Fire And Love (Firefighters 0f Long Valley Book 3)

by Erin Wright

  She hated to admit that – in fact, she still hadn’t said it out loud and probably never would because admitting that he was right was just a downright awful idea, in her not-so-humble opinion – but she had been a mooch off her parents her whole life. Maybe it was excusable when she was a kid – not too many three year olds were required to earn their keep – but ever since she graduated from high school, and especially from college?

  She could’ve started standing on her own two feet.

  She just hadn’t, and honestly, her attempts to start doing it now weren’t exactly going well.

  “The library!” she exclaimed, jumping up from her chair, and then she clapped a hand over her mouth. She hadn’t meant to say that out loud, but of course! She could go down to the library and borrow the books from there – no payment needed, and no gun either. A lack of black-and-white horizontal stripes for the rest of her life did hold a certain appeal, if she did say so herself.

  Horizontal stripes just weren’t flattering.

  Did she still have a library card? She couldn’t remember. She’d been required to get one as part of some school project but that’d literally been over a decade ago, so…

  Yeah, no idea.

  Well, even if she did have a card, the chances were that they’d changed computer systems since then anyway, so she’d need to get a new card no matter what. She grabbed her purse with her driver’s license in it and her keys and headed for the garage, using a back hallway that her mother hated because of a lack of windows in it.

  Note to self: If I ever do manage to marry someone and have kids someday, do not tell them which parts of the house I absolutely refuse to ever go into. It’s only begging for them to exploit that loophole.

  Seriously, some days, it was just a little too easy to pull one over on her parents.

  When she walked into the library, she saw Marian behind the front desk. She was a few years older than Tenny and they’d obviously hung out in different groups in high school, but she’d always seemed nice. It was good to see a face that Tenny actually knew. She felt so far out of her element, she was like a fish that’d just been asked to climb a tree.

  So she did what she always did in awkward social situations – she hid her feelings. She’d had decades of practice by this point, so she was pretty much at the black-belt level by now.

  “Hi, Marian!” Tenny said cheerfully, putting her rhinestone-covered purse on the counter. “I’d like to–Mari?” she said, catching the nametag pinned to the librarian’s chest. “Sorry, I always thought you preferred Marian.”

  Mari laughed, her green eyes twinkling. “Well, after I got a job here at the library, I decided to go by Mari instead. Too many people singing to me,” she said with a conspiratorial wink, as if that explained everything.

  “Oh right, of course,” Tennessee said easily, without blinking an eyelash. She had absolutely no idea what Mari was talking about, but she also wasn’t about to admit that. “So, I was wanting to check out some books on being frugal. Do you have any books on that topic?”

  “Of course!” Mari assured her. “That’s always a popular subject. Let me see what we have in right now.” She did a few quick searches on the computer, scribbled down some numbers on a piece of paper, and then took off for the shelves, Tenny trailing behind her. “I’m surprised to see you come in here,” Mari said over her shoulder. “I didn’t know you were a library patron. I must’ve missed seeing you before.”

  “Oh, I haven’t been since I was in high school and was required to check a book out of here as part of a history project my junior year. I’m…ummm…trying to…expand my horizons.” Which sounded much better than I’m trying to learn how not to be a mooch and thus far, failing horribly.

  Yeah, just about anything sounded better than that.

  “Well, I’m glad you came in,” Mari said with a genuine smile, coming to a stop in front of a bookshelf. “Now, we organize using the Dewey decimal system, which means any books with these numbers on their spines,” she pointed to “640.42” and “332.024” written on the scrap of paper, “will probably have some useful information in them. The stacks wind back and forth, the numbers getting bigger as you go that way,” she pointed at the far wall, “so you should be able to wander through and find some books that look interesting. If nothing works, tell me and we can see about doing an interlibrary loan.”

  Leaving the scrap of paper behind, Mari headed for the front desk again, leaving Tenny by herself.

  Stacks? Interlibrary? Dewey?

