number of emergency vehicles, he knew he wouldn’t be a
ble to get any closer.
He’d been off-shift when the fire had been reported. He was dead to the world sleeping when Penelope had called him, frantic. She’d been up and had heard the call on the scanner. Cade had barely taken the time to pull on a pair of sneakers and a T-shirt and rushed out of his house. The fifteen minutes it took him to get to Beth’s place—thank God for light traffic in the middle of the night—were the longest of his life.
Just last night, he and Penelope and the rest of the guys had talked through his suspicions about Beth.
He couldn’t ignore the signals anymore. She was doing better with her agoraphobia, but he realized with the kind of insight he’d spent his adult life cultivating with his job, it was most likely because she was purposely setting fires.
Cade hadn’t made much of it when it’d happened, but he remembered once early in their relationship he’d woken up in the middle of the night and wandered into the living room to check on her—and found her sitting on the couch watching a dozen candles flickering in front of her. She’d lit them all and was leaning forward on the couch, fixated on the flickering flames. He’d called her name three times before she’d realized he was standing there.
She’d quickly blown out the candles and had stammered some excuse, but he’d begun to put two and two together.
He’d had his suspicious, but hadn’t wanted to accuse her of something that might not be true. When he’d finally put all of the incidents and clues together, he finally realized with a sinking feeling in his belly that all the coincidences with her and fire weren’t actually coincidences at all. It was suddenly as clear as if she’d flat-out told him.
And how he wished she had.
It was apparent that Beth had merely swapped one demon for another. He wouldn’t go so far as to call her a pyromaniac…but she was definitely heading toward something that would be tough to come back from, tougher than her fear of being outside around people.
From the candles, buying a grill when she was terrified to step foot outside her apartment, the lighters in her purse, the burn marks around her patio, her burnt fingers—which couldn’t have come from grabbing a hot pan; her palm would’ve been burnt, not her fingers—the signs were all there, and it was heart wrenching.
He was a firefighter…he fought fires for a living. He had no idea how he could trust Beth if she continued down the path she was on. Just last week he’d been on the cusp of asking her to move in with him, but if he had to worry about coming home to nothing but ashes, or her scorched body, or if she’d move on to burning buildings, it could never work between them…and that broke his heart.
Cade saw the smoke lazily rising into the sky as he ran; it was lit up by the spotlights from all the emergency vehicles as they concentrated their beams on the apartment. It looked like the fire itself was out, but it’d been a good-sized one, from what he could tell. He entered the large courtyard and looked toward Beth’s building. It looked like the bulk of the damage was on the upper floor, but there were scorch marks all the way down the outside of the building, including around her apartment. Cade didn’t want to believe it, but he had a gut feeling that Beth had been involved. She was known to stay up until very early in the morning and she was obviously fixated with fire.
The firefighters were concentrating on her building, using the ladder truck to pour water on the roof and the external walls.
Tearing his eyes away from the scorch marks on the building, Cade frantically looked around for Beth. Even with the doubts coursing through his brain, he needed to make sure she was all right. He hadn’t decided what he was going to do. He’d only just realized the extent of her problem.
There were groups of people standing everywhere, and Cade didn’t immediately see Beth. For the first time he got an inkling of what she might feel when she had her panic attacks. He could feel his heart rate increase, and the adrenaline coursing through his veins made his hands shake.
Just as he was sure she was huddled inside her apartment, afraid to step foot outside, even if her apartment was burning down around her, Cade saw two people standing a bit off to the side of the mass of spectators.
He immediately made his way toward them, recognizing Beth’s body language even as he stalked over to the couple. She was standing about a foot and a half away from the older man, but her arm was outstretched, holding his hand. Cade recognized him as one of her neighbors; he’d nodded at him when he’d been visiting Beth in the past.
Her face was pale and she was staring wide-eyed up at the roof of her building as if she couldn’t tear her gaze away. Cade ran his eyes over her as he approached, trying to see if she was injured in any way. She was wearing a pair of jeans with one of his long-sleeve Station 7 T-shirts, which swam on her smaller frame. One hand was gripping her neighbor’s for all she was worth, and the other arm held one of the fire extinguishers he’d bought for her. Beth was standing stiffly and while she looked extremely uncomfortable, Cade could see she wasn’t freaking out…yet.
