I’ll just call him, she thought.
His phone rang four times. On the fifth, he answered. “Hi.”
Annabelle blinked. His tone was curt, almost unfriendly. “Hi,” she said. “Is now a bad time?”
A pause. “No. I’m just surprised that you called.”
Annabelle gulped. Why did he sound so strange? “Surprised good? Or . . . surprised bad?”
There was silence on the other end of the line, very un-Sean-like silence.
“Sean?”
Sean sighed. “Annabelle, I like you a lot, but I don’t think I’m what you’re looking for.” His voice was so tense it sounded like it could snap.
She felt a bottomless pit open in her stomach. “What happened since this morning?”
And then she remembered.
Melissa had happened.
Please don’t tell me you hooked up with Melissa, she willed him. “You mean I’m not what you’re looking for,” she said, her voice wavering. “Sean, you’re everything I’ve ever wanted!”
“Well, I do have a good job,” he said. “And I do like cats. But that’s not enough.”
“What are you talking about?” She vaguely realized that hot tears were streaming down her cheeks.
Sean sighed. “Annabelle, I want you to be happy, but I just don’t think it’ll be with me.”
And with that, he hung up.
Cold spring air whipped against Annabelle’s tear-wet face after her call with Sean ended. Her heart was pierced with emotion, but her brain was positively numb. She couldn’t think where to go or what to do, but she knew driving was out of the question. Leaving her car parked on the street, she crossed to City Park, the old-fashioned square in downtown Golden Falls. She had no aim, no plan, only a stinging shock as if she’d been slapped.
You knew this was going to happen, she chastised herself. And now you’re surprised he broke your heart? That’s your default state when it comes to Sean.
There she was, a serious scientist with a dissertation deadline looming, la-dee-dah-ing around town getting her nails done, wanting to girly it up for Sean, and it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough, and she would never be enough. Sean had already moved on, either back to Melissa or maybe forward to the prospect of someone new.
In either case, he was leaving her behind.
She walked past the quaint gazebo in the park and ended up at the graceful footbridge above the twenty-foot waterfall that was the city’s namesake.
It was one of her favorite places in town, an idyllic and historical spot. Many a marriage proposal had taken place on the footbridge. Going back generations, there was a tradition for couples to toss pebbles toward a distinctive heart-shaped rock that sat under the falls. The belief was that if both pebbles landed on the rock, it was true love.
Annabelle had never bothered tossing a pebble because she’d always known the few men she’d dated before Sean were placeholders for when the real thing came along—which she thought it finally had.
I want you to be happy, Sean had said. But I just don’t think it’ll be with me.
What a ridiculous thing to say. Sean obviously didn’t know her very well if he hadn’t realized that since meeting him, she’d never been happier in her life. That for the first time, she’d felt truly and fully like herself—not just the serious, guarded self she showed the world, but open and silly and fun and sexy.
Annabelle took in deep breaths of air so fresh it hurt and studied the waterfall. The melt-out was a time of year she always liked, when spring began its push to break through the ice and hardness of Alaska winters. A couple of weeks ago, the Nanook River had been frozen, and the waterfall, too, but now they were thawing. Changing their form, like she’d tried to do with Sean.
But who was she kidding?
She’d known she wasn’t his type. Her mother had known she wasn’t his type. Even Derrick had known it. Annabelle had disagreed with every snide comment Derrick made about Sean’s intellect; she still disagreed. However, Sean was utterly stupid if he really believed she couldn’t be happy with him. He had it all backward; the truth was, her heart had been buoyant from the instant she’d laid eyes on him again. Even with her life in danger, seeing him had given her hope . . . and turned her on.
It felt now like Sean had led her on.
He’d been the one to pursue her. He’d been the one to show up at trivia night, to ask her to dinner, to pull her onto the dance floor and be all romantic and insist on committing to each other before moving forward.
