Page 57 of Memories with Fire

The last enchilada threatens to make a reappearance because of the doubt she’s showing. Of course she doesn’t believe me. No one ever does.

Shaking my head, I pat her thighs. “Forget it.”

“Whoa, hey,” she frowns, grabbing my hands. “Not forget it. I just… it’s hard for me to wrap my head around it because I’ve spent so long being mad at you.”

For a long moment, I study her, trying to decide whether she’ll believe what I have to say. It’s probably as hard for me to trust in that as it is for her to believe me. Which is ultimately why I finally nod.

“Just like that. I wasn’t over you by any means, but I stopped holding everything against you. You had your entire life planned out before I walked into it. That determination and self-sacrifice were part of the reason I fell in love with you to begin with. I thought maybe you’d just found your levelheadedness again and decided I was a distraction.”

“You were a distraction!” she exclaims with a laugh, and I can’t help but grin at her. When her laughter dies down, she smiles at me softly, adding, “But it was a distraction I wanted. It wasn’t something I wanted to let go of. You weren’t something I wanted to let go of.”

“You never did,” I say confidently. “That necklace around your neck tells me you didn’t.”

A hand goes to her throat, dipping beneath the collar of my shirt to pull the pendant out. She fingers it delicately. “I tried once. Months after my accident I ripped it off and threw it away.” Dropping the necklace, I sense a change in her that I can’t put my finger on until she says with bitterness, “My mom found it and got it fixed for me. I wonder if she felt guilty by that point. Or ever.”

My chest aches for her. I know how close she is with her mom. Knowing how angry I am, I can only imagine the devastation she’s feeling right now. “You’ll find out when you’re ready to ask her those questions.”

“You’re damn right I will,” she says, venom dripping from her voice. “She doesn’t get to do this to us and not answer for it. I want an explanation.”

When I shift to move over her, wanting to distract her from her anger, she points a finger at me, shaking her head. “No way, buster. You know all these little things about me because of the firehouse and I’m sure Quinn. I hardly know anything about you these days.”

“Whose fault is that?” I poke at her, advancing even though she hasn’t moved her finger. My hands are on the arm of the couch on either side of her. “You’re the one that didn’t want me to even think of you.” Pressing her finger into my chest, Hailey refuses to take the bait. Instead, she pushes hard enough that it feels annoying with the burn it’s creating in my pec. Grumbling, I sit back on my ass, rubbing my hand over the spot her finger was. “Fine.”

“How did you end up here?” she asks again, satisfied once I’m a safe distance away. “Why aren’t you a cop? Why didn’t you go pro with football? I know they looked at you. They liked you.” When I raise my eyebrows at her in surprise, she rolls her eyes at me. “I told myself I hated you. That I didn’t love you. It didn’t stop me from following your college football career.”

Well hot dang. If that doesn’t move something inside me, I don’t know what would. Warmth blooms deep within, and I feel a surge of pride that makes me want to stick my chest out and beat on it.

“I never wanted to go pro. My dad was furious I didn’t pursue it, but it wasn’t my dream,” I tell her, shrugging. That was a major blow for my dad. “Even at the college level it takes a lot to stay in playing shape. Going pro is a whole different beast. Besides, you know I had my sights set on becoming a cop.”

“Which didn’t happen,” she points out. “How did you become a firefighter?”

“Everyone loves a firefighter,” I tell her, holding my hands up while I grin broadly so my dimples pop at her.

I’m rewarded with an eyeroll. “C’mon, seriously. What happened?”

They say you don’t forget your first fire, and in my experience, that’s both true and untrue. “My junior year of college, I’m out for a run one morning. It’s early on a Sunday. The streets are dead, everyone is still sleeping.” It was one of the few Sunday mornings I wasn’t hungover in college, but I don’t mention that.

“I see this plume of smoke up ahead. It’s small, and I don’t think much of it at first, but as I get closer, it gets bigger. I realize this house is on fire. I didn’t have my phone on me so I couldn’t call for help, so I did what I thought was the next best thing. I started banging on the doors, trying to wake anyone inside. There was a car in the driveway, which I figured meant someone must be in there.”

Hailey is watching me with rapt interest, hanging on to every word as I continue, “All of a sudden, I hear screams coming from inside. This woman is yelling for help. So I do what anyone in my position would do, I break a window and go in.”

“Of course you do,” she says, shaking her head. “Because that’s what every person on this planet would do.”

Grinning, I ignore the comment and keep going with my story, “I don’t remember a lot of details because it all happened in a blur. But once I was inside, I went up to the second floor and found a mother and daughter. She’d barricaded the two of them in the bathroom, scared out of her mind, thinking they couldn’t get out.”

“But then you came along and safely got them out, becoming the hero?” Hailey guesses, raising an eyebrow. “And once you got a taste of what it was like, there was no going back?”

“Pretty much. Like I said, everyone loves a firefighter.” I shrug, smirking, knowing my dimples are popping out for her. “Plus I’d never felt adrenaline like that before. It was like a drug.”

“Cops get shot at. That isn’t adrenaline?” she questions.

“It would be,” I nod slowly. “Would you rather me be a cop?”

“Hell no!” she exclaims. “I hated the idea back then; I hate the idea now. Not that running into burning buildings is safe. There are a million things that can go wrong, and I’ll probably always stress while you’re inside, but at least I understand it better. Especially being a paramedic.”

Not that I want her to worry about me, but I kind of like that she will.

“Speaking of,” I say, turning the tables on her. “Did the accident prevent you from being a doctor?”

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