The Firefighter's Pretend Fiancee (Shadow Creek, Montana)

by Victoria James

  “I don’t give a shit!” he yelled. She recoiled. “I don’t give a shit what people think about us. And they aren’t like that. They wouldn’t think the worst of you. God, who cares? Who cares about anything other than what’s here, right now in this room?”

  His jaw was clenching and unclenching, and he was angrier than she’d ever seen him. She never should have gotten close to him again. It had been selfish. She just loved him, she always had. But this wasn’t what she wanted, and she wasn’t what he needed. Ben needed someone who wanted a family, and she had already decided that it wasn’t for her anymore. He had always wanted to be a father. She couldn’t be the wife he needed her to be, and she couldn’t be the mother he needed for his children.

  “Don’t tell me what I see when I look at you. You are Molly, the first and last girl I ever loved,” he said, standing straight.

  “What about kids?” she whispered, crossing her arms over her chest, feeling pain seep through her. She was hurting him all over again.

  He shrugged. “I will take what I can get. If I get you and only you, then that’s enough for me,” he said hoarsely.

  She blinked back tears and struggled to maintain her composure. “It’s not fair of me to ask you to change your dreams. You’ve always wanted to be a dad, and you’ll make a great father…and husband.”

  He ran a hand through his hair. “But not to you. I’m not the husband for you.”

  She looked down at the ground, unable to deal with the hurt in his eyes. “People change, dreams change. Maybe this is too hard because you knew me before. I’m not the same.”

  He threw his hands in the air. “Neither am I. I don’t know what’s around the corner for me or you. What if I get hurt in a fire? What if I can’t work as a firefighter anymore? What if one of us gets cancer? When you love someone enough, you get through it with them. It brings you closer. I know you—I know if something happened to me, you’d be by my side. Why can’t you let me do that for you?”

  She clasped her hands together tightly. “I want to. I don’t know how. I don’t know how to do this with someone. I am a doctor and I can fix people, and I can’t fix myself, Ben. I am almost thirty years old, and I look like I’ve got it all together but it’s a lie.”

  He shook his head. “It’s not a lie. You do have it together.”

  She dug her nails into her palms. “I haven’t been in a relationship. Not since you. I haven’t wanted a guy. Nothing. I don’t even know that side of myself.”

  His eyes glistened with moisture, and she had a hard time breathing. It was like the more she exposed of herself, the harder it became, not easier. It was supposed to get easier. This was not easier. He looked down and cleared his throat a few times before looking up at her with so much grief and sympathy she wanted to run and hide. Maybe she should have known. This was Ben. He loved deeply, he protected people, he felt. “Then we figure it out together. I won’t pressure you. We take it slow.”

  She blinked as tears pooled in her eyes, blurring his handsome face. “You’ve been with other women,” she whispered, her throat so tight she could barely scrape the words through. “Normal, whole women. I can’t compete with that. I would stand at the grocery checkout line and flip through the women’s magazines. Or the headlines on the cover would jump out at me, like the covers on Cosmo, the ones about how to give amazing blow-jobs or mind-blowing sexual positions, and I would be repulsed, like I’d become physically ill just reading that. That’s not…me. That’s not my world. I can’t do that, and you’re going to want someone who can give you all of that. That’s the stuff you did with other women, how… I can’t compete,” she said, squeezing her eyes shut. She hadn’t known how hard any of this was going to be.

  His face was white, and she didn’t know if it was because he was finally seeing how messed up she still was or if it was because he felt sorry for her. Or maybe himself. “I know you’re having a hard time believing me, because you have so much to process. This is not a competition. There is no competition where you’re concerned. That stuff means nothing. Nothing.”

  She nodded repeatedly, looking from him to the ground, wanting to believe that it was that simple. Her entire adult life she’d devoted to being the best doctor possible. She could do that. She could pour herself into her work and be the best. But this…relationships…this wasn’t something she could study. This required her heart. This required her to be vulnerable, and she didn’t do that very well.

