Hot Response

by Stacey, Shannon

  So she gave him an honest answer. “Someday, probably. I can’t even think about starting a family while mine’s still a mess. What about you?”

  “I definitely want kids. And you can’t put your life on hold forever, you know. It seems like the longer you’re a crutch for your mother, the more she’s going to get used to leaning on you.”

  It was Cait’s turn to take a deep breath, not wanting to mar their day by snapping at him. “I’m not her crutch. I’m her daughter. And she’s getting stronger. I’ve been spending a lot of time with you, even spending the night, and they’re fine. And she and Carter are communicating a lot better.”

  He stroked her arm, his fingertip running from her elbow to her shoulder and back again. “But they’re still a factor in your future hopes and plans.”

  “It’s not so much them as the timing, I guess. By the time I find a place of my own and get settled—while still checking in to make sure they’re doing okay—it’ll be a while. I’m not saying ten years. I just want the ducks I have to be in a row before I start adding more ducks.”

  “Quack.”

  “Not you.” She elbowed him. “I meant baby ducks.”

  He chuckled. “So I’m already considered part of your pond of unruly ducks?”

  “You’re definitely in my pond.” She frowned when he laughed, shaking them both. “I guess that sounded weird.”

  “A little bit. But I’m glad I’m in your pond.”

  “Me, too.” Cait kept her gaze on the television, but she wasn’t really paying attention to the bad action movie anymore.

  It was the closest they’d come to a conversation about their future together and, even though she knew it was inevitable, it still made her nervous. They enjoyed being together so much and there was no mistaking how important they were to each other.

  It made her afraid of changing it. They lived their lives almost together, but still separate enough so there weren’t discussions about bills and plumbing problems and whose family they were having Sunday dinner with.

  Right now she was pretty damn happy with the way things were, she thought as she snuggled deeper into his embrace. It was almost perfect.

  * * *

  Gavin sat on the bench, rolling his hockey stick back and forth between his hands. He still had his skates on, but he was tired. And when Aidan and Scott were in a competitive mood, rink time became less about blowing off some steam while getting some exercise and more about checking each other against the boards.

  After a few minutes, Grant joined him. “We should all go home and let those two duke it out.”

  “Hard to believe they’re best friends sometimes.”

  “Yeah. They say it’s all in fun, but we don’t have refs with whistles and after that last hit, I thought it was 1973 again.”

  Gavin laughed. “You weren’t even here for 1973 the first time around.”

  “Yeah, I just picked a random year.” He took a swig from his water bottle, and then both winced when Aidan and Scott ended up in a tangle of arms, legs and sticks that collided with Danny in the net.

  Gavin was surprised the words coming out of Danny’s mouth didn’t melt the ice in front of him.

  “How are things with Wren?” he asked Grant, realizing he hadn’t gotten an update in a while.

  “Good. Things are good, I guess.”

  Gavin waited, expecting more. Grant was always the talkative type, but especially when it came to women. But now that he thought about it, his friend hadn’t had a lot to say lately.

  “What’s going on?” he nudged.

  “Sometimes I want to tell her I love her.”

  Whoa. “The L-word? Sounds serious.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But only sometimes?”

  “Lately, it’s been all the time. And not just when we’re in bed or getting off the phone, like most people say it. I want to tell her all the time. Every time I open my mouth, I’m afraid I’m going to say it.”

  Gavin almost made a smart-ass remark out of sheer habit, but now wasn’t the time. The heaviness in Grant’s voice, along with the pinched mouth and slightly hunched shoulders, told him Grant wasn’t happy about a situation that should be making him really happy.

  “I gotta ask,” he said. “Why are you trying so hard not to tell her?”

  “It’s hard to explain.”

  “I’m not even going to pretend I know jack shit about true love and all that, but I think if you really love a woman, you should say it.”

  Grant shook his head, looking down at his hands. “I think she’d push me away.”

  “I’m not gonna lie, dude. I’m a little worried about you with this woman.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, for one thing, I haven’t met her. Forget everybody else. I haven’t met her and you’ve been talking about her since before Cait and I started dating.”

  “She gets anxious about meeting everybody, and we’re taking it slow.”

  “Have you done a Google search on her? Facebook? Anything?”

  “There was nothing, really. And she doesn’t have a Facebook account.”

  “That right there is sketchy enough. How many women don’t have a Facebook account?”

  “She’s really private.” Grant tapped his hockey stick against the toe of his skate. “I know it sounds weird when we’re talking like this, but it’s not when I’m with her. She’s just really private and she’s skittish about our relationship. She’s warming up to me, though. You’ll see how awesome she is when you meet her.”

  “I’d like to. Especially if you’re thinking about dropping the L-word.”

  “Have you ever said it to a woman?”

  “No.” Gavin paused, then lifted one shoulder. “I mean, back in school, maybe. When you’re young, you fall in love every week. But since I grew up and it became more about finding somebody you want to settle down with for the rest of your life and less about getting to second base? No, I haven’t said it.”

