Fully Ignited (Boston Fire #3) (20 page)

NINETEEN

T
WO
WEEKS
. S
COTT
SAT
at the bar, nursing a beer and watching the evening news on the big screen with no sound. Two weeks with no Jamie. With no love and no laughter.

And then, suddenly, she appeared on the screen, with her helmet gleaming in the sun and smiling at the reporter who had a microphone in her face. Her name was on the bottom of the screen, along with a caption.
Happy ending for child who climbed a tree to rescue kitten.

He stared at her face, drinking in the sight of her, as his heart ached in his chest. God, he missed her. He missed her face and her laugh and her touch and every damn thing about her. He missed the sound of her voice.

“Hey, Lydia. Turn up the TV for a second?”

She looked up at the screen as she moved toward the remote control next to the register and then stopped. “No. If you want to hear Jamie’s voice, you can grow some balls and go talk to her like a man.”

“Jesus, you can really be a bitch.”

“Nothing warms a man’s heart like the love his children have for one another,” Tommy said from the corner.

“I love them.” He glared at Lydia. “I just love Ashley more.”

She laughed at him. “Because she coddles you and gives you ice cream.”

“Hey, the ice cream’s for the baby.”

“Sure it is. Because every growing baby in the womb needs ice cream three times in a week.” She stepped closer, a bar rag dangling from her hand. “Go talk to her.”

He pointed at the screen. “She’s rescuing children who rescue kittens.”

“That was yesterday afternoon. Slow news day, I guess, so they’re replaying the feel-good stuff.” She sighed and shook her head. “I happen to know she’s home and was planning to clean out her refrigerator today. I know this because I tried to talk her into coming in to visit and that’s what she told me.”

“How often do you talk to her?”

“Almost every day.”

That hurt—the reminder that she wasn’t really gone. She was only gone from
his
life. And it was his own damn fault. “How is she?”

“She’s fine. She’s really happy at Ladder 41 and the commute isn’t too bad.”

“That’s not what I mean and you know it.”

“I do know what you mean, but this is one of those fuzzy boundary things. I’m her friend.”

“You’re my sister.”

“Yes, I am. And if you weren’t such a dumbass, you might have caught on to the fact I’ve told you
twice
to go talk to her since you walked in.”

“Oh.” Hope flared to life as he realized if Lydia thought he should go talk to her, that meant Jamie hadn’t totally put him in the rearview mirror. There was a chance.

“Yeah,
oh.
I think you should lay off the hockey for a while. You’ve taken too many hits to the head.”

He drained the rest of his beer and then slid off the stool. “I’m leaving now. You can save your abuse for the paying customers.”

“Are you going there now?”

“I think so, before I chicken out. If I don’t go straight there, I might talk myself out of it.”

“Don’t.” She reached across the bar to take his hand. “Leave your pride at the door and talk to her.”

He lifted her hand and kissed the back of it. “Just so you know, I don’t really love Ashley more than you. You’re both equally pains in my ass.”

“You might want to come up with other ways to express your feelings before you get to Jamie’s.” She smiled. “Call me later.”

Hope buoyed him for most of the trip to her apartment building, but he felt himself faltering when he stood on the sidewalk in front. He had no idea what he could say, other than he loved her. He still loved her and that was all he had, but it didn’t feel like enough.

But he knew if he walked away right now, he wouldn’t come back. Seeing her face on the television and Lydia letting him know he still had a chance had given him the courage he needed, but it was fading.

And he wished the damn downstairs door didn’t lock. It seemed like being able to knock on her door would make it easier. Asking her if she’d come down three flights of stairs to let him in was a lot more awkward.

I’m outside your door. Can I see you for a minute?

The wait for a response was probably only thirty seconds, but it felt like hours.
Did you bring pudding?

The last thing he thought he’d do standing outside her door, about to beg for another chance, was laugh. But he did, and he remembered how much he loved that about her—about them. They laughed a lot.

No.
He sent that and then typed again.
But I’ll go get some.

I’ll be right down.

The grip he had on his phone made him realize his hands were shaking, and he put the thing in his pocket. Every minute he waited seemed like an eternity but then, finally, he saw her through the door.