  She wasn’t sure if Mari had been speaking English that entire time, but she tried her best to follow the instructions. She quickly realized what Mari had meant by “numbers on the spines” – every book had a little typed-up number at the base of its spine, making it easy to see where she was at in the number line. She began wandering through, gathering books as she went, forcing herself to not look down her nose at some of the ones that had been printed several decades ago. Maybe they were oldies but goodies. She wouldn’t know until she sat down and really looked through them.

  Once her arms were full to overflowing, she made her way over to a table and began spreading the books out, flipping through them one by one. Some looked amazing, while some looked…less than inspiring. She set those off to the side, leaving her about a half dozen to take home.

  She looked down at her pile with a grin on her face. She felt accomplished – she was getting her hands on organized, useful material, and she wasn’t spending a dime to do it. Maybe she wasn’t so awful at not being a mooch after all.

  She gathered the books up that she planned to borrow and made her way to the front. She had some shopping bags out in the car from Victoria’s Secret and J. Crew that she could use to sneak the books inside the house. Her mother would freak out if she knew Tenny was doing something as low-class as borrowing books from a library, so this would have to be her little secret.

  Secret #402 of Tenny’s short life.

  It was a good thing she was great at keeping them.

  Chapter 17

  Levi

  It was stupid of him to have even tried.

  “If I wanted some damn water, I’d walk to the sink and get some!” his dad hollered, throwing the bottle of flavored water straight at Levi’s head.

  Well, he’d tried to aim at Levi’s head. Luckily, his speech wasn’t the only thing affected by his drunk-off-his-ass condition; his aim was shit, too. The plastic bottle hit the far wall and exploded on impact, the carbonated water shooting out everywhere.

  They both ignored it.

  “Dad, I’m not bringing you Pabst anymore. I already told you that.” He sounded weary. Exhausted. And he felt it too.

  Looking down at his father’s bloated form – skin that appeared to be turning yellow before his eyes, broken blood vessels across his nose, watery blue eyes – he wondered for the millionth time where he’d come from, what with his dad’s blond, thin hair, scrawny height, blue eyes, pot belly…

  No, he didn’t look a damn thing like his father. His mother and his father must’ve been a hell of a pair. She’d probably been able to scoop Steve off his feet and carry him wherever she wanted, like a slightly oversized doll.

  Except unlike a doll, his father was absolutely no fun to play with.

  Splat!

  Jerked out of his thoughts, Levi looked down to realize that one of the burgers he’d brought over was sliding down his chest, and then with a plop, fell to the floor. His dad started laughing maniacally. “You don’t think you’re such hot shit now, do you?” he crowed as what appeared to be a hundred cats started swarming the floor, all desperate for the food.

  Something broke inside of Levi.

  Broke and twisted and shattered apart.

  I don’t have to care about this man, no matter what blood we might share.

  He turned and headed for the door, the cackles quickly turning to anger. “Hey, come back here!” his dad shouted. “I didn’t tell you you could leave! Damn you! Where
’s my Pab…”

  The wind whistling past the decrepit house pushed the words away, sending them spinning down the street. Levi climbed inside of his pickup but instead of making his way home right away, he pulled out his phone.

  “Hey Moose,” he said when his best friend answered, “wanna come over and just hang out for a while?”

  Moose hesitated and Levi knew, just knew, that Georgia was there and Moose was debating who to choose and Levi’s chest hurt because dammit all, he needed someone to want him, and then Moose said, “Absolutely. I’ll be right over, pizza in hand,” and then hung up.

  Levi shoved the key into the ignition and started up the truck. It was time to leave Steve Scranton behind, father or not.

  Chapter 18

  Tennessee

  “Tennessee,” her mother’s voice floated up the stairs, “I need to talk to you.”

