by K. Bromberg
His eyes narrow, and the look he gives me demands an answer. “No firefighters,” I reply and lift my eyebrows as if to say that’s the only explanation I’m going to give him. “You’re crazy, you know that?”
“And you are so getting laid.”
Sleep with someone.
Did I actually encourage her to get laid?
Christ, I’m sure Damon would chew me out if he knew what I did tonight. What I encouraged.
But Wes Winters isn’t all that bad. I can think of worse guys for her to sleep with. Besides, he’s nice and polite and not the kind to stick around.
So, he’s perfect.
But fuck if I’m not questioning why I suggested this. Why I called him over and initiated small talk between them. Bought them a round or two of drinks and then subtly made my exit.
The front door bounces back followed by a giggle and a laugh. There is a trail of thumps of body parts hitting walls as they make their way down the hallway.
Her door shuts, but I can still hear her.
Giggles turn to moans.
And dear fucking god. Those moans. Her moans.
Throaty and sexy and . . .
They’re enough to make me hard instantly.
Yeah, I’m definitely questioning why I did this.
And even more so, I’m questioning why my dick is in my hand and my thoughts are on Dylan and how she felt straddling me the other night. The hazy look in her eyes. The weight of her tits against the fabric of her shirt.
She’s moaning for someone else, and fuck if I’m not pretending she’s moaning for me.
The taste of her. The wine on her tongue. The buds of her nipples against my lips. Licking my way up her inner thigh.
I work my hand up my cock. Rub it over the head. Tighten my fingers and slide it back down.
Imagining her.
The heat of her tongue as those blow-job lips of hers wrap around me. Tease me. Taunt me. Suck me dry.
I squeeze the base of my shaft and work my hand up and down. Listening to her moans. Audible sex. I work myself so precum drips off the tip, and I use it as lube.
The pink of her pussy. How tight it is. How wet I make her. How she stretches around me as I pull out and then plunge back in.
Faster. Heat and pleasure. Harder. Friction and desire. Over and over.
The tense of her thighs around my hips. The scratch of her nails down my back. Her arousal coating my cock and dripping down my balls as I bury myself in her over. And over. And over.
I close my eyes and throw my head back against my pillow as my legs tense and my body begs to come.
The pulse of her muscles as her pussy comes around me.
And only for me.
Heat surges through me. Out to my fingers. Then slams back into me as my head grows dizzy and I come all over my hand, a groan on my lips.
Jesus Christ, I’m going to hell.
I just jacked off thinking of Dylan.
My roommate.
Damon’s little sister.
But fuck if she wasn’t incredible.
I stare at the ceiling of my bedroom and a tear leaks silently out of the corner of my eye. I can feel as it makes its way through my hair and onto the pillow beneath my head.
Last night replays in my mind. The good, the bad, the ugly of it. Each thought reinforcing the insecurities riddling my self-esteem.
Wes’s rushed goodbye.
The shame that followed.
The embarrassment I feel as I wait for Grady to leave the house for whatever plans he has today.
The clink of the dish in the sink.
The slam of the front door.
The sound of his engine shifting into gear and slowly retreating down the driveway.
Drawing in a deep breath, I pick up my cell and dial.
“Serenity Acres, how may I direct your call?”
“Francis McCoy, please,” I say.
“Let me check and make sure she’s able to receive phone calls,” the receptionist replies.
“She should be. She finished detox the other day.” For the sixth or seventh time. Or is it the tenth? It’s been so many I can’t remember.
“Mmm, yes, and you are?”
“Dylan McCoy, her daughter.”
“Yes, I have you on the list of approved contacts. Ms. McCoy, she’s still in a very fragile place so please don’t say or do anything that will upset her.” What about all she’s said or done to upset me? “She’s allowed five minutes on the phone.”
“Yes. I know.”
“Hold, please. I’ll connect you.”
The electronic beep of a ring comes through the phone. One. Two. Three. “Hello.” She sounds so frail.
“Hi, Momma.”
“Dylan?” Her voice is cautious.
“How are you?”
“Miserable. Do you know what they do to you here? Detox is hell. Friggin’ hell. And they try to pretty it up by using the term abstinence, but it’s still the same damn thing. My hands shake and my mouth is dry, and I’d give anything for a drink right now. And—”
“You promised me you’d try.” Again.
“I am, but you know it’s your father’s fault, right? I loved him but obviously not enough for him to love us back.”
“I know, Mom.”
“Do you have any idea what hell this place is? Do you . . .” She drones on, complaining about the same damn things she always does, never letting me get a word in edgewise until an electronic voice comes over the line.
“You have one more minute,” it warns.
“Dylan, I’m sorry. How are you? I’ve been selfish, prattling on this whole time and I haven’t asked a single thing about you.” Because alcoholism makes you selfish. “How are you? Did you need me for anything?” she asks as a tear slides silently down my cheek.
“No. I just wanted to hear your voice is all,” I say, trying to find comfort in her the only way I know how. In the only way this disease has allowed me to over the years.
