by Liz Talley
Paired with the terror was the albatross of regret he’d been wearing since Saturday afternoon. He’d lied to her. He’d said they were a mistake…because everyone told him they were.
Who did that? Who let other people tell them how they should feel? What they should do?
Yeah, Jake had almost blown it.
But God willing, as soon as he was allowed to see Eva, he’d make it right. He’d tell her how stupid and insecure he’d been. He’d tell her that he was scared to love her but even more scared not to love her. He’d weep at her feet and beg her forgiveness for letting anyone stand between what they had.
Jake had never loved a woman in his life…outside his family.
But he loved Eva.
And come hell or high water, he’d make her understand that.
*
THE HOSPITAL EMERGENCY waiting room was full. Tons of teenagers stood around, tapping on their phones. Jake pushed through them and caught a guy wearing scrubs sitting at the triage desk.
“Hey, I just followed that ambulance in. Two burn victims from Magnolia Bend.”
The man looked up at him slowly, raising his eyebrows. “And?”
“I need to get back there. That’s one of our firefighters.”
The man shrugged his shoulders. “I’ll go check. You can sit—” he looked around “—somewhere out here. They’re all from one of the local high schools. Quarterback got hurt bad in practice.”
Jake opened his mouth to tell the man he wasn’t about to sit down, but he’d already disappeared into the recesses of whatever lay behind the desk. Jake slapped his hands on the counter and glared at the spot the man had occupied.
Behind him he heard a few girls crying.
A few older guys in coaching shirts stood around looking worried.
Yeah, he probably looked the same way…except Eva wasn’t a star player. She was the woman he loved.
The double doors swooshed open and Clint rolled in, followed by his father, Murphy. What the hell?
Clint spied him and maneuvered through the crying girls. “How is she?”
“What are you doing here?” Jake asked.
“Fancy called me.”
“Why?”
Clint made a face. “Because Eva’s my friend. I care about her. I want to be here for her.”
Jake stared at Clint for a few moments. Murphy placed his hand on the back of Clint’s chair. United front.
The man in the purple scrubs came back. “They’re really busy back there. You’re gonna have to wait.”
“But I’m her…partner. You can’t keep me from going to her. I’m, like, her family.”
The man sat down and started typing on the computer. “But the word like is the problem. Have a seat and when I know more, I’ll come get you.”
Clint rolled toward the bucket chairs in a far corner. “Come on, Jake. Nothing you can do now.”
But he needed to do something. He couldn’t just…wait.
The man at the desk blocked him out, picking up a phone and making a call.
Jake shoved off the counter and followed Clint. He didn’t want to be with Clint and Murphy, but there really wasn’t another place to sit in the crowded waiting room.
For a few minutes none of the men said anything. Then Murphy stood. “I’m gonna grab some coffee. Either of you want any?”
He and Clint both said no at the same time.
Murphy shrugged and toddled off. Clint and Jake sat there, two friends with so much history, two friends with so much hurt between them.
“Eva came to see me yesterday,” Clint said. “God, I can’t believe I’m sitting here tonight. How did this happen?”
Jake ignored the flash of hurt that Eva had visited Clint so soon after he’d ended things with her. But why should that hurt him? Clint was Eva’s friend, too, and she hadn’t known Clint was part of the reason Jake had bowed out of a romantic relationship with her. Or maybe she did. He hadn’t a clue at this point.
“She went in after Jimbo. He probably passed out with a cigarette in his mouth. Or he didn’t extinguish it properly. The place went up. She was in the middle of getting Jimbo out when the roof collapsed. Dutch said something fell on her and knocked her mask off. Dutch got there fast, but she’d already passed out. She came to but wasn’t lucid, though that’s common. Carbon dioxide poisoning can make people confused.”
“Dad said the chemicals in those tires are dangerous when burned.”
