Page 22 of Blazing Hot Nights
My head swung side to side. I wanted to stop it, but it refused to listen to me. “There’s always been a pull between us, Blaze. That doesn’t mean it’s something we can act on ever again.”
“That’s where our paths divide.” He motioned his finger back and forth between us. “We’d be crazy not to act on the fire between us. Some people go their whole lives without experiencing what we just did in that kiss.”
“No. No. We’d be crazy to act on it. It will end with one of us getting hurt, and I know which one of us it will be. No.”
He grasped my bad elbow again to calm me. “Heaven, I’m not going to hurt you.”
“It’s time to go, Blaze. I have to go.” I scooted toward the ladder to get away from him, but he held the back of my shirt to keep me in one place.
“Let me go, Blaze!” I cried while I fought against him, even knowing it was useless.
“Heaven!” he exclaimed with firmness to his voice. “Stop fighting me and relax. I’m going to let you go, but I want to go down the ladder first. It’s dark, and I don’t want you to fall. Let me get the barn lights on and then I’ll make sure you get down safely before I leave. That’s all I want. I just want to make sure you’re safe.”
I sighed with frustration and resignation. I was exhausted, and my arm and neck ached. I backed away from the ladder, knowing he was right, even if I didn’t like it. “Only because I don’t want to break my neck in the dark.”
He nodded, but I could see the smirk he was trying to hide. “Understood. Hang tight.”
He swung his legs over the ladder and climbed down in his stocking feet. He must have taken his boots off, and that’s why I didn’t hear him moving around the barn earlier. His head disappeared, and in a few moments, the lights flipped on in the barn. Blaze startled a few of the animals into protesting, but he spoke to them softly to calm them. Once my feet were solid on the rungs, I grabbed the rope my daddy had rigged to help me get down without falling after my first accident. I hadn’t made it down two rungs before Blaze gripped my waist and lifted me to the floor of the barn.
He had his boots back on and walked with me to the door, sliding it open. His fingers lifted my chin, and he held my eyes. “Promise me you won’t go up there alone again until your shoulder and neck are better. You aren’t going to walk away from a fall like that, Heaven.”
“I know. It was stupid. As soon as I got up there, I knew I was going to have to wait for Dawn to get home before I got down. It’s hard to admit to myself that my arm is getting worse every day. I have to stop pretending I can just ignore it or will it away.” I waved my hand at my neck as if to say ‘forget it.’ “Anyway, thanks for helping me. I’ll put the fire out and go to bed.”
“I put the fire out, angel.”
I nodded once. “Okay, thanks. I’ll talk to you later, Blaze.”
He shut the lights off in the barn and slid the door closed again, walking with me until he reached his UTV. I climbed the stairs to my back door, and he angled himself into the vehicle. “Sleep well,” he said, then he turned the ignition on the behemoth before I could respond. I answered with a wave since he would never hear me over the rumble of the engine and then walked inside the house.
I didn’t need light to find my bedroom. I’d walked through this house in the dark my entire life. I knew every floorboard that creaked and every corner to avoid with my toes. Once in my room, my hands went to my lips at the memory of his kiss. I closed my eyes and savored the sensation. Why did Blaze kiss me? Why did I let him? I wanted to savor the kiss, but I had so many conflicting emotions about it. His kiss smoldered inside me like a latent fire, prohibited from blazing into more by the mere memory of his dead wife.
Sighing, I switched on the lamp by my bed. My breath hitched when I noticed the box sitting there. There was a note stuck on the massager, and I picked it up with a shaking hand. “You might not believe me, but you do deserve kindness. You deserve so much more than you’ve gotten in life, Heaven. I hope you’ll use this because most of all, you deserve a little bit of relief out here on this lonesome plain. Blaze.”
I dropped the note to my lap, and my lip trembled. It was evident to me that Blaze didn’t understand that I was responsible for his wife’s death. If he did, he’d agree that I deserved this hell I’d lived in for five miserable years. The worst part was, there was no end in sight.
I glanced down at the massager on the bed again, and it reminded me that might not be true. At least not for my physical hell. The hell I went to sleep with and woke up to every morning wouldn’t be so easily massaged away, though. Those memories would be my constant companions until the day I died.
It was becoming more apparent every day that I was the only one who understood how much I deserved it.
Seven
The door swung open and closed the way it should after a little bit of adjusting. Satisfied, I opened the window and peeled the stickers off.
“Blaze!” Beau yelled from the front of the house.
“Kitchen!” I yelled back. Unless he was sleeping, Beau was always on full volume.
He jogged in and stopped in his tracks. “What are you doing?”
“Fixing the screen door as you told me to. What are you doing?”
“I told you to fix it, not replace it,” he said, taking a moment to check it out.
“True, but they told me this one is better insulated for winter. We needed a new one anyway. I’m going to replace the wooden door too. I should have time later this fall.”
I packed up my tools and stood again, assessing him. “Something is wrong.”
“Why would anything be wrong?” he asked, ducking his head into the fridge.
