Controlled Burn

by Shannon Stacey

  She watched him until he disappeared from her sight, knowing by the set of his head and shoulders he wouldn’t look back. If he did, he’d probably come back and want to kiss her again and she’d never leave.

  Smiling, Jessica moved into the line and waited her turn for the security screeners. Once she was through, she’d buy a muffin and some fruit, and then open her laptop to work until it was time to board. Hopefully between the work waiting for her and the last-minute party details, she could distract herself long enough to get on the plane without any more tears.

  Hours later, her mind addled by the time zones and her heart heavy, Jessica unlocked the door to her condo and stepped into what had been her home for several years. With nobody to please but herself, it was decorated in a simple, classic style with warm colors and an eye for comfort over style. An end unit, it had a lot of light, a tandem garage and access to a pool.

  It felt empty now, but she knew that feeling would fade. This was her home and when she was in her favorite pajamas, curled up on the couch with a drink and a book, she’d remember everything she loved about this house and her life.

  But right now, with the brief text exchanges to let Marie and Rick know she’d landed still fresh in her mind, all she could think about was what she’d left behind in Boston.

  * * *

  Rick made it through most of Friday without taking anybody’s heads off their shoulders—although Gavin came close when he balked at doing some housekeeping—but he started getting restless as the sun went down.

  He hadn’t slept well the night before because he’d been tossing and turning, thinking about Jess. He’d known he would miss her. He hadn’t guessed just how much, though.

  Rather than stare at the television screen or listen to whatever conversations the other guys were having, he went down one floor to the office space he shared with Danny Walsh and tried to catch up on some paperwork. But his mind kept wandering and finally he just rocked back in his chair and closed his eyes.

  Jess hadn’t wanted to leave him. He’d seen it in her eyes and felt it in the way she’d kissed him goodbye. Maybe she’d been caught up in the moment, though. Coming to Boston had been quite the emotional trip for her and maybe their relationship had gotten tangled up in that.

  Back in San Diego, surrounded by her everyday life, maybe she felt differently. The intensity of her feelings—whatever they might be—would fade and eventually so would the memories. She’d realize long-distance relationships seldom worked out. He didn’t like to think that, but this wasn’t his first rodeo and he knew it was a possibility.

  Or maybe she was all the way on the other side of the country thinking about him. Maybe she was even wondering if he’d started moving on the minute she got on the plane. After a moment of hesitation, he pulled out his cell phone.

  Hey, you busy?

  He waited for the dialogue bubble to pop up, letting him know she was typing a reply, but instead her name flashed on the caller ID as the phone vibrated in his hand. “Hello.”

  “Hi. I figured since you sent a text, you must not be too busy to talk. You’re working, right?”

  Just the sound of her voice soothed his ragged nerves and he smiled for the first time that day. “I’m in the office pretending to do paperwork.”

  “I’m in my office, too, but I’m pretending to read emails.”

  “What are you really doing?”

  He heard her small, breathless laugh. “Honestly? I’m staring out my huge window at San Diego, wishing I was still in Boston.”

  “I wish you were still in Boston, too,” he confessed, feeling the tightness in his chest ease. There was no cooling off in her voice—no sign she was ready to put some distance between them and move on.

  “Why did my dad have to choose California? Why not Connecticut? Or New York, if he really wanted a city?”

  He chuckled. “I don’t know but, even with the gas mileage in that truck of mine, I’d be driving to see you.”

  There was silence for a few seconds and then she sighed. “That would have been nice. Have you seen Joe and Marie since I left?”

  “I saw them yesterday, and I talked to Joe on the phone today. They miss you, of course, but Marie’s telling everybody about the fancy phone her granddaughter bought her and showing off the pictures she already has stored on it.”

  “I sent her a few I had on my phone, just so she’d have them. She wants me to send her a picture of my father, too.”

  “Will you?”

  “I’ll ask him. I think he should, really, but I’m leaving it up to him. I can’t get in the middle of their relationship and start playing mediator. I have him and I have them. I hope they don’t always have to be separate, but I’m not sacrificing one for the other.”

  “Good for you.” He was glad she seemed confident about balancing those relationships. Especially since it was good for her to have Joe and Marie in her life. “How’s the party planning going?”

  She told him all about it and while normally it wasn’t the kind of thing he cared about, he was content to listen to her talk. Because it was something she enjoyed, her voice was animated and he smiled as he listened to her.

  Then, because it was just his luck, the alarm sounded. She must have heard it because she paused in midsentence. “You have to go.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Will you call me tomorrow?”

  He was on his feet, but he’d called on his cell phone, so he took it with him. “Isn’t your party tomorrow? Call me when it’s over.”

  “It doesn’t usually wrap up until eight. By the time I get home it’ll be almost midnight for you.”

  “I’ll take a nap. I want to hear about your party.”

  “Okay, I’ll call you. But you can’t put on your gear one-handed, so you have to hang up now.”

  She was right. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  “Good night, Rick.”

