Page 37 of Up In Smoke

Even the way that Ivy looked at him couldn't change the fear that settled as a cold hard fist in his chest.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“Everything is good?” Ivy checked one last time with Shannon, but her assistant only nodded at her and made a motion for Ivy to get away.

She was headed home from work early. She and Luke had set up a meeting with Chief Taggart. Ever the librarian, she had tried and tried again to organize all their reports and her notes into a trail that made sense. She’d been at it until two in the morning when Luke had finally put his own hands over hers and stopped her frantic organization.

“Taggart will change it all. Just take it to him in a big pile. It will be okay.”

He’d almost laughed at her, but she’d still been concerned.

Maybe he was okay with this, but she’d read all the reports. There was damning information in there about Luke. A good number of reports of him getting rounded up with his friends. He’d been questioned about stolen cars, drugs, even home burglaries. But nothing had ever stuck.

He’d seemed smart enough to clean up his act by the time he turned eighteen. Neither she nor Orlando had found any records on him after that birthday. She’d asked him, “Why do your records end six months before your eighteenth birthday? Did you just know you couldn’t afford a record as an adult?”

She wondered if he would answer. It was such a personal question … and the only reason she didn’t have a record was because she hadn’t been caught. No one arrested the Hollywood stars nor the half-dressed women tagging along and fucking them.

“Carlos and I were in a car accident.”

She felt her eyebrows rise. His expression said the memory was not a good one. But when he kept talking she didn’t stop him. Her own curiosity outweighed the need to comfort him.

“Carlos was driving—underage, mind you—and he ran us right into this telephone pole. At the time, it seemed like he did it on purpose.”

“What?”

“No,” Luke was shaking his head. “You know how memories get messed up with accidents. But he nailed it, square on. Wrapped the car around the pole, us both in the front seat.”

He took a deep breath and continued. “It was an old car, there was no airbag, and he was slumped over the steering wheel. I thought he was dead.” Luke didn’t look at her. He didn’t look at anything, just stared into the middle distance. “I tried to wake him. I now know not to move an injured person, but I shook him. He didn’t move. Nothing. But a police officer came by.”

This time, when he took a breath, he lifted his eyes to hers. “That officer had hauled us in so many times that I don’t remember. We were horrible to him, awful. Cussing him out, Carlos liked to insult the man’s wife.”

Oh, shit. Ivy consoled herself that she knew the end of the story already and that Carlos was still alive.

“He took one look at us, and even though the engine was smoking and the whole car was about to blow up, he told me we were going to be okay. Then he carefully talked me through everything, managed to get my door open as he called in the accident. He put me on the grass and climbed in the passenger seat and saved Carlos himself. When they put my brother in the ambulance and we still didn’t know if he would make it, Officer Beasley put me in the front seat of his patrol car—I’d never been in the front before—” He laughed a small self-deprecating sound, “and drove me to the hospital. Then he waited with me on those stupid orange plastic chairs that are so fucking uncomfortable. Even when my mother showed up, Officer Beasley stuck around. He bought us snacks and he waited until we knew Carlos would make it. And he never once said a damn thing about what little shits we were to him.”

Ivy breathed out her own relief. “That’s a good story.”

“I went into the station the next week. I waited an hour for him to be free and I apologized to him for everything. Then I asked him how to become a cop.”

He sat me down and said, “I saw how you looked at the jaws of life when they pulled your brother out. And I saw your awe when the car burst into flames and the firefighters put it out. I’ll help you become a police officer if you want, but I think you should be a firefighter … And here I am.”

Luke shrugged, but Ivy fought to keep her jaw from falling open. “Can I include that in the town history?”

That was a shitty thing to say. “I’m sorry! I’m not trying to make it about me or minimize what you went through, but it’s just such a wonderful story!”

She was almost crying. What he’d been through and what an amazing person he was to recognize the moment that had been handed to him. At seventeen, he’d apologized for the way he’d treated someone else and started to turn himself around. She knew the path to becoming a firefighter wasn’t an easy one. Regardless of the way Mr. Gentson had tossed it around, Luke had spent years getting educated to the point where he could even apply for the job.

Luke laughed and looked at her like she was nuts. “Beasley was there when I showed up for my first day and said now I was his colleague. Then he apologized to me, for all the times they’d pulled us over simply because of who we were.”

“Jesus.” That was history, she could feel it in her heart.

“I guess you can tell the story in the town history. Once Taggert knows, I’ll either keep my job or not.”

She shook her head at him. Taggart loved his men. He didn't hire and keep anyone that he didn't want on the team. Jo had been new just a few months ago, but her presence had illustrated some unsavory facts about another firefighter. The chief had removed him, not Jo.

Ivy had high hopes that—despite Luke's concerns about revealing his own ugly past—the chief would understand the man he had become, and not the kid that he was.

Hell, if she was judged by life number two, things would be very different for her today. Lord knew she hadn't put all of her drug use and crazy partying on her NYU application. Just the GED that she had gotten and the work that she'd done. Luke would be the same.

---