Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
TUCKER
My phone rang at the ass crack of dawn, and I swore as I struggled to open my eyes. I slapped my hand to my nightstand, searching for the offending phone, dislodging Her Fluffiness, who’d been dead asleep on my chest. She lifted her grumpy face and glared at me like I’d personally offended her.
“Hey, blame whoever’s calling me—” I blearily eyed the screen. “It’s Ryder. Feel free to crap in his shoes next time he comes by.” I hit Answer and growled, “Someone better be dead.”
“Next week is my and Penny’s anniversary,” Ryder said.
I blinked. “Of what? You just got married four months ago.”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Shit.” I closed my eyes, too tired to rise to the bait.
I was happy for him. Hell, they all deserved what they had—Ryder and Penny, Caleb and Emma.
I just hadn’t figured out how to deserve something like that myself.
“I’m hanging up now. And if your call woke up Hank, I’m delivering him to your door in less than twenty. ”
“I need you to find that same reclaimed barnwood we used on the Fulton job. It’s Penny’s favorite, and I want to do an accent wall in our living room.”
“You’re the contractor.”
“And you’re the estimator with the connections.”
“Fine,” I grumbled. “Whatever.”
“Thanks. You’re my favorite brother.”
“This could’ve been a text.”
“Seriously, you’re a lifesaver—”
I took petty satisfaction in hanging up on him.
Once a week, my chaotic family descended onto one of our places for a meal. We used to meet at the Cork and Barrel, the local bar and grill, but after a few too many conversations-turned-loud arguments, we pivoted to breakfast. Less booze, less brawling.
Mostly.
This week was at Kiera’s. No one could drive me up a wall like my sister, but since she took in Dad on the nights I worked around the clock, I let it happen. In return, I took the twins off her hands as often as I could.
She’d lost her husband a few years back. Auggie had been a brother to us. His loss had been impossible to fathom, and we’d nearly lost Kiera to her grief. Watching her crawl her way back to life had changed me in ways I hadn’t expected.
I made it to her house on autopilot, yawning the whole way after yet another hellish shift for my crew—Jayden, Tessa, Marcus, and Harlow. We had been out on calls for thirty-six hours straight. A full moon had resulted in two fights and a structure fire. So, you know, classic Star Falls.
Kiera’s place sat at the end of a winding oak-lined road that always smelled like woodsmoke and lavender from the neighbor’s overzealous garden. Kiera’s back porch sagged just enough to creak when you stepped on it, and the welcome mat still read Go Away.
Homey in the way only a Colburn house could be—loud, scrappy, and usually in some sort of meltdown mode.
I was dragging my feet by the time I let myself into the house and caught a tiny human blur in midair, then another…
“Unca Tuck, Unca Tuck!” Abi clung to me like a baby koala, arms around my neck and forehead pressed to mine, breathing hot Cheerios breath in my face. “Alex said I’m a girl!”
“’Cause you are a girl!” Alex said, indignant.
Abi’s lower lip trembled.
“You don’t get to decide for her,” I told Alex. “She gets to tell you.”
Abi beamed. “I’m a Paw Patrol.”
“You’re a dog?” I asked for clarification.
She nodded, triumphant.
Alex considered that. “Why didn’t you just say so?”
The air inside was warm and smelled like maple syrup and whatever plastic toy had been left too close to the radiator. A kids’ show blared in the background, and Abi’s hair was full of glitter, which had immediately transported itself to me.
Kiera poked her head out of the kitchen with a smile aimed my way, but it faded at whatever she saw on my face. “You okay?”
“Sure.” I looked around and didn’t see the usual Colburn Circus. “What happened to family breakfast?”
She frowned. “Tuck, it’s Saturday. Family breakfast is tomorrow.”
Ah, hell.
She came close and gave me a little punch to the arm. Her version of a hug. “What’s wrong?”
“Just tired.”
“You’re taking arson-investigation classes on top of two full-time jobs. Anyone would be tired.”
I lifted a shoulder. “I want to do this.”
“You know you don’t have anything to prove, right?” she asked gently.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“That’s a bad word,” Abi said. “You gotta pay the jar.” She held out her hand.
I searched my pockets and slapped a five into her palm.
Making little crowing noises of victory, she threw herself at me. For some reason, her favorite game was using me as a human climbing gym. She hugged me tight, then ran off.
“You know she’s going to put that in her own piggy bank,” Kiera said, nudging me to the couch. I barely caught the rest of what she said—something about Caleb being here because he’d picked up her Costco order for her. Then: “Why can’t you postpone the classes?”
