I nodded, took orders for beers, and went into the house to grab them. I was in luck when I found a brand new twenty-four pack of Heineken, and thanked Luke, silently, for bringing some over on his last visit.
When I returned outside, I passed out the drinks and went to work helping them where I was able. Mostly, I continued to screw the deck, although much slower since my finger was still throbbing since my last fuck up.
I’d been keenly aware of exactly where Sebastian was the entire time I’d been working. Not once had he moved that I’d not been aware of him on some primal level. I watched out of the corner of my eye as his muscles flexed and bunched when he moved boards into place.
Fingers trailed across my shoulders about an hour later. I looked up, startled to see Sebastian leaning over me.
Of course, I’d seen him coming, but I didn’t actually think he was going to come towards me, or touch me for that matter.
Swiping the hair out of my face, I looked up, gazing into Sebastian’s honey brown eyes. He looked so fucking edible. I wanted to run my tongue down the length of his torso.
“Yes?” I questioned.
“You’re really burning. Did you put any sun screen on?” He asked.
I grimaced. I could feel my shoulders burning, but I didn’t have any sun tan lotion, and I’d have to go to the store to get some. “No, I don’t have any.”
He scowled. “That’s going to feel like shit in the morning.”
I knew it would. I’d experienced burns before. This wouldn’t be the first time. Nor the last. “Yeah, I’ll go in shortly and order pizza. When I go pick it up, I’ll get some.”
“Won’t do you any good by then. You won’t have a need for it. Sun’s going down in an hour and a half.” He mused.
I shrugged. There was no way I was leaving people here to work on my deck while I did nothing. That was pure laziness in all its finest.
“Stubborn.” He growled, removing his hat and placing it firmly on my head. “At least wear my hat. Your face is going to burn to a fucking crisp.”
I froze when he fixed the fastenings at the back, making it tighter to fit my head. Then he turned without another word and went back to cutting boards to the length that was called out to him.
“Y’all are so going to fuck.” Winter whispered into my ear, making my head whip around.
“Shut up!” I hissed at her, ignoring the knowing grin on her face.
I wore the hat way past sun down, and even into the night. Sebastian left the hat with me, and whether it was on purpose or not, I vowed that I’d keep the hat forever.
Chapter 2
Cute enough to stop your heart, skilled enough to restart it
-T-shirt
Baylee
I watched in amazement as Winter shoved the entire hot dog in her mouth in two bites, chased it down with a half a bottle of Mountain Dew, and ran with me to the medic. We’d just caught a home invasion call, with one patient who had major injuries due to a gunshot wound.
We’d been eating at Hot Dog Express when the call had come in, and Winter decided to eat her hot dog before she left. Since I wasn’t driving, I waited until we were on the way to the residence before I opened the bag and ate my chili cheese dog and fries.
Being a paramedic, I’d learned that it was best to eat, because if you waited, it was very possible you wouldn’t have the opportunity to for hours. Therefore, I’d practically sucked every single bit of chilidog down, finished off half my coke, and then wiped my hands with a baby wipe all in the three minutes it took Winter to drive to the patient’s house.
We arrived on scene to find the local PD, and engine three already on scene, which was good because it meant that the scene was secure and we could proceed inside without waiting for the okay to enter.
“I’ll grab the cot.” Winter said as she headed to the back of the medic.
I grabbed the bag and followed behind Winter as she entered the house.
The house itself was on the outskirts of Kilgore, just barely in the city limits. It was located off the Whispering Pines Golf course, and I could clearly see why someone would want to break in; the house was a fucking gold mine.
A young police officer met us at the house front of the house and his sunny smile made him look to be about the cutest thing I’d ever seen. I hadn’t actually seen this one before, but since I’d only been working a short while, there were always new people to meet.
“Officer Jones,” Winter said, nodding her head at him.
“Winter,” He said, nodding back. “Who’s this lovely young lady?”
Oh man, the young Officer Jones was a charmer. “I would be Baylee Roberts. Nice to meet you Officer Jones.”
