33. thirty-one
thirty-one
. . .
CREW
In what felt like the blink of an eye—but was really more like four hours—the crew and I trudged back into the firehouse. Once the engine guys had knocked down the blaze, we all spent some time on overhaul, meaning we walked through the structure to ensure the fire was entirely extinguished and made sure the house itself was stable enough to stand until the Lees decided what they were going to do with it. An insurance adjuster would need to come out, photograph it, and process a claim. Plus, I was sure that, if anything inside was salvageable, the Lee family would want to go through and take what they could.
My limbs were heavy with exhaustion, but my veins hummed with electricity as I made my way toward the locker room for a shower. The second my shift was up, I had somewhere to be.
Unfortunately, crawling into bed with Aspen, which was where I desperately wanted to be, would have to wait a few hours.
ME
Gonna be late getting home this morning. Wanted to give you a heads up. Miss you .
Aspen’s response was almost immediate despite it being six a.m.
LITTLE PHOENIX
Miss you too. Everything okay?
ME
Yep. Just have to take care of something.
LITTLE PHOENIX
A case-related something?
ME
Mhm. I’ll fill you in when I’m home
Two hours later, the second the third shift lieutenant was through the door, I was racing for my truck, shouting a hasty goodbye to Tuck and the rest of the guys.
I didn’t bother to turn on the radio as I drove across town, knowing it would only add to the mess of thoughts already at full volume in my brain. My anxiousness had my fingers drumming on the steering wheel as I rolled down the path I’d taken countless times before.
When I stopped in front of the shitty house, more grey now than white thanks to years of neglect, I wondered if I was making a mistake. This place had been the sight of so many lost nights for me, and while I was over a decade past the boy I’d been, it would be too easy to trip and fall back into old habits.
I’d seen it happen too many times, and I worked too long and too hard, both in therapy and for years avoiding any sort of trigger, to go back.
There was no “recovered” for someone like me. You were either recovering—a lifelong process—or you were an addict. Knowing how thing the line between the two was put my confidence on shaky ground .
Still, it had to be done.
With a fortifying breath, I got out of the truck and approached the front door, deciding how I wanted to play it. I could go in guns blazing, or I could sit him down and try to talk some sense into Chris.
Ultimately, he made the decision for me.
No sooner had I reached the top step of his porch than did Chris appear in the doorway, a fucking knife in his hand, pricking the skin of my abdomen.
“The fuck you want, pig?”
God, I fucking hated this guy.
In a smooth move, thanks to years of training with Finn and West, who had taught me all kinds of shit they’d learned in the Rangers, I had the blade knocked out of his hand. Shoving him inside, I kicked the door closed behind me, then pressed him into the nearest wall with my arm barred across his windpipe.
“Where were you last night?”
“Here,” he choked out, slapping at my bicep to get me to lay off.
I did, but only enough that he could draw air slightly more comfortably. I couldn’t have him passing out before I got answers.
“Can anyone vouch for you?”
“Tito was here.”
Fucking Tito . I should’ve known.
Tito, or Timothy Tost, was a washed up high school athlete who turned to drugs after an accident ended his football playing career. He was my age, had never left this county as far as I knew, and was as big a piece of shit as the man in front of me. Tito was considered Chris’s “muscle,” meaning he knocked around junkies on Chris’s behalf when they didn’t pay up.
Forearm still braced against Chris’s neck, I sent Lane a text, asking him to track down Tito to confirm. Not that I trusted these guys not to lie .
“You sure you two didn’t get doped up and go start a fire?”
Chris’s beady eyes narrowed. “The fuck you talkin’ about?”
“Residential fire last night,” I gritted out. “The family home of one of the Prom Night Arsonist’s victims. Happened right after the sheriff cut you loose. Seems convenient, doesn’t it?”
“It wasn’t me,” he gasped.
“I’m not sure I believe you,” I said, almost conversationally, completely masking the hatred coursing through me. This man…he’d taken advantage of me. Preyed on me when I was in a delicate situation, used both my mental and physical struggles against me until I became another one of his willing little mules.
I knew Chris Taal, better than most, which is why I’d never trust a single word coming out of his fucking mouth.
“C’mon, man,” Chris said, grinning to expose each of his decaying teeth and equally rotten breath. “You know fire ain’t my style. I like to be a little more up close and personal.”
The tip of another blade once again pressed against the skin of my stomach, this time with enough pressure to draw blood, and I swore internally.
How could I have forgotten he always kept two on him? The man was a moron, but he took his personal safety seriously. In my angry haze, I’d failed to notice the flailing he’d been doing with his arms was really him trying to reach the second knife.
I inhaled shallow breaths, trying to keep my stomach from expanding too much lest I drive the blade deeper.
