Just One Taste

by Kimberly Kincaid

  “Believe me, I know,” Jesse said, standing his ground even though he knew he’d get sucker-punched for his trouble. This story was long overdue, and what’s more, Jesse ached to finally tell it. “But it wasn’t like you’re thinking. You need to know the truth. And you need to hear it from me.”

  He gave Gabe a succinct and definitely sanitized version of events, weaving in the details of his mother’s addiction and his memory of the attack in Afghanistan. Ten minutes later, the whole tale was out, and he pushed back against the tailgate of Gabe’s truck with a mixture of frustration and defeat.

  “I didn’t intend for any of this to happen, and I definitely never meant to hurt your sister. But she deserves a home, and now that her apartment is done, she should have that. She shouldn’t have . . . a guy like me.”

  A minute passed, then another, before Gabe broke the silence between them. “Can I ask you a question, Jesse?”

  Jesse braced for something along the lines of where do you want it, in your head or in your chest. Still, he didn’t back down from the question. “Yeah.”

  “Why do you think I let you stay all the way out here in the middle of God’s country with my sister?”

  His chin lifted in confusion. “Because you needed help fixing the place up.”

  “Because I trust you,” Gabe said. “Just like Adrian and Teagan trust you at the restaurant, and just like I’d bet Kat trusts you here, in her space. I know that you’ve had a tough road, and I’m not saying you’ll get past those obstacles all in one day. But you’ve proven to everyone close to you that you’re a good man. Don’t you think it’s time you started believing it too?”

  Holy . . . shit. Jesse had spent so long believing he simply wasn’t good enough—for his mother, for his squad mates, for anyone—that he’d missed what had been right in front of him all along.

  There was a difference between circumstance and truth. And the people who mattered most saw past one to know the other. Kat wanted to be with him. She believed he was good enough.

  And last night, he’d walked away from her.

  “I really screwed this up,” Jesse said, defeat threatening every last thread of hope in his chest. How was he supposed to fix things, to make everything right and convince Kat to give him another chance? It would take hours, days, weeks to come up with something good enough....

  It’s only complicated if you make it that way.

  Adrian’s words slammed into Jesse with the force of an artillery tank, and his hands balled to determined fists at his sides.

  “But I think I know how to fix it. If you’re game, I’m going to need a little help pulling it off without a hitch.”

  Kat wished the receptionist at the physical therapy center good night, shouldering her purse as she rummaged for her keys. She’d slept in fits and starts last night, half expecting and fully hoping to hear the rumble of the Challenger at some point in the drive. But Jesse hadn’t come back by the time she’d left for work, and by now, his stuff was probably long gone from the lake house.

  God, she didn’t want to be there without him, with all the energy they’d created there lurking in every corner. She’d shoved enough things in her car that morning to tide her over for a night or two at the apartment, and she’d picked up the new set of keys from the management group on her lunch break. Maybe what she needed was to go back to her apartment, to be in a place that didn’t remind her of Jesse every time she turned around.

  Maybe Kat needed to just move on.

  Her cell phone rang from the depths of her purse, twanging out an all-too-familiar Georgia Satellites tune, and damn it, she really needed to change her brother’s ringtone.

  “Hello?” she said, sounding every bit as tired as she felt.

  “There’s my favorite sister! No offense, kid, but you sound like crap.”

  “Why thank you, Gabe. You sound just lovely.” Despite the lump in her throat, hearing his voice made her feel a tiny bit better. But the glimmer was short-lived.

  “Sorry. Listen, my shift ended early and I’m at loose ends. I thought I’d meet you at the lake house for dinner.”

  Well, crap. Of course Gabe wouldn’t know her apartment was ready. The paint was barely dry on the walls. “Well, you could, if I was going to be there. My apartment was finished yesterday. To be honest, I kind of just want to be at home tonight.”

