Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
HUNTER
T he morning’s session isn’t at the fire station, but rather the elementary school. I swear we’re in the same classroom I suffered through second grade, faint echoes of Mrs. Campbell berating me still ringing in my ears.
Dog is d-o-g, not g-o-d. If I have to tell you one more time, Hunter, I swear. You should be past this by now.
I cross my arms over my chest, unable to recline in the too-small chair at the too-small table. My knees are practically in my armpits.
Next to me, Madeline has her notebook open, ready to capture everything Chief McClure says during his lecture about fire hydraulics. And just as she warned, it seems there’s a fuckton of math.
Chief McClure stands at the front of the classroom, gesturing with a dry-erase marker as he talks. “So, the basic equation the pump operator needs to calculate when operating the fire pump is EP equals NP plus FL plus APP plus ELEV.”
He writes the formula on the whiteboard behind him, my eyes glazing over. It had been hard enough when Madeline had explained it to me at the library.
“Now, who remembers what those acronyms mean?”
For a change, Madeline’s hand doesn’t shoot up to immediately answer. Instead, she nudges my arm.
“You know this,” she whispers.
I shake her off. There’s no way in hell I’m answering. I learned my lesson in classrooms. Keep your mouth shut at all costs.
“Woodward? O’Connor? You have an answer for me?”
Shit. Why’d she have to get us in trouble like that?
Both Madeline and Chief McClure look at me expectantly. Seriously? She’s not going to answer?
“Uh, EP is engine pressure and NP is nozzle pressure,” I say haltingly. I remember those two for sure. Does FL mean fluid? No, it’s something else. Something...loss. What had Madeline said at the library? Oh, right. “FL is friction loss, APP is appliance friction loss, and ELEV is elevation loss or gain.”
“Good job,” the chief says as he returns to his lesson.
Madeline smiles, and I find myself returning it for a second before I shut it down, my cheeks heating. I look like an idiot, about to pump my arms in the air for getting one stupid question right. It shouldn’t be a big deal, but that still doesn’t stop the center of my chest from warming with pleasure.
I answered a question right in class. For probably the first time ever.
Chief doesn’t call on me again for the rest of the lecture, but I make sure to pay attention, ready for it. And, honestly, it’s not so bad listening to him now that I know what the hell he’s talking about.
Thanks to Madeline.
After our lunch break, we return to the firehouse, where a firefighter we haven’t met yet, Huey, has set up a search maze for us, designed to simulate searching for a fire victim in an unpredictable area. We have to army crawl through an enclosed tunnel around obstacles, although it’s possible Madeline’s small enough to do it on her hands and knees. Each person is timed during their turn, and out of the six of us trainees, I come in second and Madeline comes in fourth.
Thank God. That’s one less thing we have to train for.
We run through it again and after listening to some pointers on ways we can improve our time, we’re dismissed for the day.
“You ready for arms?” I ask Madeline as we make our way to the parking lot, then nearly laugh at the look of reluctance she gives me.
“I guess.”
“If I had said that, you’d say I have a bad attitude.”
She groans. “Fine.” She brightens, putting on a toothpaste-commercial smile. “I can’t wait for my arms to fall off,” she says in an overbright, bubblegum-sweet voice.
I resist the urge to roll my eyes. “I’m supposed to be the smartass, not you.”
She shrugs, her smile more normal now. “Thought I’d give it a try.”
It continually surprises me that she actually has a sense of humor underneath all that seriousness.
She follows me back to my place and I open the garage door to let in some fresh air. With summer fast approaching, it gets too stuffy in here otherwise.
She joins me, her gaze scanning over the weight bench, then behind her to the street. “Will people see us?”
Does she mean see us exercising? Or see us...together? Does she not want to be seen with me?
No, that’s stupid. We’ve met up at the library three times now.
That’s different than getting spotted at my house, though.
I clear my throat, pushing aside the thought. “I promise no one cares what we’re doing in here. The lady across the street has cataracts and can barely see, anyway.”
She nods, then holds up her nearly empty water bottle. “Could I refill this inside?”
“Come on.” I motion for her to follow me inside, and silently thank my past self for cleaning up last night. Not that it was a pigsty or anything, but based on the immaculate neatness of her room last night and knowing she was coming over today...Well, I didn’t want to come across as a total slob.
I don’t have people over all that often, preferring my private space to stay, well, private. Occasionally a few guys from work come over to play something on the PS5, maybe a girl every once in a while—though I prefer to go to her place if possible. Growing up in a house where I not only had to share a room with my brother, but was reminded at every turn that nothing was mine and could be taken away whenever my dad felt like it...It makes you hold something you finally get for yourself sacred.
Taking her water bottle from her, I fill it up from the dispenser in the fridge door while she tries not to be obvious about inspecting my home.
Her gaze meets mine and she looks away quickly, knowing I caught her.
“Your place is nice.”
“Thanks.” I’d scrimped and saved, putting away every dollar I made for the down payment on this house. Not that it’s a mansion by any means. It’s an average ranch-style home, built in the sixties, with brick siding on the front. But it’s mine.