“You’re okay, then?” she asks when she’s in no place to offer any kind of solace for my bruised ego.
“Yes,” I whisper.
“I love you. I’ll try harder.”
“I love you too.” Please try harder.
The line goes dead.
And this is what it comes down to. Five minutes. That’s all I get. This seems to be all I can remember getting from her.
Me needing her when she still craves something else.
First it was my father.
Then it was the alcohol.
Maybe it’s still my father she still craves.
I’m not sure. All I know is it has never been me.
Seems to me I always come in second place.
“Are you avoiding me, McCoy?”
My boots clomp on my wooden porch, and I take a seat beside her on one of the steps. She doesn’t respond, and I don’t push as I look at the progress on the playroom. It isn’t pretty, but it’s a work in progress.
She takes a sip of her coffee, and I bump my knee to hers to prompt a response out of her. “Not avoiding, no.”
“I think you are. I didn’t see you at all yesterday.”
“I was writing.” She says the words but there’s an underlying tone. Something is bugging her.
“And you aren’t talking to me now.”
“I just said three words to you.”
“You know what I mean.” I take a sip of my coffee and turn the handheld radio in my bag down when dispatch begins to chatter. “So are we going to pretend that I didn’t hear you bumping into walls the other night when you brought Wes home. Or giggling.” Or moaning.
“No, it happened. Believe me, it happened,” she murmurs, and a part of me is instantly pissed that Wes Winters was that good she’s still thinking about him.
“That good, huh?” There’s a bite to my tone when there shouldn’t be.
Her laugh is unexpected when it rings out and the self-deprecating sound to it rubs me the wrong way.
<
br /> “None of your business,” she says with a playful smile that seems more forced than genuine.
“There’s no need to be embarrassed,” I say, trying to make her feel more at ease when I realize she’s most likely not used to talking to other men about her sex life. At least, I hope she’s not.
She splays her hands over her face for a second and shakes her head to try and clear the confused emotions from her expression. “No. I’m not—that isn’t what—I’ve never done that before. You don’t understand. Just . . . just never mind.”
Well, at least I know Wes isn’t a stallion in the sack.
“You’ve never had a one-night stand?” I try not to sound so surprised, but I don’t think I pull it off.
“No. God. No.”
“What’s wrong with them?” I ask with a partial laugh, trying to figure out how she lives in the Hollywood fast lane and is still so damn innocent.
“Nothing. It was just . . . you know what? It’s super weird discussing this with you.”
At least I called that right—it was embarrassment—not anything else that had her shying away from me.
“Look, there’s no use in regretting it. It was fun. It was one time. It was a way to get your mind off Jett the fuck face and back on you and your needs. There is no shame in it.”
“Says the man who probably lives at the One-Night-Stand Café.”
I pound my hand to my chest as if I’m clutching a dagger. “And she thinks so highly of me.”
“You had another nightmare last night, didn’t you?”
“You’re changing the subject.”
“And you’re not answering,” she counters with an impenetrable stare.
I shrug. “Not sure. I was asleep.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Do I ever? No.
“If I did, I don’t remember, so there isn’t much to talk about.”
“You were screaming for an Andrew. I think that was the name.”
No. It’s Drew.
“Huh. That’s weird. I don’t know any Andrews.” I stand abruptly. “I’ve gotta get to the station.”
After I take a few steps, she calls my name. When I turn around, there is a sympathetic look in her eyes and concern on her face. “Don’t think I don’t notice how you always change the subject when it circles back to you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” With that, I turn and walk to my truck without looking back.
I’m frozen.
Smoke billows out of the old warehouse, and all I can do is stand and stare. And remember. The crackle of the beams and the whooshing sound they made as they fell from above. The panic in Drew’s screams. The smell of the burning wood and plastic . . . and flesh.
“Goddamn it, Malone!” Dempsey rips the line out of my hands and glares at me as if I’ve lost my mind. The problem is, I fear I have. And it isn’t the first time. “We need you. Either engage or get out of the fucking way,” he growls.
But I don’t move. I feel like I don’t even breathe. The smoke is gray and thick and ashes rain down on everything around us. Embers. Papers, half charred and glowing against the darkened sky, float around me like a ticker tape parade of disaster.
The guys from our engine and Swift City’s are laying down pipe and breaching the building from the west side. A crew is on the front, breaking the windows to control the fire’s fuel. Another crew is putting on their air packs to prepare for a second entry.
And I still stand here, frozen in memory, hearing the PASS sirens going off in my head when there are none sounding off around me. Everyone is moving. No one is stuck in the fire. No one is trapped.
No one is dying.
“Malone! Malone!” I’m yanked from my trance, and Bowman is in my face demanding my attention. “Take command, until the chief comes, will ya?”
“What?” I shake my head, trying to figure out why he’s giving up his command.
“Get to it, Malone.”
And then I get it. He doesn’t trust me. I’m out here, and they’re in there, and he knows I still can’t bring myself to step foot into the beast and get over the past. The fear. The bullshit weighing me down.