His smile widened at my no-nonsense-tolerated tone. “Nice to meet you, too. Did you hear what you’d be responding to?”
Winter answered. “Gunshot wound. One victim. Why?”
“It wasn’t the home owner, but the burglar. Owner, a twenty nine year old female shot him in the stomach, chest, both legs, and foot.” Officer Jones explained.
“Wow!” I exclaimed. “Did she unload the whole clip?”
“Almost, more like the entire revolver. She has young kids in the house. She feared for her children’s life.” Officer Jones explained with a smile on his face.
Good for her. Home invasions were all the too real. I should know. I’d had one nearly kill my mother when I was fifteen. My mom had been in the kitchen at the time, and would’ve died if the dog hadn’t killed the burglar before he could shoot her.
My father was currently the Chief of Police in Casper, but, at the time, he’d just been a uniformed K-9 officer.
Drone, our family pet, was a retired K-9 officer. The year I turned fifteen, Drone had been a victim of a knife wound. The knife wielder had been aiming for my father, but the dog had jumped in front of my father, protecting his partner. He’d sustained injuries, and although he’d healed, they’d thought it best to retire him. So he’d come home to the Roberts’ family homestead after his recovery, and stayed.
The night we’d had our home invaded, it was because the thief had seen my father’s new TV box out by the trash. At the time, we didn’t have an alarm, and since my father had been on his way home, my mother had the front door open waiting for him to arrive home. In turn, it made the burglar’s entry exceptionally easy. When he’d arrived in the kitchen, he’d leveled his gun at my mother, but didn’t see Drone until it was too late.
He’d died of trauma to his throat, bleeding out before the ambulance could arrive to offer assistance.
“How bad is he?” Winter asked, bringing me out of my own childhood nightmare.
“Oh, he’s dead. Just need the confirmation.” Officer Jones explained.
“Well, that should be easy.” I muttered.
The City of Kilgore had a new policy in place that required an EKG to be performed due to a lawsuit two years prior. The woman who’d been presumed dead had revived over an hour after her wounds were deemed ‘incompatible with life’ by a paramedic. Although the woman hadn’t had a pulse, and the lower half of her body was missing, she’d somehow revived without medical intervention, recovered, and then sued due to delayed medical care.
She’d won the suit, and the new law of an EKG being performed became a new protocol. Hence why Winter and I were called to perform said task, and then transport.
“All right, where do we go?” Winter asked.
Officer Jones pointed us in the correct direction, and we arrived to find the dead man on his back, eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling. A dead person gave off a particular stare paramedics liked to call the ‘thousand yard stare;’ where the dead person in question stared off into the distance, with none of the animation that alive people have.
The man that’d been shot was doing that very thing. When I’d seen my first dead person, the woman had had that same blank stare as well. Hundreds of dead people later, and the look had never changed.
Police officers had cord
oned off the area, and the crime scene techs were waiting off at the side of the kitchen, waiting for the removal of the body.
My brother stood in the hallway, halfway in the kitchen, and halfway in the living room, keeping an eye on the scene. Luke didn’t normally fool with crimes such as this; it was a surprise to see Luke’s half smile directed towards me.
Disregarding my brother, I dropped down to my haunches, snapped gloves into place over my hands, and checked for a pulse on the victim. Finding none, I started hooking up the EKG while Winter dropped the cot to the lowest position, and turned on the monitor.
The EKG showed no electrical activity, so I called time of death. “Time of death, 0810 hours.”
Two of the firefighters on scene, Dillon and Bowe, helped Winter and me load the body onto the cot. From there, Winter walked out with the body, Dillon and Bowe. She waved at Luke as she went.
Dillon and Bowe were firefighter/paramedics that worked with us at station three. Dillon was the oldest person at station three at the age of thirty-six. He was of Irish decent, tall and blonde with arms the size of tree trunks. He was the FAO, or the fire truck operator, for truck three, and a stickler for the rules.