  “I thought you might say that,” he murmured, clearing his throat. “Tell you what. Why don’t I meet you at the lake house to help you pack? I’ll bring the takeout, and you can sack out in those weird fuzzy slippers of yours. What do you say?”

  Kat paused. As much as her heart hurt at the thought of spending one more night at the lake house, spending time with Gabe always made her feel better. Jesse had undoubtedly moved back in to his apartment, so it wasn’t like she’d run into him. What could it hurt?

  “Okay, okay. You talked me into it.”

  “Good,” Gabe said, and was that relief in his voice? “I’ll see you in a few.”

  The drive to the duplex passed uneventfully, and by the time she turned in to the gravel drive, she was all too ready to crash on the couch with some Moo Goo Gai Pan and her brother’s dry sense of humor. She parked next to his pickup, heading up the walkway and into her side of the duplex with a tired smile.

  But the man who met her was definitely not her brother.

  “Jesse! What are you doing here?” Kat blurted, and okay, so graceful wasn’t her middle name.

  But Jesse just smiled, as if it was his favorite thing about her. “Sorry for pulling one over on you. But I didn’t know if you’d meet me if I called. And I still owe you a dinner from last night.”

  “You got my brother to get me out here so you could make me dinner?” she asked, certain she’d misunderstood. If Gabe had called her on Jesse’s behalf, that meant . . . “Oh my God. Did you—?”

  “Tell him about us? Yeah, I did.”

  “But why would you do that?” Kat asked, her heart starting to pound as Jesse stepped forward, turning the space between them into less than a breath.

  “Because I want to be with you, Kat, and that means going all in. Here, or at the apartment—hell, I’d go to the moon with you if that’s what you want. Gabe needed to know it. And you need to know it.”

  Kat’s lip trembled, but still, she pushed out the words. “You want to stay?”

  He didn’t hesitate. “Yeah, I do. I’m not going to lie and say my past hasn’t been hard, and that it hasn’t shaped what I believe about who I am. But for the first time in my life, I’ve got a support system of people who care about me. For the first time in my life, I care about other people too.” He cupped her face, but his shoulders held no trace of tension as he whispered, “I care about you.”

  He leaned down to kiss her, but she pressed up to meet him, kissing him right back.

  “Thank God you finally got it,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around him to pull him in tight. “I thought I was going to have to resort to boxed mac and cheese.”

  “Funny you should say that. I do still owe you dinner,” Jesse said, tipping his head at the kitchen. Over his shoulder stood a lavishly decorated table, with softly glowing candles sending tiny sparkles off the crystal and silver.

  And two plates of macaroni and cheese, ready and waiting.

  “So what do you think, Just Kat? You ready for the first dinner of the rest of your life?”

  “Nah.” She kissed Jesse again, knowing full well that she’d always be at home as long as she was in his arms. “I have it on good authority that mac and cheese from a box isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. And anyway, I’d rather have you.”

  Make a Christmas visit to Pine Mountain

  this October with Nick Brennan’s story and

  ALL WRAPPED UP!

  Nick Brennan’s boots sounded off against the neat stretch of pavement in front of his apartment, and he inhaled a deep breath full of frozen air and screaming back pain. He’d learned to cope with an extended
and somewhat brutal version of winter upon moving to Pine Mountain two years ago.

  The pain was a little more difficult to swallow, but then again, the snap, crackle, and pop running the length of his spine was more rule than exception. After a little over two years, Brennan had learned to suck it up and lock it away.

  After all, there were worse things than blowing out a couple of vertebrae. Not to mention worse ways to deal with the pain.

  Brennan stuffed back the thought, popping the locks on his Chevy Trailblazer and sliding into the well-worn driver’s seat. The Double Shot’s staff schedules weren’t going to write themselves, no matter how much his back creaked like a hundred-year-old staircase, and he needed to get to work, stat. Brennan might’ve closed the bar last night, and yeah, the four before it too, but his friends Adrian and Teagan needed all the help they could get.