“I didn’t imagine it like this.”
“What’d you imagine?”
She shrugs, a smirk hovering around her lips. “A dungeon where you concoct your evil pranks.”
“Evil? You’re the one that was evil, making me eat a sponge.”
She points her finger at me. “I didn’t make you do anything. And anything involving glitter is definitely evil.”
Yeah, it kind of is.
“And maybe some kind of crazy sex swing or something,” she says, motioning to the living room. “You have a reputation, you know.”
“Well, you haven’t seen the bedroom.”
She blushes and looks away. God, she’s so easy to provoke.
“Is this a delay tactic?” I ask her. “So you don’t have to work out?”
She half chuckles, half sighs. “Let’s go.”
Taking her water bottle, she heads back out to the garage and sits on the weight bench, then scoots back to lie flat.
“So I’m supposed to lift this?” she asks, wrapping her hands around the barbell.
I wasn’t going to start her on that, but if she wants to try, she can. “Sure.”
I move behind her to spot her.
Her fingers flex on the bar. “You won’t let this fall on me?”
She’d asked something similar when we’d done the ladder exercise at the station, too. If I’d let her fall. How bad does she think I am?
“No. My hands are right here. The bar’s not going anywhere unless you or I tell it to.”
She nods and releases the bar to wipe her palms on her shirt, then grips it again. “What do I do?”
“Lift it off the rack and toward your chest, then straight up. Do it as many times as you feel comfortable doing.”
My hands hover under the bar as she follows my instructions, but as she goes to lift it from her chest, she whimpers.
“Holy fuck.”
I’m momentarily startled by her curse. I’ve never heard her say anything like that.
She manages to lift the bar enough to get it back on the rack, then her arms collapse on the bench. “Oh my God, you didn’t tell me it would weigh that much.”
“It’s forty-five pounds. That’s common knowledge.”
“For you, maybe. I need a lower weight. That was way too hard.”
Well, this is starting out great.
“Besides,” she continues, “it’s not like bench presses will be on the test.”
“So look up what is on the test.”
She grabs her phone from its spot next to her water bottle and fiddles around on it, then reads aloud the eight events we’ll have to complete in less than ten minutes and twenty seconds while wearing a fifty-pound vest to simulate the weight of normal gear. By the end, she’s chewing on her thumbnail, her face worried.
“I’m surprised you haven’t looked this up before,” I tell her, not sure what else to say. It’s obvious from what she read she can’t do everything on there. Or, at least, not within the time limit. The rescue event alone has us dragging a heavy mannequin around. If she had trouble with the hose pull, that one will be worse.
“I was afraid to,” she mumbles.
“Looks like we’ll need to start running, too. We’ll need stamina.”
She looks up at me. “Do you run now?”
“No. But I used to, back in high school. For football in the fall and baseball in the spring.” Sports were a great excuse to be out of the house and away from Dad.
“Right. I forgot you did those. Well, um, Green Valley doesn’t have a gym, does it?”
Hmm. “All I know of is the MMA place. You want to try that?”
She gives me a deadpan look. “No.”
That’s what I thought. “What time do you start work?”
“Around eight-thirty, usually.”
“What do you mean usually?”
She shrugs. “I can start my day whenever. No one’s looking over my shoulder. As long as everything gets done, it doesn’t matter when I do it.”
The idea is completely foreign to me. “Well, I have to be at work at seven. So we can either go running before six or after I get out at three-thirty.”
“Wait. We’re running together?”
“Will you actually run every day if you’re not held accountable?”
Her mouth tightens. “To spite you, I would,” she mutters under her breath.
I laugh, unable to help myself. “It’ll keep me accountable, too.”
“Okay,” she says grudgingly. “But I’m not waking up that early, so how about we do it in the early evening when it’s not so hot? Maybe five-thirty?”
So we go from hating each other to spending every day together now? Life’s funny that way.
“Did you really hate me?” I blurt out before I can think the question through.
She blinks at me, her brows knitting. “What?”
Shit. Why did I bring this up? “Back a few weeks ago,” I mumble. “Before we had to work together.”
She studies me carefully. “I hated the pranks you pulled,” she says finally.
Is that a nice way of saying yes?
I nod, looking at my shoes. “I’m...sorry. I don’t think I ever said that properly, back in the chief’s office.” And the crazy thing is, I mean it. Have I ever sincerely apologized for anything in my life? “I...I don’t know what got into me,” I end with lamely.
Sure, I’d held a grudge against her for that day in high school, but that wasn’t really the why behind it, at least not past that first prank.
Maybe it was because she gave back as good as I gave her. Because I liked riling her up, seeing how she’d react. She always surprised me.
There’s something so...intriguing about her. Maybe because she’s different from anyone else I know. So different from me.
“Apology accepted,” she says, a soft smile on her face. “Even if you still drive me crazy.”
She’s teasing me. I think. It’s hard to tell with her. “Right back at you.”
I pull out the lightest set of dumbbells I own and lead her through a set of exercises I think will help her best, then take her on a twenty-minute run around my neighborhood and back.
