Win
“Do you want us to come meet you after I’ve taken Sam to speak with Murph’s bosses about setting up a business?” Rose asks, leaning against the front counter.
Behind her, I notice the blond man in a navy-blue Rios Fire t-shirt, sitting alone in a booth, scanning a large plastic-coated menu. Noah, Joel’s older brother. As he sets the menu down to glance at his watch, I refocus on Rose. “Um, you go ahead. I have something I need to do first.”
“Okay. I’ll see you at home later?” She kisses me.
I break the kiss fast, mentally kicking myself when her smile dims. “I’ll see you later.”
She leaves holding Ben’s hand, and Sam follows them out, shell-shocked and clutching a bundle of napkins after his wild success at fitting out Nico’s office. He’ll have work for the next two years once word spreads around Rios about what he can do.
The second the door closes behind them, I dart around the counter and rush over to Noah’s table, calling out to Lina, who’s wiping down a table, “I need five minutes.”
She gestures for me to go. The busy lunch period is over, and Nico is still admiring his new office. What I need to know won’t take long, and now is the perfect opportunity.
“I need advice,” I say, slipping into Noah’s booth.
Rios’s fire chief raises a dark-blond eyebrow at me. “About fire safety?”
I lower my voice. “About something personal.”
Interest stirs in his dark-green gaze. “Wouldn’t that be better shared with your pack?”
I shake my head. “No. This is too intimate.”
Both brows shoot up. “Too intimate to share with your pack? Now you have me intrigued.” He glances at his watch. “I don’t have long, though. I’m meeting a friend from the fire academy.”
“You’re hiring?”
What little I know about firefighting, I learned from Joel.
Both he and Noah went to a fire academy in Des Moines for about twelve weeks of intensive training after they graduated from high school.
When they came back as rookies, they worked part-time at first until full-time positions opened up.
The training is constant, and not all of it is in Rios.
Other times it’s out of town, and Joel can be gone for a couple of days.
He nods. “We’re down a guy. Sean moved to Colorado to be closer to his wife’s family a couple of weeks ago, and my friend is interested in moving down here. What’s so personal that you can’t talk to your pack about it?”
It’s a good question. I’ve been friends with Joel forever, though I’m closer in age to Noah. We can talk about most things. Except for this.
I hesitate. “It’s about Rose. We’ve kissed a few times, and… well, things have been leading one way, but—”
Noah holds up one hand and sits back in his seat. “Okay, that might be a little too intimate to be sharing with me.”
“It’s not about sex advice.”
A shoe squeaks and I turn in time to see Lina spin on her heel.
“I’ll be back to get your drink order later, Noah,” she says.
She couldn’t walk away any faster if she tried. We’re close, so I understand why she wants no part of this conversation.
Please let her never ever bring up what she overheard.
Letting out a sigh, I massage my forehead and lower my voice further. “Rose slept with Joel and Murph. But every time things start heading that way with us, I run away.”
Noah eyes me for a beat. “I’m going to assume this is not sex advice related, despite the fact that this sounds very much like it’s sex advice related.”
“I don’t want to disappoint her.”
He shrugs. “Everyone always thinks that, Win.”
I run my eyes over him. “Yeah, right.”
He’s over six feet tall, blond, an alpha, and a firefighter. Hell, at thirty-five, he’s Rios’s youngest-ever fire chief, to boot.
“It’s not about how I look, Win. Feelings change all the rules.”
I stare at him, silently communicating how little I’m buying this shit.
Maybe if it weren’t coming from someone who has never been short on female attention, I’d be more willing to listen.
But I have literally overheard a woman say she wouldn’t mind if Noah Shaw hosed her off, preferably while he’s wearing nothing but his firefighter's hat and boots. The stuff he’s telling me hits different—as in, not at all.
He smiles, reading my skepticism. “When it’s someone important to you, you care more. That’s just the way it is. Why couldn’t you have asked Joel or Murph this? They’d have told you the same thing.”
“They wouldn’t have wanted to hurt me.” Both know I’m comfortable singing loudly in public and walking around in a horse costume. But women… everyone has insecurities, and romance is mine. It’s always been easier to revert to being the friend, even when I’ve wanted more.
He snorts. “Joel has always been honest, and Murph has always been blunt.”
“You might have a point there,” I concede.