“Beth? Are you all right?”
Beth’s eyes immediately shifted to him, and Cade sighed in relief at the look of recognition in her eyes. He held out his hand and she immediately leaned over to put the extinguisher on the ground, and then reached out to grab it. Cade noticed that she didn’t let go of her neighbor until he had her hand firmly in his.
Cade felt her sigh as she melted into his embrace, burrowing her face into his chest. She shook as she nuzzled into him, holding on for dear life.
“Shhhh, I’ve got you. You’re okay.” Cade turned to her neighbor. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. I’ve noticed she’s a little gun-shy when it comes to being around people and that she doesn’t go outside much. I figured I might serve as a stand-in until you got here.”
Not surprised the man had noticed—after all, he’d been at Beth’s apartment a lot over the last couple of months—Cade gave him a chin lift in thanks.
Now that he knew Beth was safe in his arms, Cade recalled all the other things he’d thought about in the last couple of days. He had a million questions, but now wasn’t the time.
They stood in the courtyard watching as the firefighters finished hosing down the building and did their walk-through, looking for hotspots. They finally came out and made an announcement that while the damage looked localized, the people who lived in that building wouldn’t be able to go back to their apartments until at least the next day. The fire marshal and building inspectors would be checking over the structure in the coming days to make sure it was safe. Red Cross shelters were being set up for the displaced residents.
Beth hadn’t moved at the announcement, except perhaps to burrow farther into his arms. Not releasing her hand, Cade hugged her closer to his chest. He wouldn’t abandon her, but he had no idea how he was going to manage having her in his house and space without making love to her.
He’d made the decision that night after the discussion with the others at the firehouse that he needed to back off from their relationship until she could get her firebug tendencies under control. He wasn’t giving her up for good, but she had to want to get better, to want to stop the fire thing before he could go any deeper into their relationship.
Cade wanted to snort at himself. He wasn’t sure how much deeper he could go. He loved her. And knowing she’d turned to fire to help control her fears killed him. Having her in his home was not going to help with his decision to back away from their intense relationship for a while.
“Come on, sweetheart, let’s get going. It’s late, you have to be exhausted.”
She looked up at him. “I don’t have any of my stuff.”
“We’ll get anything you need later. I’ll take care of you, Beth.”
“I know you will. I’m trying to take this all in stride…but I’m having a hard time. If I can’t go back, I just…”
“It’s going to be fine. You’ll get through this. You’ve been doing a lot better. Hang in there.”
Beth looked up at Cade
with questions in her eyes. Cade knew she was probably expecting more out of him. Hell, a week ago he wouldn’t have hesitated to tell her to make his home her home; he’d been about to do that very thing earlier this week. But he had too many questions now. He steeled himself against the lost look in her eyes.
It was for her own good. She needed more help than he could give her.
“Come on. I had to park a bit away from here because of the traffic. Things will look better in the morning.”
Beth nodded and they set off for his truck. Cade had no idea what the next day would bring—hopefully answers to some of his questions. For better or worse, they had to talk about her issues, and where the two of them were going from here.
CHAPTER 16
“Why don’t you go ahead and go in and get comfortable. I’ll be in after a while.”
Beth paused on the stairs leading upstairs. She’d been pleased with how she’d been handling everything. She’d trusted her neighbor, he hadn’t kidnapped her, she’d stood outside with him for who knew how long before Cade showed up, without majorly freaking out. She had no idea if she’d be able to get back to her apartment, her safe place, the next day or not, and she’d done it all without using the lighter she’d taken to carrying around again.
The damn bag in the kitchen held all of her fire tools, except for one lighter. Finding that every once in a while she could use it to calm herself, she couldn’t bring herself to throw it away yet. It wasn’t as if she was actually setting fires with it…but the flame relaxed her enough so she could push the panic attacks away.
But this—she wasn’t sure she could handle Cade pulling away from her on top of everything else. He was her rock, even if he didn’t realize just how much she relied on him. She wanted to be whole for him.
Beth felt her heart kick into gear and her breathing increase. She curled her hands into fists and tried not to panic. “You’re not coming?”
“I’ll be up later.”
