Nothing Left to Burn (2 page)

“Hi, Mrs. Logan.”

She continued to blink and then jumped up. “Sit, sit. I’ll reheat some pasta.”

“Mom, it’s okay. We already ate.”

But she was busy pulling plates from a cupboard and a plastic container from the refrigerator.

“Mom. Mom?” I took her shoulders and turned her around to face me. “What’s wrong?”

She sighed heavily and shook her head. “Your father,” she said, her face blank.

I braced for it—whatever thing I’d done to piss him off this time. “What?”

The blank expression disappeared, and her face turned stony and tight. “He’s…gone. He’s decided to leave. He doesn’t want to see either of us again.”

I forgot how to breathe. I opened my mouth, but the air just wouldn’t move. My ribs crushed my lungs, and little black and white dots filled my visual field. System offline, reboot.

When I was little, I used to have these episodes. Everything in the entire world, every fear, every worry, every
thing
, coalesced into a single point deep in my chest, and I couldn’t keep it inside. Matt was the one who’d taught me how to beat these episodes. He’d asked me silly things like “Why did the chicken cross the road?” (It didn’t. The road merely passed beneath the chicken.) and “Why did six hate seven?” (Because seven was hungry and
eight
nine.) and if I’d been able to breathe, I’d have laughed. It helped. He told me jokes and riddles and had me answer questions, because concentrating on him helped me forget about the pressure blocking my systems.

But without him, only one thought kept replaying in my head.

I
promised. I promised. I promised.

He
wasn’t supposed to go.
I
was.

Dimly, some corner of my brain realized if I could think about the promise, then I could think of questions Matt would have asked. I focused on chess openings in alphabetical order. By the time I got to the Evans Gambit, I could breathe again.

“Reece. Reece!”

“I’m okay.” My voice was nothing but a wisp of air. I blinked and found Mom crying next to me and Alex leaning over me. Somehow, I’d ended up in the chair Mom was in when we arrived.

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry,” she whispered, folding me up in a tight hug.

“Not your fault.” It was
his
. I pulled in a deep breath, trying not to pant, trying not to obsess about the damn promise. Mom pulled back and just stared at me.

“I won’t lie to you. Things have been really hard since Matt”—she paused, swallowed hard, and then finished the sentence—“died.”

My stomach rolled, but I waited for Mom to make her point.

“Things have been hard for all of us, Reece, but they’ve been really hard for your dad.”

I blinked. Did I hear her right? Did she just make a fucking excuse for him?

“He can’t talk about it. He can’t face it. He can’t even look at Matt’s things. He’s in complete denial.”

Oh, how terrible for him.

“Give him the time and space he wants, and maybe he’ll—”

My sound of disgust stopped her from finishing the sentence. She raked hair off her face—it was wild and sticking out all over—and put up her hands in a gesture of surrender.

“No. Forget it. Reece, the truth is your father will never change. Let him go. We’ll be fine without him.” Her voice cracked, and she pressed her lips together. “You boys go watch your show. I’m going upstairs to soak in a hot tub.”

We listened to her footsteps climb the stairs and creak over our heads. Alex pulled out the chair next to me and sat down with a sigh. “Reece, you okay?”

It was a rhetorical question.
Okay
was a state of being that I hadn’t felt in a long time, and he knew it. I was tired, tired of hearing excuses for my father, tired of being treated like a freak because I wasn’t Matt, tired of myself.

I shook my head, and he stood up. “Come on. Let’s watch TV, get out of our heads for a while.”

Alex had the uncanny ability to compartmentalize his world. We’d watch TV, and some part of his highly evolved brain would be working on chess gambits, SAT practice exams, and plans for the hovercraft he was bitterly disappointed to not yet have. Halfway into the first episode, Alex suddenly turned to me with the familiar gleam in his eye and twitch in his lip that I knew meant he had a theory.

“Reece,” he began, appraising me from head to toe. “What does your dad love beyond all things?”

I considered that for a moment. Half an hour ago, I’d have said my mother, but what the hell did I know? “Firefighting,” I finally answered.

Alex clapped his hands. “Yes! Exactly. It’s something he’d never quit, right?”

Slowly, I nodded, not quite connecting the dots. “Right.”

