Page 45 of A Sudden Response

“Wait,” Eric said, trying to make sense of what she was saying. “Then, what are you planning to do for work?”

Frowning, Joe said, “What I’m doing now.”

He stared at her for a moment, wondering if she was kidding. Judging by the way she met his glare head-on, he realized that she was serious. That was going to be a problem for him because he needed her off the truck as soon as possible.

“Why the hell would you keep working on the truck when dispatchers get paid more?” Eric demanded, trying to stay calm.

“Because I love what I do,” Joe said with a shrug. “But you had a good point the other day, so I decided that I needed to have something to fall back on in case anything ever happened.”

She was kidding.

She had to be.

“You don’t need something to fall back on, Joe, because I’ll always take care of you!” Eric bit out, feeling his patience snap. “What you need to do is find a safer job so that I don’t have to worry about you every fucking minute of the day!”

“We’ve been over this, Eric. That’s not your job,” Joe said tightly as she buckled her seatbelt with clipped motions.

“The hell it isn’t,” Eric said, snatching the mic, realizing they needed to put a little distance between them right now or they were going to kill each other, or at the very least, he was going to spank some sense into her ass.

“Dispatch, this is Echo seventeen. Are we clear to return to base?” Eric asked, ignoring the glare Joe was sending his way.

“Echo seventeen, you’re clear,” dispatch answered.

He threw the ambulance in drive and headed back to base. The entire time neither one of them spoke or so much as lookedat the other. By the time they reached the firehouse, his chest was tight and he felt like he was going to be sick.

How the hell did they get back to this point? He didn’t want her pissed. He wanted her safe and happy and he kept pissing her off, but then again, she was pissing him off too.

“Asshole,” Joe muttered as she climbed out of the ambulance and slammed the door shut before she stormed inside, leaving him sitting there feeling like the biggest asshole alive and wondering why it hurt so damn much when she was unhappy.

CHAPTER 19

“Jerk,” Joe muttered as she pulled her boots off and threw them at the wall. It made her feel a little better, but not by much. Hunting down Eric so that she could put him in a headlock would make her feel a hell of a lot better, she decided even as she pulled off her uniform shirt, leaving her in a tight baby blue tank top.

She climbed into bed only to climb back out seconds later when she decided it was too damn hot and she was too damn aggravated to try to sleep in her pants. She just wanted to sleep through the rest of her shift, go home, and take her anger out on cleaning her attic.

Twenty seconds after the light was shut off, she was curled up in bed and felt like crying. She hated fighting with Eric, absolutely hated it. There was a reason why she was so quick to forgive him because staying mad at him hurt. She still remembered when they were ten and she’d worked all day cleaning out Mrs. Pembroke’s garage. By the end of the day, she’d been dirty, tired, sweaty, and five dollars richer. Excited that she finally had enough money for a new bike, well new to her anyway, she ran all the way home.

She’d hid her money in her shoe before she walked into the apartment they’d shared with her mother’s boyfriend. After double-checking that the coast was clear, she’d dug the rest of her money out of the empty can of Comet that she’d cut the bottom off of, knowing that it was the last place that her mother would ever think to look.

Once she had all of her money, she’d raced out of the house and ran all the way to the church’s thrift shop where she’d spotted a used, pink bike that morning. When she spotted the bike still outside the thrift store, she ran inside and bought it.

She’d been so excited to have her own bike. She didn’t care that the tires were flat and the chain was rusted, the bike was hers. After deciding that Eric and Nathan just had to see her bike, she’d pushed it to their house, placed the bike against the garage and ran inside the house. She didn’t stop searching until she found one of them. Without a word, she’d dragged Nathan away from his video game and back outside only to frown in confusion when she didn’t see her bike anywhere.

The horrible sound of metal being bent drew her attention to the garbage truck in front of the house to find Eric walking towards them. Her eyes darted from Eric to the truck and back again before she launched herself at him. Ten minutes later, Alice had them each by the ear and demanded to know what happened. When she told her what Eric did, his expression became pained.

Even at ten, Eric thought it was his job to take care of her and it just about killed him to know that he did something to hurt her. After he’d explained that he thought it was junk that his father had left against the garage for him to bring to the curb, she forgave him. She was still upset about the bike, but she just couldn’t stay mad him, knowing how upset he was over the whole thing.

Eric made it up to her. Three months later, he banged on her apartment door, interrupting her peanut butter sandwich dinner to drag her downstairs to show her the new bike he’d bought for her. He’d saved up his allowance, did extra chores around the house and even worked for the neighbors to save up enough money to buy her a bike. It had been the sweetest thing anyone ever did for her.

It was things like that that made it so difficult to stay mad at him. He screwed up a lot, but he always made it up to her. She knew that he never meant to hurt her even when he was being a jerk like now. He just wanted her safe and she got that, but she could take care of herself.

She was careful at work, followed her training, and never took chances, but that incident more than a week ago made him nervous and now, after twelve years on the job together, he was letting it get to him. They worked great together and she knew that all he needed was a little time before he remembered that. Until then, she’d have to put up with him being an asshole.

When the door opened, Joe tensed, waiting for the fight to continue. She didn’t want to fight with him. She hated fighting with him. All she wanted to do was go back to the way things were before he said those things that hurt her and before he kissed her, robbing her of her sanity and made her wonder about all of those things that she had no business thinking about.

“Joe?” Eric said softly.

Instead of answering him, Joe closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep. It was the coward’s way out, she knew that, but she wasn’t sure how much more she could take. She was glad that he hadn’t insisted on coming with her to New Hampshire this weekend. They both needed some time apart to think things over. If things didn’t go back to the way they were before, then she was going to ask for a transfer to another station.

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