  He ran his hands down his face, not taking them off right away, and she wondered if she pushed too far. When he lowered them finally, his cheeks were wet, his eyes damp. “Let’s get something straight,” he said, walking toward her as he spoke. “If I had known…if you had told me what had happened, I wouldn’t have been with anyone. I would have waited. I would have waited a decade, a lifetime for you, Molly.” He turned around, and she wiped the tears from her face. “I wasn’t given the chance. So, yes, there have been women. Casual relationships that mean nothing. What you and I have is another level; it’s a real connection. It’s not two people just getting off; it’s two people loving each other. You have to trust me. You have to trust that.”

  A sob broke free, and she looked up at the ceiling, away from him. “So you’re a thirty-three-year-old man, and you’re going to enter into a relationship with a woman who doesn’t know if she’ll be able to give you what you need.”

  “I don’t know what the hell you’re doing. You need to stop thinking you know what I’m thinking or know what I need. Shut out the crap from the rest of the world. The expectations that you think I have of you. If all I get is you spending the rest of your life with me and nothing else, then I’ll take it. But I know you. I know the girl you were before, and I know the woman you are now. Both of you responded to me. Just like I respond to you the second you walk into a room. Or the second you spill coffee all over me,” he said, cracking a one-sided smile. “And I know you feel the same, because whether or not you want to acknowledge it, when I touch you, you feel the chemistry. It’s in your eyes, it’s in the way you curl into me, it’s in the way you kiss me, it’s in everything we did in that bed. But I don’t care; I’m not worried about any of that. I just want you.”

  She looked down at the ground. “I never planned on staying here.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I never planned on staying in Shadow Creek. I signed a one-year contract. I’m going to Mexico with Doctors Without Borders. It’s on my career bucket list. This was a career move for me, but I had no intention of staying in this town with my mother…”

  “Me.”

  “There are too many memories here. There’s too much bitterness. I have issues…with my mother, and they will never be resolved. I don’t want that. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life trying to avoid her at the grocery store or coffee shop. My father was never told because my mother claimed it would kill him, but he died anyway, thinking his daughter didn’t give a crap about him. I have been walking around with this secret, and I can’t keep doing it. My sisters don’t get me. They think I’m just this career-driven, cold person who shut them out of my life. I can’t do this. I can’t stay here,” she said, panic rising as she voiced everything that had been eating her up inside.

  “You can if you really wanted to. I think you’re trying to work off some guilt for giving up your baby. You think if you can go out there and save as many babies and kids as you can, then you’re doing some kind of penance. You’re searching for something you’re never going to get, and you’re going to throw your life away trying to find it.”

  She sucked in a breath sharply. “That’s not true.”

  He nodded. “It is. Stop running. Forgive yourself. You saved your baby.”

  She took a step back.

  “I…I was thinking I need some time alone. Like maybe I should go back to the inn and try and sort things out.”

  He looked as though she’d just punched him in the stomach. “I’m not holding y
ou here prisoner. Don’t say it like that.”

  Because he didn’t want to be associated with any kind of psychopath. Because he would always have to watch how he touched her, how he talked to her, how he treated her…because he knew the truth, and Ben was a good guy. He would never do anything to make her feel uncomfortable. And that was what she feared. It would never go away; it would always be there. “I know. I just mean, I know why we started this; you were worried about your mother. Now she’s feeling better. We don’t have to tell her we’ve broken up right away. She won’t know for a few days that I’ve moved out. I can tell her if you want. I know you’re going to get the position as chief. We will wait it out. We can appear publicly until it’s official. It’s the deal we made.”