“What if you were to join the junior squad?” When my jaw dropped, Alex stopped my protest with a raised hand. “Just listen. He’s a career firefighter. Loves it so much, he hired extra crews for his business so he could spend more time volunteering. If you signed up, he couldn’t walk away from you. He couldn’t ignore you. And he couldn’t kick you out—not unless you did something so terrible, he’d have no choice.”

I was six foot two and a hundred and fifty pounds if I wore clothes on the scale. “I’m not…physical enough for that.”

He waved a hand. “Matt didn’t get ripped until he was, like, sixteen, and you’re taller than he was. You put the effort into training, you’ll be able to do it.”

“Maybe, but he’ll never sign the permission form.”

Alex inclined his head. “True.” And then he grinned. “But your mom will. Especially if you ask her now.”

My eyes popped wide. He was right. She was so pissed at my dad, she might do anything if she thought it would upset him back. “I like the letter idea better.”

Alex shook his head. “Write it if you need to get it out, but a letter now won’t make an impression. He’s already gone. You need to get inside him, Reece.” He tapped his temple.

“Yeah.” I reconsidered. “Yeah, where he lives.”

Alex smiled. “Exactly.”

Chapter 1

Reece

Dear Dad,

I promised Matt I’d do this. I know it’ll piss you off, but a promise is a promise, and I can’t let him down.

Baring your soul wasn’t as easy as I’d thought. There was so much I wanted to tell Dad. Remind him about all those times he’d said no, every time he’d made me feel less important than my brother. Every time he’d made me cry and wish I were Matt instead of me. There were
years
of pent-up resentment that could fill entire reams of paper, yet I’d managed to scrawl just a few lines. Somehow, the right words were impossible to find—if they existed at all.

I folded the crisp white sheet of paper into thirds, then folded that in half, tucked it carefully into my pocket, and thought about abandoning this entire pointless idea. But I had no other options. I sucked in a deep breath, tried to ignore the pounding of my pulse, and left the car.

It was time.

At the entrance where the roll-up doors were all the way up, I stopped and took a good look around. Red trucks gleamed in the light. I could hear guys busting each other’s balls, laughing hard and cursing loud. The slight scent of mildew tickled my nose when the April breeze blew my way. The fire station was every little boy’s fantasy, including mine. But I learned a long time ago that it did no good to dream.

Then I saw Amanda Jamison, packing nylon rope into a bag, and just watched. In her station uniform, the lean muscles in her long limbs flexed when she strode to a truck to stow the bag. I knew Amanda from school. Knew the blond hair she wore scraped viciously back and twisted into a knot at her neck was straight and smooth, reached past her shoulders, and smelled like lemonade. Knew I had no shot with her. She’d never said so much as “hi” to me.

She’d had a thing for my brother.

She caught sight of me, turned, and didn’t notice her rope bag tumble out of the truck. “Matt? Oh God. Matt.”

Matt.
My shoulders sagged. Okay. No turning back now. I swallowed hard and walked into the house where I had never been welcome. It took only three steps for recognition to fill Amanda’s eyes. Or maybe it was revulsion. The two often went hand in hand where I was concerned. Mom says people just didn’t
get
me. I figured that’s because Dad always told them I was strange.

“Excuse me.” I cleared my throat. “Could you direct me to the chief’s office?” I took out my completed application from the bag on my shoulder, and her eyes popped.

“
Reece
Logan,” she said with a sneer, and I jerked in surprise. Apparently, she
did
know me. She’d come to Matt’s funeral with a few other kids from junior squad. Hard to believe that was four months ago. She’d hugged my dad, kissed my mom’s cheek, and walked right past me. I figured that meant she’d heard all about my father’s version of the accident that killed Matt—and believed it.

When she glanced over her shoulder at a group of guys in turnouts checking the equipment on Truck 3, I knew exactly what she was thinking. She probably hoped they’d pick me up and toss me out of the station for her. I saw the way her eyes scanned me from head to toe. She was cataloging. Indexing. Comparing me to Matt. When I held out my hand, she looked at it with disgust all over her face.

I swallowed hard, searched for something,
anything
, to say. “You came to the funeral. You and Gage.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, and when she opened them, they were wet. “Yeah. We did.”

