Page 77 of Reckless
But again, Alex pressed. “This will heal. Have I?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Zoe’s voice wavered, her arms curling even tighter around her body. “You can’t promise me you’ll always be okay.”
A dark ripple of frustration pulsed through his blood. “I’m a firefighter, Zoe. There are no absolute guarantees. You know that’s not how it works.”
“And I also know I can’t live like this.”
The words were no more than a feather-soft whisper, but they ripped through every part of Alex as if she’d screamed, and impulse had him answering, hard and fast and with everything in his heart.
“Yes, you can,” he said, leaning forward in the bed just to bring himself closer to her. “You just have to take the risk and believe in me. In us.”
“I can’t take any more risks!” Zoe cried, stabbing her feet into the floor as her face hardened with determination Alex knew all too well. “Don’t you see? They allfail.I wasted all that time and energy that could’ve gone toward feeding people who depend on me. I put something that mattered on the line and I lost. I risked my relationship with my father, who won’t even speak to me right now. And I…” She broke off, her chest shuddering on a swallowed cry. “You let me believe that all of this would be okay. That the risks were worth taking. But they’re not. You could’ve died today, Alex, just like you could die every time you’re on shift. And I can’t take risks when all they do is fail.”
Just like that, Alex’s last thread of control snapped. “Theydon’talways fail. Sometimes, risks save lives. If I’d taken one today, the man I pulled out of that fire wouldn’t be in the shape he’s in now. But I hesitated, and it cost valuable time.”
Zoe blinked in surprise, but she didn’t say anything, and hell if he was stopping before he’d unloaded his piece. “I get that you’re raw right now, and I know taking risks scares you. But the flip side scares me. Every day that we have is a gift—a goddamn treasure. Not living my life because of what-if is the one risk I’m not willing to take. If you want to go live in a bubble, I can’t stop you. But I can’t go with you either. Please, Zoe. Stay with me. Take the risk.”
Alex looked at her, willing her with all he had to take a step toward him, or even to make the slightest move that said she’d trust him enough to stay.
But instead, she said, “I’m sorry.”
And then she turned and walked out the door.
26
Zoe made it all the way through the Emergency Department, past the double doors and over the stretch of asphalt in the parking lot before the tears she’d been fighting told her stubborn pride to kiss their ass. Wiping her face with the back of one hand, she used the other to get into her Prius, shutting the door so she could cry in peace.
Peace. On second thought, just crying would have to cut it for now.
She started the car, cutting a careful path over the handful of streets between Fairview Hospital and her apartment. Even though the drive wasn’t terribly taxing or terribly long, by the time she’d parked her car and reached her threshold, her throat burned as much as her eyes.
Neither one of them came within a trillion miles of the hole in her chest.
Dropping her keys to the kitchen counter with a lackluster clank, she surveyed her favorite room. The kitchen had always been the cure-all for her frustrations, for her anger and her sadness and her doubt.
But now when she looked around, all she saw was the box of Lucky Charms Alex had conned her into buying, the skillet he’d washed and put in the dish drainer just that morning before he’d left for his shift, and the dish towel he’d snapped at her legs as they’d cooked together last week. In just one short month, he’d left an indelible mark in her space, her kitchen.
Her heart.
Another wave of fresh tears rimmed Zoe’s eyes, and she didn’t even bother swatting them away. Yes, she felt as if she’d been dragged across an emotional battlefield today, but the alternative was simply a non-option.
The fear of loving a firefighter had torn her parents’ marriage apart after two and a half decades, proving that it never went away, and if anything, it only got worse over time. If Zoe had been this terrified at Alex’s near miss, she couldn’t even imagine how much worsereallylosing him would be. And between the profession that defined him and the lifestyle that was just as woven into the fabric of his being, the risk was too great.
She wasn’t cut out for taking chances. All it did was leave her burned.
Zoe took a deep breath, trying to stuff her sadness down along with it. She wasn’t hungry by any stretch, even though she couldn’t remember for the life of her when, or even what, she’d eaten last. Deciding to forgo food, she slid a bottle of pinot noir off the shelf over the counter, uncorking it and filling her glass ridiculously high. She padded into the living room with both her glass and the bottle, putting them side by side on the slender coffee table in front of her as she plopped to the sofa, pulling a throw pillow across her chest.
The masculine scent of Alex’s shampoo drifted up to greet her, and God, she was going to lose her mind.
Placing the pillow in the armchair across the room with the mental note to do laundry first thing in the morning, she flipped on the TV to scroll through the channels. She avoided anything vaguely hinting at local news, finally landing on a hockey documentary on the sports network. But after an hour of sitting there and not seeing a damn thing other than the level of liquid in her glass go all the way down to empty, Zoe finally decided that if she didn’t at least eat something, she was going to be drunk as well as heartbroken.
She was halfway to the kitchen when a businesslike knock sounded at her front door, grabbing her attention and making her pulse rattle. She’d made a passable enough excuse to everyone at the hospital as she’d left, citing exhaustion as she’d slipped away. Rachel didn’t know where she lived, and Tina would’ve certainly called before coming over. Could be a misguided pizza delivery person. But it also could be a misguided serial killer, so Zoe deepened her voice with as much authority as possible before asking, “Who is it?”
“It’s me, kiddo.”
Zoe pressed herself flush to the door to look through the peephole, her confusion warring with shock. Sure enough, her father stood in the hallway, looking right at her through the tiny lens.
She unlocked the dead bolt with a heavy click, swinging the door wide. “What are you doing here?”