“Yeah.” Jake nodded, clasping his hands between his knees, assuming the position every worried person assumes in a hospital waiting room. “It’s not good, but Eva’s strong. She’s a fighter. And she didn’t get exposed the way Jimbo did.”
“Do you love her?” Clint asked.
Jake jerked back, startled at his friend’s abruptness. “Why the hell are you bringing that up again?”
“Because she loves you,” Clint said, his dark gaze delving into Jake’s. “She came over yesterday, mad as a wet hen. Guess people at Ray-Ray’s let the word out about our talk. Someone told Eva I said some things.”
Jake grunted. So Eva knew what an ass extraordinaire Jake had been…but she also knew he had tried to do right by her, tried to spare her the future hurt. Did that count for something? That he loved her enough to let her go?
“So do you?” Clint asked.
“Huh?”
“Love her. Do you love Eva, Jake?”
Jake pressed his hand into his eyes, as if he could wipe away the throb in his head. But it didn’t help because everything in his body surged. His gut churned, his knees still trembled and his heart, well, his heart beat with hope. Please let her be okay. Please let her forgive him. Please let them have another shot at love.
Sitting back he said, “I love her.”
Clint let loose a labored breath. “I can’t believe that, but I can’t ignore what you and Eva both want.”
Jake straightened. “Why do you get a vote?”
His friend blinked but said nothing.
Jake pressed. “I can understand all you said at Ray-Ray’s. Things built up. Both of us needed to air out some things—the accident, the guilt, all the shit we’ve stacked between us. But Eva wasn’t part of us, Clint. You used the leftover guilt I carry around from the accident to keep me from her.”
“I wanted her.”
“So what? I mean, that’s life. We don’t always get what we want, right? And she has—”
“I know. That’s pretty much what she said to me yesterday. I discounted her…and I underestimated you. Seeing you now, thinking about what I’ve done to you, I… I was wrong.”
Jake didn’t say anything. Just stared at a painting on the wall of a Louisiana bayou.
“I’m sorry. For a lot of things. I came tonight not just to check on Eva and be here for her, but to be here for you. Because despite all the shit I threw at you, and despite my jealousy, you are and always have been my friend.”
Something inside Jake gave, like someone jerking the plug from a tub of water. The ugliness inside him began to drain. He’d gone for months not knowing why he didn’t want to be around Clint. Now he knew. The crap between them had built too high, the pressure too intense. But the simplicity of Clint saying “I’m sorry” had allowed the bad stuff to start draining away.
“Yeah, I’ve always been your friend,” Jake said.
Clint nodded and that was pretty much all that needed to be said. Murphy came back with his coffee and two bottles of water for Jake and Clint. Frannie, flocked with her daughter and sister, bustled in, looking stunned, fear shadowing their faces as they hunkered down in the corner. Then Hank showed up with some of the other guys.
For the next thirty minutes, they all kept a silent vigil, waiting on any news about both Eva and Jimbo.
Finally, the man in scrubs approached them. “Is one of you a Mr. Beauchamp?”
“I am.” Jake stood.
“You can come with me,” the man said, not bothering to wait on Jake.
“Wait a minute,” Hank called, “I’m her captain.”
The man turned and gave Hank a withering look. “Well, she didn’t ask for you. She asked for him.” He jabbed a finger at Jake.
Jake didn’t bother offering any explanation. He followed the man, who could seriously use some customer-service training, back through the double doors. The man pointed down a long corridor with patient rooms on either side and said, “She’s in eight.” Then he turned and left Jake on his own.
A cute nurse in blue scrubs came out of a curtain bay and nearly ran into him. “Oops.”
She ran her eyes down the T-shirt he’d bought when he took Birdie to the Justin Bieber concert a couple years ago and his tight jeans. “Bieber? Really?”
Jake managed a smile. “My niece.”
“Who you looking for?”
“Firefighter in eight?”
“Down there to the left,” she said, giving him a wink. “Only a man with confidence could pull off that shirt.”
A man with confidence. Right.
