Controlled Burn- To Publish Read online

  I opened my eyes and found the spoon in front of my mouth filled with the delicious ice cream I’d bought us earlier in the day.

  I leaned forward tentatively, just waiting for him to yank it back, and pulled it off the spoon with my lips.

  He growled.

  I moaned as the deliciousness coated my taste buds.

  It’d been a little over three months since Blue Bell had come back into my life, and I’d never take it for granted ever again. It was now my goal to make sure that I always had some Blue Bell in my freezer.

  Today, though, I hadn’t been able to have my fix, and I’d only found two small pints of it at the gas station on my way there.

  Being the nice person I was, I shared them with Dean.

  He hadn’t been in the mood for the ice cream at the same time I had mine, but I’d been sitting there thinking about it in the freezer.

  Which led us to now.

  “Give me another bite,” I ordered.

  His hand came down sharply on my ass.

  “What did you say?” he asked teasingly, hoping I’d repeat myself.

  I panted as a different desire started to roll through me.

  This time, ice cream was not on my mind.

  “Please,” I said to him, my lids falling half closed as he trailed his spoon down my spine.

  He moved down my legs until he was sitting on my knees, and then I felt a cold wetness on my back.

  “Did you just waste your ice cream on my back?” I gasped in outrage.

  He chuckled darkly.

  “Oh, I’m not wasting it at all,” he said, his mouth going to my skin as he licked the creamy treat from my flesh.

  “Oh, sweet baby Jesus,” I whispered as his tongue dipped down to the top of my ass. “God.”

  ***

  “Ouch!” I cried out when Dean’s fingers pried away my t-shirt, jostling the glass that was still imbedded in my armpit.

  “Sit still,” he snapped when I went to turn around.

  I sat still, but did so reluctantly.

  My eyes went to the side of the ambulance in front of me, and I glared at the reflection I could see in the glass of one of the cabinets.

  I hated the way his hands felt on my back, even if they weren’t doing anything that wasn’t medically necessary.

  Also, I definitely did not like that he was seeing my body once again.

  I’d gained weight.

  A lot of it.

  Nearly thirty-five pounds, in fact.

  I now had stretch marks, and my love handles were definitely more ‘handle’ and less ‘love.’ Unless you wanted to say the ‘love’ in them was my love for food, then that was accurate.

  I’d taken to eating quite a bit lately, and I’d pretty much abandoned my workout routine he’d helped me put together. One that’d helped me lose forty-five pounds while I was with him for six months.

  Why, you ask, when it was working so well?

  Because when I ran, all I thought about was the stupid man who was touching my back with such care that I wanted to slap him.

  Not to mention the fact that I had no one to impress anymore.

  “This might hurt,” he said, wiggling the piece of glass as he worked it out of my skin.

  I squeezed my eyes shut tightly, and then the burning pain stopped as soon as the glass was removed from my back.

  “Got it out,” he added for my benefit, and not the woman who was being silent, watching us interact. “Glad you didn’t cry.”

  My eyes moved to her. She was looking down, but her eyes kept flicking up to take us both in before her eyes would return to her hands.

  She had a small smile on her face that clearly showed she was amused by us, causing me to narrow my eyes at her.

  “I wasn’t going to cry,” I snapped at Dean.

  He patted me on the shoulder like a fucking child, and I had to grit my teeth to keep the scathing words from leaving my lips.

  That was also something he used to do to get a rise out of me, and I realized what he’d done not ten seconds later as a wave of nostalgia washed over me.

  Crying was his weakness. I knew it, and I tried as hard as I could not to cry in front of him.

  I didn’t want his pity. I wanted his love, and when he told me it wasn’t going to work with us a year ago, I hadn’t cried. I’d done well not to cry in front of him since we’d broken up…until that bad day at the diner just a few short days ago when he’d said I was an ‘old friend.’

  I knew he hated it when I did. Mostly because he told me so.

  “We’re pulling in!” the woman from the front seat said, breaking into my thoughts.

  I looked up and glanced through the small windows at the back of the ambulance and winced.

  Looking down, I said to her, “Do you have something I can put around me or change into?”

  The blonde pulled out a sheet that was akin to a see-through shower curtain, and I grimaced.

  Looking down at my red demi-bra and my breasts that practically spilled over the cups, I sighed and reached for it.

  “This is going to do nothing,” I said in resolve. “Fuckin’ A.”

  Dean chuckled at my back, and I tossed him a nasty glare over my shoulder as I wrapped the sheet around me with one hand, as I muttered under my breath.

  “What was that?” he asked. “Did you say something?”

  I muttered something else under my breath that had to do with his face and turned my back to him once again.

  Then I felt his hat pull down over my head, and I smelled Dean again.

  I used to wear his hats all the time.

  In fact, I had my favorites, one of which I still had secretly stashed away in my closet.

  And him putting it on my head like he used to do had my heart breaking all over again.

  I looked down as tears pricked my eyes, then reached up and pulled the hat off my head when he went to the back doors and opened them.

  Pushing outwards, he hopped down and turned around to offer me his hands.

