Controlled Burn- To Publish Read online

“I don’t want you to be Alexa,” I said. “I want you to be you.”

  She laughed humorlessly.

  “Whatever,” she said. “That woman will always be a problem for me, and that’s exactly how she wants it. But for some reason, you can’t, or won’t, see it. I would have given anything to have gotten that unconditional adoration from you that you give her. But I didn’t, and I know now that she played an instrumental part in the end of our relationship. There is no way I can compete with her; don’t you see? And I don’t want to.”

  Alexa was a problem.

  I could see that now.

  Something had to be done, and I either needed to give her up or find a way that she was a part of my life, but she also isn’t shoved into July’s face around every turn.

  Knowing I wouldn’t get through to her today without having that answer, I decided to broach another topic. Let her know what I saw. Something she refused to see.

  "Do you know what a slip knot is?" I asked her, reaching forward and taking down the apron that hung next to the prep station.

  Her eyes fluttered up to mine.

  "No," she said softly, confusion clouding her features. "What's so special about it?"

  I smiled, looked into her eyes, and then demonstrated the knot by tying the string attached to the apron around her hand.

  “It’s a reliable knot; it works really well when you need it to hold things in place. But it is also designed to let things go when you don’t need to hold onto them anymore." I demonstrated it by pulling the end of the cord, and the piece around her hand loosened.

  “Ok,” she said softly. "But why are you showing this to me?"

  I stood up, pocketed my phone, and walked to the door.

  “This is what our relationship was like,” I said. “You kept a loose hold on me, ready to let go the second you thought things were going south in our relationship. You give yourself an escape route just in case things go badly like you expect them to," I continued. "You sabotage yourself, and when you lose everything, you wonder why."

  With that, I walked out the door, closing it so softly behind me that I barely heard it latch. I might as well have slammed it. The punctuation of that door closing resembled more of a shot to the heart.

  Chapter 11

  ‘Fuck that shit’ is a perfectly acceptable replacement for the word ‘no.’ Unless you’re with a patient. Then you’re likely going to get written up.

  -Dean to Tai

  Dean

  By the middle of the next week, I was more certain than I’d ever been that I needed to do something.

  What, though, I didn’t know, but I knew I needed to do something.

  I was thinking that something should start with July’s brother.

  After the diner incident, I’d gone straight to the project house and started working—inside, seeing as it was still raining. It was as if we were in Seattle instead of Kilgore, Texas with as much rain as we were getting.

  After exhausting myself, I’d arrived at my place to find my spare key I’d given to July the day she’d gotten out of the hospital on the kitchen counter, and all of her belongings long gone.

  She’d even cleaned up after herself as well.

  The place where the ugly cat’s litter box had rested was cleaned, spic and span. The things I’d had to move in order to make room for it had been replaced, and my living room had even been vacuumed.

  Now here I was, counting down the minutes until my shift ended, praying I wouldn’t catch a call and be expected to stay any longer than I had to.

  I had shit to do. Shit that I’d come to believe that I had to follow through with or the wound July had dealt me would fester.

  I knew she still loved me. I still loved her. There was nowhere else I’d rather be than with her.

  This last year had been torture.

  I’d see her, and my whole fucking body would come alive.

  A man that was over a woman didn’t find it hard to breathe when she walked into the room. Nor did they find it even harder to breathe when they walked away.

  No.

  I wasn’t over July.

  The house fire I’d worked last night had convinced me that whatever I did, I had to do it now.

  Life wasn’t promised.

  “You okay?” Tai asked, dropping down into the seat beside me.

  I looked over at him, saw the same soot and sweat stained clothes on him that were currently covering my tired body as well, and smiled.

  Or tried to at least.

  “Head hurts,” I coughed at the end of that statement.

  The black sooty substance tasted like ass, and I wiped it off on my uniform pants, a smile taking my face back over at the thought of dropping these off at the cleaners’ tomorrow afternoon.

  “What’s that look for?” Tai asked, leaning back and snagging his Dr. Pepper off the hood of the ambulance.

  “I was just thinking about dropping off my clothes tomorrow and hearing the lovely old Chinese woman tell me I needed to take better care of myself,” I explained to him.

  “Ming?” Tai asked. “She’s the shit. I love her, and she gives me every fourth cleaning free.”

  “She does that for every first responder,” I told him. “You’re nothing special.”

  He snorted.

  “My wife doesn’t say that,” he said. “In fact, just yesterday morning, before I left, she told me I was the best.”

  I rolled my eyes, my mind once again wandering to July.

  I hadn’t actually lived with her, but I imagined if I had—and hoped I would eventually—that she’d be much the same as Mia was with Tai.

  “Fuck yes!” Tai grabbed his keys out of his pocket. “Narcotics exchange, and I’m going home and showering. Then I’m taking a seven-hour nap!”

  I laughed and pulled my keys out as well, waving to Able who was my relief.

  “You got a good one last night, didn’t you?” Able called as we passed each other.

  I nodded.

  “We did,” I confirmed. “You would’ve liked it.”

