The Love Series Complete Box Set (123 page)

Lucky is a funny word, though.

I don’t think anyone would consider being stuck on the other side of a three-foot thick cement wall where you hear your partner screaming in pain
lucky.
There’s no luck involved in not being able to get to him because you can’t move, because you’re being burned alive. I don’t think anyone would feel fortunate if they were the first to be rescued as the screams on the other side of the wall fade into silence.

“Well, good morning there, Evan. How are you feeling today?” Janice, the day shift nurse, cheerfully carries in my breakfast, smiling as bright as can be.

I try to push myself up in the bed and it hurts like a bitch.

Luck my ass.

“Hey, Jan. I’ve been better.” She places the tray on my side table and helps me get adjusted, propping some pillows behind my back.

“Dr. Tompkins will be around shortly and we’ll see about getting you out of this place soon. That ought to cheer you up, huh?” She pushes the bed table in front of me and opens the lid for my breakfast. “You got a few visitors out in the waiting room. Are you up for some company?” She hands me a cup with a few pills in it and I swallow them down with the weak coffee next to my tray.

“Sure, but not for long.” I don’t need to be reminded of how I failed. Hopefully, the pain meds will kick in before long and I can pretend to need sleep.

Halfway through my plate of eggs and bacon, Fitzy and Manny step into the room, with a cup of real coffee and a box of donuts in hand. I guess having people visit you comes with some benefits.

“Hey, man, you look a lot better than yesterday.” Manny hands me my coffee and I manage a polite nod.

I want to say,
“Wanna trade places, see how good it feels?”
but I bite back my sarcasm. He did save me, after all.

“Thanks. Feeling a little better. Nurse said I might be able to go home soon, so there’s that.”

Fitzy props open the box of donuts and I grab one. Plopping himself down into the chair next to my bed, he looks exhausted. I’m sure these last few days haven’t been easy on him either. As Captain of our squad, I’m sure he blames himself for what happened.

I think it’s genetic with firefighters. We can’t help but blame ourselves when something goes wrong. It’s how I’m feeling about Brody.

“How’s the kid doing?” No one told me anything yesterday, and if they did, I was so out of it on pain meds, that I don’t remember. All I can recall is someone telling me that Brody was here too. Knowing that they got him out of the building was enough for me at the time, but now I need to know what happened to him.

My question hangs heavily in the room for a few long moments. Fitzy drops his elbows to his knees and scrubs his hands over his face. He looks like he hasn’t slept since everything happened.

Manny clears his throat and it breaks the tense silence in the room. “He’s okay. Still not out of the woods yet, but he’s improving by the hour.”

“Improving by the hour? What the hell does that mean? How bad is he?” My temper flares as my body tenses. The fucking burns ripple in a flash of pain across my stomach.

He’s alive; I have to focus on that, because right now, the look that Fitzy and Manny are sharing is scaring the shit out of me.

“Yeah, he’s alive. And he’s going to be okay, but they’re . . .” Fitzy is lost for words. Well, fuck that never happens.

“What is it?”

Manny stands beside me and looks over at Fitzy one last time as he nods, obviously granting Manny permission to tell me whatever the hell is going on.

“His legs were crushed, Evan. He survived and that’s what . . .”

“No. Fucking tell me the whole story. What happened?” Pulling the thin blanket covering my legs tightly into my fist, my knuckles go white with tension.

“They saved his life. That’s what’s important, but they might not be able to save his leg,” Fitzy says with more sadness than I’ve ever heard the man express in the years I’ve known him.

“Fuck,” I curse in disbelief as I slam my hands down into the bed. Pain vibrates through my broken right arm, but the physical pain is the easy part. Knowing what happened to Brody could have been prevented if I would have done my job, if I would have protected him, that’s the kind of pain that won’t ever go away.

“I wish it weren’t true, but it is.” Fitzy stands abruptly and jams his hands into his pockets. “Be as pissed as you want to be about it. Hell, we all are, but you’re going to have to get that all out now before you go see him.”

“I . . .” In true Captain form, he stops my protest before it can even leave my mouth.

“You can and you will. We’re going down there now, give his family a chance to head home for a few hours and get some rest. We’ll stop back up and give you an update on our way out.”

I nod resolutely as Fitzy leaves the room. Just as Manny gets to the door, he turns back to me. Tipping his chin to my busted arm, which is currently lying across my burnt stomach, a look of guilty anguish washes over Manny’s face. “I wish I could have gotten to you sooner, Evan.”

I never thought of it that way—that someone would feel guilty about what happened to me. “Don’t worry about it, man.”

“Yeah, well, I’ll see you later.”

As Manny walks away, I let the medicated fog fall over me, washing away the pain I feel at letting down Brody, at putting Manny in a position where he has to worry about having let me down.

“Do you need help, Ev?” Tessa’s words sound muffled through the bathroom door.

Using my teeth, I tear off one last piece of medical tape and somehow manage to flatten it across my healing skin. “Nah, I got it,” I call out dismissively. Stepping out into the hallway, I slide past her and walk into my bedroom.

Rifling through some clothes, I pull out a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. “Why don’t you let me help you?” She leans up against the dresser, arms crossed over her chest, legs crossed at the ankles. There’s sadness in her eyes and I know more than a little anger. I haven’t been all that easy to get along with since I was discharged a week ago.

