Snowed in with the Firefighter (Shadow Creek, Montana)

by Victoria James

  Just relax, Melody.

  “Hey,” he said, entering the room a few minutes later. She was torn between being disappointed and relieved when he walked in wearing a T-shirt and jeans.

  “Hi. I thought you might want some water, too.” She placed the two glasses on the coffee table.

  “Thanks. Sorry for being a jerk back there.” He walked over to the liquor cabinet in the corner. His voice still sounded husky and thick with sleep.

  “Don’t worry about it. I’m used to grumpy hospital patients. It takes a lot more than that to offend me.”

  He gave a short laugh and poured the drinks, his back still to her. “I can only imagine the people you must come across.”

  She smiled, her shoulders relaxing now. This wasn’t so hard. “Usually they’re pretty good.”

  The image of the last couple slid into her mind, and her chest squeezed painfully. They hadn’t left the hospital smiling.

  “Do you like brandy?” he asked, stopping her before she could spiral into guilt and memories. “That’s all that’s here.”

  She blinked a few times and focused on Finn. “Sure. I’ll just have a small glass. I need to be up early.”

  “Big plans?”

  “No, just another attempt at working out.” She grimaced.

  His lips twitched as he turned to her, holding two glasses of something. His limp was pronounced as he crossed the room. She tried to pretend she wasn’t staring. “You know you don’t have to keep the same hours when you’re on vacation, right?”

  She shrugged. “True. I’ve always been so afraid that if I actually really relaxed, I wouldn’t have the self-discipline to go back to a rigorous schedule after.” That probably sounded boring, but it was the truth. Not that what he thought of her mattered because Finn was just her sister’s husband’s brother.

  “That’s one way of looking at it, I guess. A vacation is supposed to leave you rested so that when you do go back, you can jump back into that routine, and if it’s a job you love, you’ll look forward to going back,” he said, handing her a glass.

  “Maybe I’ll test out that theory. Thank you.” Her fingers brushed against his, sending a spiral of awareness through her. She ignored it and walked over to the couch that faced the fireplace.

  “It’s never failed me, and I bet it would work for you. According to what everyone says, you’re one of the best obstetricians around. A small town like ours is lucky to have you.” He slowly lowered himself on the couch. She caught the wince he made before sitting.

  So, he clearly hadn’t heard what had happened. She was pretty sure that wouldn’t be what people were saying about her anymore. Now it was probably about how she’d lose some patients or how they would be keeping a closer eye on her at the hospital. Or maybe that she’d been told to leave for a month.

  But none of it compared to the feeling when she’d held that baby, when she’d looked into that mother’s eyes or the father’s eyes. She had never been so close to losing control in her entire professional career. Even her entire life. She’d always held it together. But something had changed in her that day. Something that made her very uncomfortable. She hadn’t brought life into the world. She’d stared at death and couldn’t stay professional. Tears had fallen from her eyes as she held their sweet baby, their dream, their love, and all she could ramble was how sorry she was. The nurses had taken over for her while she’d tried to pull herself back together.

  She brushed aside those feelings and tried to give an appropriate answer that wouldn’t reveal anything about what had happened. “It’s a great hospital, and I’m thrilled I get to work with my sister and Addie’s husband, Drew. I just really needed a break from it all.” She didn’t need to tell him that she wasn’t actually planning on ever going back. No one needed to know that right now. She sat down opposite him, and that same feeling washed over her from the bedroom. This was intimate. Two people, sharing a drink in the middle of the night on a sofa. She pulled one of the cozy knit throw blankets onto her lap and leaned back.

  She wanted to ask him what was wrong, if he’d been having a nightmare, but that would lead to more intimacy. Or he might just shut her down, not wanting to look vulnerable in front of her again. Or maybe she was just being ridiculous. Maybe she and Finn would come out of this whole thing as good friends. She could use some. And they would be tied together forever as family because of Molly and Ben. She hadn’t spent any time in the last decade nurturing relationships of any kind.

  There. That was it. She could be friends with the incredibly attractive man sitting beside her who had turned her down when she’d asked him to prom. This was a great idea. She curled her legs up under her and leaned against the pillows so she was facing him. His features hadn’t relaxed, and she wondered if he was still in pain. “You okay?”

  He gave her a nod and shifted, extending his injured leg out in front of him. “Yeah. Sorry I woke you,” he said, taking a drink.

  She shrugged. “I’m a light sleeper. That’s okay. Does this happen often?”

  He gave her a nod and looked down, and she studied his profile. She had the sudden urge to reach out and run her fingertips over his beard, tracing his jaw. And she struggled to remember the way he looked clean-shaven, wanting more, to see more of him. His face had been an open book; he’d been free with smiles and laughter. So different from this Finn. “It’s a recurring bad dream I’ve had since…after the accident.”

  “Oh,” she said, wishing for something more eloquent. But she knew very little about his accident, except that he almost didn’t make it. “I’m sorry,” she added, feeling extra ill-equipped for this level of sharing.