  “What about Cait?”

  What about Cait? It was a question he asked himself a lot. “We’re getting there. Pretty quickly.”

  “Good. I think you guys are the real deal.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “I don’t know. Just seeing you together.” Grant shrugged. “It’s obvious you’re into each other, and it’s just natural. Like you get each other and you fit. It’s hard to explain. Gut instinct, I guess.”

  Gavin wished it was that easy. He wished there was a way to simply know, without a doubt, that he and Cait were meant to be together forever. He was starting to believe they might be, but he felt himself holding back. If he started pushing her for more, would she feel as if he was pulling her away from her mother?

  If he thought about it too much—and he did—he always ended up frustrated by his inability to know the right thing to do.

  “I was thinking about asking her to move in with me,” he said.

  “No shit?”

  “No shit.”

  Grant started to grin, but then it faded. “What do you mean was?”

  “We were talking about whether we wanted kids, like in a vague way, and she said by the time she found her own place and got settled enough to think about a family, it would be a while. So I guess she’s not in the same place I am in that regard.”

  “Maybe she was giving you an opportunity to say, ‘Hey, you don’t need your own place because you can move in with me’ and you blew it. Again.”

  Gavin hadn’t really thought about that possibility, but he didn’t think that was the case. Thinking back, there hadn’t been any sense of hinting or nudging in her voice. Just a statement of fact. “I don’t know. I’ll probably bring it up again soon, though, since I think about it pretty much all the damn time.”

  “What about her family?”

&
nbsp; “I don’t know. I’m hoping Diane’s in a place where she can handle it and, to be honest, she has to see it coming. Cait spends as much time at my place as she can, and she’s been spending the night more often.”

  “That sounds promising.”

  “Yeah, I guess it does.” He grinned at Grant. “Maybe we both found the right ones this time.”

  “Lucky bastards.”

  “Fucking right.”

  “Hey,” Scott called from the ice. “You two gonna play hockey or do you want to start knitting some shit over there?”

  Grant looked at him and then at Gavin. “First one to take him to the ice gets a free beer next time we hit Kincaid’s.”

  He snorted. “You recognize the irony in that, right? Since it’s his family’s bar?”

  “Just makes it all the sweeter.”

  “You’re on.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Cait wasn’t accustomed to having company for her first cup of coffee in the morning, since she got up earlier than her mom and her brother, but on Friday Carter had a meeting with his guidance counselor before school started. He was bleary-eyed and clearly unhappy to be awake, but he still managed a quick smile when he saw her.

  “I can’t believe you get up this early every day.”

  “Do well in school and go to college, and maybe you can get some fancy office job with bankers’ hours.”

  “Ha ha.” He grabbed a soda from the fridge and popped the tab while Cait winced. The only thing worse than liquid sugar in the morning was carbonated liquid sugar. “Hey, there was a fire on the news when I walked by the TV.”

  Frowning, she took her coffee and went to sit on the couch. She set her mug down to pick up the remote control since she always turned the volume down to a murmur in the morning.

  “Crews are still battling an early-morning fire at this hour,” the news anchor announced, before they cut back to the live scene.

  It was a massive fire, and it looked like it had originated in one triple-decker before jumping to the one next door. The middle of the night and early-morning hours were the worst time for residential fires, she thought sadly. Most families were sound asleep when they started.

  “Do you think Gavin’s there?” Carter asked, startling her. She hadn’t realized he was standing behind the couch, and she turned sideways so she could see both him and the television screen.

  “He’s there.” She didn’t need to seek out the information or try to see the numbers on the apparatus on the screen. She knew he was on shift, she knew the building’s location and she could see the scope of the response. Engine 59 and Ladder 37 would be on scene.

  “It looks dangerous.”

  She heard the underlying tension in his voice and it pretty much matched the tension she herself was feeling. She probably would have changed the channel if she was alone in an attempt to fool herself into thinking she’d stop worrying, but Carter’s gaze was so glued to the screen, she wasn’t even sure he’d blinked.

  “I know it looks like chaos,” she said, “but it’s actually very organized. There’s a guy in the command area who has a magnet board where all the trucks and firefighters are accounted for. And they’re all very well trained.”

  “But things go wrong.”

  Cait didn’t want to talk about that. Just the thought of something going sideways twisted her stomach into knots and made her throat ache. But just the fact Carter was so intent on the screen and the conversation—phone forgotten next to him—told her how much he cared and she didn’t want to discount that.

  “Sometimes, but not often. You hear more about the few times it turns ugly than you do the thousands of times it doesn’t. There’s a lot of experience and training on that scene. And if they think it’s unsafe, they’ll pull everybody out.”

  Carter only nodded, and then Cait watched him tilt his head, craning his neck as if he could see around the news anchor to identify the firefighters in the background. It was sweet and she found herself smiling at the back of her brother’s head.

  She’d done enough fire standbys so she could make sense of what she was seeing, but she had to admit this time was different. The worry she usually felt for the first responders—many of whom she knew on at least a passing basis—was amped up and, like her brother, she couldn’t stop herself from trying to pick Gavin out of the crowd.