His heart pounded and he felt the hair stand up on his arms and neck as he watched her come toward him. God, he’d missed her so much. His hands were still shaking and he didn’t want to put them in his pockets, so he curled them into fists so maybe she wouldn’t see how nervous he was.

She pushed open the door, and his heart skipped a beat when she smiled at him. “Hey, you. Come on in.”

Scott wanted to touch her. He wanted to wrap his arms around her and squeeze her and not let go until they physically couldn’t stand there anymore. “Thanks.”

“You want to come up for a few minutes?” The smile was still there, but her eyes were sad.

“Even though I didn’t bring pudding?”

“Normally I wouldn’t offer hospitality to somebody showing up empty-handed like this,” she joked. Then her lip quivered and she gave a tiny one-shouldered shrug that almost killed him. “But I’ve missed you, so I’ll make an exception.”

He followed her up the stairs, trying to think of the right words to say to her. But he also didn’t want to overthink it because the only way he was going to get Jamie back was if he spoke from the heart. She wasn’t going to settle for any less.

“I saw you on the news,” he said when they reached the last flight, just because he couldn’t stand the silence anymore.

“I couldn’t believe it when the news crew showed up. A kid climbed a big-ass tree to rescue the neighbor’s cat.” She unlocked her door and pushed it open. “Needless to say, once the kid got up there, the cat came down. The boy didn’t. But there are worse days, so I don’t mind those kinds of calls.”

Walking into her apartment was like coming home. They’d spent so much time here that everywhere he looked, he was reminded of the weeks he’d had with her—the best weeks of his life.

“I’ve missed you, and when I saw you on the television, I couldn’t... I had to come, you know?”

“How have you been?”

“Shitty.” There was no point in sugarcoating it. “I screwed up again by just walking away. I don’t know if giving you space was the right thing or if I should have pushed and tried to get you to forgive me. I don’t know and I took what I thought was the easy way out.”

“It hasn’t been easy.”

“No. So I’m here and I’m still in love with you and I’m still sorry.” He realized they were both standing there in the living room, and he wished they could sit down. His knees felt a little wobbly. He changed his stance so his knees weren’t locked because passing out wasn’t going to impress her any. “I don’t want to put you in a box, Jamie. I want you to be you because you’re the person I love. I don’t want to change anything about you.”

She folded her arms over her chest, her lips pressed together for a few seconds. “I feel like it’s easy for you to say that now because I’m not going through the door with you anymore. I’m at Ladder 41 and you’re not there when I’m in situations you don’t want me to be in. Removing the situation doesn’t mean the feelings that trigger the behavior are gone, too.”

“Maybe that’s part of it. But there’s a chance we’ll end up working a fire together someday and if we do, it’s because they struck a shitload of alarms, so it’ll be a bad one. If that happens, I swear to God I will not get in your way. I’ll worry about you. Hell, I’ll be scared shitless for you, but I won’t ever disrespect you again.”

“I want to believe that. I want to so badly.”

“I’ve mourned, Jamie. I lost you and I’ve grieved for you and I hate that it was my own damn fault. I lost my mom to something she couldn’t control, but she fought it. And we’ve lost brothers who were doing what they were called to do. I didn’t even give you that. I thought it wouldn’t hurt as much to lose you now, but it’s even worse because I wasted what we had. I want to make memories with you. I want to grab every single day we can together.”

The tears shining in her eyes ripped his heart to pieces, but he forced himself to stand where he was and not try to wipe them away. “I want that, too.”

“We can do it, Jamie. We’ll make a life together and we’ll figure it out. We can have kids and they’ll have days with me and days with you and then we’ll have, what, three days a week all together? And we can chat and text and video chat during downtime. We can have it all.”

She laughed, the sound a bubble of happiness through her tears. “I can almost see it.”

“I
can
see it. And we’ll worry about each other, but we’ll be strong.” He moved toward her, unable to help himself. “I’ll go see the therapist that Ashley and Danny go to if you want me to. If we have a problem, we’ll figure it out together. I don’t ever want to walk away from you again.”