  I walked forward, hunched over so I didn’t hit my head on the roof, and went straight into his arms.

  I kept my eyes downcast so he wouldn’t see my tears, thankful that my hair was down to cover my face.

  He set me down on my feet, and I walked next to him, barely managing not to look up at him and give him my eyes.

  Give me your eyes. Don’t deny me the pleasure of seeing them on me.

  He’d loved it when I kept my eyes on him.

  He really liked me to look at him, and it wasn’t often that I took my eyes off of him.

  As I walked alongside him, I really struggled with myself to not look up at his face.

  Once we reached the glass doors of the ambulance entrance, he typed in some numbers at the keypad and the doors slid open.

  “Take a left,” he ordered me.

  I did, tripping slightly on the sheet that was dragging behind me.

  It hurt to hold it up higher, and Dean obviously realized that as he gathered the back up in his large hand, accidentally grazing my ass as he did.

  “Sorry,” he muttered when I jumped in reaction.

  I turned back around and tried to blink my tears away before we got to where we were going.

  “Hey, PD. How’s it shakin’?” a security guard called from in front of us, drawing my attention.

  “Got a neighbor who fell on a piece of glass, Murphy,” he said. “Alexa around?”

  I stiffened at the mention of Alexa.

  Alexa was the nurse who had the hots for PD when I’d first started dating him. She didn’t hide the fact that she was interested in him from me, that’s for sure. Not to mention that Dean went into a soft puddle of goo whenever she was around.

  It must be the mousy thing she had going on, because everything that was her, was definitely not me. I was mouthy, opinionated and didn’t take shit from anyone.

  She would’ve rolled
over if you asked her to. Me? I would’ve told you to go fuck yourself.

  Then again, that was the trailer trash queen coming out in me.

  I had to stick up for myself, because nobody else but my brother would, and Wolf wasn’t there half the time.

  So it was me against the world, and my attitude showed it.

  “She’s here today,” Murphy the security guard said. “Room four.”

  “Pelvic rooms,” Dean muttered. “She hates those rooms.”

  I gritted my teeth and took a seat where he told me to in the waiting room.

  “I’ll be back,” he said, leaving me there in the waiting room, feeling naked.

  He’d done it on purpose.

  My brows lowered in anger.

  If my problem wasn’t serious enough to warrant a straight back—or instant—room, then why the hell did I have to ride in an ambulance?

  I watched Dean stop at what looked to be a nurses’ station until the doors closed, shielding his body from view.

  The room he’d left me in was clean and elegant. The floors were white, and the walls were a pale brown. The chairs were soft as a cloud, and the coffee table in the middle of the chairs were covered with every kind of magazine one could imagine.

  I leaned forward and looked at the Cosmo, my eyes lighting up as I saw Thor on the cover. I sure loved that man, and I even had a life-size cardboard cutout of him in my bedroom that kept me company at night.

  “July.”

  I looked up to find Dean standing in the ER doors.

  “How old are you?” he asked.

  My lips thinned.

  “Twenty-eight,” I replied softly.

  I was barely able to contain the tremble of anger as the words passed through my lips.

  He nodded and walked back into the ER, leaving me to my own devices once again.

  The man knew my age and my birthday…or he used to.

  Now, who knew. I wouldn’t think he’d be able to forget that we shared the same birthday, but apparently I was wrong.

  Then again, I was wrong about a lot of things where Dean was concerned.

  I stewed for long minutes as I thought about all the things that Dean had done to disappoint me over the last year, and I got so caught up in my thoughts that I didn’t hear the footsteps approaching.

  “Ma’am?” another voice startled me out of my thoughts.

  “Yes?” I asked the security guard.

  “PD asked me to give this to you, and to tell you that he had to go, he had a SWAT call. He said he was sorry and that he’d send someone over to give you a ride home,” he advised.

  I took my phone, something I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten, and licked my dry lips.

  “Thanks,” I said, trying not to let the fear over him going on a SWAT call leach into my voice. “I appreciate you telling me.”

  The officer nodded, commiseration in his voice. “I was on the SWAT team for ten years, and my wife looked like you every time I got a call out.”

  I gave him a wan smile.

  “We’re not together,” I said softly.

  Bitterly.

  “Yeah,” he said, sounding somewhat amused. “I can see that neither of you care about each other at all.”

  With that he walked away, leaving me to my misery.

  Fucking Dean.

  Fucking Alexa.

  She’d been the reason that Dean had left me.

  Not completely, no. I’d been the one to make him feel guilty every time he left, after all. But she’d been the one who handed him the hammer so he could drive that final nail into the coffin that was our relationship.

  ***

  One year and one month ago

  The beginning of the end.

  Three loud beeps, followed by a loud solid beep had me turning my eyes to survey the coffee table that was currently holding my nail polish, nail polish remover, as well as about a billion cotton balls.

  A little black box had me staring at it in confusion.

  “Is that what I think that is?” I asked Dean, turning my head to him.

  He got up and walked to it, picking it up in his hands, staring at it.