  With business booming under the new management of the burly head chef and the owner’s daughter, busy shifts were a foregone conclusion, especially around the holidays. Not that Brennan minded. All that work kept him moving forward, and that was a good thing. Because going back?

  Not an option.

  The handful of country miles between his apartment complex and the small-town bar and grill started flashing by in a late-morning slide show of snowy pine trees and mountain backdrops, and Brennan cracked his window to take another deep breath despite the December chill in the air. Dwelling on the past and the physical pain that went with it only spelled trouble, and he forced the muscles in his shoulders and back to unwind as he slid more air into his lungs.

  Wait . . . was that smoke?

  Brennan’s pulse catapulted into go-mode, his heart triple-timing it against his sternum even though he refused to let his movements follow suit. With his senses at DEFCON 1, he methodically scanned the narrow road in front of him from shoulder to shoulder, scooping in another lungful of air as he lasered his focus through the bare trees to the sky overhead.

  Fuck. Definitely smoke. Enough to mean very bad things.

  And it was getting stronger by the second.

  Brennan swung the Trailblazer around a familiar bend in the road, whipping gracelessly into the parking lot of Joe’s Grocery. His palms went slick over the steering wheel as the building came into view past the tree line on either side of Rural Route 4. Black smoke funneled from the far end of the clapboard building near the roofline, billowing with enough density to kick his oh-shit meter up another notch. Fueled by nothing more than pure instinct and hard-edged adrenaline, Brennan threw his SUV into PARK and laid waste to the distance between his sloppy parking job and the front entrance.

  “Joe!” Relief uncurled in his chest at the sight of the store’s owner standing outside the front door, despite the obvious panic on the older man’s face. “What happened? Are you hurt?”

  “No.” Joe shook his head, eyes glassy and breath puffing around his face from the cold. “Caleb and I were stocking produce when all of a sudden the fire alarms started going berserk. I did a quick look for people in the aisles, but by the time we got Michelle from the register at the front and told everyone to get out, smoke was all over the place.”

  Jesus. Something must be burning back there, and fast.

  “Okay. If everyone’s out, we need to move away from the building and call 911.” Brennan turned toward the opposite side of the parking lot, where the two college-aged kids on Joe’s staff stood alongside a smattering of shoppers, thankfully all far enough from the building to be out of harm’s way.

  For now, at least. Fires could turn on a dime and leave 9½ ¢ change, and the smoke now steadily pushing at the expanse of windows on Joe’s storefront was thick enough to make Brennan twitchy.

  Right. Time to go. “Come on.” He turned to lead Joe across the parking lot, ready as hell to let the Pine Mountain FD have at the building so he could get out of there and slide back into the shadows, when an ungodly scream stopped him cold.

  “Matthew? Matthew!” The woman belonging to the noise came hurtling around the corner of the building from the back, her head whipping from side to side in a panicked search.

  “Whoa!” Brennan looped an arm around her waist to stop her midstride as she angled herself toward the front door. “You can’t go in there.”

  “My little boy!” She struggled against his grip, turning to fix him with a wild-eyed stare. “He was in the bathroom, but I can’t find him. I think he’s still inside. Please, you have to let me go!”

  Realization punched Brennan’s gut full of holes. “Ma’am, it’s not safe inside. You need to wait for the fire department.”

  “No.” She shook her head, vehement. “No, I don’t see him anywhere. He’s not out here. I’m going back inside!”

  For a split second, the entire scene froze into place. Black smoke, foreboding and malicious, pushed from any exit it could find. The heat pouring off the building, demolishing the chill of winter from twenty feet away, was a clear-cut sign of a large, active fire within. Brennan’s brain screeched at him to restrain the woman and fall back, to let the fire department get there and secure the scene, to not act impulsively in a way that could cost him everything. Again.

  But then he caught sight of the propane tanks Joe sold in the summer, lined up in a chain-link storage locker against the side of the clapboard building, and he was done thinking.