“‘Cause I don’t need it. I told you that.”

She huffs a sarcastic laugh at me as she watches me wrestle my cast into my shirt. “You sure about that?”

It still hurts like a bitch to move my shoulder through the sleeve, but I’d rather do it myself than rely on someone for something as simple as putting a fucking shirt on. “Yeah, I’m sure,” I snap angrily.

I sink down onto my bed, clearly frustrated with . . . well, with everything. “Tessa, I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“Then don’t say anything. Like you always do,” she says. Storming out of the room, I know she expects me to follow.

I give her a few minutes to cool down while I gather my thoughts. We’ve been together for a little over two years now. It’s been good, but I know she’s looking for more. More that I just can’t give, especially in light of what’s recently happened.

Right now,
here
is not what’s important. What’s important is getting to the hospital to visit Brody after his amputation.

God, the fucking kid lost his leg because of me. If
I
would have crawled out of that room first, then I would be the one missing
my
right leg below the knee. Not some new, fresh twenty-four-year-old probie.

The cabinets slamming out in the kitchen stir me from my thoughts of guilt and shame. I guess I should at least try to calm her down before I leave.

Standing in the arched entryway of the small kitchen, I lean up against the frame and watch her make a cup of coffee.

She is beautiful; that much I can’t deny. Long and lean, muscular but enticingly curvy, dark and exotic. The crux—she’s needy. Needy as fuck and I don’t know how much more of her neediness I can take.

I step behind her, inhale her fruity-mixed-with-vanilla scent and get lost for a minute—just a minute, and then she opens her mouth.

“You’ve only been home for a few days and already you’re going back there.” Hell yeah, I’m freakin’ going. Damn rookie loses his leg and today’s the first day after his amputation—that happened
because
of me—he’s allowed to have visitors again. Damn fuckin’ straight, I’m going back there.

Choosing not to lay into her, I just run my hand through my hair and reign in my anger. “We’ve been through this, Tessa.”

“Been through what? That you’re there for
them
more than you ever are for
me?
” Throwing her arms up in frustration, she stares at me with such contempt. My brain is incapable of understanding how one person could be so selfish. How is it possible to lack so much compassion? Here come the tears.

I can’t stand to see her upset, not because I feel bad about my decision. I hate seeing her cry because she does it to make me feel guilty, to get me to give in to her. And I do. “Come here.” She willingly walks into my open arms and I press my lips to her unruly, dark brown hair.

The words “I’m sorry” are on the tip of my tongue, but I refuse to say them—this time. I’ve said them too many times in the past—when I missed her sister’s wedding because O’Hallaran needed to swap tours because of his daughter’s first ballet recital, when I had to trade vacations with Jones because his son was playing in the state championships.

Holding her against my chest kills—it physically hurts more than I’m willing to express. Burn wounds hurt like a motherfucker, but she wouldn’t know. No one knows the pain of those kinds of wounds—no one except my brothers. The ones who are waiting for me at the hospital; waiting for another brother to wake up from surgery only to find out that he’s lost his leg.

That’s where I need to be.

Not here.

But she doesn’t understand that, so I try my best to explain, as carefully as possible.

She leans back from my arms and looks up into my eyes, which I’m sure are shadowed by my conflicting thoughts. “I need to go, but I promise . . .”

Tessa pushes away from me, causing excruciating pain in my still-dislocated shoulder. “You? Promise? What exactly are you promising, Evan?”

Her arched eyebrow and snarky tone are more than I care to deal with right now. “I can’t get into this right now.” So much for expecting her understanding.

The nasty laugh that passes by her lips reminds me of every reservation I have ever had about her. I can’t deal with her right now, so I step back and grab my jacket from the kitchen chair. Painfully, I pull it over my arm, forgetting about my cast—damn thing. I toss it back on the chair; frustrated and pissed off as I walk toward the door. Just as my hand hovers above the knob, her voice reaches my ear. “Of course you can’t deal with it right now. You never have time for me.”

I shake my head, not knowing how to move forward—if moving forward is even an option with her. The absolute last thing I want to do it to turn around and look at her disgusted and angry face. “I’ll be back later. We’ll talk then.”

Without a backward glance, I walk out into the chilly fall air, the sounds of the city soothing rather than chaotic. Driving toward my work-family, I can’t help but wonder what the hell I’m driving away from.

Chapter Four

October 15, 1995

Two weeks.

That’s how long he’s been gone from my life.

I’ve already done the calculations and know the exact number of hours and minutes too.

I’ve spent the last fifteen days, ten hours and twenty-three minutes without Jimmy. It seems like the only thing that keeps me going is my sick need to watch the clock simply add another minute to my tally.

You’d be surprised how you find ways to occupy your mind in the hauntingly quiet darkness of the night. You’d be surprised how sleep eludes you when you don’t have a warm, strong chest to nuzzle into. I find that the only way I can get any rest is if I curl up with his pillow. It still smells like him. The worst minutes are the ones right after I wake up. Still drowsy and unaware of my reality, I think the scent of his pillow, or whatever article of his clothing that I’ve used as a security blanket to lull myself to sleep at night, is actually him. In those moments of exhaustion and confusion, I allow myself to believe, if only for a split second, he’s still alive. That he’s still with me.