Nothing Left to Burn (19 page)

Who was this guy?

“Okay, okay, enough.” Jimmy led John to the truck. “Reece, why don’t you guys take off? Logan, get in the truck,” he said to John.

John held up his hands in surrender, still smirking, and climbed aboard without a word. Reece glared after him for a moment and then strode away.

It took me almost a full minute to close my mouth. By that time, Reece’s long legs had taken him halfway across the damn lot.

“Hey, Reece! Wait up!” I didn’t catch up to him until he’d reached his car.

“What?”

Tired as he was, as we all were, I was totally amazed to see the temper that still sizzled in his eyes. I never saw Reece as much of a fighter. He seemed more like a sulker.

Until now.

“What?” I echoed, grabbing his arm. “You really have to ask? What the hell was that back there? You
want
to get kicked out?”

“No.” He knocked my hand away. “Why the hell do you care anyway?”

I dropped my eyes to the ground. I lifted one shoulder and said only, “I didn’t like the way your dad ignored my squad because he’s—”

“
Your
squad?”

“Yeah.
Mine.
J squad is all I have that’s mine.” They took me in, made me one of them. Was it really so selfish to want to keep it? To protect it? I caught site of the emblem on my T-shirt. PROUD AND READY. Damn it, they should be more than just words. “What your dad did isn’t right. Everybody pulled together to help get you trained up. We all did great today and deserved some applause for that.”

“Well, maybe you should tell
him
.”

“I did.” I looked away, my face burning.

He continued to seethe and then blew out a long slow breath. With it, his temper finally faded. “I’m sorry.”

I didn’t want him to be sorry. The truth was he didn’t have anything to be sorry about. But I was hot, hungry, and too damned tired to argue over it. “Okay, I guess we all keep forgetting you’re new.”

Reece gave me the side eye. “Trust me, he’s completely aware of that.”

His words, or maybe it was the look in his eyes, squeezed my heart. I always thought families loved each other just
because
—that they didn’t have to perform feats like this…this twisted audition Reece was doing for his dad. But I didn’t say anything. What did I know about families?

I turned, shielded my eyes against the sun, and watched Engine 21 pull out of the parking lot.

I used to like John Logan. After Matt died, John cleaned out Matt’s locker and never uttered his name again. I’d tried to talk to him about a month after the funeral. I’d asked John if we could do a memorial event for Matt, but John’s mouth went thin and a hard look came into his eyes—a look that screamed hatred and fury. I’d stopped talking midsentence, the closest I’d come to one of John Logan’s legendary temper displays—until today. But John just shook his head and said memorials were a damn waste of time and had no point. Anybody who could forget Matt Logan had something wrong with them, and no memorial would ever be able to fix that. I couldn’t argue with that logic, so I’d dropped the subject.

That hard look in John’s eyes never faded.

With Reece in our house, that look just kept getting harder, and it completely broke my heart. Reece was trying so hard.

No one had ever tried for me.

I glanced back at Reece. The look in
his
eyes never faded either. The looks—John’s angry and Reece’s so painfully sad—were like some kind of symbiotic life-form, each feeding the other, or feeding off the other.

I clenched my fists.
Stupid. Stubborn.
They were so damn lucky and had no freaking clue.

Chapter 17

Reece

I’m not a coward. I’m not sure what I am, but I’m not that. I used to be tired. And sad. So fucking sad. But that was a long time ago. I’d kill to feel only sad right now.

I sank against my mother’s car, unable to look at Amanda.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly, cutting me in half.

“No! No, Amanda, it’s not your fault.”

“Reece, for what it’s worth, I think your dad was proud of you today. He can’t stand it, but he was.”

I snorted out half a laugh. “He hates me, Amanda.”

Her face twisted. “No.”

“Trust me.” I snorted again and opened the car door for her. “I had all these issues when I was a baby. Colic. I didn’t sleep. I was afraid of everybody who wasn’t my mom. She says we never bonded—my dad and me.” I rolled my eyes. What a stupid word.
Bond.
Because I didn’t do cute shit like other babies, my dad didn’t have to love me? Blood, DNA—why wasn’t that enough? Isn’t that how it was supposed to work?

