Page 10 of Hot Shot

It was impossible to avoid the naked vision of her cut out of the flames, hunched over with her feet caught in her pants. The curves of her breasts, tipped up at the nipples. The gentle mounds of flesh where her torso was bent, the perfect swell of her ass. Her body changed in ways that made me want to count every one, study them like my favorite subject. But the things I remembered most about her were exactly the same. The shiny, rich copper of her hair. The dusting of freckles across the bridgeof her nose. Her rounded cheeks, colored with a flush, her rosy lips a plump passage for her shallow breath.

Goddamn, it felt good when she looked at me like that. Made me want to run out on a battlefield with an axe in my hand, if it meant I could have her. If it meant she’d be safe. And mine.

I nearly groan.

I shouldn’t have said so much. But if I know her at all, she won’t remember, and what shedoesrecall will be so fuzzy, she’ll figure it was a dream.

For a moment, I feel like I’ve jumped back in time. Her mom’s house smells like candles, the photos hanging on the wall down the stairs the same as they’ve always been, with some additions at the end. A few frames down from our prom photo is a picture of Cass and Davis from their engagement photoshoot.

The denial I clung to on finding out she was engaged to him was fierce, and when she landed in town with him for her wedding, it damn near brought me to my knees. Not only because she was mine, once upon a time. Not just because I cannot fathom a world where she ends up with somebody who isn’tme.

Shecan’tmarry him, or anybody for that matter.

She’s already married to me.

Problem is, she has no idea.

It was half on a whim that we got married in Vegas a week before we left for college. We were there with our friends as a farewell hoorah, but when Cass found out about the ring I’d been carrying around for months, that was it. We gave ourselves one night, just so we’d know. Just so we’d have a taste of the future we couldn’t have.

And then I went and fucked it up by not sending in the papers.

You know how it is when you tell a lie, and the longer you wait to come clean, the worse it gets? Try waiting ten years.

For what it’s worth, I did form a half-ass plan to tell her the truth. Basically, it consisted of blurting out, “Forgot to mention we’re still married,” and hoping she didn’t commit murder.

I didn’t say it was a good plan.

My feckless hope was that by the time I had tousethe plan, I wouldn’t need to. Wasn’t sure how. A meteor flying into the planet, maybe. Didn’t feel like the Rapture was too much to ask for. Surely, divine intervention would save me. The divine had done a great job up to then.

Luckily, the divinedidlet me off the hook when they stopped the cursed wedding for me.

And just in the nick of time. My mouth was open to object when the best man beat me to it, saving me from certain death right there in the aisle of the First Baptist Church.

The bad news is, I still have to tell her.

The worse news is, I still love her.

The kind of love that inspires you to do something like get married for a night, just so you’d know what it was like? That kind of love doesn’t die. I’ve fucked around for ten years, pretending like I was over her, trying to fill a space in me that only she could fill. And ten years with some fucker who didn’t love her enough to be true isnothingwhen you love somebody like she loved me.

The vision of her flushed and naked in my arms just now flashes in my mind, and a smile flickers on my lips. Because the way she looked at me said she did.

I know there’s a way to get her back. It’s thehowI’ve always been fuzzy on.

God help me if I’m wrong.

Once at the bottom of the stairs, I make for the back door. Jessa is outside hosing off the fire, swaying a little. She glances over her shoulder when she hears the door close and offers a tired smile.

“Sorry for all the trouble,” she says, turning her attention back to the fire.

“They still let Mrs. Crowley drive and she can’t see past her elbow. Trust me, the trouble has nothing to do with you.”

Jessa raises a brow.

“Alright, maybe a little.”

She chuckles. “We still have quite a bit more to get rid of, and I’m afraid this might not be the last time you’re called to keep a fire in check.”

I assess the piles of boxes. “Want me to take it off your hands?”

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