Who ends something so good? She must have misread everything because she had really thought Sean was falling for her just as hard as she was falling for him. The way he looked at her, the way he held her as if she were precious . . . did he really think he had nothing more to offer her than a mutual appreciation for cats?
If he really thought that, he was the stupidest man on earth.
She dug a little rock out of the hardened path and threw it with all her might at the heart-shaped rock. Not in the hope that it would land and stick on the rock’s surface, but merely to take out her frustration.
It was her first toss ever, and when it landed and then skidded across the wet surface of the rock and then landed on the very, very edge . . . Annabelle burst into new tears, but just as quickly wiped them.
Stupid Sean.
Stupid rock.
Stupid legend.
And stupid Annabelle, she thought, looking at that feisty little pebble clinging tenaciously to the heart rock in the middle of the ice-choked waterfall. For believing in love, when all you’ll ever have is science.
28
Sean hung his head low over a mug of fire station coffee. He had the kind of sick feeling in his stomach that came from a profound lack of sleep. He didn’t usually stay up late the night before a shift, but neither did he usually end things with a woman he really, really cared about. Agonized thoughts of Annabelle had filled his head, plus wondering about the “friend” who had sent him the list of pros and cons. The only mutual acquaintances that had Sean’s phone number were on the trivia team, and Sean didn’t think it was Cameron. Lottie had been nothing but supportive of their relationship. So that left Derrick, which was no surprise to Sean.
He’d briefly considered that Derrick had made it all up, but it was Annabelle’s handwriting and more than that, it was her thought process. No matter what the source, the fact remained that her true feelings didn’t match Sean’s.
Such thoughts had occupied him so thoroughly that he’d only fallen asleep sometime around four in the morning.
“Rough night?” Dylan Hart asked, looking ragged around the edges himself.
“Stayed up too late.”
“Me, too.”
“Where’d you go? I was at the Gold Digger.” Dylan was referring to a dive bar on the industrial side of town, favored by truck drivers and bush pilots.
“I stayed in, actually. Just had trouble sleeping, don’t know why.”
But he did know.
Cutting things off with Annabelle had seemed like the right thing to do. She didn’t love him; a shared fondness for cats and pure physical attraction were not the basis for a relationship. What a fool he’d been to hope it was anything more.
He wanted to forget Annabelle, to move on the way he had plenty of times before at the end of relationships. But as his sleepless night had proven, thoughts of her continued to torture him: her red hair and creamy skin and vivid blue eyes, and her shy, passionate, quirkily scientific ways.
He sipped his hot black coffee and hoped it would be a slow day so that he could get a long nooner nap.
Cody entered the station’s kitchen, looking well-rested. “What’d you guys get up to last night?”
“Went out,” Dylan said, and let his head fall onto the table with a thud. “I should have been like Sean here and stayed home alone with my cat. If I had a cat, that is.”
Of all the men on their crew, Dylan Hart was the most mysterious. Well-liked but not w
ell-known except by his close friend, the ladder captain Tom Steele, he was prone to taking off on long motorcycle trips when not on shift, and his favorite pastimes were reading historical novels and songwriting, often fiddling around with lyrics and trying out chords during their downtime at the station. Being tall, dark, and handsome as well as a musician meant he was never lonely for female company, but as yet he hadn’t settled down and didn’t seem in any hurry to.
“I need more coffee,” Sean said, not wanting to talk with Cody about why he hadn’t been spending time with Annabelle. He felt like an idiot for being so confident about his relationship when they were getting fitted for Cody’s wedding.
“You’re tired, too?” Cody asked, looking closely at Sean.
“I’ve felt better.” Sean placed his now-empty cup beneath the coffee machine and waited for it to fill, turning and leaning back against the counter with his eyes closed.
Thwack.
A sharp pain lanced through his groin. Sean’s eyes opened, and he lunged at Cody, who was laughing. The groin tap—a station classic. Sean struggled to get back at Cody, who’d darted behind the island counter, but he couldn’t stand upright yet. As the pain slowly subsided, he started laughing, too.