  After reluctantly shoving the phone in his pocket, he stepped into his boots. Then he pulled up the pants and yanked the suspenders over his shoulders, before grabbing the coat and his helmet.

  He crossed paths with Scott on their way to their respective trucks. “Giving the long-distance thing a shot, huh?”

  Rick shrugged. “Since she lives in California, it’s the only shot I’ve got.”

  As he climbed up into the cab of L-37, he was a mess of mixed emotions. On the one hand, she’d asked him to call her tomorrow. There was no out of sight, out of mind thing going on with her.

  But on the other, it really sucked that he’d finally met a woman who turned him so inside out she had to be the one, and she was on the other side of the country.

  Chapter Fourteen

  As usual, the Broussard Financial Services holiday party went off without a hitch. Jessica sipped the cranberry margarita that would be her one and only drink for the night and watched her coworkers mingle. The clients who’d attended had already made their exits and now that it was just the BFS employees, the atmosphere was very relaxed.

  “You did a wonderful job, as usual.”

  She turned to face her father, who she hadn’t heard approaching thanks to the expensive carpet. “Thank you.”

  “I shouldn’t have doubted you’d pull it off, even from Boston.”

  She was surprised he mentioned Boston. Between her arrival at the office late Thursday afternoon and now, he’d managed to avoid the topic, as if she’d simply been on vacation or out sick. “Like I said before, as long as I have my phone and my laptop, it doesn’t matter where I am.”

  He pulled out his phone and started tapping the screen. “I’m texting you a photo.”

  “Why? I’m standing right here, so just show it to me.”

  “You’ll see.”

  When her phone chimed, she pull
ed up the text to find a picture of her and her father, taken earlier in the night. They’d obviously been having a discussion, but had turned toward whoever took the picture. They were both smiling and Jessica was surprised to find herself a little choked up. They might not be a picture-frame-selling family, but this was probably the first genuine, happy family photo of them.

  “Derek took that and when I saw it, I asked him to text it to me. It’s a nice picture of us.”

  “It is.” She saved it to her phone’s photo album.

  “You asked me earlier if you could send a picture to your grandparents—to my mother—and I think she’d like that one.”

  Jessica nodded, smiling when she imagined Marie’s reaction to the image. And it was a moment she really wanted to share with her grandparents, and with Rick. David Broussard might not have been a good son and he certainly had some faults as a parent, but she wanted them to know she and her father did have a good relationship overall. “She’ll love it. Thank you.”

  “Let me know. What she says, I mean.”

  “I will.” She glanced around and saw that they were almost alone, but not quite. But her father seemed vulnerable tonight—maybe even nostalgic—and she had a question she wanted to ask him. “Can we step into your office for a minute?”

  “Of course.”

  His mouth tightened and she knew he was bracing himself for something unpleasant. Maybe he thought she was going to tell him she was leaving the company and heading back to Boston for good.

  As he closed the door behind them, she wondered what his response would be. And for a moment, she was actually tempted to say the words. But then her father was staring at her expectantly, and she lost the nerve to turn her life upside down.

  “I have a question for you,” she began, “and I want you to answer it. And not like you’ve answered my questions in the past. I don’t want you to deflect or try to make me feel bad for asking or anything else.”

  “I’ll try.”

  She took a deep breath. “How come my mother didn’t fight for custody of me? Or at least visitation?”

  Even though he had to know something serious was on her mind, her father still looked taken aback by the question. “I’d rather not discuss this, Jessica. I don’t like talking about that time in my life.”

  “Yeah? Well, I didn’t like growing up without a mother and I’d really like to know why I did.”

  He blinked, clearly surprised by her tone, but she didn’t apologize for it or try to make excuses. She simply waited him out.

  “It was because of me,” he said finally. She’d already guessed that much and was going to push him for more, but then he spoke again. “I discovered cocaine in college. It brought your mother and I together and, if I’m being honest, is a big part of the wedge between my parents and I, even though I’m quite sure they never knew about the drugs.”

  “They don’t know about that, no.” She wasn’t sure about Marie, but Joe would have mentioned it.

  “She managed to clean up a little when she got pregnant with you, but not totally. It’s a miracle you were born so perfect. But it didn’t last and we were destroying ourselves and each other and we were going to destroy you in the process. I lost a great job at a financial firm and it was a wake-up call. I got clean, but she couldn’t and eventually she took off. It was hard to stay clean but it was easier without her, so I let her go.”

  Jessica stared at the liquid in her glass, swirling it a little as tears blurred her eyes. “Why couldn’t you just tell me that?”

  “What father wants his daughter to know he was a cocaine addict?”

  “I would rather have known my father did drugs in college than spend my entire life wondering why my mother didn’t want me.”

  He flinched. “I’m sorry, Jessica. I didn’t...I don’t know what else to say. I’ve done some thinking lately and I’m a self-centered person, I guess.”

  She took a sip of her drink to hide the snarky really? smile as that thought popped into her head. But then she forced herself to let it go because it wouldn’t help. “I guess if you’re aware of it now, you can work on it.”

