Nothing Left to Burn (17 page)

I watched him go, shivering from the cold.

***

We sat around a high-top table in the diner in town, sharing an order of loaded nachos and sipping drinks—Coke for everyone except Reece. He had lemonade. Reece stuck his finger in his mouth and then winced. “Rope burns.”

I laughed once and looked down at my own calloused hands. I never noticed the rough skin or the broken nails before. I wondered if boys might like to hold hands with someone whose hands were soft, like a real girl’s or something.

Maybe.

What the hell did I know about girl stuff?

And then I remembered it didn’t matter. No boys for me. Not until I was out of the foster care system.

I hid my hands under the table and stared out the window, trying to find something to say that wasn’t about rope burns or knot tying or hose advancing. Reece looked really uncomfortable, like he was hoping a small kitchen fire would start and save him from having to talk to anybody.

Bear slurped the bottom of his glass. “So that was intense today. Hard to believe your old man ever made a mistake, you know?”

Reece shrugged, shifted. His face clouded up for a minute, but he didn’t say anything. He suddenly lifted his head and asked, “Who turns seventeen first?”

“Uh, me.” Max raised a finger. “My birthday’s coming up soon.”

Birthdays.
The thought sent tears to sting the back of my eyes. When it was just Mom and me, she used to make a big deal out of my birthdays. She’d invite my friends over for cupcakes and old-fashioned games, and at the moment of my birth—six o’clock in the morning—she’d wake me up with a softly sung version of “Happy Birthday,” one last cupcake she’d saved just for me, glowing with a single candle, and we’d eat it together, getting crumbs all over my bed.

“You gonna stick?” Ty asked, scooping up more nachos, and I shoved the memories back into their corner.

“Hell yeah, I’m gonna stick. I didn’t work my ass off all these years just to quit when it gets good. Logan knows what I mean, right?”

Reece shifted again, his eyes darting to Max. “What?”

Max smirked. “Come on. I saw your face when those bells rang. You can’t wait to be on the truck. Neither can I.”

“Rig boner,” Kevin announced.

Reece’s eyes almost fell out of his skull. “Rig boner?”

Gage slapped the back of Kevin’s head. “Jesus, dude. A little class?”

Kevin just grinned and bopped on his stool. “Like you guys never heard that before.”

“Um, yeah.” I scratched at my neck, which was suddenly blazing. “It’s something the guys say all the time.”

Reece’s dark eyes locked on mine, soft and sweet, and then he flashed a grin. “That’s good. I’m glad there’s a name for what I felt.”

“Dude.” Bear put a hand on his shoulder. “Everybody feels it.”

“So what about you, Logan? You gonna stick when you turn seventeen?” Max asked.

The smile froze. “Yeah. Of course.”

Gage frowned and caught my eye. I shrugged. Yeah, that was weird. Yeah, I agreed; something was up. No, I didn’t know what.

Max picked up on it too. “Yeah? You don’t sound so sure.”

“I’m sure, I’m sure.” Reece waved his hands in protest.

“That’s good, because everybody at this table is working hard for you.” Max dropped his fork with a loud clang. “I’d hate that to be for nothing.”

Reece hung his head. When he lifted it again, the smile was back. “You guys, all that you did for me, even when I know you hate me—”

“We don’t hate you, Logan.” Bear flung a balled-up napkin at his face.

Reece’s smile faded a bit. “It’s okay. A lot of people do. Kind of used to it now.”

With a loud smack, I dropped both hands on the table. “Okay. Enough. Why don’t you tell us what happened with your brother and why your dad is so pissed at you?”

Reece’s face went white. Gage shook his head at me, and I squirmed. “Forget it. You don’t have to tell us.”

“No.” He gulped. “You should know. You guys have been great. Really.” He took a deep breath and blew it out. His voice shook. “My dad taught Matt how to drive. But not me. I asked over and over again, and he never would. So I asked—” He broke off and shut his eyes for a second. “I asked Matt to teach me. He took me out almost every day.” He smiled, remembering his brother. When he spoke again, his voice sounded strangled, and I knew he was trying hard not to cry. “He was so cool. You guys knew him. He was…my best friend.”

He paused and then laughed. “Everything was cool. Until it snowed.”

His smile disappeared. Gage leaned forward, but Reece wouldn’t look any of us in the eye.