“Nice one!” Dylan said from the kitchen table.
“I’m not forgetting that!” Sean said. “Wait ’til you’re asleep . . .”
As much as he would have preferred not to be on the receiving end of a groin tap, it had taken his mind off of Annabelle for a whole few seconds, and for that reason alone was almost worth it.
The ladder crew came into the kitchen, rustling around for coffee, starting bacon on the stove, and making oatmeal and toast. The clamor of it all worsened Sean’s mood, as did Troy Garrett’s obnoxious description of the woman he’d hooked up with over the weekend.
“I didn’t realize you’d broken up with your fiancée,” Sean said to him.
Troy blinked. “I didn’t. We—uh—it’s an open relationship.”
“Does she know that?”
“How about it’s none of your business?”
“You’re right, it’s not.” Sean took a slow sip of coffee. The last thing he needed was to get his heart rate elevated over a piece of crap like Troy.
“Maddog can’t come home soon enough,” Cody muttered under his breath to Sean.
“Weeks, dude. Weeks. Then the station will be back to normal.”
Nate Halstead, the ladder’s engineer, walked out of the kitchen suddenly with his ear pressed to his phone. Sean could hear him in the hallway talking in conciliatory tones.
“Let me guess. Stacy’s pissed about something?” Dylan muttered.
“Probably,” Sean said, feeling sorry for Nate, who always seemed to be dealing with domestic drama while he was at work. He wondered what it would be like if Annabelle was waiting at home for him, if she—they—had kids and someone got into a fight at school or refused to do their chores.
He couldn’t imagine Annabelle calling and blaming him for being gone, or wanting him to take sick hours and rush home for every incident. His imaginary children with Annabelle were like her, orderly and quiet and curious. Except for when they were on the hockey rink; then they were ferocious little beasts.
Miserable, he stared at the floor and wondered if he’d be thinking about Annabelle and their imaginary kids for the rest of his life.
His musings were interrupted by the call tones and voice of the dispatcher over the intercom. “Engine One, Rescue One for a possible stroke . . . Three-Oh-Five West Banks Street, Unit . . .”
Sean drove the fire truck code three, with lights and sirens. The protocol for stroke patients was to get them to the hospital as soon as possible, no messing around with on-scene treatment. He recognized the address, a small assisted living home just north of the river. They’d run hundreds of calls there over the years.
As they crossed the Nanook River, he saw movement in the ice, a few lifted chunks of white crunching and grinding against each other. The melt-out was visibly underway.
“Finally,” Dylan said from the back. “Summer is coming.”
They reached the home and moved quickly to see the patient. Sean was the lead paramedic on the call, and he performed the simple tests that confirmed a stroke in the elderly man: his face was drooping, his speech slurred, and his right arm dropped after being raised. His wife had noticed the symptoms; she held one of his hands and kept telling him, “I’m right here. I’m here with you, honey.”
The scene was poignant to watch. The elderly couple’s faces looked alike, the same configuration of worry lines and laughing parentheses around their mouths, a testament to a long and shared experience. It was far from the first time Sean had seen old people in a situation like this, supporting each other even as their bodies failed, but this time it got to him. There was only one woman he could picture by his side when he was old, and she didn’t feel the same way about him.
I’m going to die alone, he thought, aware that he perhaps was being overdramatic, but still convinced that if it couldn’t be Annabelle, it wouldn’t be anybody.
Sean climbed into the ambulance with his patient. The wife rode with them, never leaving her husband’s side. For a few moments, he was absorbed by his tasks, establishing an IV—elderly veins were tricky, thin and wriggly, but he got it on the first try—and patching a call to Golden Falls Regional Medical Center that they were on the way.
The man was wheeled into the ER and Sean gave his report to the medical team, then waited in the paramedic’s lounge for the fire engine to come pick him up. Cody would probably be driving in his place.
