Chapter 51
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Miles leaned heavily on his cane and reminded Nix to heel as he hobbled down the empty hallway.
Classes had ended an hour ago, and no children ran wild in the halls, no happy screeches came from the classrooms, and so early in the year, only the teachers’ meticulously created bulletin boards decorated the walls. Art would join them soon enough.
He’d agonized over Abby’s offer for days, signing the contract and accepting the benefits gratefully, but leaving the department blank until Wes broke the news Forest had been made his permanent replacement.
The searing twist in his chest, more painful than his leg, ripped a new wound in a heart still not healed from all the other losses it had sustained.
He wanted to go back.
He’d told his new therapist as much.
“Why is returning so important to you?” the therapist asked.
After thinking it over between sessions, Miles responded, “It would let me stay in the family, with my brothers, helping them.”
“And if you didn’t, would it mean you weren’t part of the family?”
The question challenged Miles’s assumptions. In some ways, it meant exactly that, and having lost a relationship with one biological brother already, he hated the idea of losing any more.
Captain Ross hadn’t spoken a word to him since the day he’d failed his retake. Obviously, his former boss didn’t consider him a part of the team.
On the other hand, Wes had taken weeks off work, all but moving into the spare bedroom to help care for him during his recovery.
Others had brought food. Surprisingly, some of the older, retired guys had reached out, too, offering to talk.
They’d been through enough in their long lives; they could empathize.
When he’d said as much, his therapist had challenged him. “They can empathize, but Captain Ross can’t? What if what you’ve made up about him isn’t true?”
The prompt was enough for him to call his former mentor, and their conversation lasted over an hour.
“You fought so hard, Miles. I’m not disappointed, I’m proud. I’ve never seen a firefighter come back from a worse injury, and you almost did it. If you’d waited...” He’d trailed off. “I’m sorry it didn’t work out the way you’d hoped.”
With a clean slate, Miles found the courage to be honest with himself. He loved the station, but it would always be a knife in his chest when he couldn’t go out. He’d never not wish to be beside his brothers as they answered the familiar siren call to help.
He couldn’t live beneath such a shadow.
No one should.
He deserved more. A second chance. A new life.
So, instead, he’d accepted the school liaison position.
He made his slow way through the halls of Jif’s school, grateful the room number he’d been given wasn’t Jif’s class. He had to meet with the district contact, file a background check, and hand over proof of Nix’s vaccinations and training certificates.
Nix pulled to the right, but Miles tugged him back into place. “No, boy. We’re not going to visit Jif.” His rough voice echoed in the hallway, throwing its broken tones back in his face.
She’d never forgive him.
“What should we be talking about that we aren’t?” his therapist had asked after a couple of weeks of meetings.
He stumbled over his words. “I had...a girlfriend. Before. I mean, after. Ah...during... She was...” Everything.
Light.
Sunshine.
Joy.
“What happened?”
“I ruined it.”
“Why?”
Only because the question came without the weight of judgment—genuine curiosity, an invitation to explore his own process—could Miles answer.
“I didn’t trust her. I couldn’t bear to be hurt...again.”
“That served you in the moment,” his therapist reminded him.
“Yes. No...”
He could excuse his choice with the pain, the devastation, the pattern Tessa had set by leaving him when he’d needed her most. Excuse it, but not accept it.
The very opposite of Tessa, Jif had offered to stay and care for him, but he’d been too wounded, too prideful, too stubborn to accept. He’d compared himself to the men she’d surrounded herself with and come up short in his own eyes.
But never in hers.
He should have believed her.
Instead, he’d been nothing but another man who abandoned her. Selfishly abandoned her.
With Colton’s move to San Francisco, her connection to the Raptors had evaporated, but Miles had to believe Jif’s friends weren’t so shallow they’d desert her.
Abby had been tight-lipped about her husband’s former star receiver and his sister, but Britt and Garrett’s wedding had garnered media attention, and, though small, a photograph of the wedding party was included in the article.
Dressed in a flowing, navy-blue cotton dress with a long skirt, it hardly matched her usual style, but more importantly, the smile on her face was the real, genuine one he’d come to love so well.
Instead of her signature, pasted-on expression, her joy for her best friend blazed across her face, not merely sunshine, but an incandescent happiness.
Clearly, she’d made her peace with everything and found a way to move forward without him. He’d had his chance, and he’d thrown it away.
Finally arriving at the correct classroom, Miles double-checked the room number and knocked.
“Come in.”
He froze, hand on the doorknob.
He recognized that voice.
Nix did, too, and his tail thwapped Miles’s leg as it revved from zero to sixty in less than a heartbeat. When Miles didn’t go in, the dog danced in place, a whine in his throat, then scratched at the door.
“Sorry, coming,” the voice—her voice—replied. “I didn’t realize I’d locked...”
She trailed off as she wrenched the door open.
Miles cleared his throat. “Uh, hi.”
Jif folded her hands together and twined her fingers. “Abby didn’t tell me it would be you.”
“That makes two of us.” He stood in the hallway a moment longer, until Nix bumped him again, a second whine building. “For goodness sake, just pet him before he has an aneurysm.”
A half-smile flashed over Jif’s face, and she dropped to her knees, opening her arms for the dog.
He barreled into her, whuffling her hair and licking her cheek while she scrubbed her nails over his shoulders.
“It’s good to see you, boy.”
The dog wriggled, glanced up at Miles, then buried his head under Jif’s arm.
She laughed, the windchime tone fluttering in his chest, perching on a rib as if it would fly up his throat and out his mouth.
I love you. I’m sorry. Please give me another chance.
He forced the words back down, studying her bent head, her long, caramel curls tumbling over one shoulder, her eyes glittering with joy when she glanced up, catching his gaze with hers before turning away, burying her nose in Nix’s neck.
“It’s good to see you, too.”
Her hands slowed at his words, and Nix butted her chest again, demanding more pets. She gave him one last caress, then stood slowly, wiping her hands on her fitted, khaki pants. She swallowed, her throat bobbing, her eyes sheened with moisture, but before he could say any more, she turned away.
He followed her into the classroom, already indelibly imprinted with her style: a mini-fridge humming in the corner; an oval rug with flat pillows scattered in a loose circle around the edge; the old, velvet-covered, sapphire wingback chair off to one side, a heavy, knit blanket draped over the arm.
A dog bed sat beside the chair.
Because she was the district contact, and she’d anticipated someone arriving to take his place.
With that thought, his feet stumbled to a halt.
Somehow, in all his work to imagine a life without Jif, he’d never considered she would live a life, too. One not only without him, but ostensibly with someone else.
I can’t do this.
Going back to the fire station would hurt less than facing Jif again and again, words crawling up his throat and swallowed back, heart breaking, and regrets haunting him.
And one day—oh, heaven help him one day she’d meet someone. He’d steal her heart, taking it away from Miles forever.
He clenched his eyes closed, breathed deeply, and reminded himself he’d done hard things.
This might be the hardest of all.
Letting her go, not from afar, from the safety of his therapist’s office or the enveloping shadows as he fell asleep, wondering what he’d say if he ever had the chance, but each and every day. Over and over again. A long, agonizingly slow goodbye.
Or, he could fight.
He could say the words that so desperately wished to fly from his mouth.
He could apologize and ask for another chance.
He could let go of his pride—he had none left anymore, anyway—and hope the Jif he’d fallen in love with, that kind, gentle, patient woman would understand.
Would see his heart. Through the mess. Through the pain.
Through the walls he’d built and the hurt he’d left behind.
He had a second chance—one he never imagined.
He wouldn’t waste it.
Not again.