He looks at me, eyebrows raised, impatience in his expression. The figurative helping hand extended, yet again.
“Yeah. Sure. I’ve got it.” I jog over to where he stands, momentarily snapped from the living hell in my memory and into the present one. I grab the clipboard and radio from him. “Two-in. Two-out,” I murmur without thinking.
His body jars from the words. From hearing the phrase Drew and I twisted to make our own.
Christ. I just proved his hunch right. That I’m thinking about Drew and what happened instead of the here and now. Instead of doing my job. That the memories are in fact what is holding me back.
He meets my eyes and nods as a slight smile curls his lips. “Two-in. Two-out,” he repeats before jogging toward danger, and as I start the personal accountability record for the guys on scene, I can’t help but think of the last time I went in it was two-in. One-out.
Hours pass.
Each one marked by the charred contents of the building being gone over and over to make sure no hot spots flare up. The scene preserved for the arson detective to investigate the cause of the blaze.
“You want to tell me what happened earlier?”
I look to where Dixon stands with his fire hook prodding something, but he doesn’t meet my eyes. He just keeps looking down, letting me at least keep my pride.
“Nothing did. I froze. It was no big deal.”
“Sounds like burnout to me.”
I don’t flinch at the term now that I know his eyes are studying me. Waiting. Expecting. Questioning. “Nah. I’m good.”
“You think I don’t realize that you haven’t actively participated in a fire since the accident?”
“What do you mean?” Fucking Christ. I roll my shoulders and turn my back to him to investigate a pretend stream of smoke that needs to be stomped out.
“I mean, there’s always a reason, an excuse, or something keeping you from going into the flames. It’s kind of hard to be a firefighter when you’re afraid of fire, don’t you think?”
“I’m not afraid of shit,” I say as I turn back around and force a chuckle. “I had a shitty dream last night about a fire, and it felt like fucking déjà vu standing there. That’s all.”
“Is that what happens every time? Seems like a coincidence to me.”
“Look, Dix, I get your point. I know where you’re going here. The same place the other guys have gone. Were you the one elected this time to broach the subject? If so, thanks but no thanks. I’ll say it again, I’m fine.”
“We all lost him, Grady. You aren’t the only one.”
But I was the one who couldn’t save him! I scream the words in my head but on the outside, I nod while my insides churn with a guilt no one understands. It was my job to watch him and make sure he came out. But he never came out.
“Yeah. I know.”
“This is one hot motherfucker.”
I look over to where Drew stands in the doorway, the flame’s fingers licking all around him and smoke billowing like a son of a bitch above us and from the windows we’ve broken out. His voice sounds like it’s in a tin can as it echoes in his helmet and then through my radio.
“We need to knock down that head over there and then get the fuck out of here.”
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this, Malone.”
I glance over to him again and wave my gloved hand his way. “We’re fine. Hitch and Collins have the other side of this. Johnson’s holding down the escape route.”
“Are we sure this place is cleared?”
I can’t see his face as I search through the smoke. “Why?”
“I swear I keep hearing someone calling for help.”
I stop what I’m doing and hold up my fist to tell him to be quiet. And I listen. There’s the crack of the fire. The snap of wood as it tw
ists and pops under the pressure of the heat. The rush of the smoke as it pushes and pulls against the oxygen before devouring it. The roar of my own heartbeat in my ears.
But I don’t hear anyone crying for help.
“I don’t hear it, man.”
I take my axe to break apart a pile of burning debris, trying to dissipate the fire’s fuel. But it isn’t going to help. This place isn’t going to stop burning anytime soon.
“Listen.”
I stop again at Drew’s command, but the flames are closing in on us, roaring and spinning and whipping around in a vortex of heat I can feel through my turnouts.
For the life of me, I can’t hear shit. There’s a whistling somewhere, but I swear it’s the oxygen sucking through wood.
When I turn around to look back at Drew, he’s pushing deeper into the building. We should be getting the fuck out.
“Drew? Drew, c’mon. We gotta get out of here. We’ve been in here too long.”
“Just let me look in here.”
“Malone. Drew. We need to pull out. The roof’s unstable,” the chief commands over the radio.
“Goddamn it, Drew!” I move after him. My boots hitting debris I can’t see. My eyes are straining from searching through the dense smoke, and I’m just clearing the doorway as I hear the crack.
A portion of the ceiling falls in and lands in front of me and at his back.
Panic flickers and flames just as brightly as the fire raging around us.
“Grady? Where are you?”
“I’m here. You okay?”
“I can’t see you. I can’t . . . shit . . . I can’t find a clear line out.” The same panic I feel laces the edge of his voice.
“I’m here. I’m here,” I yell as my body heats with fear.
Another crack.
Then slam.
A beam falling.
A scream.
“Drew!” I shout. “Drew!”
Sweat coats my skin as I wait for an answer.
Seconds.
Tick.
Tick.
“I’m trapped.” His voice is almost quiet. Pained. “I can’t . . . I can’t.” Fearful. “Grady.” Terrified.