  He let out a short laugh and looked down at the ground. “I don’t need you to do that. Fine, Molly. You do what you need to do. You may think you’re doing the right thing. You are probably justifying all of this in your head, thinking you’re saving me. You’re doing me a favor because you’re so different, you’re so screwed up now, but you’re lying to yourself and me. You’re doing this because you’re scared, and you feel vulnerable now that you’ve let me in. Well, here’s the truth: I have loved you for my entire adult life, and I will continue to. There will be no other woman for me. I will not get married to anyone else. I will not touch another woman. I’ll sit in this house until I’m an old man, by myself. There’s one woman for me, and it’s you. I will take you in any form, any day. You will always be that girl with the killer smile and sweet laugh. You will always be that girl who can make me forget where I am with just one look. You turn me on, you make me crazy, and there will never be anyone else who can do that. But you go, do what you need to do to survive. But I’ll be right here. When you’re ready, you come and find me. I will welcome you back with open arms, sweetheart.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Ben rammed the ax into the log, a sick satisfaction hitting his already sore and fatigued muscles.

  “What the hell, Ben?”

  Ben turned in the direction of his brother’s voice. He hadn’t even heard him pull up. It was cloudy and it looked like rain, maybe a storm. Good. Perfect. He hoped a tree would fall on his property, then he’d have more wood to chop.

  He was in the back of his house and, until now, enjoying speaking to no one. He didn’t want to talk to anyone. He swung the ax high again and then down into the log, watching it split into two and fall onto the grass.

  “You do know you have a furnace, right? Like, you don’t actually need to chop wood for heat?”

  He ignored his brother’s sarcastic remark and went to pick up another log, but Finn got in his way, blocking him. He really wanted to knock him over, but then that would lead to a fight, and that would upset their mother who was still recovering. “What do you want, Finn? I already called in sick to work.”

  “You’ve never called in sick. Ever.”

  This was a different kind of sick; he hadn’t been able to sleep, eat, or function for days. This was the kind of sick that no one could have prepared him for. It was the kind that ripped your insides apart without a hope in hell of healing, because he knew he couldn’t make any of it better.

  He’d lost his shot at making it better, at helping Molly. He’d lost his shot because she’d been manipulated, and he’d been purposefully tossed aside. He wasn’t arrogant enough to think he could have taken away Molly’s pain, but maybe he could have been her rock, maybe she wouldn’t have felt so alone. He would have held her in the dark, he would have whispered whatever she’d needed to hear, he would have taken her to the doctor, to therapy, to the hospital. But instead he’d been here, thinking how badly she’d treated him. He’d sat here, feeling sorry for himself. But Molly…Molly had been living in hell.

  He had been shut out of everything, and he was angry as hell. He was helpless. He felt so damn helpless and that was a new and very sickening feeling for him. He was angry at men in general. He was angry that he didn’t know who the guy was. He was angry at Marlene. He was angry at the whole damn world.

  He ignored his brother and walked toward the house where he knew he had an open bottle of whiskey waiting for him. “Go away,” he said to Finn.

  “Right. I’ve had to put up with you way too long to just leave you now. Besides, Mom would be pretty pissed at me if I just let you turn into some kind of beast mountain recluse.”

  Ben ignored him and walked up the back steps of his house, opened the door, and walked straight to the whiskey.

  “Wash your hands, bro, like what the hell?”

  Ben looked down at his dirty, sweaty hands and reluctantly walked over to the kitchen sink and washed them. Finn was standing in the doorway looking around his place, no doubt wondering why the hell it looked like such a sty.

  Ben sat his tired ass down on the couch, picking up the bottle and taking a long drink. This was where he’d sat with Molly.

  He squeezed his eyes shut because he saw her face again, when she sat here crying and telling him. He saw the girl she’d been. He saw the girl who shut the door on him, and now, looking back he could see the fear in her face, in her eyes. And then, what had tortured him all night, he saw the guy, he imagined what he’d done to her, and he was torn between puking and violence.

  “Holy crap, are you crying?”

  Crying? He didn’t cry. He ran his hands down his face and felt the moisture on his hands. He cleared his throat and opened his eyes. “No, loser. It’s from the wind. What do you want?”

  “Uh, I don’t know, to make sure you’re not plotting murder or suicide?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t want to talk to anyone. Go away.”