  He shrugged. “I’m sure they’ll go away at some point. They are way less frequent than in the beginning. I thought it was the pain meds when they happened at the hospital, but they’ve lingered even though I never take anything heavier than the generic stuff now,” he said, his voice thick before he finished off the rest of his drink.

  She took a sip of her drink, trying not to let her sympathy for him show. “You look like you’re improving, and the fact that you’re not on any prescription painkillers is a great sign. I guess nightmares are a pretty normal reaction to the trauma you suffered.”

  He rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah. I had therapy for a while, to get me past the worst of it. I hated it, though,” he said with a short laugh.

  She knew counseling was in her future, too—she just hadn’t done it yet. The hospital had support available to all staff, and maybe when she went back, if she wasn’t better, she would seek it out before returning to work at a different hospital. “I don’t blame you. The thought of talking to someone about your darkest day sounds excruciating,” she said, taking a sip of the smooth brandy.

  He leaned his head back. “Yeah. Exactly. But to be completely honest, it wasn’t as bad as I thought. And it did help. I guess time will fix the rest.”

  “It will,” she said, trying to sound positive. She filed away what he’d said about therapy not being as bad as he thought.

  “I guess I was naïve, but I thought once I recovered, everything would just go back to normal. I mean, I’m alive, I’ve been injured before, I’ve been in bad situations before, so why am I still having nightmares? This has taken me a hell of a lot longer to shake.”

  She huddled under the blanket. “Because you came so close to not making it,” she said, softly.

  He gave a stiff nod. “Yeah.”

  She took another sip and forced herself to break the wall between them. “What happened?”

  His jaw clenched, and for a moment, she thought he was going to get up.

  “Never mind. I don’t know why I asked that. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. I’m sorry I asked. I don’t mean to pry,” she said, scrambling to take back her question when his features closed up.

  He shook his head and
finished his drink. “That’s okay. I’ve relived it hundreds of times now anyway. It was a typical day until that point. It’s weird because there wasn’t a hint of something extra ominous that day. No sixth sense, which may sound silly, but my instincts have saved me before, and I thought they always would. But this time there was no warning, no moment that tipped me off. We were called to a three-alarm fire at a house on the outskirts of town. It was one of those old, three-story buildings that was used as a rooming house at one point and was in bad condition. The fire was so extensive we were unable to conduct our customary primary search to see if anyone was inside.” He stopped speaking abruptly and stood, walking back to the liquor cabinet and pouring himself another drink. Her heart was racing, wanting him to finish, but already aching for him because she knew how his story ended. It wasn’t fair. He was so good at what he did, so young, so many years ahead of him.

  He slowly walked back to join her on the couch, not making eye contact. His expression was strained, and his eyes were filled with a pain that she didn’t know was from his physical state or the memories or both. Her heart squeezed, and a shiver stole through her body, despite being bundled up.

  He grimaced as he sat back down. A part of her wanted to reach out and hold his hand. Or even snuggle into his side and offer him comfort. He seemed so alone, and Finn wasn’t a man who was alone. He was the life of the party. He always had someone by his side—not her, but that was fine. There was always someone.

  But here they were, and he was almost more of a loner now than she was. She shifted as she waited for him to continue his story. He rubbed the back of his neck and kept his head down. “I’m sorry, Melody. I…thought I was okay to talk about this. I can’t.”

  Silence hung between them. She knew the rest. She knew how he’d broken one leg, damaged his spine, and had third-degree burns. She hadn’t known about the nightmares or the fear that laced his voice. Finn and Ben had lost their father in the line of duty, and she witnessed the horror and fear that they all lived through when Finn was in the hospital. She had spoken with his mom, and she had been a complete wreck. She was the sweetest woman and tough, but not knowing if Finn was going to pull through had almost destroyed her. She’d aged so much since the accident.

  She didn’t know how Marjorie still managed to go on. How Molly was able to live with the fear of Ben’s job every day. Sitting across from Finn gave her so much insight into who he was. Who all those firefighters were who risked their lives. He had been so carefree, so the opposite of this man. But this…sitting here with him made her really understand who he was.

  “It’s okay. I’m so sorry…I mean, I have no idea how you have that kind of courage to get out there and try and save people you don’t even know. I’m so sorry you had to go through that. But you pulled through, you made it…” Her voice trailed off because she didn’t know what else to say and her throat ached.

  “I had no choice. I had to pull through. You do the same. You save people every day at the hospital,” he said.

  She shook her head, her stomach churning. “No, no, it’s not the same because I’m not risking my life.”

  His head fell back, and he stared up at the ceiling for a moment. “I never thought of it like that before the accident. Well, I never thought about it too long. Dwell on the what-ifs for too long and you’ll never walk out the front door in the morning. And it’s not always like that. It’s not always rushing into some burning building like in the movies. Hell, most of the time, we’re running mundane calls…but all it takes is a day like that one to change everything. Some days all I want is to get back out there, and then some days, the ones that start out like this? I don’t ever want to go back,” he said harshly before standing.

