Chapter 9 Galen #2
I wish Nash a merry Christmas and see him to his bike. Watch him rumble away on a machine that almost got him killed the night I met him. How he rebuilt it after that smash, I’ll never know. And I don’t like thinking about it.
Lucky for me, ten years on the job has made me good at shoving things out of my mind.
Trauma, death, unimaginable pain. Doesn’t matter if it’s mine or someone else’s, it all goes in the same box.
Only thing I can’t shunt out of my brain is Sab, and I blame Nash for that.
It’s easier than brooding over his misguided theories.
I’m a nice guy.
I’m fun at parties.
I don’t cling to people I fuck because I don’t need to. I don’t want to—
You’re not fucking Sab.
Heaven’s sake.
I expel another noisy breath and go back inside, shutting out a perfect winter day to retreat to the couch Nash had seemed so impressed with and play chicken with my phone.
FlingIt calls to me.
Eventually, I open it up and reply to a couple of messages without looking at my thread with Sab.
If he’s replied to my weak response from a few days ago, I don’t see it—I make sure of it, and spend the rest of the day convincing myself the jagged rock in my stomach is because I’m hungry and too lazy to do anything about it.
That raw feeling, though. It’s still there the next morning, even after I eat an entire box of Cadbury’s Animals I stole from the festive stash at the station and chug a protein shake.
I escape to the gym.
Leave my phone at home.
Work hard with a shoulder that’s looser and stronger than it’s been since I went back to work full-time, and it’s a feeling I’ve been waiting on for weeks.
Months. But it doesn’t hit as sweet as I expect.
It’s just kinda there, and I’m grumpier than ever by the time I go home and contemplate the never-ending list of DIY I need to get done if I want to sell this fecking house and make some money back.
I’m not Nash. Not an indomitable jack of all trades with mind-boggling competence, but I can turn my hand to most things.
Joinery is my Achilles heel, though. Fitting a new frame in the bathroom doorway drives me to distraction for the rest of the week, and I’m fecking over it by the time I go back to work.
And I still haven’t messaged Sab.
Fool.
Me. Not him. And I’m still a fool when Saturday rolls around and a dull dayshift livens up with a shout to Hollymist Hall, the stately home on the outskirts of town.
Primary fire call. Fryer blaze. Outside catering unit at the Christmas fête, an event that draws thousands of visitors from all over the county and beyond.
We blue light it, and after a year behind the wheel, I’m still adjusting to sitting in a crew seat further back.
To enduring the grind of anticipation without the distraction of driving the engine.
It’s a different focus, less intense, and somewhere between me scanning the horizon and checking gauges and gear, Sab fills my brain like he owns it.
Leaning against the wall, watching me step into my shoes, bewilderment simmering beneath a heat that tightens my chest even now, almost a week later, a thrum in my belly that has nothing to do with the rumbling engine beneath me.
Shake it off.
I try.
And I succeed. I have to, to do the job I’ve fought so hard for.
Still, though, that spark I felt the very first time I laid eyes on him, it lingers, curling my fingers tighter around the seat beneath me, a visceral reaction to the mere fecking thought of him, and I’m grateful for the diversion of the scene we roll up on.
I jump down from the rig on high alert, the scent of burning oil heavy in the air, sharp, acrid, and horribly familiar.
“Food court!” someone shouts. But I’m already on my way, boots on gravel crunching the frost, surveying the scene as I pass through with a second crew member at my back.
Sonny.
Logan’s replacement. Criminally, that’s about all I know about him, but there’s no time to fix that now. He’s not Logan. No one ever will be.
But he’ll do.
We jog past the marquees lined up in the grounds of the stately home, a perfect row against the grandeur behind them, fairy lights flickering in the wind.
I’m sure it’s pretty as hell, but as I spot the ribbons of black smoke curling into the winter sky, I don’t much care.
I duck around the last tent. Heat slams into me, blasting any lingering cold from my skin. On a nearby food truck, the fryer fire is popping off, flames roaring above the steel vat, licking the sides of the tent it’s parked against.
Too much oil.
Classic.
And I can already tell some moron’s chucked water on it, leaving us little time to contain it before the whole row of tents goes up.
“Evacuate,” I tell the security guard who’s followed us all the way from the rig. “Now.”
It’s not my job to check he does it. The watch commander can do that from the perimeter. I focus on fire suppression with Sonny backing me up.
The blaze is belligerent.
Takes a while to subdue.
We put it out a little while later, and I stand down with rancid smoke stinging my eyes. Strip my gear back, peel my helmet off, and take a breath of cold, sharp air as I tune back in to my environment.
Damn. The scene before me isn’t very fecking festive. I turn away from it, letting Sonny take control of securing the fryer site, cooling it down and clearing the oil.
It’s habit to scan my surroundings. Absent, almost. I’m not taking in the details, just checking for danger as my adrenaline fades, waiting for the relief to hit, a drop in energy I’ve always kinda hated, even when it means no one’s died.
But the slump doesn’t come. As my pulse slows and my breathing evens out, a new feeling simmers at the base of my spine. A pull in my chest that has me straightening despite the recovery my body demands.
I glance around the cleared fête again, telling myself this is the last place he’ll be. Why would he be here? Selling crafts and cakes? Or spending a small fortune on them?
But like most things recently, my logic is found wanting. My gaze skips over a hundred people before it lands on broad shoulders and dark hair, and there he is.
Sab.
Not looking at me, but profoundly present, and that feeling in my body—my physical reaction to him—it’s powerful.
I swallow, pulse kicking again, thudding in my veins, and not from the blaze or the exertion of putting it out.
No. It’s from the warmth sweeping through me as I trace the lines of his profile, the angle of his jaw, and the way he stands so strong and masculine in the world as he talks to someone I can’t even begin to notice, oblivious to how magnetic he is.
It’s crazy, but for a second, I almost run from it.
But my boots don’t move.
If anything, they plant deeper into the frosty grass, and just as I’m questioning my sanity, Sab looks up. He sees me, and heat lurches in my chest, desire and yearning sweeping through me, laced with something far softer, and perhaps what Nash was trying to warn me about.
Maybe I’ll figure it out later. As the world narrows, the bustle and chaos fading, I have no chance of doing it now.
Of thinking about anything that isn’t him.
I lift my hand in a wave.
Die a sweet death as Sab waves back.