“Matt said everybody needs to know how to drive in the snow. He took me to a parking lot, over by the mall. They hadn’t gotten around to plowing one of the fields yet. A few cars were out there, turning 360s. Matt told me what to do. For an hour, we had a blast, drifting and skidding around in that snow. I was doing great—Matt said so. I practiced and practiced, and each time the car went into a skid, I was able to recover it.”

Suddenly, he shoved his chair back, curled over his knees, and rocked back and forth. “Except for the last one.”

“What happened?” Bear asked, and Reece shook his head.

“I wish I knew. I swear, it was the same skid I’d done a few dozen times that day. Only this one, I couldn’t recover. I hit a light pole. It fell and…God! It…it crushed the top of the car.” He started to breathe hard, rubbing his chest.

I wiped tears from my eyes and waited for him to go on.

“It took them twenty minutes to cut us out of the car, and I couldn’t—I couldn’t stop—” He clenched his hands into fists, then opened his hands and just stared at them.

They shook.

It was a long moment before he spoke again. “Matt—God! I woke up alone, and the nurses, the doctors, none of them would tell me anything. He…he died while I was asleep in my hospital bed. I broke an arm. He had a broken leg, broken ribs, broken neck.”

He looked up at us then, and his eyes were heartbreak and blame. Bear sniffled and then put a hand on Reece’s shoulder, gave it a squeeze. Reece jolted. It was like he forgot we were there.

“Dad didn’t want to tell me. He didn’t want me at the funeral. He wouldn’t talk to me. Wouldn’t look at me. Until I made him.”

Gage’s eyebrows shot up. “By joining J squad?”

Reece nodded once. “At first. But not now, not anymore. Now it’s for me.” He spread his hands. “And for you.”

Everybody just stared at him for a minute. “Logan, we don’t want payback. We’re a team.” Gage waved a hand around the table. “Are you telling us you’re in this for the long haul?”

He nodded. “I am. Definitely.”

This time, his voice held this really solid note of certainty, and there was a part of me that punched the air and shouted
Yes
! If he was planning to stick around, there was a chance, a really thin one, that he and I could be together when I was on my own, with no more rules, and I didn’t know why, but I wanted that more than birthday cupcakes in bed.

I stood up, excused myself, and practically ran to the restroom for the second time this evening to hide my hopes behind a stall door. By the time I got back, only Bear and Reece were left at the table. Reece had his head down.

“Where’d everybody go?”

Bear jerked his chin at the exit. “Max had a date. Ty and Kevin got a ride with him.”

“Great,” I muttered. “What about you, Reece? No dates?”

“I wish.” Reece sat back in his chair, wiped a hand over his mouth, and picked at a nacho chip—didn’t eat it, just picked it apart. “Last winter, I fell for somebody,” he began, and I felt a pinch deep in my chest.

Last
winter?

“What’s she like, dude?” Bear leaned in.

“She’s got this, I don’t know, this
style
that’s hard-core strength under a layer of pure soft.” He laughed once. “I can’t explain it, but God, I love to watch her move.”

Even though it killed me by syllables, I clung to every word he spoke.

“She didn’t know I existed for a long time, and then one day, she got close enough for me to smell her. She reminds me of lemonade.” He held up his glass and took a sip, shutting his eyes. “I didn’t want to talk to her, didn’t want her to notice me, because I would have bet money on it that she was like everybody else in my life who thought Matt was Superman or something.”

Oh God. I wanted to squeeze his hand and tell him he’s cool too, but I couldn’t risk it.

“I imagine these scenes,” he said, drawing the glass along his flushed face. “These elaborately staged moments when she’d tell me it was never Matt but
me
she wanted, and then we’d kiss and it would be so amazing, so intense, so fucking hot, it would set records.”

Tears stung the back of my eyes. Oh yes, I wanted a kiss like that. I wanted
that
kiss. I looked away, disappointment crushing me from the inside out.

“Man, you okay?” Bear nudged me.

“Oh, um, sure. I gotta get back to the Becketts’ house. See ya.”

“Later,” Bear said.

I walked away, cursing my mother and her stupid boyfriend the whole way home.

Chapter 15

Reece

You made me. But you could never be proud of me, could you? I was different. Alien. And that only made you mad.

It had been a hell of a night. I climbed up the front steps to Alex’s door, knocked, and bounced impatiently until he answered.