“And stop running away when she kisses you,” he warns. “She’ll start thinking you’re not attracted to her, and then you really will have a problem on your hands.”
I wince. Shit. I didn’t even think of that.
“Thanks.” I move to get up.
“The first time is always special,” he says quietly, eyes on the table.
“Even if things don’t go right and you bump heads, trip, or walk into a wall, it’s still special.
I’ve seen the way you are with each other; you won’t disappoint her.
Just enjoy the moment for what it is—you showing each other how you feel. She’ll do the same. And… treasure it.”
That’s surprisingly heartfelt for a guy who doesn’t date. “You sound like you’re talking from experience.”
He lifts his gaze from the table. “Good luck with Rose. Not that you’ll need it, but I’m relieved I don’t have to face my brother with the intimate details of your sex life.”
His tone is light, but the warning to back off this particular subject is as subtle as a semi-truck ramming into me.
“Got the message loud and clear. Thanks again.”
“I’d say anytime, but that feels a little too much like tempting fate,” he says dryly, a glimmer of amusement in his gaze.
Chuckling, I get to my feet to finish my shift in the kitchen. I feel a little better about Rose, but whether this newfound confidence translates to real life when I speak to her later remains to be seen.
Noah clears his throat.
I look at him.
He glances around, as if to confirm Lina isn’t close by. “Sam is staying in Lora’s apartment, right?”
Confused about where this is going, I nod. “Yeah.”
He rubs a hand over his clean-shaven jaw. “Know how long for?”
I shrug. “Not sure. I can ask Rose if—”
“No,” he blurts out. “Just curious.”
“About?”
He fiddles with his menu and doesn’t respond.
Head cocked, I study him a little longer. “Curious whether he’s staying there temporarily or if he’ll still be there when Lora moves home from grad school?”
She graduates this summer, and while I haven’t heard from Lina or Nico about when she’s coming home, at least one of them would want to go to Arizona to help her pack up her stuff and join her on the long drive back to Iowa.
Noah has always been laser-focused on being the fire chief and on all his responsibilities. Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but it sure seems like he’s suddenly acting territorial about her apartment.
He sets his menu down when he notices me looking at his hands. “It’s nothing.”
I start asking him about Lora when the bell over the door chimes, and a large, dark-haired man steps in carrying a large duffel. He spots Noah and beams. “Hey, man!”
“Caleb! Good to see you.” Noah pushes himself to his feet to greet his friend.
I walk back to the kitchen to finish my shift before I clean up and Nico takes over.
As I pass Nico’s open office, I slow when I see him sitting in his chair, looking around with a wide smile, as if he still can’t believe it’s his.
Nico gives so much to this town and has done so much for me.
Seeing him that happy is the best feeling there is. He deserves all the happiness he gets.
Dinner was awkward.
I couldn’t help but notice everyone glancing at me. Even Murph was more talkative than me, which is… something. But I needed to prepare. I needed to conserve all my brainpower for this.
Taking a deep breath, I release it in a quiet exhale as I lift my shaking hand and knock on Rose’s bedroom door.
A mattress squeaks, bringing to mind thoughts I need not be having now. The soft tread of footsteps moves toward me, and the door swings open.
Rose gives me a surprised smile. “Hey, Win.”
Given that I bolted from Ben’s bedroom the second he fell asleep after Joel and Murph read him a bedtime story, she probably thought I was actively avoiding everyone.
She was right. I thought she’d gone downstairs to watch a movie with Joel and Murph until I heard her voice coming from her room, probably talking to her parents, and I waited until it stopped.
So now I’m here, and she’s peering up at me, wondering why I knocked on her door only to stare at her. But my words won’t come. My tongue is heavy, and my mouth is dry.
Say. Something. Literally anything.
Her smile fades. “Win, is everything okay?”
Plastering a smile on my face, I stuff my hands in my pockets and take a step back. “Fine. Just wanted to say goodnight.”
I turn around and walk back to my room, where I close my door, lean my forehead against it, and mentally call myself an idiot for ten seconds. As I head to the book on my nightstand, there’s a soft knock. I eye the dark wood and reach for the handle.
It’s Rose, and she’s not smiling. “We need to talk. Can I come in?”
I recall Noah’s warning in the diner earlier.
Looks like you’ve successfully made a problem out of nothing.
I step aside without a word, anticipating the dreaded “I really like you, Win, but I think we’d be better off as friends” conversation I know all too well.