Not something he had a great store of at the moment.
Jake moved quickly down the hall, and then, pausing outside door eight, he knocked.
Nothing.
“Oh, sugar, go on in,” a nurse from the large center desk called. “She can’t talk anyhow.”
Jake fought the fear at the thought of Eva being so bad she couldn’t talk and pushed inside the small diagnostic room.
Eva sat up in the bed, an oxygen thing going into her nose, an IV in her arm. Her hair was still damp and plastered to her head, and soot streaked her cheeks. Someone had tried to clean it up but had done a poor job. She wore a white-and-blue dotted hospital gown.
Jake stood there, taking her in, sweet relief flooding him. She was alive. She would be okay.
“Hey,” he said with a low voice, creeping inside gingerly, as if he approached a wounded animal.
“You are a dumb-ass,” she whispered.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
IN FIRE SCHOOL the instructors taught them about how painful it was for a victim to breathe when suffering from smoke inhalation.
Eva now knew firsthand that it was terrible.
Her lungs felt burnt to a crisp and breathing was torture, as if she was underwater. Her throat still had some swelling, so speech was difficult and she could barely whisper anything to her doctors and nurses.
However, calling Jake a dumb-ass was imperative.
’Cause he was one and deserved it.
Jake swallowed and stood like a schoolboy in front of the principal. Except, even haggard with worry and streaked with soot, Jake was the sexiest guilty schoolboy she’d ever seen.
“I know,” he said, moving closer.
“You do?” she whispered.
He nodded. “Before I throw myself at your feet and beg for mercy, tell me how you are.”
“Good,” she said, clutching her throat. “It’s hard for me to talk, but the doctors think I was lucky. I’ll have to do some breathing treatments. They’re about to take me to a hyperbaric chamber. They say it helps reverse the damage. I wanted to see you before they did any more tests.”
Jake nabbed a small stool in the corner and sank down beside her. He tentatively took her hand. “I’m sorry.”
“You should be.”
“I know. I was wrong and I was unfair to you and—”
She pressed a finger to his lips. “You were there at the fire. I heard you.”
“Yeah, you think I’d let a fire keep me from my Eva?”
“I failed,” she whispered, thinking of the roof collapsing, of Jimbo beneath her…not breathing.
“No, you didn’t. You did what you were trained to do, baby. Dutch was there because that’s what we do. We’re a team. This team didn’t fail. We got Jimbo out and we knocked out the fire.”
“Is he dead?”
“I don’t know. They’re working on him. They would have pronounced him at the scene if there was no chance.”
Eva brushed the dampness from her eyes with the hand not attached to the IV and tried not to get upset. Steady breathing was needed. “You’re right.”
Jake smiled then. “You know I like being right.”
“Charlie?”
“He’s good. With my mom. She wasn’t going to say anything to him until I saw how you were doing.”
“I’m okay.”
‘I’ll call her. Get her to bring him up here.”
“No.” She shook her head. Charlie didn’t need to see her like this. It would scare him. After all she’d gone through in facing death and staring it in the eye, she kept thinking about what would have happened to Charlie had she succumbed. She was his guardian, and she had a responsibility to him. Protecting him was her job, which meant she had to also protect herself. He needed her.
“He needs to see you’re okay. We can’t just tell him you were hurt in a fire and not let him see you. Mom will wait until the morning. By then, you’ll be cleaned up,” he said, wiping her cheek with his thumb, smearing the soot.
Then he tipped forward, burying his face into her side. His broad shoulders shook, and Eva was shocked to realize that Jake was crying. She ran her fingers through his soft hair.
For a good minute he cried, his hands clutching the white sheet covering her legs.
Finally, he looked up, his eyes so blue against the redness. Eva had never seen a man cry, and her heart melted into a pool of sweet, sweet love for Jake.
“I love you, Eva.”
So simply stated for such a complex emotion.
“I love you, too,” she whispered.