“Hey! Did you see my text? It’s working, Alex!”

He didn’t smile. “Great.”

I peered at him carefully. “You okay?”

“Fine. What text?”

My smile faded. “Oh, um, nothing. I thought I’d tell you how my class went.”

He didn’t invite me inside. “It’s kind of late.”

“Dude, it’s barely ten o’clock.” A muscle in his jaw twitched, and I frowned at him. “You’re not fine. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“Okay.” He was obviously lying, so I tried changing the subject. “We did knots tonight, and then the squad invited me to the diner with them. Alex, it was great! All that studying with Bear—it paid off. I practiced knot tying on some old clothesline I found in the basement. When Dad started class tonight, he told us a story about how he fucked up—do you believe that? My dad actually made a mistake once?”

Alex nodded and smiled with tight lips while I babbled on and on about my class and finally gave up. Obviously, he didn’t want to hear about it and didn’t want to talk about whatever was wrong. His eyes were flat, and the muscles in his neck were tight. Didn’t need a genius to tell me Alex was pissed.

At me.

“Okay.” I nodded grimly. “Whatever I did, I’m sorry.”

He shook his head. “No apology needed. Like I said, I’m fine.”

Fine. Sure. Okay. “See you tomorrow?”

He snorted. “Yeah. Tomorrow.”

I hovered in the open doorway, a ball of nausea swelling in my gut. “Alex, please. Tell me what I did wrong.”

“Nothing, Reece. You did nothing.”

He closed the door in my face.

I sat down on Alex’s front steps, gripped my head in my hands, and tried to figure out what I did—or didn’t do. It wasn’t his birthday. We didn’t have plans that I forgot about. I paid him back for the movie tickets he bought. I stared at the stars and wondered why in hell somebody was always pissed off at me. I finally—finally!—got somewhere with my dad, and now my best friend doesn’t want to hear about it.

Maybe I should just go now…forget about J squad.

I took out my note and started writing.

***

The days passed slowly.

Alex had graduated from avoiding and evading me to outright animosity. I still didn’t have any idea what I’d done wrong and felt his absence almost as deeply as Matt’s. Despite the churning in my gut, I slept like the dead every night. Must be all those hours of working out.

I was able to carry thirty pounds up and down those bleachers now. I could don personal protective gear in under two minutes. I could conserve tank oxygen for up to fifteen minutes and tie knots blindfolded.

Saturday morning, I woke with the sun. Practice day. The whole J squad had been buzzed about this for days. Once a month, the squad practiced at the county training academy in the next town. Today was that day.

I whistled for Tucker, but he twitched an ear as if to say, “Oh hell no,” and burrowed deeper in his bed.

“Come on, pal. Want a treat?”

The dog stretched, pulled himself up, and padded out of my room without a single look back.

I sighed. “Jeez, you too?”

If there was anybody
not
mad at me for some reason, I’d like to meet him.

Once Tucker got some food in his belly, he was happy to go for a long walk. I took him by Alex’s house, and he immediately turned up the walk, familiar with the route.

“No, boy. Alex doesn’t want to see us anymore.”

The dog whimpered.

“Yeah. Me too.”

Back home, I headed for Matt’s gym equipment in the basement, did a half-hour workout, and got ready to leave.

“You’re up early,” Mom said on a yawn. She padded downstairs in her pajamas, hair pulled up in a ponytail.

“I have to go to the training academy today. Can I take the car?”

She shrugged. “I guess so. I have no plans today. When are you going to fix my wall?”

I blinked at her. “Crap, I forgot. I’ll do it tomorrow.”

“Promise?”

“Yes. I’m sorry. I totally forgot about it.”

She held out car keys. “You’re not going to get hurt, right?”

“No,” I said with a shake of my head. “We’re not allowed to practice with real fire.” I took the keys, but she didn’t let go. Instead, she grabbed me in a fierce hug.

“Reece, please don’t take any risks just to impress Dad.”

She didn’t say it. But I knew what she was thinking. It was a waste of time and effort. Didn’t mean I shouldn’t try. “I won’t, Mom.”

But I would. Of course I would.

By eight o’clock, I was parked in the lot of the training facility, a huge firefighters’ playground that served the whole county. I looked around at the fake structures, the junked vehicles—all kinds of things designed to build skills.