  “Joe, get my cell phone out of my truck and call 911. Tell them you have an active fire with reported entrapment. Round up everyone on the outside and stay as far away from the building as you can until they get here. Go now.” Brennan flipped his keys to the older man, scanning the grocery store for the best strategic point of entry. Dammit, despite all the possibilities, this still had spectacularly bad plan written all over it.

  He turned toward the woman, purposely slowing his words and movements so he didn’t spook her further. “The last place you saw Matthew was the bathroom in the back of the store?”

  “Y-yes,” she sputtered. “When the alarm went off, I looked all over, but I couldn’t find him. I thought . . . maybe he got out another way, but . . . oh God. He’s only seven. You have to help him. Please.”

  Serrated echoes of a different voice yanked at his chest from the depths of two years ago, stealing the breath from his lungs and cementing his body to the asphalt.

  You don’t have time for this. Your only job is to get this kid. This. Kid. Right fucking now.

  Before Brennan could register the movement, the past was gone and his boots were crunching over the frost-encrusted gravel strip leading to the side of the building. The bathrooms were in the back of the store, and he needed to start there and work forward. Just because Matthew’s mom hadn’t seen him there didn’t mean he wasn’t there, and it was the last place the kid had been for sure. With the fire alarm going full bore and the building full of smoke, they could’ve missed each other, and at seven, Matthew had to be terrified.

  Probably enough to hide.

  Jacking the neck of his long-sleeved thermal shirt up to cover his nose and mouth before zipping his black canvas jacket tight, Brennan clattered to a stop by the side door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. Although it was ajar, he laid a quick hand on it to assess the temperature, relief splashing through him at the relatively cool feel of the steel panel. This had to be where Matthew’s mom had exited the building. Calculating his surroundings with every move, Brennan swung the door open and stepped inside the space, squinting hard against the thick curtain of smoke issuing up from the floor.

  Christ. Until it had a place to go, this smoke was going to be a major roadblock. He needed to find Matthew. Yesterday.

  “Matthew!” The acrid air scraped a path into Brennan’s lungs, but that didn’t stop him from crouching down low and drawing in another ration of breath. “Call out, buddy! I’m here to help.”

  But the bathrooms and the small office beside them turned up empty, and Brennan banged both doors closed behind him in an effort to isolate his search field and contain some of the heavy smoke. T
he heat had gone from zero to unbearable in about three seconds flat, and between the sweat stinging his eyes and the smoke clogging his path, visibility was pretty much nil.

  Nope. No way was he leaving without this kid.

  “Matthew!” Swiping an arm over his brow, Brennan tried again, the bellow burning in his chest as he called out over the clanging smoke alarm. “I’m here to get you out!”

  The only answer was the incessant bell and the soft, underlying whoosh of unseen flames that told Brennan he needed to haul ass unless he wanted to die trying.

  Pushing forward, he bent even farther for breathable oxygen as he quickly checked the employee break room and made his way toward the main section of the store. Despite the high overhead ceiling, the normally wide-open space was cloaked in hot, soot-f illed air and thin stretches of orange flames, and Brennan coughed hard against the sucker punch rattling through his lungs. Fully on his hands and knees now despite the bite of the linoleum through his jeans and the screaming tightness in his back, he forced Matthew’s name past the charred taste of smoke in his mouth.

  Process of elimination told him the boy had to be somewhere in this room, so Brennan shuffle-crawled toward the wall to start a strategic search. Yes, he needed to move as fast as possible, but speed wouldn’t matter for shit if he missed the kid altogether. Starting in aisle one, Brennan clambered down the smoke-obscured rows, instinct thrumming through him as he shoved past metal shelves and cardboard displays. The first four aisles turned up empty, each one hotter and more smoke-laden than the one before it, and dammit, where was this kid?

  Brennan sucked in a raw breath to call out again when a deep chill of fear plucked down his spine.