“I was about three when I figured it out. He and Matt spent a ton of time together—camping, fishing, playing catch. I used to cry and beg to join them, but—” I shook my head. This was pointless. I sounded like I was still three, whining about everything that didn’t fit my sense of fair.

I walked around the car and climbed behind the wheel, and Amanda got into the passenger seat. We sat there for a long moment, staring through the windshield at the empty parking lot. The car smelled like lemons—fresh squeezed lemonade—and my mouth watered. Suddenly, the dam burst, and words just fell out of my mouth.

“Dads are supposed to
teach
their sons, you know? They’re supposed to tuck them in at night, chase away the monsters under the bed, help them become men. He never did that stuff with me, just Matt.” I slammed my palm against the wheel. “I should have hated Matt, but I couldn’t. He’s the one who taught me how to bait a hook and tie my shoes and pitch a curve ball and even piss standing up. God! I miss him. I miss him so fucking much, it feels like it’s gonna kill me.”

I covered the tattoo of Matt’s name burned in the skin over my heart and squeezed my eyes shut, but tears dripped from them anyway. A soft warmth spread over my hand. For a minute, I thought it was Matt. I opened my eyes and found Amanda’s hand covering mine.

“You’re here. And you’re dealing.”

No, I wasn’t. Not really. The note in my pocket suddenly felt like a hot knife twisting in my gut.

“Matt was what held our family together. Now he’s gone…Dad’s gone. Mom didn’t even argue about it.” I shook my head.

She didn’t get it. She just kept looking at me like I was a toddler with a boo-boo on his knee.

I cursed. “Look at me, Amanda!” I waved my hand at my face. “I have his eyes, his build. I wear the same shoe size as he does, but everything about me bugs him. He will
never
love me the way he loved Matt, and I got that a long time ago. So I’ll settle for—” I broke off abruptly. I’d nearly spilled the truth, and that was a secret nobody was getting from me, even if she did smell like lemonade. “I’ll settle for his respect.”

She stared at me for a long moment and finally nodded. “You’re getting it, Reece. You worked your ass off, getting in shape, studying. I’ve never seen a cadet work as hard as you. Hang in there, okay?” She ended with a smile that seared itself into my brain.

Amanda had a crooked tooth.

How had I never noticed that before? One of her bottom teeth was just a little crooked, and she even had a dimple. I would have noticed the dimple if she smiled at me like this sooner. Maybe this meant she didn’t hate me.

Wow. Someone who didn’t hate me. I could get used to that. I grinned back and stuck out a hand. “Deal.”

She took my hand, shook it once, but didn’t let go. Her pulse—or was it mine?—tripped against my fingers. The lemony air inside the car taunted me, and I wanted to pull her hair out of that tight knot and bury my face in it. I could hear her breathe, feel the heat against my face each time she did. Something was happening here, something that shouldn’t, no matter how much I wanted it to. And God, I wanted it, as much as I wanted my dad to forgive me. Maybe more.

Staring into my eyes, she licked her lips, and I was lost or maybe I was found. I didn’t know, I didn’t care, I didn’t think. I’m pretty sure the world stopped turning. My heart sped up and kept time with her pulse. A strand of hair that had escaped that tight little knot fell across her eyes, and it called to me, like the ribbon on a birthday gift, begging to be unwrapped. I tugged the band in her hair free, tossed it on the dashboard, and let her hair spill through my fingers, closing my eyes as her sweet scent filled the air. I traced the curves of her face, the dimple I’d just discovered. Amanda tilted her head, nuzzling against my palm, and sighed like I was a dream she didn’t want to end. I pressed my lips to hers, and her hands gripped my arms, pulling me closer, and when her lips opened under mine, time stopped. Our tongues touched, and my stomach flipped. It was a kiss that should have broken hearts, but mine was mended. When we finally separated, I patted my chest to make sure it was still there.

It was.

“Oh God, Reece. This is impossible.” She touched her lips with fingers that shook, and pride burned through me, knowing I was the one who’d made them shake—that I even could. “What are we going to do?” She hugged me tight, like she wanted to keep me, and I never wanted to be kept so badly in my whole life.