  Dammit. She froze, her hand over her pad of paper, the partial drawing of a metal bear still waiting to come to life on the page. She dropped the pencil into a cup and with a sigh, headed to find her mother. Whatever it was that she wanted, it wouldn’t be good, Tenny was willing to bet money on that. Her mother didn’t call her downstairs to tell her she’d done a good job arranging that week’s flower arrangement.

  Her mother was standing in the drawing room, her hands clasped behind her back. Tennessee spotted Virginia on the couch in the corner, watching the whole thing, her eyes wide, and Tenny sighed again. Her younger sister didn’t need this kind of drama in her life – she was a teenager; she had enough drama already – but her mother wasn’t one to consider that sort of thing and Tenny didn’t want to make her younger sister feel unwanted by asking her to leave.

  Plus, she also just wanted to get this over with.

  Whatever “this” was.

  “Yes, Mother?” she asked politely, also clasping her hands behind her back. She felt like she was a soldier being inspected by the general, and would be expected to salute at any moment, but she stuck with the pose anyway. She’d found long ago that playing by her parent’s rules only helped her cause, never hurt.

  “What is this?” her mother demanded, pulling a book from the library out from behind her back and shaking it accusingly at Tenny.

  A small, snarky (thankfully inner) voice wanted to reply, “How to Save Big Bucks Each Month – Painless Personal Finance Tips to be Frugal and Live Fabulously,” but Tenny kept that particular thought to herself. She was pretty sure her mother didn’t want a reading lesson.

  “How did you find that?” she demanded instead, feeling like a rebellious teenager whose parents had just found a stash of weed under her bed.

  “I have my ways,” her mother replied imperiously, which was absolutely code for, “The maid found it.”

  Dammit all. I really thought I’d found a good hiding spot this time.

  Every time the maid came over to clean, her mother would “miraculously” discover something Tenny had tried to hide from her. A part of her wondered if the maid was being paid per contraband item, like a really bizarre version of a salesman’s bonus.

  “I’m trying to learn how to be more thrifty,” Tenny said, deciding that sticking to the truth could only help in this case. Plus, it wasn’t like she could say, “I’m taking up gardening!”

  “I already put that part together for myself,” her mother said sarcastically. “What I cannot figure out is why. First, camping like a hobo and now wanting to live like a poor person…Oh, it’s that Scranton boy, isn’t it!” she exclaimed, waving the paperback around wildly. Her eyes were gleaming with the triumph of having figured it out.

  “Levi—”

  “I told your father – I told him he was bad news!” her mom exclaimed, cutting Tennessee off at the pass. “Well, whatever the reason for your actions, it’ll all be coming to an end soon anyway. Now that you’re not marrying Moose like you were supposed to, your father has been on the lookout for someone new. He met up with a farmer from Washington whose son is single, and I do believe that they’re having talks right now to settle things up, but he’s not going to want to marry you if you’re going to be doing things like reading…reading trash!”

  The world wobbled around Tennessee for a moment, the edges turning black as she stumbled forward, grabbing onto the back of the chaise lounge and staring up at her mother. “You can’t…I can’t…” She couldn’t make her mouth work right. “You can’t marry me off to a stranger!” she finally got out. “You can’t!”

  She could hear Virginia’s gasps of horror behind her, but they were quiet and far away, as was her mother’s voice. It was like the world had suddenly ended up underwater – hazy and indistinct and garbled.

  “You’ll meet him before you marry him – we’re not barbarians,” her mother snapped, but it was a far away voice because Tenny just couldn’t seem to bring anything into focus.

  “You’re going to sell me off to the highest bidder,” she said hollowly. Even her own voice sounded far away.

  “Do you think it’s cheap to live like this?” her mother thundered. Tennessee’s eyes snapped up to her mom’s, and suddenly, it all came together, in one horrendous, awful answer:

  Her parents were poor.

  Or, at least, they were spending more than they were making, which Tennessee was discovering from her illicit books, meant the same thing. The late nights of quiet arguing, the larger-than-normal stacks of credit card bills coming in, the one time their electricity got turned off three months ago or so, and her mother had yelled and harangued the poor Idaho Power employees to within an inch of their lives for their mistake.