  All firemen lived for the fire calls.

  As much as we loved helping people during the medical calls, it was the fire calls that fueled our blood. Made the adrenaline pump harder. Faster.

  Last night had been that kind of call for me.

  The one thing that would keep me sane until the next fire call.

  “You always get all the good stuff,” he muttered as he tossed me a mock glare. “Last month it was the kid, remember?”

  The ‘kid’ was actually a fifteen-year-old girl who’d been in a car wreck, and I’d stayed with her for nearly an hour as the rest of the firefighters had worked tirelessly around me to get her free.

  She’d been so pinned in that they’d had to remove the guardrail from around her before they could get started on the car that she was in.

  It’d been nerve-racking but thrilling, especially once she was free and had walked away without a scratch.

  “Have a good shift, Able,” I called as I pulled my truck door open, then jumped inside.

  Able waved me off, and I pulled out in front of Tai, earning myself a glare from the man’s dark eyes.

  “Sorry,” I called, waving at him.

  He flipped me off, and I couldn’t help the snort that slipped past my lips.

  Geez, the man was impatient. Although, if I had a wife like Mia at home and a baby that was growing like a weed, I’d be anxious to get back to them as well.

  Instead of taking the cutoff back to my house, I headed to the interstate.

  The drive to Wolf’s office, the first place I was going to look for him, took forty-nine minutes exactly.

  I pulled up in front of his office, got out of my truck, and headed inside without notice.

  Wolf was bent over a desk in the very back corner of the room, and he didn’t look up from the notes he was taking.

  He shifted the phone back under his ear, an
d I headed toward him, ignoring the other man in the room who was also on the phone.

  Instead, I walked straight to Wolf, took a seat in the chair in front of his desk and waited for him to get finished.

  I didn’t try to hide the fact that I was listening to his phone conversation, either.

  “I haven’t been able to track down any information on his whereabouts on the twenty-first,” Wolf was saying in the phone. “Do you remember seeing him that night?”

  I twiddled my thumbs, looking at him for long moments before he finally looked up.

  The moment his eyes connected with me, his face slipped into a blank mask.

  “If you can think of anything else, don’t hesitate to call me. Thank you, Maria,” Wolf murmured into the phone.

  Once he’d received a ‘goodbye,’ he hung his phone up, leaned back in his chair, and stared at me for long moments. Long enough for most men to start squirming in their seat.

  Most men didn’t grow up with Buchanan Dean Hargrove as their father, either.

  My father was a career military man. The army had recruited him at seventeen, and the rest had been history.

  In fact, my father was still in the military.

  I grew up with a man who never once went easy on his son. It didn’t matter that I was young or that I was sick.

  He believed that everyone, regardless of nationality, health or rank should be treated the same.

  There was no acceptable excuse for anything less than perfection.

  If they weren’t perfect, or at least striving to be, they weren’t good enough for Sergeant Major Hargrove’s time.

  Wolf broke the silence first, nearly making a smile appear on my face.

  Almost.

  “What are you doing here?” He leaned even further back in his chair.

  So far back, in fact, that I thought he might tip over if he wasn’t careful.

  Or if I followed through on the push that I wanted to give him.

  “I’m here to talk about your sister,” I said. “We’re going to come to an understanding, and then you’re going to tell me what I want to know.”

  “And what the fuck makes you think I’m going to do that?” he questioned, a grin tilting up the corners of his mouth.

  “The fact that your sister loves me, and I love her. The fact that I will take care of her. The fact that she wants a family, and so do I—with her. The fact that she’s unhappy, and she deserves the happiness that I can give her,” I snapped.

  His face went completely blank, and I knew I’d struck a chord with him.

  “You’re not good enough for my sister,” he drawled.

  I looked at him in a different light.

  “Nobody’s good enough for our sisters,” I explained to him. “But, eventually there’s going to be a man who makes her happy, who swears that he’ll try as hard as he can to keep her happy, and you’ll just have to deal.”

  Wolf’s lips curled in disgust. “Someone more qualified might come along.”

  I laughed at him then, throwing my head back and roaring with it.

  Which drew the attention of the man wearing the cowboy hat across the room from us.

  “What’s so funny?” he wanted to know.

  Griffin.

  Griffin Storm was his name, and he was a Texas Ranger like Wolf was.

  “He thinks he can make his sister love someone that he thinks is good enough,” I shared, my lip kicking up at the irony of the observation. “You do know that’s like wiping your ass while you’re still actively shitting. Futile and messy.”

  Wolf kicked his lip up in disgust.

  Griffin, however, understood.

  “Do you remember when Ridley tried to warn Apple off of Kitt?” Griffin asked.

  Wolf scowled.

  “Now she’s got a kid by the man and he’s a part of our club. Trust me when I say that you’re fucked. Just let it happen,” Griffin recommended to Wolf. “They were in love when I saw them back then, and your sister’s not been happy since they split.”

  Wolf’s eyes darkened.