I smiled down at her, because impossible or not, I was too happy not to. “I don’t know, but I promise I’ll figure it out.”

A cell phone buzzed, and we jumped apart like we’d been Tasered.

“It’s the Becketts. Oh God, I’m late.”

“I’ll drive you home.” I started the car, pulled out of the lot, and drove with that grin on my face all the way to her place.

Chapter 18

Amanda

Crap, crap, shit!
What in the actual hell just happened? A month ago, I hated this boy, and today, I’m kissing him?

Reece shifted into gear and pulled out of the lot. I sank lower into the seat and tried to pretend everything was cool, that my heart hadn’t just cracked through its armor. I knew better than this. I knew better than anyone just how badly love can mess you up. I’d whispered “Love you” when Mrs. Merodie tucked me in one night, and the social worker removed me from that foster home the next day. And Mom. Jesus, Mom was doing time because Dmitri, her jerk-off boyfriend, conned her into a scheme that got
her
caught with all the evidence while he pleaded stupidity.

Okay, he pleaded no contest, but Mom was still the one who went to prison. She was in an upstate correctional facility that I couldn’t visit unless someone was willing to take me. Enough said.

I snuck a glance at Reece and wished I could kick myself. He’d been through hell today. And then I—oh God. He was smiling like he’d just won the lottery.

I jerked in my seat.

Me? A lottery prize.

I tried to remember a single time in my life when anyone had treated me like something precious. Something special. Only Mom had, and then she’d…stopped.

Since the day he walked into the firehouse, Reece looked at me like I was a real girl. I was never
Man
to him but
Amanda
. And yeah, I kind of liked the way he stared at me, breathing through his mouth, trying not to look at my chest.

Matt never looked at me that way. Or made me feel the way I was feeling—ready to say fuck the rules and statistics, ready to risk everything just to be looked at that way one more time.

I blew out a long, slow breath. “I live a few blocks off Upper Cedar Grove.”

He nodded. “I know where that is.” He was still smiling.

I
made
him
smile
like
that.

In all these weeks, in every smile I’d seen, there was always that little bit of pain Reece couldn’t completely hide. I knew Reece could single-handedly fight a fire, save the kid, the old lady, and the puppy, and John would probably just smirk and say Matt could have done it better. If I hadn’t seen John treat Reece like crap myself, I wouldn’t have believed it. John Logan was one of the reasons this squad felt like family for me. Matt, Gage, and all the lieutenants had rallied around me, trained me up fast. I was so afraid it would be just like foster care…always the outsider, always looking in.

Oh.

The thought slammed into my brain, like a home-run swing to the head. This was what life was like for Reece inside his own family. Having to watch over and over when his dad did things with his brother instead of him, see the way his dad blamed him for the accident that killed Matt. Jesus, if Reece were a foster kid, there was no doubt in my mind John would have sent him back.

A tear dripped to my hand, and it pissed me off because I had to decide if that sucked more than not having a dad at all.

“Which one’s yours?” He signaled and turned onto the street where the Becketts lived.

Foster home number four.

“This one.” I pointed to the two-story with blue shutters. “Thanks for the ride. I’m…God…I’m sorry.”

“Amanda, wait—”

I shut the door before he could say anything else and ran up the walk, already feeling the cold and loneliness settle back in my bones.

***

Safely upstairs in my room, I fell face-first onto the bed, licking my lips.

They still tasted like Reece.

Suddenly, I remembered what he said the other night at the diner, about kisses so hot, so intense, they’d set records. I wanted that kiss like I wanted my next breath. I was so friggin’ jealous of the girl he described, I almost got sick.

And tonight, I
was
that girl.

Oh God! I smothered a sob with my pillow. What was I gonna do? I couldn’t be with Reece, and now, I couldn’t be without him. Everything was such a fucking mess.

A knock on my door made me bolt upright. I snagged tissues from the box next to my bed and wiped my eyes. “Yeah?”

Mrs. Beckett poked her head inside. “Hey, Amanda, we’re—what’s wrong?”

“Oh, nothing. Just really tired. It was a hard practice today.”

Frowning, she stepped inside and sat next me on the edge of the bed, holding an envelope. “Did your squad fail?”