Chapter Forty-Four #2
I can’t catch my breath through the tears. “He became…a firefighter…because of one conversation…when he was nineteen. And I killed him.”
Parker’s watching me. I can feel it. But she doesn’t utter a word.
“I know what everyone says.” My voice is so soft, I’m not sure she can even hear me.
“I know the fire did it. I know the building collapsed. I know there were things nobody could control.” Finally, I lift my gaze.
Her blue eyes are wet with tears. “But I was responsible for him. I was supposed to protect him.”
My voice fades away completely. I try to breathe. My lungs are so tight…I can’t.
A sob tears through me. I cover my face, but it doesn’t hide anything.
“I killed him.”
I expect her to move away, but the cushions shift instead as she moves closer.
She doesn’t tell me I’m wrong. She doesn’t try to pull the guilt out of my hands and carry it herself.
She just wraps her arms around me.
And that breaks me open completely.
I know how to survive anger. I learned how to survive pain. I don’t know how to survive someone staying.
I let myself fall apart in her arms until the shaking slows and the room starts coming back in pieces.
When I finally pull away, it’s dark outside. In the lamplight, I search her face for the flicker of uncertainty. The flinch. The distance I was certain I’d find. But it’s not there.
“Tell me about him,” she says.
The words catch me off guard. “What?”
“Zack. Tell me about him.” Her voice is quiet. Almost…reverent. She’s not asking about the man I killed. She’s pulling him out of the fire and giving him back to me.
For a moment, I can’t find the words. Then a memory floats to the surface. It’s so small and ordinary, I feel silly telling her at all.
“He made the worst coffee I’ve ever tasted.” The laugh that slips free is rough and strained, but real.
Parker’s expression softens.
“I’m serious,” I say. “It was terrible. Every member of the crew gave him hell about it.” I shake my head. “Took us a month to find out why. Turns out, he’d never had a cup in his life.”
The corner of her mouth lifts. “Never?”
“No.” I smile, despite everything. “He had no idea how bad it was. He just knew everyone else drank it, so he figured he should learn how to make it. He’d brew a whole pot and wait for everyone to tell him it was getting better.
But it never did. Eventually, I asked him why he kept trying.
Kid straight up said, ‘Well, how else am I supposed to learn?’”
She grins. “I know a few people like that.”
“He thanked everyone.” I roll my eyes, though the memory warms my chest. “Every call. Didn’t matter what we were doin’. Soon as it wrapped, he’d thank anyone who hadn’t already booked it back to the truck.”
“Now that, I have no experience with.” Parker settles a little closer to me, her hand on my thigh. She leans in, like there’s nowhere else in the world she’d rather be than right here, listening to me talk about Zack.
“He loved training. Actually loved it. Showed up early, stayed late, tried to get the whole house fired up right along with him.”
“I reckon that went over about as well as a lead balloon,” Parker says.
“One guy, Torres, told him straight up, ‘If you say great teamwork one more time, I’m tossin’ you out the nearest window.
’ He meant it, too. Oldest guy in the house, grumpier than a bear after hibernation.
Zack grinned, then said it again forty minutes later at a call with another house.
Their captain made a crack about the kid bein’ slow chargin’ the line.
Torres lost his shit. It took three of us to stop him from endin’ his career right then and there. ”
My voice is going. Too many calls. Too many tears. But for the first time since the fire, Zack’s last words over the radio aren’t the only thing about him I remember.
My smile lingers longer than I expect. It’s still my fault. He’s still gone. But for a few precious minutes, that isn’t all he is.
Parker links our fingers, and that simple gesture almost brings me to tears again. I spent years remembering how Zack died. Somewhere along the way, I forgot how he lived.
I don’t know how long we sit in silence. Long enough, exhaustion settles deep in my bones, and my eyes burn. “It’s…late.” I expect Parker to see the escape route I’m giving her and take it. Instead, she keeps hold of my hand, pulls me up, and leads me into the bedroom.
Without a word, she pulls back the covers, then crosses to the dresser for one of my t-shirts.
“You gonna steal that one too?” I ask as I work the button on my jeans free and let them fall to the floor.
“Maybe.” She disappears into the bathroom long enough for me to crawl into bed and settle on my side, my back turned to the empty half of the mattress.
I told her everything, and somehow…she’s still here. So why am I too afraid to look her in the eyes?
Because her presence is a fragile, precious thing. Because I’m still waiting to see it. The distance. The uncertainty. The end of what we could have been.
The bathroom door opens, the light winks out, and the mattress dips. A moment later, Parker’s curled against me, an arm draped over my hip. She presses her lips to the back of my neck for one beat, then another, before resting her head on the pillow and relaxing with a sigh.
A single tear trails down my temple. She didn’t leave. I told her everything, and she didn’t leave.