  His brother sat down with a casual indifference that put his teeth on edge. “What’s going on? And do you need to have your stomach pumped?” he asked, pointing to the empty bottle of whiskey.

  “Yes. And no. There are beers in the fridge. And that bottle wasn’t full when I started.”

  Finn didn’t really look like he believed him but walked across the room and came back a minute later holding a cold beer. “So what happened? Molly?”

  “Molly,” he said, even though it actually hurt to say her name. He’d failed her. He wasn’t able to make any of it better. He could never make any of it go away. He hadn’t been there for her then, and he couldn’t be there for her now.

  “I’ll do my best not to be insulting since you look really close to the edge, but what did you do? Did you look like this when she left, because that might be reason number one?”

  He couldn’t tell Finn. It wasn’t his place to tell him. But there was no hiding that something had happened. He couldn’t fake that. And a part of him needed to talk to someone. “Something happened to her. She told me the truth about why she broke up with me back then; she never cheated on me,” he said, needing to make that clear. It was a God-awful thing to think because it was damn far from the truth. He didn’t want anyone thinking of her as less than perfect, because she was.

  “The baby?”

  Ben covered his face and swore. “It’s so messed up, man. Her mother is a piece of work. It’s worse than I could have every thought.”

  “Wow. Well, then I’m glad she told you. So, why aren’t you back together? We both know she’s the reason you never settled down with anyone else.”

  He didn’t even bother denying it. Molly was the reason he’d never fallen in love again. “She’s still going through some…stuff. I don’t know if it’s the kind of thing she’ll ever get over. She also has this crap with her family. Hell, I don’t know how she’s going to stay in this town at all. Too many ghosts here,” he said, staring bleakly into the dark fireplace.

  “She needs you.”

  He leaned forward, bracing his forearms on his thighs. “I can’t make this better. This isn’t something I can fix for her,” he said roughly.

  “Maybe she doesn’t need you to fix it for her. Maybe she just needs you.” Finn looked horrified the minute those s
appy sentiments were out of his mouth and let loose in the room. “Hell, I sound like an idiot.”

  “You do,” Ben agreed, while secretly contemplating if there was any truth to the statement.

  “So what’s your game plan? Sit around here and drink, grow a beard, and stew in your own filth?”

  Ben nodded. “Sounds fine to me.”

  “Bull.”

  “Finn, just go away. This is beyond you or me. You don’t know what you’re talking about. This is big. This won’t go away. She asked me to leave her alone. She said she can’t stay in Shadow Creek.”

  His brother placed his empty beer bottle on the coffee table. “Then leave. With her. I know you want the job as chief…”

  Ben looked over at his brother sharply. His entire life had been here. Their mother was here. And despite his outward irritation toward Finn, his brother was his best friend. The station held their family history; it was the last place they’d seen their father alive. He’d never planned on leaving this place. But then, he’d never planned on living his life without Molly. He couldn’t just let her leave here, broken, again. No, she deserved so much more than that. He linked his hands and stared down at the floor. He would leave for her. He’d go anywhere for her. “You’re right,” he said, more forcefully than he expected. “We’ll work out the details. I mean, if I can get her to agree,” he said, realizing him telling her he’d leave with her wasn’t exactly solving the problem. He needed to speak with Marlene. He needed to do that for Molly, whatever happened.

  They both stood up and Finn gripped his shoulders, his eyes serious. “You won’t regret doing this for her. I know how much she means to you. Now, go take a shower, shave, and make yourself look like your usual less-than-acceptable self instead of this horror show version. Also? Don’t screw this up. Oh…show up at work tomorrow, ’kay?”

  …

  Ben rolled his shoulders and felt a bead of sweat drip down his back as he stood at the Mayberry’s front door and waited for someone to open it. He had never considered himself the kind of guy to interfere in family problems, but this went beyond that. This had to do with Molly and how she’d been wronged. Even if she never forgave him for this, he knew in his gut he was doing the right thing.