Page 17 of My Grumpy Fire Chief Next Door
And if I’m being completely honest, the sight of him standing there in the wind, tall, serious, jaw clenched like he was fighting something invisible, I didn’t only want to comfort him. I wanted to reach for him. Touch his wrist. Tug him closer. See if that mouth tasted the way his voice sounded.
But I didn’t. Of course, I didn’t.
The storm picks up, and the light overhead flickers, making me draw an uneasy breath.
Parker’s scream shatters the moment a beat later, raw and sudden and sharp. My stomach free-falls. I shove back from the table and sprint toward his room as the storm slams into the side of the house with a force that makes the windows tremble in their frames.
I pause in the center of the living room, my heart thudding loudly in the stillness between thunderclaps. The wind presses against the walls like a living thing trying to crawl inside. My chest goes tight, not from the roar overhead but from what lives underneath it. That cold sliver of memory that cuts deeper the harder it rains.
I swallow hard.
I hate this kind of storm, the sudden, snapping kind, wild wind, and black sky; it’s too familiar. The air feels the same as it did that night, the night I lost Ethan, Parker’s father. Thick. Heavy. Too quiet before the sound split open the sky.
Parker’s sobbing in the hallway, clutching his stuffed stegosaurus like it’ll keep the walls from caving in.
And I can’t breathe.
I see it, a flash, like lightning behind my eyes.
That night.
Parker was barely eighteen months old, bundled in the back seat with sticky hands and one shoe off. I remember the feel of my hand on the dash, bracing for impact. The wipers couldn’t keep up. Everything was blinding.
The sound, the scream of metal, the sudden jerk of the car spinning, the sickening silence when it stopped.
And Ethan? He was slumped over the wheel. The rain sheeting on the windshield made it hard to see anything else. I blink the memory away, but it clings. The storm outside is howling again, like it remembers, too.
“Mommy,” Parker’s voice breaks, high and panicked.
I move quickly to scoop him up into my arms as the thunder crashes directly overhead. The sound splits the air open. Parker’s face presses into my neck, hot and damp, and I can feel him trembling all the way through.
“It’s okay,” I whisper, even though it feels like a lie. My arms tighten around him. I shift our weight from foot to foot, rocking gently as if the motion alone can protect us. “I’ve got you, baby. I’ve got you.”
A groan comes from above, the rafters shifting under the force of the wind. The house creaks again, a long, aching sound like it’s holding itself together with willpower alone.
The lights flicker once.
Twice.
Then everything goes dark.
I flinch. Parker clutches me harder.
I force my feet to move, feeling my way across the room, my heart pounding like a drum. I find the flashlight on the entryshelf by instinct and flick it on. The weak beam cuts through the black like a lifeline, dancing shadows across the walls, making them stretch and twist like they’re watching us.
Parker’s crying harder now. Full-bodied sobs that shake him against me.
“We’re okay,” I say again, softer this time, kneeling down behind the couch with him in my lap. “It’s just the storm. We’ve got each other, yeah?”
He nods against my collarbone, fingers still curled in the fabric of my shirt.
I hold him until his breathing slows a little. Then I carry him to the hallway, the most protected part of the house, and nestle him onto a pile of pillows and blankets I threw together after the weather warning. I tuck the stuffed stegosaurus into his arms. He clings to it like it’s made of armor.
“I’m right here,” I whisper, brushing his soft curls back from his forehead.
A moment passes, and I hear the unmistakable crunch of boots on the porch; my head snaps towards the door in time to hear the knock. Once and hard.
My bare feet whisper across the wood floor as I approach the door. The wind is shrieking again, tearing through the trees like it wants to rip the whole world loose.