“Thanks for that. It was…hard.” I laughed once, a short uncomfortable huff of air, and then shrugged. Understatement of the century, but what the hell are you supposed to say about your brother’s funeral?

“Amanda? Problem here?”

She whipped around to face the tall, thin man standing in the swath of sunlight. He took a step closer, and I recognized him. Mr. Beckett, the chem teacher from school.

Her face hardened. “Right. Hard.” She picked up the rope bag she’d been packing and shoved it back into Engine 21. She slammed the compartment door, and I had the feeling she wished it were my head. I figured she didn’t want to know there was someone who looked this much like Matt, sounded like Matt, walking around while Matt couldn’t. When she stalked off to talk to Mr. Beckett, I knew I’d underestimated her hatred, but I couldn’t let that stop me.

“Hey!”

She whipped around. “What?”

“Chief.” I waved the sheet of paper at her. “Please.”

She pulled in a deep breath and ground her teeth together. “Go home.”

I laughed bitterly and shook my head. Hell, hers would probably be the nicest greeting I’d ever get in this house. I stepped around her, strode to the door that led from the apparatus floor to where I figured the offices were, and prayed I’d survive this, even if it was only long enough to keep my word to my brother.

Chapter 2

Amanda

He stood with the sun shimmering at his back, and I stopped breathing.

Matt. Oh my God. Matt.

The blood rushed from my head. The gear I was packing squirted from my hands, hitting the ground with a dull thud. I watched, dizzy, as the ghost in front of my eyes stepped out of the glare and became a living thing. Not Matt. Tall, maybe even taller than Matt, same toast-brown hair, same piercing brown eyes. But where Matt’s eyes used to glint with a bit of mischief, this boy’s eyes held something else.

Pain.

My heart gave a long slow roll when I realized who this was.

Reece Logan. Matt’s brother.

Oh
crap.
I shot an uneasy glance over my shoulder where the guys on Truck 3 checked their equipment, but the lieutenant wasn’t with them. And then I remembered he wasn’t on-shift on Wednesdays. Is that why Matt’s brother was here—because he knew his father
wouldn’t
be? I looked away, really wanting to avoid getting sucked into somebody else’s family drama, but it was too late. He drifted closer to me, stood so close I could feel the anxiety radiating off him in waves.

Damn it, when he spoke, he even
sounded
like Matt, but without the laugh in his voice. Frowning, I looked at him again. Now that I could see him up close, I noticed his face was more angular, his lips thinner than Matt’s, and there was a tiny scar running through one eyebrow. When he took out a completed application from the bag on his shoulder, my mouth unhinged. He said something about Matt’s funeral, and I swear, I’d have blasted him between the eyes if Mr. Beckett hadn’t picked that minute to walk in, crinkling a bag of potato chips.

He saw me talking to this boy and immediately frowned. “Amanda? Problem here?”

Crap, crap, shit.
Mr. Beckett had a strict no-boys rule.

I quickly got rid of Reece and turned to my foster father. “Sorry about that.”

He upended the rest of the chips into his mouth, folded up the bag, and put it in his pocket with a frown. “Who was that boy?”

I shrugged. “A new volunteer.”

“Do you know him?”

Don’t lie. Do not lie.
No lying is another rule. “His father’s a lieutenant here.”

Mr. Beckett’s eyebrows shot up over his glasses. “Really? He certainly didn’t look twelve.”

I shook my head. “He’s not. He’s in my grade, so he’s probably sixteen.”

“I wonder why he’s volunteering now. What changed?”

I didn’t wonder. I knew. “His brother got killed back in December.”

“Ah. How tragic.” Tragic—yeah, but Mr. Beckett’s expression relaxed. “But are you sure you don’t know him personally? You seemed extremely upset speaking to him.”

Oh, I knew Reece Logan. But I shook my head. “I never spoke to him until today.” Not a lie. “I know the lieutenant, and from what he says, he and his son do not get along. I don’t want that drama spilling over onto my squad.”

Mr. Beckett pressed his lips into a thin line and looked down at me over the rims of his glasses. “I’m not comfortable with you continuing here if there’s going to be drama.”