“You better not.” She looked him in the eye as she closed the distance between them. “Don’t ever push me away like that again.”

Burying his hands in her hair, he rested his forehead against hers, blinking against the tears that blurred his vision. “I swear I won’t. I love you, Jamie.”

“I love you, too.”

Scott felt like all the broken pieces inside of him knit back together again, and he kissed her. Slowly and tenderly because he wanted to savor this gift he’d been given. Then he wrapped his arms around her and squeezed.

“You’re everything to me,” he whispered. “I’m going to spend the rest of our lives making sure you know it.”

“I can’t wait.” She tilted her head back to smile at him. “It’s still early. What do you say we take a drive down to this little place I know on the South Shore and catch up. They have great seafood.”

Three months later...

T
HE
FLAMES
GREW
taller as smoke billowed around them. The smoke was thick and black, smelling like burnt meat and barbecue sauce.

“Turn the gas off,” Jamie yelled.

“Hey,” Scott said, turning and waving a spatula at her. “You’re not in charge of
this
company.”

“Obviously not, because if I was, that grill wouldn’t be sending up smoke signals to the neighbors to call 911 right now.”

“This is like a bad joke,” Lydia said. “How many firefighters does it take to put out a grill fire?”

There were half a dozen of them standing around the grill, so more than six, Jamie thought. Grant and Gavin were just laughing but the others ignored them.

“Maybe I should get a fire extinguisher,” Ellen Porter said.

“We’d never get that taste out of anything we cooked after that,” Aidan argued.

“Turn the gas off,” Jamie repeated.

“If we turn the gas off,” Scott said, “then the fire will go out.”

“I can’t believe they haven’t let you skip the exam and just made you an honorary officer,” Jamie said.

He waved the spatula at her again. “You’re going to pay for that later, funny lady.”

“If the fire goes out, how will we cook off the gunk so we can make the steaks?” Aidan shook his head, and then jumped back when something—probably leftover fat stuck to the grill plate—sizzled and popped. “Joey, you always man the grill when we do charity cookouts. Explain this to her.”

Joe, one of the guys from Ladder 41, shook his head. “Hell, no. I’m not here to explain anything to my LT. I’m just here for the beer and the steak, and it’s probably a good thing I like mine more on the well-done side.”

“If you turn the burners on full, that shit’ll burn off faster and we can eat sometime today,” Tommy said from his lounge chair in the shade.

“Dad!” Ashley walked out onto the back deck, one hand on her baby bump. “You of all people should know better than to say that to them.”

Jamie laughed and turned back to the folding table that was practically groaning under the weight of potluck food. They’d all come together to christen Aidan and Lydia’s new house with a backyard barbecue, and all she could do was hope the guys didn’t burn down their backyard. That would just be embarrassing, both personally and professionally.

Jess stepped out onto the deck, carrying a tray of condiments. “I don’t even know if there’s room for these on that table.”

“We’ll make room.” Jamie started shifting dishes around. “I heard you officially opened the Boston branch of Broussard Financial Services last week.”

“I did!” Jess set the tray down in the clearing Jamie had made. “It’s scary, but so exciting. And I’ll still fly to San Diego now and then, but being home with Rick all the time is amazing.”

“How are your grandparents doing?”

“They’re doing great. They love where they’re living and they’ve made a lot of friends there. I swear, they’re always doing something. And my dad’s going to fly out later this month.”

“Really? That’s awesome, Jess.” Jess’s father had been estranged from his parents for all of her life, so getting him to Boston was a big deal.

“I’m nervous, but I think it’s going to be good. Seeing the office is an excuse, but part of rebuilding their relationship is him facing where he came from. We’re going to have them all over for dinner, of course.”

“That’ll be good because it’s the house he grew up in, so the memories will be there, but you guys have changed it enough so they won’t be overwhelming.”

Jess smiled. “Exactly. I think after this visit, if it goes well, we’ll probably start planning our wedding. It won’t be at Kincaid’s Pub, but we’ll try to make a decent party.”

“Cavemen cooked dinosaur meat over open fires, didn’t they?” she heard Rick say. “Why can’t we just throw the damn steaks on?”