  Then a new camera view picked up Ladder 37. She didn’t need a close-up to know it was Gavin at the top of the ladder. She just knew.

  A woman and a little girl were in the window, screaming as the flames closed in on them. The ladder was moving and she could see Gavin yelling to them and see his body language. She didn’t need audio to know he was telling her it was okay. That he’d get them.

  The woman shifted the girl in her arms and Cait knew she was going to throw the child to Gavin.

  “Jesus,” she whispered as her stomach knotted.

  The camera cut away, going back to the front of the scene. Cait didn’t move—she couldn’t move—as she realized the emotional toll it would take on Gavin if the mother threw the little girl and he didn’t catch her.

  “Cait?”

  “You need to get to school,” she said, more sharply than she intended.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yes, I’m okay. And so is Gavin.” She forced herself to look away from the TV and paste a smile on her face. After taking a sip of her coffee because her mouth was dry, she stood up and walked around the couch to give him a quick hug. He wasn’t a fan, but he accepted it. “If you don’t go, you’re going to be late for your meeting.”

  He slung his backpack over his shoulder, but didn’t move. “But if Gavin’s there, maybe they’ll interview him.”

  She shook her head and shoved him toward the door. “It’ll be a while before anybody does an interview. And only the officers do interviews, so you won’t see Gavin, anyway.”

  Once he was out the door, Cait noticed the time and realized she needed to get a move on. But she couldn’t stop herself from looking at the television one last time.

  The scroll on the bottom of the screen changed to Fatal Fire and Cait felt her eyes well up. Nothing said the fatality was the woman or her little girl, but her gut told her it was. She swiped at her eyes, and then she made a few phone calls and, for the first time in a very long time, called in sick.

  It wasn’t really a lie. Her stomach hurt but, even more, her heart ached.

  * * *

  Gavin sat on the curb, his elbows propped on his knees and his hands dangling between his legs. Head bowed, he stared at the disposable coffee cup that had slipped from his fingers, losing its lid and steaming contents when it hit the pavement. He didn’t care.

  He could hear the little girl crying. The screaming for her mother had abated to sobbing and to pleading with the EMTs. She just wanted her mommy.

  But her mommy was gone because Gavin hadn’t been able to catch her. Fifteen seconds. Maybe even ten. But if she’d just waited fifteen more seconds...

  Gavin knew all the right words. He couldn’t save them all. He’d done all he could. That was the job. Blah blah blah. He knew all the correct words and he’d even had to say the words to others once or twice, but right now they offered no comfort. It would probably be a long time before they could overpower the memory of the little girl screaming for her mother.

  A hand closed over his shoulder and squeezed. Gavin closed his eyes, hoping whoever belonged to the hand—probably Jeff, judging by the grip—didn’t say the words to him right now.

  After a few seconds, the hand lifted and Gavin opened his eyes to see boots moving away from him.

  The cold radiating from the pavement to his already chilled body was starting to hurt, so Gavin finally pushed himself to his feet. Their tour was over. They were returning to quarters and then he’d go home. Maybe he’d sleep or maybe h
e’d lie in bed and listen to the little girl screaming in his head, but for now he followed the others to the trucks.

  Jeff was limping, favoring his knee, but he wasn’t surprised when he waved off the EMT who approached him. It wasn’t an injury, but a chronic problem Gavin suspected was getting worse and the cold didn’t help.

  Nobody spoke on the ride back. Utterly exhausted and with the pall of a fatality hanging over them, they simply stared out the windows until the trucks were backed in and they could robotically go through their checklists before handing everything over to the next shift.

  Gavin didn’t bother to shower. He just wanted to go home, and he didn’t speak to any of the guys on the way out. Derek Gilman, who was on his way in, slapped him on the shoulder, but they didn’t exchange words.

  As he stepped through the firehouse door, a car pulled up to the curb and it took him a few seconds to realize it was Cait’s.

  Something shook loose inside of him and he took a deep, shuddering breath. Then he opened the door and slid into the passenger seat and closed the door. She didn’t say anything. She just reached across to hold his hand and pulled back onto the street.

  “Don’t you have to work today?” he finally asked, realizing his voice sounded hoarse from screaming. Don’t jump. I’m almost there.

  “I called in sick.”

  “Thank you.”

  Cait didn’t ask him any questions. She seemed content to just drive and hold his hand until they parked in front of his building. He knew if he talked about it, she’d listen, but he couldn’t do it. Not yet.

  Once they were inside his apartment, he turned to her, though. He wanted a hug in the worst way, but he looked down and realized he must stink of sweat and smoke. But when he looked up again, she was moving toward him, her arms apart.

  He buried his face in her neck as she squeezed him tightly. “Did somebody text you?”

  “I saw the fire on the news. The camera cut away because I think the camera person realized the woman was going to throw her daughter to you. A few minutes later they changed the headline scroll to fatal fire.”