  “I wouldn’t blame you. No one would. Maybe that’s the hardest thing, knowing when walking away is the right thing to do,” she said gently, standing because she didn’t want to leave him alone. She hated that he was tortured. She had assumed Finn was invincible, that nothing could knock him down. This other side of him, this was someone no one saw, and he’d let her in. She didn’t want him to push her away, and she didn’t want them to go back to just being two people forced together and go back to hating the holidays.

  He turned and faced her. “But walking away isn’t who I am. It’s pathetic. I need to find my way back because I can’t just give up like this. It’s letting fear win.”

  She reached out to grasp his hand, shocking herself. It was warm and large, and he didn’t pull away. Something lit in his eyes, and his jaw clenched. She took a step closer to him. “Or is it finding another way? Maybe it’s exploring different options. You don’t have to do what you did before to be fulfilled. It’s not quitting if it means protecting the life you have now. There is nothing wrong with doing what’s best for you, Finn.”

  His thumb stroked hers, and her mouth went dry. His face was hard and unreadable, and if it hadn’t been for the way he was holding onto her, she would have expected him to walk away.

  “I have never thought of a life outside of firefighting,” he said. “It was my dream. Ben’s dream. Since we were old enough to know that’s what our father did. We both looked up to him and knew we had to do this together.”

  She squeezed his hand. “Dreams can change. Life changes. And it’s disappointing and it’s not fair, but sometimes you just have to follow the path you’re being led down.”

  “I don’t want to be led down this path. I want to push through the old one. I want my body back. I want my job back. But I don’t know how much longer I can keep trying.” He scrubbed his free hand across his face then looked at her with dark, lost eyes. “Is this all pointless?”

  She took a deep breath. “I don’t know that, either. I guess you are right about not wanting to walk away because of fear. There has to be more. It has to be based on reality and not just your emotions. I know what it’s like to want to walk away because of fear. The problem is that if this is your passion in life, if it’s your calling and you let the fear win, you’ll be miserable.”

  “Is that why you’re not working? Are you not planning on going back to the hospital?”

  Not going there. She went to drop her hand, but he held on. “How do you know that?”

  He held her gaze. “It’s a hunch. You’re the workaholic. Worse than Molly was. You wouldn’t just take a couple weeks off work. But there’s more. You don’t seem happy. Not like someone who is taking time off work. You’re actually reminding me of myself,” he said with a gentle smile.

  She couldn’t tell him. She wanted to. Finn was suddenly this safe person who would listen to her without judgment. She sensed that. But she couldn’t share the way he did.

  What had happened was buried so deep, under layers of shame and self-loathing. She knew she couldn’t be a perfect doctor, but she tried so hard to be, and what had happened would stay with her forever. It’s not that she was so cocky that she would be able to escape the stats of death, but she wasn’t prepared for the emotional toll it had taken on her. She wasn’t prepared to unleash her misery and shame on Finn. She couldn’t even talk to Molly about it, because her sister was unknowingly wrapped up in all her insecurities.

  Everything had come naturally to Molly. She’d been able to get ahead and skip grades in school without even trying. But that wasn’t so for Melody. In order to keep their demanding mother happy, Melody had forsaken a life and buried herself in the books.

  But it was never enough. She wasn’t as kind as Addie, and she would never be as smart as Molly. She’d heard that over and over again from her mom, from herself. And when she’d lost her patient’s baby…that day, her mother’s face, her harsh words, had come back to haunt Melody. If she’d been smarter, more talented, she would have been able to save that baby. If she’d actually cared, that young mother would have gone home from the hospital with a baby in her arms instead of a broken heart and an empty womb.

  Sh
e did care, and she had tried, but neither had been enough. What she had to offer would never be enough.

  She tried to take an adequate breath, to push aside the rising panic filling her body, making her feel like she was close to drowning. She would never lose it in front of another person again. She would never let her guard down and be less than perfect. And she would try harder, no matter what she decided to do.

  But oh, how she wanted to let go of her iron control just for one night. The idea of telling Finn what really happened beckoned like a fairy tale. She could just lean into him, maybe he’d wrap his arms around her, and he’d listen—without judgment. He would tell her he believed in her, that he believed her when she said she did everything she could. He would tell her she wasn’t a sham, that her mother was the one who was wrong. That despite Melody having to work so hard to get where she was at, she was a great doctor. And then she could tell him how broken she was, how every night when she went to bed, she saw her patient’s face when she told her the baby was stillborn.

  She opened her mouth, her eyes not leaving his. She wanted to reach deep inside, pull up all the details, and tell him everything, but…what if he didn’t say any of those things? What if he did think she’d blown it? She couldn’t handle criticism from Finn. She liked him too much. She liked his company. She liked everything he represented. And maybe she just wanted to enjoy her time here.

  Her mother was right. She was selfish.

  She cleared her throat and tore her gaze from his and fixed it on his mouth. Wrong spot. It was a great mouth. She looked at the picture of Molly and Ben on the fireplace mantel, in which they were laughing, on the beach. She had no idea what that kind of joy must feel like. Finn probably did. But she had turned people away like they were a dime a dozen, like there would be time later for friends.

  That time never came.