“You know murder ain’t my style either.”
That was also true.
Evidenced by the tip digging into my flesh, Chris enjoyed carving people up as a way of keeping them in line, a few slashes here and there to remind them he meant business.
I had a few on my back to prove it.
But he’d never killed anyone—at least not at the end of his blade.
All the anger coursing through me dissipated in an instant, leaving nothing but exhaustion in its wake. I’m free , I reminded myself. And this man couldn’t hurt me any longer.
Curving away from the blade, I removed my arm from his neck and took two healthy steps back.
“Do you know anything?” I asked him. “Anything that can help us. You cooperate, and it’ll go a long way toward easing your current legal problems.”
“I don’t know shit,” he spat.
I nodded, turning for the door. My work here was done, and I didn’t want to spend a single second longer in this nightmare from the past.
My hand was on the knob when he said, “Okay…maybe I know a little.”
I looked at him over my shoulder. “How much is a little?”
“Missy Plano,” he said. The knife blade retracted with a snick , and he stuffed his hands into the pockets of his baggy cargo shorts, backing away from me. “That’s all I got.”
Better than nothing , I thought as I escaped at last, dialing Lane before I was fully settled behind the wheel of my truck. I peeled away from Chris’s house in a cloud of dust and burning rubber.
“You’re alive,” my brother said in greeting, “so I’ll take that as a win as long as Taal is too.”
“He’s still breathing,” I confirmed. “Fucker actually managed to get the drop on me.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Good. I haven’t tracked down Tito yet, but I’ve got deputies out looking for him. What’ve you got?”
“Name Missy Plano mean anything to you?”
Under his breath, Lane mumbled the name to himself over and over. “Ahh! Shit, yeah, it does.”
I waited for him to go on, but he didn’t. The line was silent save the scritch-scratch of what I could guess was Lane’s pen against his notebook .
“Lane? Care to share with the class?”
“Right, sorry bro.”
“So Missy Plano?”
“Missy Plano is, for lack of a better term, the town whore.”
Holy shit .
“Damn,” I breathed. “I never knew her last name.”
Lane snorted, the scratch of his pen replaced by the click-clack of computer keys. “Neither did I. Doesn’t help that she goes by Mel now either. Or she tries to, anyway.”
“What else do you know about her?”
“Nothing off the top of my head,” Lane admitted. “But I ran her through the system and got a DOB.”
“She got a sheet?”
“The usual shit given her…proclivities,” my brother chuckled. “Solicitation. Couple distribution charges, but nothing has ever stuck.”
I rolled my eyes. “Wonder why.”
“DOB puts her in high school at the same time as Lee and Stanhope though,” Lane said. “Maybe we should pay another visit to Mom.”
“I’m not opposed to the idea. We can run it by her at dinner this week.”
“Deal. See you then, baby bro.”
The line went dead, and as I drove home, my mind swirled with all kinds of ideas. Truthfully, I couldn’t wait to see Aspen. Not only because it had been over twenty-four hours since I last had but because I couldn’t wait to tell her everything I’d learned and see what she thought of it all.
“Aspen?” I called as I padded down the hall from the mudroom.
“In here!” she replied from the living room.
I made my way toward her, not bothering with verbal pleasantries as I hauled her off the couch and into my arms, my mouth capturing hers instantly .
Fuck, she tasted good. Like coffee and something that was purely her. I skated my hands down her sides and found her bare thighs, lifting her off her feet. Her legs came around my hips and, mouths still fused, I walked us through the house toward my bedroom.
With her still in my arms, I climbed onto the mattress and settled us in the center before I finally broke free.
“Hi,” I grinned down at her.
“Hey, hotshot.” She leaned up to press a kiss to the side of my neck, inhaling deeply. “God, you smell so fucking good. Especially after a call. All smokey and sexy.”
“Maybe I should quit showering before I come home,” I mused.
Aspen shook her head. “I don’t want the sweat. Just the smoke.”
I chuckled. “Whatever you want, baby.”
“How was the call?”
“The Lees house is a total loss, but luckily they weren’t home.”
“They’re in Arizona with their other daughter and her family.”
“You keep in touch?”
Aspen shimmied her shoulders. “Here and there. They were planning on coming home for the Fourth of July.” Her face fell. “Now I guess they’ll stay in Mesa.”
Rubbing my hands up and down her arms, I pulled her back to my chest. “I’m sorry, little phoenix.”
“It’s not your fault,” she whispered. “But I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
“What do you want?”
“ You .”
This fucking girl.
“Nice shirt,” I said, toying with the hem briefly before sliding my palm higher against her smooth skin to cup one of her tits .
“This old thing?” she said coyly, sitting up and forcing me back on my heels.