“I don’t want to. Redken is retiring in six months, and I want to take his place.”
“Is that all this is, this push to exhaustion?”
“Key.” I leaned back and closed my eyes. “I’m too tired for the psychobabble.”
She paused, then pushed anyway, because she’d been raised by stubborn, overbearing brothers. “You think I don’t know you’re a firefighter, one of the best in the county, by the way, because you have a need to save everyone?”
I snorted.
But she didn’t smile. “You think you could’ve saved Mom.”
I didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Some guilt never shut up, no matter how many fires you put out, even if you logically knew the truth—that no one could have stopped her from getting sick.
Kiera wasn’t done drilling me. “Auggie died on a ski trip hundreds of miles from here.”
Yes, alone. He’d asked me and Ryder to join him. We hadn’t. That guilt still hadn’t moved on.
“Stop that,” she said quietly. “The guilt thing. It’s all over your face. After he died, you watched me break down and helped build me back up. You saved me. You also make a living saving perfect strangers. And now, also, maybe, a certain redhead from your past.”
I groaned. “I knew you’d go there.”
She just smiled. I shook my head and closed my eyes—and the next time I opened them, my feet were in the lap of the woman I’d been dreaming about.
Hazel.
I jolted upright. “What? When?”
She just raised a brow, waiting for my faculties to return. “I was in the kitchen when you arrived.”
Confusion befuddled me. “It’s not breakfast day. It’s Saturday.”
Her mouth curved. “Turns out your sister has a life even when you’re not around.”
“Funny.”
Unbothered, she hummed and licked the frosting off an amazing-looking cinnamon roll. Then she sucked some frosting off her thumb, and I forgot my name. God, that mouth. I’d once had a whole mental highlight reel of that mouth living rent-free in my head.
On repeat.
The way it tasted, how it felt on my skin…
She shifted, and my eyes roamed, taking in the way those jeans and snug white tee fit her, turning every neuron I had into a fire hazard. She looked like every good memory I’d ever had, and every bad one too.
Something smacked me in the back of the head, and I glared as Caleb passed by. “What the?”
My annoying-as-hell brother grinned and peeled a piece of paper off my back that read, Kick me! “Had to improvise since you’re sitting down.”
Hazel choked on her cinnamon roll.
When I slid my gaze her way, she fumbled for her phone. “Hey,” she said into it. “Thanks for calling me back. I—”
I caught her wrist. Her scent hit me—wood stain, lemon soap, and something warmer underneath, like home, if I were a metaphor kind of guy.
I pulled the phone from her ear and checked her screen.
Blank.
She grimaced.
So not in a truce then. Good to know. “Payback’s a bitch,” I warned her. “This isn’t over.”
She tilted her head. “Is it ever with us?”
“It was. The night you left.”
Just like that, she was gone again. Not far. Just out of reach, where she’d been for years. And senseless me, I kept hoping she’d close the distance.
I spent the next few days kicking my own ass. Why had I said, “It was. The night you left”?
Because maybe Caleb wasn’t the clueless one. Maybe I was.
Hazel was relaxed and comfortable with everyone but me. That dug under my skin like a splinter I couldn’t get out.
After a long day at Colburn Restorations, estimating and bidding for a stack of upcoming jobs, I picked up Hank from his daytime caregiver.
He was in the same cargo shorts we’d argued over that morning. He’d wanted to wear Grinch pajamas this morning for reasons known only to him.
But his T-shirt was pink, slightly too small, and read Sassy Is a Full-Time Job.
Definitely not his.
This had Nell all over it. Nell was Penny’s grandma and Hank’s caregiver, and Nell…well, she was amazing and marched to her own wild beat. “What happened to your shirt?”
He just smiled.
Awesome. He was feeling playful. And I was too damn tired to keep up. I didn’t want to talk. Hell, I didn’t want to think, but that was the thing about my dad: It didn’t matter what I wanted or needed. Never had.
“Ah,” he said, which could mean anything in Hank speak. Probably meant he’d enjoyed whatever chaos had ensued.
He pointed to a guy walking a dozen dogs on a rigged-up belt. “Ah!”
“You want a dog,” I translated.
He clapped his hands. Well, he missed on the first two tries, but got it on the third. Occupational therapy was working.
“Sorry, man. We have a cat.” I didn’t have the brain power or the energy for one more thing in my life.