Bowe was just the opposite. He was Italian, through and through. Dark complexion, inky black hair. The men at the station called him ‘Chef’ because of his excellent cooking skills. He didn’t just stick to Italian either. He was skilled in any type of dish he deemed to cook. He was one of the youngest at the station at twenty-nine. He was also a charmer.
Peeling my eyes away from Bowe’s cocky knowing grin that said he’d caught me staring, I turned and regarded my brother who was watching my perusal of the young firefighter.
“Hey, Lucas. What are you doing here?” I asked as I rolled the soiled gloves off my hands, folded them in on each other, and hugged my brother.
Luke’s arms wrapped tightly around me, smashing my face into his chest. “How ya doin’, Bay?”
I smiled into Luke’s chest. I loved my brother senseless. As children, we’d been very close. When he’d enlisted into the marines, and then was deployed, I’d missed him like crazy. Then he’d gotten out of the marines because of my niece, Katerina, was born. He stayed in Casper for a year before moving to Texas.
Luke said it was because of a job offer; I had a different theory. Mainly, the she-devil of a girlfriend that broke up with Luke after she’d found out that he’d had a kid. It wasn’t pretty, and Luke had left her as soon as he’d become aware that Lydia wasn’t going to grow up and be an adult about the situation.
I’d missed my niece horribly in the last three years, but I was here now, and I’ve been trying to make up for it ever since.
“I’m doing well, big brother. Still sun burned, though.” I smiled wide at my brother.
He groaned. He’d been upset that he wasn’t there to help me put the deck together, but he’d been right. The backyard looked freaking awesome. Now all I needed was to spread the rock I’d bought last week around the deck, and I’d be done.
“I’m sorry again, Bay. I meant to get there, I really did.” Luke apologized.
I smiled at him. “It’s okay, big brother. I’ve got to run this guy down to the cooler. I’ll see you tonight when you drop Katy off for her sleepover.”
Luke ruffled my hair as I left the room and headed for the bus that now housed the dead guy who’d made the unfortunate decision to invade a mama bear’s territory.
Dillon was standing beside truck three with his arms crossed tightly across his chest. He looked intimidating with his trademarked scowl taking over his face. However, that wasn’t indicative of his mood. He could be in the best of moods and still be scowling. The way to tell was to watch his feet. If they were tapping, he was happy. If they were planted and still, he was mad.
Now, for instance, they were tapping.
“What’s up, Dillon?” I asked as I walked up between the two trucks.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d say Dillon looked almost nervous.
“Hey, girl. I know you’ve not gotten to too many places while you’ve been here. The boys and I thought we’d rectify that. I’ve got two tickets to the Ranger game in Dallas tomorrow. Want to go?” He asked.
Was Dillon asking me out? Or was he really trying to get me more acclimated to my new community? Was this platonic? I sure hoped so. I didn’t want to date anyone from the station. I’d done that once before and been burned.
I liked it here. I knew better than to jump in that particular pool.
“I’m sorry, Dillon. I’ve made plans with my niece to have a sleepover this weekend. I appreciate you asking me though.” I smiled.
“That’s okay. The boys and I go a lot. We share a pair of season tickets between the station. There’ll be a next time.” He said before turning and climbing into the truck.
The big beast roared to life with a rumble, and Dillon, Bowe, PD, and Fat-baby rumbled out of the parking lot.
PD and Fat-baby weren’t ones I knew well.
PD’s real name was Dean Hargrove. He was tall, like six inches over six feet tall, and towered over my own height. He was the second best cook in the station. They started calling him PD after Paula Dean. The men liked to tease him about his butter fixation, and the name Paula Dean stuck.
Fat-baby’s real name was Aaron Sims. Aaron received his nickname because he’d bought a pair of Fat-baby boots without realizing they were women’s boots. From then on, the name had stuck. Although he’d been nice to me, he seemed a little standoffish, which wasn’t too surprising when I’d become aware that he had a wife who was a jealous bitch. Apparently, before I’d appeared, Aaron’s wife didn’t like the fact that there were women in the same building where her man slept overnight. Which was even more of the case now that I was there practically every other night.