The tee had once been black but had faded to more of a dark grey thanks to the number of times I’d worn and washed it. DUSK VALLEY FIRE DEPARTMENT was emblazoned on the front, CAPTAIN was written across the shoulders on the back.
“Yeah, that old thing ,” I replied. “Looks a hell of a lot better on you.”
“You know where it’d look even better?” she asked, a wicked gleam in her eye.
I leaned forward to nip at her neck, her ear, whispering, “Where?”
Aspen shoved me away and said, “Your floor.”
Then she whipped it over her head and sent it floating to the carpet, leaving her clad in nothing but a pair of panties.
“A goddamn wet dream,” I murmured, reaching out to gently trace my fingers over her collarbones and down the line of her sternum before veering over to her nipples.
Aspen sighed as goosebumps erupted over her skin.
Then she stilled, pulling my attention to her face.
“What’s wrong?”
“Sorry,” she said sheepishly. “But I remembered you had something to tell me.”
“What happened to not wanting to talk about this anymore?”
One of those naked, slender shoulders hitched up. “I changed my mind.”
Sighing, I ran a hand over my face. I wanted Aspen to know every single part of me, jagged edges and all. And that meant baring myself fully to her and hoping she still wanted to be with me afterward.
“I’ll tell you,” I said, “but you’ve gotta put that shirt back on. I can’t talk to you when your perfect tits are staring me in the face.”
Aspen giggled as I climbed off the bed and retrieved the tee from the floor. I tossed it to her, but she made no move to catch it, instead staring at me, mouth open in shock.
“What?” I asked.
“Crew…you’re bleeding.”
I glanced down at my torso, a thin line of blood and a small hole decorating my shirt where Chris has cut me.
“Fuck,” I breathed, pulling my shirt off and heading into the bathroom. Aspen put hers back on and followed, turning my back against the counter and inspecting the wound. “Antiseptic is in the closet.”
She grabbed the bottle and a cotton ball, and I hissed as she dabbed the liquid on my skin. “What happened?”
“Paid a visit to an old friend.”
Aspen quirked a brow. “All your friends treat you like this?”
“Just the ones who used to be my drug dealer.”
Aspen sucked in a shocked breath, and I was grateful I couldn’t see her face. I didn’t know what I’d find there, but with my few previous relationships, when we got to this point where I spilled my darkest secret, they always ran. Like the man I was suddenly reverted into the piece of shit I’d been, and they couldn’t stand to look at me anymore.
I considered it a good sign, at least, that Aspen made no move to get away from me.
She bent to blow on my stomach, drying the peroxide before stepping back. “I don’t think it needs a bandage.”
Then she turned on her heel and retreated into the bedroom.
As we’d done countless times over the course of the last month, I gathered her in my arms and reclined us against the pillows, the top of her head tucking perfectly under my chin as she fit herself into my side.
Like she was made to be there.
“Remember how Lane and I interviewed that Chris guy a while back?”
“Yes. ”
“I went to see him again. Lane told me he finally made bail yesterday and was released. The timing was too convenient.”
“And? Was it him?”
“No. Chris…that’s not his style.”
“What happened? How did you…”
She didn’t finish the question, but I knew what she was asking.
“I had an accident when I was fourteen. Finn, West, and I had always been hell-raisers, and it got worse after Dad died. That day, we’d been out in one of the pastures dicking around. I got the dumbass idea to ride my horse by standing on his back. No helmet, no reins, nothing to protect me. I managed to stay up for a while…until my horse got pissed and took off into a nearby copse of trees. Naturally, I fell and shattered my fibula and tibia.”
Reaching for her hand, I bent my knee and lifted my pant leg, pressing her fingertips to the silvery scars crossing the shin of my left leg. The intervening years had smoothed them out considerably, but they were still slightly raised.
“It required a few surgeries and a lot of pins to fix, and I got hooked on painkillers in the process,” I continued flatly, Aspen’s touch giving me the courage to plow ahead. “At first, I really had been taking them for the pain, but after a certain point, I craved the numbness they gave me.”
Aspen laced her fingers with mine, curling our hands together and placing them over my wildly thumping heart. I’d gotten through the hard part and she hadn’t bolted, which settled me in a way that told me this thing between us was forever.
Two months in was surely too soon for such wild thoughts, but it came and stayed nonetheless. We’d walked through fire together, and now, there was no way in hell I’d ever her go without a fight.
From there, the exploits of my teenage years poured out of me. How I ran pills for Chris when he needed an extra hand—and was always paid in the form of whatever drug I was pedaling. I’d tried pretty much everything, and only getting hooked on pills versus cocaine or meth had been a miracle. How I fought people because he asked me to, barely graduated high school because I was too caught up in the thrill and emptiness of my addiction to give a fuck about anything else. How badly I broke my mother’s heart for all those years, and how nothing and no one could pull me out of the spiral until it had almost been too late.