When we return, she guzzles an ungodly amount of water in my kitchen, then collapses on the living room floor.
“I’m dead,” she moans. “And my ghost will haunt you forever for making me do that.”
If she’s this sore now, she’ll be in hell tomorrow. No sense in bringing up that fun tidbit now, though.
“You’ll survive,” I tell her. “How about I make you a protein shake? You need to build muscle.” I should have some vanilla-flavored protein powder in the cabinet.
“I won’t be able to drink it because I can’t sit up.”
“It’s that bad?”
She nods pitifully.
“What do you want me to do?”
Groaning, she says, “I don’t know. Get me a new body?”
“You need a massage?”
Whoa. Where did that thought come from? And why can’t I keep control over my mouth today?
She opens one eye and squints at me from her spot on the floor. “Is this a prank?”
“What?” I laugh. “How could it be a prank?”
“Because it sounds too good to be true. And it doesn’t sound like something the Hunter I know would offer.”
The Hunter she knows. Who is that exactly? Even I’m not sure at this point.
“I’m turning over a new leaf,” I tell her.
“Okay,” she says warily. “I’m not in any kind of position to turn down a free massage right now.”
I kneel next to her on the carpet and the reality of what I offered hits me. I’ll have my hands on Madeline. It shouldn’t matter, but there’s a jump in my lower belly all the same. If anything, I should be grossed out. The girl’s a sweaty mess, lying boneless on the ground.
My gaze moves to her ass, the same one I watched yesterday doing that stupid “Buns of Steel” workout. The same one I watched today while jogging behind her. I can’t massage her ass. Even in her half-dead state, she’d take issue with that.
The back it is.
Her shirt is cool to the touch, still damp with drying sweat, and I’m reminded that my own shirt isn’t much better. The standards are low at the moment, though.
“Oh, sorry. I’m gross, aren’t I?” she says, reaching back and touching her sweat-soaked shirt.
“Maybe you could, um, take off your shirt?” I find myself asking. “So I can massage you better.”
What am I saying? If she wasn’t so tired, she’d probably slap me.
She groans, lifting up on her forearms. “Okay, but don’t be a perv.”
It’s a Herculean effort for her to heave herself up enough to strip her shirt off, leaving her in a black sports bra and athletic shorts. She collapses back again, her arms at her sides.
What she’s wearing is the kind of thing you’d see at a gym all the time. Perfectly normal.
But that doesn’t stop my mouth from watering at all the creamy, porcelain skin on display. Only a few freckles mar the otherwise perfect expanse. She must not go out in the sun often. Or she’s one of those people who’s diligent about wearing sunscreen. Yeah, she seems like the type.
She’s normally all covered up in oversized shirts that don’t give any hint to her shape. And there’s no way in hell I would have ever guessed she has two dimples on her lower back, right above her shorts.
I reach out and sweep a thumb over the area, goosebumps flaring on her skin. Does my touch affect her? Or is she cold?
The sweat on her has dried, leaving only soft, smooth skin. What must she think of my work-roughened, calloused fingertips? The sawmill hasn’t been kind to my hands. Countless scrapes, cuts, and splinters over the years, even wearing work gloves most of the time, have taken their toll.
I’m reminded that I’m a sick fuck again as I trail my fingers up her back, taking an inordinate amount of pleasure in the act. What the fuck is wrong with me? I’ve seen plenty of girls in a whole lot less. I can’t even see her front. Only her back.
But this is Madeline. And, for some reason, that makes it different.
As I dig my thumbs into her trapezius muscles, she lets out a low groan.
“Oh my God, that feels good.”
There’s that jump in my lower belly again, even knowing she didn’t mean that as a sexual thing. She said it because she’s in pain and I’m supposed to be helping her.
What I’m not supposed to be doing is getting excited.
I continue what I’m doing, moving around to different areas of her back, silently reveling in her softness, in the way she’s pliant under my hands. She’s rarely this easygoing, this agreeable. And she’s making these quiet noises of satisfaction under her breath that are driving me insane. I’m not sure she’s even aware she’s doing it, but all I can think of is if she’d make those same sounds if I was touching her in a different way. If my hands traveled just a little further south...
My fingers flex, pausing, and I swallow hard, getting myself under control. I’m not actually attracted to Madeline. I can’t be. She’s a know-it-all goody-two-shoes. She’s nothing like my type.
But tell that to my dick.
I block out the noises as much as I can, focusing on massaging her back, trying to get this over with as quickly as possible. This was a terrible idea. The longer my hands are on her, the more I’m afraid they might...roam. Especially as I get to her lower back. Her ass is right there. That wonderful, perfect ass I’ve spent the last two days watching intensely with her completely unaware. It would be nothing to massage that, too. She’d probably like it. I could even slip my hand around and?—
“You’re all done,” I tell her, snatching my hands away, my voice unsteady. “I’ll make that protein shake now.”
I get up before she can respond, and head to the kitchen, gripping the counter.
Get yourself under fucking control. She’s your partner for this firefighting training program. You need her help to pass. You train her physically, she trains you mentally. That’s all this is.
There’s nothing more between us.