“Let’s go, Bay! If we leave now, we’ll get back to the station before shift change!” Winter called from the bus.
I walked quickly to the truck. That was one thing I hated doing was going past shift change. It didn’t matter if the call happened after we were scheduled to be off. If dispatch called us for a call, and we were in the ambulance, we’d be going to the call. Then we’d have to stay after to write up the PCRs (or patient care reports) once we were back at the station. That was also if we were lucky we didn’t catch another call in route to the station.
We were lucky.
Forty minutes later, we pulled up to the station, got out of the bus, and even walked inside to the table before another tone dropped. Even luckier, the shift change happened five minutes prior, meaning we’d dodged the call. We still had to do PCRs, but those would’ve been done regardless. In turn, it meant we were out of the station only an hour off schedule, rather than our normal two or three.
Score!
“Do you want to meet at The Back Porch tomorrow for dinner?” Winter asked me.
I looked up from rifling through my backpack for my keys and looked at Winter. “Is this a girl’s night thing, or is this a family thing?”
Winter smiled that devious smile of hers. “Well, the kids have a babysitter, but the youngest of the bunch will be there. Ember and Gabe’s youngest, as well as James and Shiloh’s. They’re too young to be left alone in a group full of rowdy kiddos. Hell, it’s hard to get Jack to leave ours alone and she’s sixteen months now. With all that said, there’s no reason it can’t turn into a girl’s night thing.”
“Okay, well I have Katy tomorrow night. If you don’t mind that she comes along, then I can come. I won’t be drinking though.” I said, before crying in triumph when I found my keys at the very bottom of my bag.
Yanking them out, Sebastian’s black baseball cap flew out in my exuberance, and I caught it as if it were a piece of glass that would shatter if it hit the ground. There was nothing really special about the hat. It was completely black with orrah embroidered in black thread on the side of the hat. It had sweat lines, and looked extremely broken in, which meant that Sebastian must�
�ve worn it a lot.
Which, in turn, made me feel a little gooey in my center to know that he’d put a hat on my head that was most likely a daily wear for him.
“Geez, don’t break yourself. It’s just a hat.” Winter laughed as I fumbled for the hat, nearly falling backwards when I tripped on my own feet.
Hell, I couldn’t explain the attachment to the hat. I felt like the geek in high school who got to wear the letter jacket of the superstar jock that every girl drooled over. Then all the girls would envy me and call me a bitch behind my back because I got to sit with the most popular boy in school during lunch.
Without saying a word, I carefully put the cap back in my bag, zipped it closed, and walked over to my Cutlass. “I’ll see you tomorrow, text me what time.”
Winter laughed as she crawled up inside her lifted Chevy Silverado. Her husband bought it for her a few months prior, and Winter joked that she could run over my car if I wanted to collect the insurance money for it.
I’d laughed.
The Oldsmobile Cutlass wasn’t the nicest car on the block, but it ran.
I’d received the grass green 1971 Cutlass from my father for my sixteenth birthday. I hadn’t minded; I’d wrecked my father’s truck twice, and I was just happy to be getting a vehicle under the circumstances. He could’ve not gotten me anything, so even though the Cutlass was an eyesore to the extreme, I used it.
The insurance on the big beast was affordable. It ran well, and it was safe. Those three things right there made me keep the vehicle. Only when it gave up the ghost would I get a new car. It just seemed a waste to me to get rid of a working car. Although every time I had to fill up the gas tank on the car, my heart palpitated.
I had to wait to get out of the station’s lot because the tones dropped for a house fire in a residential district on the north side of town. The fire truck left first, followed shortly by the ambulance. I was glad I didn’t catch that call. Fires were no fun, and they were time consuming. There was a lot of sitting around and waiting, which for me, was hard.
Lights to My Siren Page 2