Hank huffed out a sigh and turned away. His version of a temper tantrum. Once, he would’ve yelled. Once, he would’ve shamed me for being a disappointment. Now? A sigh.
I tried to keep my mouth shut, but my mouth wasn’t interested. “You do realize I’m able to take care of you because I’ve convinced myself you’re not the same man who raised me, right? You’re just someone who needs help. And that’s what I do. I help people.”
He didn’t answer. Or look at me.
Fine by me. I had things to overthink.
Hazel’s voice echoed in my mind. I’m broken.
She wasn’t. But maybe I was.
At home, I helped Hank out of the truck. He grabbed my hand, fingers tangling in mine. Then, with his other hand, he tried to pat me on top of my head. Being six four, I got slapped in the face instead, but I knew what he meant.
It was affection. And possibly an apology, though whether he knew what he was apologizing for was anyone’s guess.
This from the man who, pre-strokes, had never learned the meaning of the word sorry.
I stared down at our entwined fingers, squelching the urge to pull free.
That wouldn’t do any good, because as far as we all knew, he had very little memory of the past. So I sucked it up and held his hand all the way into the damn house.
Her Fluffiness waited in the foyer like a furry time bomb. Two minutes past dinner, and the queen was displeased.
“Ah.” Hank patted his own tummy.
Guess the entire kingdom was displeased. “On it.”
The house was still warm from the late-afternoon sun, the air faintly laced with coffee from that morning. I walked straight through the kitchen and out the back door to start the barbeque, my dad right on my heels.
The wind rustled through the oaks like it had something to say just as a fluff ball raced past me. Her Fluffiness, on her evening walkabout. “Hey, don’t even think about going to Hazel and begging for food again,” I called after her.
Like she’d listen. I shook my head at myself and my circus, then went back inside for the food. “Burgers or hot dogs?”
“Ah.”
“Both it is.” I wasn’t sure when I’d begun understanding what the various ahs meant. Or, hell, maybe I was just making it up in my head.
My phone had buzzed several times on the way home with incoming texts. Probably Caleb sending me memes I wasn’t in the mood for, so I’d ignored it, until Ryder’s name lit the screen. “What?”
There was a beat of silence. Most people deferred to Ryder, but we liked to play a little game, the one where he was the most annoying older brother on the planet, and I was the flippant, mocking younger brother who kept him humble.
“You talk to her?” he finally asked.
“Who?”
“Fuck, man, you’ve got to read the family chat.”
“Why? You guys do nothing but trade insults all day long. Who has time for that?”
“Listen…Hazel got detained at the state park last night. Cops thought she was vandalizing.”
My stomach dropped. “She wouldn’t do that.”
“They drew on her.”
I froze. “What?”
“She’s got a reputation, earned or not.”
I remembered Hazel’s face when she’d said people hadn’t forgotten. Shame. Embarrassment. “People change,” I said tightly, furious for her.
Ryder exhaled. “Yeah, well, check the town IG page.”
I pulled the phone away from my face and did just that. Then I stared at a picture of the old gazebo in the state park. It’d been graffiti covered for years, some of it from Hazel herself, but was now gleaming with fresh paint and a new roof.
“She rebuilt it,” I said, somehow not surprised, even as something twisted in my chest. Not grief. Not quite pride. Something harder to name.
“Used her own time, materials, everything. But the cops thought she was tagging it. Instead, she was saving it. Now the mayor wants to personally thank her and offer her a commendation.”
I closed my eyes. Hazel, the girl everyone had labeled as trouble, had just quietly saved something this town had let rot. “Why would she do that?”
“Ask her yourself,” Ryder said. “Oh wait—you can’t, because you two are still acting like twelve-year-olds. You ever going to tell me what that’s about?”
“No,” I said. Because I didn’t have the words for the way she still lived under my skin.
“Tuck.”
I sighed. “Feelings change. People move on.”
“So…you’ve moved on?” he asked doubtfully.
I knew the answer should be yes. We’d been kids. Time had passed. But saying I’d moved on and actually moving on were two different things.
“That’s what I thought,” Ryder said, then hung up.
I flipped a burger and thought too hard about Hazel. Sweet and sharp and stubborn as hell. Also, she’d kill me dead on the spot if I called her sweet to her face.
I was smiling a little as I stood there, grilling for a father who couldn’t speak, trying not to read too much into how much my cat loved Hazel, or the way Hazel kept crashing into my life when I least expected it, showing me a woman who was clearly not broken after all.
Just healing.
And maybe, just maybe, I was too.