“My addiction was bookended by accidents,” I said. “The one that drove me to drugs, and the one that drove me away.”
“What happened?”
“I was almost seventeen at the time. Chris and I were making a delivery on the outskirts of Boise, and things got out of hand. We made the drop, and he decided to stick around for the party. Got caught up in enemy territory, meaning a rival dealer had claimed that particular area as his. Chris had known, didn’t give a fuck, and hadn’t bothered to clue me in. All hell broke loose. I was high as a kite and wasted off my ass, but Chris made me drive to get us the fuck out of there. And…I crashed. Wrapped his junked-out Honda around a tree.”
I shivered, remembering. Even through the haze of pills and booze from that night and the patina of a memory, I could still feel the blood slicking my hands, the shards of glass cutting into my flesh, my shallow, rattling breaths from my collapsed lung, and the sheer agony of my broken leg—the other one that time.
“That’s why you don’t drink,” she said softly.
“It’s a slippery slope,” I admitted. “Addiction is a deep, dark hole I almost didn’t crawl out of.”
“But you did. How?” She shifted to look up at me, and I searched her face for any sort of disgust or pity.
I found none of it. All that radiated from her expression was understanding and acceptance.
“Chief Madden,” I said, smiling as thoughts of my long-time mentor and friend assaulted me. “After that accident, he took me under his wing. Got me help and took me under his wing.”
It hadn’t been easy. Not on me, my family, or Chief himself. I spent the first month of my senior year of high school in rehab, doing double the work to get myself back on track while still hoping to graduate in time. When I got out, I spent any free moment I had at the firehouse with him, learning the tricks of the trade.
“Thanks to Chief, Mama let me apply for the CFD. She hadn’t been keen on the idea of me entering the fire service, not when I’d just come out of a fire of a different sort. But after some long and emotionally draining conversations, she gave in. We all knew it was a long shot. People get selected for the CFD via a lottery, and the chances of my number ever coming up were slim. But we decided the chance was worth it if it meant I could get out of Dusk Valley and away from all the reminders of the things I’d done. If it hadn’t panned out…I probably would’ve left anyway.”
“You being selected was a miracle,” she said.
“Yeah,” I replied, shaking my head. Some days, I struggled to wrap my head around it all. I was the luckiest son of a bitch in the world, as evidenced by the woman wrapped in my arms. “It saved my life.”
“I’m glad it did.” Aspen swung her legs around so she straddled my lap and cradled my face in her hands. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t have been able to save mine.”
“God, you would’ve hated that version of me. I wasn’t a great guy back then, Aspen. I wasn’t worthy of you, and I’m not sure I am now, either.”
My secret shame and my greatest intrusive thought: that I didn’t deserve all the good in my life because of the kid I’d been.
“No, Crew,” she assured me, gripping my shoulders fiercely, like she was going to shake some sense into me if I didn’t see reason. “You’re a good man. The best one. ”
“I’ve done bad things to good people,” I protested. “And you better believe if it comes down to it, I will stop at nothing to keep you safe You’re…everything to me.” Fuck, it felt good to get that off my chest, even if emotion clogged my throat, my body stiffening, bracing for her reaction. “If that means I have to put a bullet in the head of the fucker responsible for this”—I brushed my fingers along the material of her tee over the burn scars on her back—“make no mistake, baby. I’ll happily do it and sleep like the dead afterward.”
Aspen tiptoed her fingers up my chest, her entire palm coming to rest against my cheek. “You’re pretty sexy when you get all murderous like this.”
My hand continued down her side, over the curve of her ass, and she shifted onto her knees so I could grab a handful. “Oh yeah?”
“ Yeah . Gets me all hot and bothered. Makes me wanna do naughty things to you.” Leaning in, she pressed a kiss right over my heart. “And for what it’s worth,” she continued, pulling back to look me in the eye. “I wouldn’t survive if something happened to you. This”—she gestured between us—“is everything to me too.”
A low grumble emanated from my chest. Fuck, this woman turned me on something fierce, both with the dirty talk and emotional vulnerability. I slipped my hands under the hem of the tee, once again peeling it off her body. Then I scooted us to the side of the bed and put Aspen on her feet. Naked again save her panties, she stared at me in confusion.
I merely smirked at her, sliding off my pants and boxer briefs. Aspen’s eyes widened, and the tip of her pink tongue darted out to trace along her bottom lip, as though she could sense where I was going.
Despite my emotional purging, I was hard as a fucking rock, and I hissed at the pressure when I gave my shaft a few tugs.
“Get on your knees and show me then.”