  “Pager,” he said, clipping it to his belt. “I’ve got to go.”

  “Go where?” I asked in confusion.

  “SWAT call,” he answered, looking away from me.

  “What?” I breathed, my voice so soft I could barely hear it.

  Dean did, though, and he looked at me like I’d screamed it.

  “SWAT call out. I gotta go,” he answered, walking toward me.

  I stood up so fast that the cotton balls on the table were knocked down onto the ground with the suddenness of my movement.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked half hysterically.

  “I joined the SWAT team as a tactical medic,” he explained, looking at me as if he was surprised by my reaction to his news.

  “No,” I laughed at his attempted joke.

  He nodded his head, his eyebrows furrowing.

  “Yes,” he said in confirmation. “I told you this already.”

  I was shaking my head before he’d finished.

  “No,” I amended. “You told me you were thinking about it, but that it wasn’t a done deal. Two months ago. Which, might I add, you have never said another word about since.”

  He nodded his head.

  “Yes, but I still told you. As of this afternoon, I’ll be on the SWAT team in an official capacity. I won’t be working every call because I’ll be rotating with the other five firefighter/paramedics that I work with,” he explained. “I’m actually on call right now. I was the first one to start.”

  My mouth dropped open.

  “You…I…I can’t believe you’d do something this important without discussing it with me first!” I said in outrage. “You know how I feel about cops!”

  Okay, it wasn’t actually toward cops, per se. It was more geared towards how dangerous a cop’s job was and to make matters worse, he was joining the SWAT team. A job that was more dangerous than just your average beat cop. A job that would take him away from me if he ever got hurt, or worse, died.

  “Honey,” he said soothingly. “Nothing’s going to happen to me.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “Oh?” I said with deceptive calm. “Please, enlighten me, how you think that you can promise me something like that?” I snapped.

  He knew about my brother. He also knew about my irrational hysteria when it came to his safety. My issues with him leaving me to go to work and never coming home again.

  Dean’s lips thinned.

  “I’m the medic,” he said soothingly. “I won’t be put in the line of fire unless there are no other options for me.”

  “That’s not good enough,” I said. “You know what happened to my brother.”

  And he did. We’d had the conversation the day he’d first met my brother. I’d wanted to warn him not to comment on the scar my brother bore. The one that made him shut down and refuse to speak for long minutes afterwards as he thought about how that scar got there.

  He sighed and walked forward to pull me into his arms, but I stepped back before he could get too close.

  “Stop,” I held my hand up at him.

  His brows lowered and he kept coming.

  “Stop!” I yelled, causing him to freeze.

  Once he stopped his forward motion, I started looking for my things.

  “No,” he said. “You can’t just ask me to stop. You have to talk to me about this. We can’t just leave it like this before I have to leave. I’m on shift tomorrow for the next two days.”

  I laughed, no humor in my voice whatsoever.

  “Well, it’ll be longer than two days,” I said. “I can’t deal with this,” I informed him. “Not after what happened to my brother. Someone’s going to kill you, and I’ll never see you again.”

  “Honey, I’m not going to leave you. Never,”
he promised, not stopping this time.

  Once he was in front of me, he pulled me into his arms. “Even if you don’t want me to be, I’ll always be here.”

  I looked at him, saw in his eyes that held such sincerity that I actually believed him.

  “Stay,” he said. “When I get back home, we’ll talk, okay?”

  I held such hope that I agreed, and I shouldn’t have.

  I should’ve gone with my instincts, because if I had, I could’ve saved myself a world of hurt over the next month and a half.

  But I didn’t.

  Why?

  Because I loved him.

  And I was stupid. So fucking stupid.

  ***

  I got up, wrapping the sheet tightly around me like a sarong, and walked out of the hospital without looking back.

  Then I got in a cab that was sitting at the curb, and I directed him to my house.

  Once there, I did my best to clean the cut in my shoulder, thankful that it was no longer anything but an annoying throb rather than a shooting pain.

  The super glue, though, burned like a bitch when I used it to close the wound myself.

  And I had to throw away my red bra, seeing as I’d practically glued it to my body.

  Lying down on my bed hours after the incident, I closed my eyes and cried myself to sleep for the three hundred and eighty-ninth day in a row.

  Stupid fucking Dean.

  Chapter 6

  Love is a meeting of two souls. Fully accepting both the good and the bad. The bitchy and the non-bitchy.

  -Words of Wisdom

  Dean

  “What do you mean she left?” I barked at Alexa.

  Alexa made a noncommittal sound.

  “Went out to call her in, and she wasn’t there,” Alexa repeated again, her voice firmer than usual. “I tried calling her on the number you checked her in under last night, but her phone went straight to voicemail.”

  I narrowed my eyes at the windshield of my truck.

  “Thanks,” I muttered darkly. “I’ll talk to you at breakfast tomorrow morning.”

  Alexa had become my rock since I’d ended things with July, and I had to admit, I knew I was using her. She thought if she was patient enough, she’d be able to get in there with me. She’d admitted as much one night when she was drunker than a skunk.