  “I’m going to try.”

  There was a knock on the door and Sharon poked her head in. “Everybody’s getting ready to leave and they want to say goodbye.”

  Her father surprised her by giving her a quick hug, and then they went out to close out the holiday party. She was exhausted, but she smiled and wished everybody a happy holiday as they trickled toward the door. Once they were gone, she could go home. And then she could talk to Rick.

  She managed to lock her door and kick her heels off, but she had her phone in her hand when she sank onto her couch. Even her pajamas could wait. She pulled up the photo of her and her father and sent it in a text to Rick.

  Can’t send this to Marie until tomorrow because it’s late, but it was a nice night. Calling now but wanted to send pic.

  He answered on the second ring, and she felt the familiar thrill at hearing his voice. “You look happy in that picture. You had a good time?”

  “I did. I always enjoy the party, but it was also great that my father said I could send that picture to Marie and Joe. I thought about having it printed and framed for them for Christmas, but she was so hopeful I’d get a picture of him at the party that I can’t handle how disappointed she’d be between now and then.”

  “I wouldn’t wait, either. And just having it will be a great Christmas gift for her, even if it’s a little early. And, hey, if it’s in a frame, it’s awkward to carry around the neighborhood, showing all her friends.”

  Jessica laughed, turning sideways on the couch to put her feet up. “Did you do anything fun today?”

  “I slept. Then I shoveled snow. Did some errands. Basically, no. Until now, of course.”

  “I couldn’t wait for everybody to leave so I could get home and send you the picture. And talk to you.”

  “I love the picture. I won’t even crop Davey out of it,” he said. She laughed, shaking her head even though he couldn’t see her. “Anything else happen?”

  “My father and I talked a little bit, but that’s not fun stuff. The cranberry margaritas were delicious. I wish I didn’t have a one-drink rule at the company parties.”

  “Jess.” The way he said her name cut off her chatter. “You can tell me the not-fun stuff, too. I want to hear about it.”

  She smiled and pulled the throw blanket off the back of her couch to cuddle with. It wasn’t Rick, but at least it would keep her bare legs warm. “I asked him about my mom.”

  They talked for a while about her mother, and about her father’s seemingly sudden bout of self-awareness. Then he caught her up on hockey news. The sport still didn’t make a lot of sense to her, but she was learning and she loved hearing him talk about it.

  Until she heard him trying to stifle a yawn and realized it was now the middle of the night in Boston. “You should go to bed.”

  “Yeah. You have plans for tomorrow?”

  “Not really. I might hit the fitness center for a while in the morning and then I’ll probably hang around here. Go through my mail. Spend some quality time with Netflix.”

  “I’ll call you tomorrow, then. Probably late afternoon your time.”

  “I’ll be here. Good night.”

  “Sweet dreams, Jess.”

  They definitely would be. Sweet, agonizingly sexy dreams that would make her wake in the morning feeling unsettled and longing for him. Long-distance relationships were hell on sleep.

  * * *

  On Christmas Day, Rick sat on the battered couch in the basement of his parents’ house, once the playroom and then the teen hangout and finally the man cave. But when John’s boys came along, it had circled back to playroom again.

  He usually worked the holiday, but at the last
minute the LT from a nearby station had ended up in a bind. Due to a traveling in-law situation, a very pregnant wife and the potential for more family drama than any one guy should have to handle, his family had to celebrate on the twenty-third. If he couldn’t get the day off, he was probably going to have to run away from home. So Rick had worked his tour, spent Christmas Eve with the Broussards and had landed with his family for the big day itself.

  Presents had been opened and there was wrapping paper everywhere. And Rick had managed to get himself on the family shit list by gifting his nephews big superhero Lego sets. They’d been opened over their mother’s objection and were now strewn from one end of their grandparents’ house to the other. Now he, his brother and the kids were banished to the basement to digest dinner while their dad napped in his recliner and the women relaxed before dessert.

  “When are you going to settle down, Rick?” John waved a hand at his sons. “It’s time for my boys to have some cousins with the same last name as them because they are seriously outnumbered by my in-law’s kids right now.”

  He laughed. “I’m not getting married just so there can be even teams in backyard football games.”

  “Are you at least seeing anybody?” John took a sip of his soda. “I was pretty surprised you and Karen broke up, to be honest.”

  “We’re just good friends. And I’ve been seeing somebody for a few weeks. Kind of. Right now I’m not seeing much of her in the literal sense.” John frowned and made a hand motion for him to continue. “She’s Joe and Marie’s granddaughter and she came out from San Diego to meet them and help them with some financial stuff.”

  “Ah. And now she’s back in San Diego, so you’re seeing her, but not literally. Got it.”

  Rick pulled out his phone and checked the time. “I’ll be seeing her literally in a few minutes. I sent a note with her Christmas present that she couldn’t open it until we were in a video chat so I can see it. She should be calling anytime.”

  “You sent her a Christmas present?”

  “I would have sent it home with her, but I’m surprised her suitcase didn’t explode at the seams as it was.”