“I want to be enough for you,” he said, rising and brushing a kiss against her lips. She felt the dampness on his cheeks against hers. The oxygen tubing up her nose came loose, but Jake caught it and fixed it, carefully smoothing her hair.
“I never asked you to change. I fell in love with you just the way you are,” she rasped.
“But I have changed. I think love does that.”
Eva thought about Charlie and how much her life had changed over the course of the past month and a half. She was no longer a footloose and fancy-free gal. She had a kid brother, whom she loved, and her life would be different with Jake in it.
Love was hard…no one ever said it was easy. But it was so worth it.
“Yeah, you’re right,” she whispered. “Love does that.”
Jake kissed her once again.
*
JAKE TUGGED CHARLIE off the elevator. The boy carried a bear dressed like a firefighter, and Jake carried a bouquet of flowers. They’d waited until lunch to visit, giving Eva time to get cleaned up and get some rest. They’d just gotten word that Jimbo’s condition was grave but he was hanging in there.
“I don’t wanna go in there,” Charlie said, looking up at Jake. “This place is scary.”
They passed an older man in the hall who was walking with the aid of a walker. He gave Charlie a trembling smile.
“It’s where people get well, and hopefully your sister will be able to go home tomorrow.”
Charlie blinked up at him with big brown eyes, his hair somewhat messy—Jake probably should have helped him comb it. He ran his fingers through the mop of hair, trying to make it lie down. Charlie jerked away and made an annoyed face.
Jake had tried to spend the night with Eva, but she insisted he go home and be with Charlie. They had continued to run chest X-rays and all sorts of diagnostic tests, so with her in and out and needing what little rest she’d likely get, he complied. He’d stayed at his parents’ last night, needing to be around them, needing to be there for Charlie.
“Here’s her room,” Jake said, knocking lightly on the door. Of course, since she was hoarse, there was no answer. He pushed the door open and stuck his head in. “Eva?”
She had been sleeping, her face toward the window leaking afternoon light into the room. She’d been moved to a proper room last night, thankfully skipping intensive care. She looked wan, but her face was clear of soo
t, and someone had braided her hair to the side.
“Charlie,” she whispered, motioning her brother to her.
The boy grabbed Jake around the leg. “What’s comin’ out of her nose?”
Eva smiled and pointed. “This is oxygen. I’ll let you try it if you want.” Her voice was a raspy whisper but sounded better than it had last night.
“Gross,” Charlie said, but he let go of Jake’s leg and inched closer to his sister. “What’s that?”
She pointed to the IV. “This is an IV. It gives me medicine to help fight any infection. My lungs got a little burned, and sometimes nasty germs will attack them. This will stop those little buggers from making me sick.”
“Oh,” Charlie said, picking up the small elliptical pan on the bed tray. “What’s this?”
“That’s for when you need to throw up,” Eva said, laughing when Charlie immediately dropped the pink pan.
“How are you feeling?” Jake asked, moving into the room, leaning down to drop a kiss on her forehead. She still smelled like the fire, but he could give a damn. She was alive…and laughing at her little brother.
“I’m better. Still hurts to breathe, but they’re giving me breathing treatments.”
“Uncle Jake said you can come home tomorrow. I gotta show you this picture I colored in art class. Oh, this is for you.” He shoved the bear toward her and went to look at the blood pressure machine in the corner.
“Uncle Jake?” Eva asked, arching her brows.
“Yeah, he said one day he’d be my uncle so I could start calling him that,” Charlie said.
“Really?” Eva said, sneaking a look at Jake.
He felt himself blush. Last night he’d sobbed like a little girl and now he stood here blushing like a fool. This is what Eva did to him. Made him…strong enough to be himself. “Well, yeah.”
Eva smiled. “We’ll see about that.”
Jake grinned. “Oh, I plan to do my utmost best to convince you that I need to be Charlie’s uncle.” He locked and flexed his fingers, giving her a wolfish grin.