A young nurse smiled at him. Once, he would have flirted with her, but this time he only nodded a sober greeting.
It sucked, but Sean felt spoiled for any other woman now. Annabelle was like a taste of the finest, most complex wine, the most sumptuous chocolate, the symphony of beauty and intelligence and the wild passion in bed that was his own private and delicious secret. He gritted his teeth in frustration as the bitter feeling of rejection surged forth again.
Damn it, he thought. Why couldn’t Derrick mind his own business? Sean wished he didn’t know about the pros and cons list. He might have wooed Annabelle, added a few more pros along the way. But now he couldn’t un-feel the sting of what she’d written or the sense of inadequacy.
He glanced back at the ER. The stroke patient would probably be in surgery already, pumped full of drugs to reverse the damage and break up the clot. Any other day he might have felt good about helping to save a life, but today, everything was overshadowed by his personal heartbreak.
When Engine One pulled up outside, he loped out into the cold air, hopped into the driver’s seat, and put on the headset, taking over from Cody.
“Tom just texted me that Nate Halstead got injured at ladder training,” Jack told him.
That wasn’t good. “He okay?”
“I guess his arm got yanked out of position, and it messed up his shoulder.”
“Hope it’s not the rotator cuff,” Sean said. That was a sports trivia type injury, he thought. Baseball pitchers were always hurting their shoulders. It was a season-ender, if not a career-ender.
That made him think of his own career-ender. As he maneuvered the fire truck through the traffic of downtown, he rubbed his knee. It had started to ache again. Would Annabelle feel differently if he was pulling in millions as a pro hockey player? Was she, after all, one of those women who was just after status?
Every instinct he had told him no, she wasn’t. As much as he wanted to categorize her negatively, he found that he couldn’t. Somehow, in the space of just over a month, she’d reconfigured his entire world, and his heart kept rebounding to wanting to cherish her, protect her, love her.
When he got back to the station, it took all of his willpower not to call her and tell her so.
29
On Wednesday, Annabelle walked to her office at dawn. The brisk sunrise walk helped clear her head, and her ank
le was sufficiently healed to where she could enjoy moving on it. She stayed in her office all day working on her dissertation, just as she’d been doing all week when she wasn’t teaching. She ate too little, drank too much coffee, and took only bathroom breaks, not wanting to leave the familiar cocoon of her desk.
Derrick had stepped up, too, bringing her coffee at just the right intervals and helping her work out her thoughts when they got jumbled. His helpfulness reminded her that he wasn’t a bad colleague, just a bad boyfriend.
Her dissertation was pretty much done, and now she was only editing, tweaking, and writing her conclusion. The clarity of her scientific research was the salve she needed for her heartbroken emotional state.
Around five, Lottie knocked softly on the doorframe, even though it was her office, too. “Hey! You haven’t been answering your phone.”
“Oh, sorry. I left it at home.”
“You’re looking increasingly like a science zombie.”
Annabelle knew it was true. She’d avoided looking at herself in the mirror, not wanting to see the dark circles beneath her eyes.
“It’s trivia night,” Lottie said. “And we’re all in agreement: you need a night out.”
What Annabelle really needed was Sean, but the man had well and truly disappeared from her life as if he’d never been in it at all. The first day or two after their break-up call, she’d kept her phone at her side, checking it probably ten times an hour to make sure it was charged and the ringer was on. Today, though, she’d left it at home so she wasn’t tempted to check for messages from Sean.
“I don’t know, Lottie . . .”
“I do! Step slowly away from that dissertation and come drink beer with your friends.”
Derrick popped his head around the corner. “Is she coming?”
“She’d better.” Lottie glanced at Derrick. “This is one of the best ideas you’ve had in a while, Derrick.”
“Ha, ha,” he said. “But seriously, Annabelle, please come out with us for a few hours. Just your fellow geeks.”
Forget Me Not (Golden Falls Fire Book 4) Page 20