  “That’s because this motherfucker broke up with her,” Wolf snarled at Griffin, turning that angry glare toward me.

  My stomach tightened and I stared at the man.

  “You were part of the reason that happened, Wolf,” I said softly. “I’ve obviously not been appraised of all the details, but she’s scared as hell I’ll be killed like you almost were. That I’ll leave her.”

  Wolf sighed and let his head drop down to his upraised hands that were resting on top of the desk.

  “Fuck me,” he said. “Goddammit.”

  I leaned back in the chair and let him put two and two together to get eighteen, and it didn’t take him long.

  “She’s got abandonment issues,” he said suddenly, his head coming up so his gaze could stare straight into mine. “I left and joined the army. Our parents were useless. Didn’t want kids after they realized how much work they were. They were gone more than they were there. We were on food stamps and government assistance because it never failed that both of our parents would get fired from their jobs; usually at the same time.”

  I waited for the rest.

  “July had one boyfriend and one boyfriend only. He gave her some pretty lies about getting her out of the shithole we grew up in. He didn’t keep his promise. Went off to college, found a girl who would put out and dumped her before he’d even been gone a month,” Wolf continued.

  My gut burned at the idea of July being in love with someone other than me, and it also hurt to learn that I wasn’t the first person she loved.

  I didn’t like knowing that these things had happened. I’d wrongly assumed that because she’d been a virgin when we’d met that I was her first and only love. Apparently, I wasn’t and that was a hard pill to swallow.

  “Our parents left, and then I did, too. I didn’t come home for a long fucking time, and I selfishly refused to come visit when I was on leave because I hated that hellhole of a town,” Wolf kept adding fuel to the fire. “I finally did come home, and I joined the police force. I pulled my head out of my ass. It was like the old days, her spending as much time with me as my job and life allowed until I met my then wife.”

  I could tell he didn’t want to talk about his wife at all.

  In fact, I saw sweat start to bead on his forehead, and I knew that he was telling me this strictly for July’s benefit.

  He took a deep steadying breath, his eyes catching on a picture on the corner of his desk, and he looked back up at me.

  “I dropped her the moment I met my wife. Again. My wife was very needy. Hated to be left alone. Was jealous of the time I spent with my sister. So I slowly stopped doing that, and I regret it deeply,” he said. “Then I almost died. My wife and baby did die. So if she has ‘issues’, as you say, then that’s my fault.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest, studying the man.

  His devastation was clearly written all over his face.

  “You’re making up for any damage you’ve done to her,” I said to him. “You and that boy of yours were always her favorite topics of conversation. You both mean the world to her.”

  It was like the kind words I’d shared with him were shots to his heart. His hand lifted and massaged his chest, his eyes going far away as he thought about something that he obviously didn’t want to share with me.

  “She misses you,” he finally admitted, leaning back in his own chair just as I was doing.

  It was my turn to lift my hand and rub my chest as those words tore through my heart.

  “I know,” I said to him. “I miss her too.”

  “She’s going to resist,” he said. “She’s going to fight you tooth and nail, but you’ll just have to force yourself in there. That’s what I had to do. Be persistent. Don’t let her tell you no.”

  “Hey,” Griffin said, interrupting my deteriorating thoughts. “Since we’re on the subject of your
sister, did you convince her to go to the reunion?”

  My eyes narrowed as my hearing sharpened.

  Leaning forward in my chair, I turned my body sideways so I could see Griffin and Wolf at the same time without having to turn my head.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked. “Why would you care if she went or not?”

  Wolf flipped Griffin off.

  “It’s nothing,” he lied.

  “Sorry,” Griffin muttered as he picked up his silver Yeti off the corner of his desk, waved goodbye and disappeared out of the office without another word to either one of us.

  Wolf growled in annoyance at the abrupt departure of his friend, then turned back to me as he stared at me with resignation.

  “I want my sister to talk to someone for me,” he said. “A man she used to have the hots for.”

  My spine stiffened.

  “What?” I asked, annoyed that Wolf would ask his sister to move on when he and I both knew she wasn’t ready.

  “It’s not what you think…”

  By the time he was done explaining what exactly it was, I was no longer angry. I was fucking livid.

  “Let me get this straight,” I said stiffly. “You’re sending your sister to her ten-year reunion to try to get some guy to talk to her. To tell her things that he hasn’t told anybody…without any protection.”

  “You know I would never put her in danger,” Wolf snapped. “Of course I would have men on her to make sure nothing bad happened to her. I about shit myself when I realized who this joker was. I’ve been looking for a way into this operation for a freakin’ year. This is the perfect opportunity.”

  “The perfect opportunity to get your sister hurt,” I snapped. “What makes you think that she can pull anything out of him anyway?”

  “The fact that she’s able to draw the attention of any goddamn man that comes into contact with her,” Wolf said looking at me as if I was stupid.

  I gritted my teeth.

  “I know she’s beautiful,” I told him. “What I want to know is why you think she’ll be able to pull anything from him when he never gave her the time of day in high school?”

  Wolf sighed.