  It wasn’t their mistake.

  Her parents hadn’t paid the bill on time.

  Her parents were poor.

  Tenny started laughing. Laughing and laughing and laughing, until tears were streaming down her face. She could see her mother’s mouth moving but had no idea what she was saying and even more importantly, didn’t give a damn.

  She finally straightened up, wiping the tears from her eyes. Her mother was still talking, but Tenny was done listening. She took her iPhone out of her back pocket and laid it on the Chippendale end table.

  “Virginia, if you want to talk to me,” she said loudly to her younger sister, boldly ignoring her mother who promptly sputtered to an indignant stop, “call me at Georgia’s house. Mother,” she said, swinging back to the woman standing in front of her, spitting angry at being the second one to be addressed, “if you want to talk to me…don’t.”

  She plucked the frugal book out of her mother’s hand and swept past her and up the stairs. It was time to leave. It was time to stand on her own two feet.

  She pulled her Louis Vuitton suitcases out – three, a matching set, of course – and began throwing clothes into them with abandon. Her mother chased her up the stairs, her chest heaving with anger or exertion from running, Tenny didn’t know.

  And didn’t care.

  “Just wait until your father gets home!” she yelled from the doorway, the veins popping out in her forehead in a very unladylike way. “You’ll wish you hadn’t done this.”

  Tennessee looked up at her and laughed dryly. “Mother, you’ve already made me wish I wasn’t born. At this point, there isn’t much else you could do to me.”

  “We’ve given you everything!” her mother protested. “Music lessons and college and a credit card and a convertible godawful Pepto Bismol pink car and—”

  “But no love,” Tenny said, looking her mother straight in the eye.

  No, she wasn’t her mother. Simply the human being who’d happened to give birth to her.

  “You’ve never given me love,” she repeated softly. “I have been a thing to use to get what you want – more cash by selling me off to the highest bidder after you and Father blew through Grandpa’s estate. How long did it take you two to spend those millions?” Even as she challenged her mother, something she’d spent virtually her whole life trying to never, no never do, she continued to pack, grabbing everythin
g she could get her hands on.

  She could do this. She could walk away and never come back. She could.

  “You have no idea how expensive children are,” Roberta said, her tone suddenly wheedling. “All of those shopping trips to the mall – do you think we got that money off trees?”

  “No, I stupidly thought you grew it from the ground in the form of mustard seed and wheat and corn and potatoes. You know, Father’s job as a farmer.”

  “Farmers only make so much,” her mother sniffed. “We couldn’t possibly live on just that.”

  “Father is the largest farmer in Long Valley County,” Tenny pointed out. It was a fact that he liked to slip into a conversation whenever possible, so yeah, basically every time he talked to someone. “If you and Father cannot make it on his income alone, how the hell does anyone else pay their bills?”

  “Language!” Roberta snapped.

  “Roberta,” Tennessee said, admittedly enjoying using her biological mother’s first name a little too much and watching her eyes grow wide with shock and anger, “I am 26 years old. I can damn well say ‘hell’ anytime I want to.” She zipped the three suitcases up and began wheeling the first two down the stairs, thumping carelessly down. each. step. as. loud. as. possible.

  “You’re going to mar the wood!” Roberta yelled down the stairs. “Stop that this instant.”

  “I find it fascinating that wood on the staircase is what you’re worried about right now,” Tennessee said dryly, parking the suitcases next to the door out to the garage. “And oh-so-telling.” She ran back up the stairs to grab the last suitcase, wheeling it past her mother Roberta with a sarcastic smile. “I’ll bring the car by later. Perhaps you two can sell it and use the money to pay off some debtors.”

  “The car? But…you can’t not have a car! How are you going to get around?”

  Tennessee pulled her wallet out of her purse and began laying all of her credit cards down on the counter with a snap.