Chapter 05 DEVON
Sam asked me if I would spend the night in his room. He seemed slightly nervous to ask and made it clear that I didn’t have to if I wasn’t comfortable with it, but I didn’t want to leave. I sent Matt a text that I wouldn’t be back that night and he sent a whole bunch of texts in a row that started as excited and ended as a bunch of emojis that were innocent on their own but he made them dirty and I finally turned off my phone.
Sam left the TV on but turned it down, and we were facing each other in his bed while he rubbed his hand up and down my arm. He called me beautiful. The question still came, like I knew it would, but not in the way I’d heard it before.
“Can I ask you what happened? You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. It’s just that I can tell you’re insecure about your scars. You seem worried that…I’m not sure. You’ll be judged? Or that it somehow makes you unattractive? If you want to talk about it, I’m here to listen. For what it’s worth, you’re quite literally the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen.”
I met his eyes and he was looking back at me with an open sincerity, no hesitation, no glancing away. “Car accident,“
I said softly. He was still rubbing my arm, a little more soothingly than before. “Yeah, I am insecure, I guess, especially since my ex suggested putting a bag over my head while we fucked. It was probably the worst thing anyone’s said, but not the only thing.“
I decided being blunt was the way to go, since he asked outright, but his face darkened and fury burned in his eyes.
"Tell me this person’s name. I’d like to have a little chat with them.”
I laughed a little at his desire to defend my honor even though we barely knew each other. “It’s ok,“
I said quickly, “I’m long over him. I just got left with a little more insecurity than I already had. But I’ve been dealing with comments most of my life, especially in school. I was eight. I was with my aunt. I dropped my tablet on the floor of the car and asked her if I could take my seatbelt off to get it. Just for a second. She said yes.”
I paused for a second while he traced my scars with his finger. There was something in his eyes that I didn’t quite understand. He looked like he was about to say something, but he didn’t. I went on. “In those couple of seconds while I tried to grab it, some dude on his phone ran a red light and t-boned her car so hard it flipped a couple of times. I went through the windshield. The car was still moving when I got thrown out, so I ended up in a ditch yards away from where it stopped. I was barely conscious, and I couldn’t talk even though in my head I was screaming for help. My aunt was hurt pretty bad, and she was stuck in her car. When paramedics got there, she tried to tell them she’d had her nephew in the car with her, but they didn’t understand her because she was hurt and panicking.”
“Holy shit,“
he said, but in a way that made me stop talking. He continued my story for me. “It was a rookie firefighter who finally realized she was trying to let everyone know she’d had a child in the car. He started looking around while they were working on getting her out of the car, desperately looking for the child no one else realized was missing. He finally found him in a ditch, probably fifteen yards from where the car stopped.”
I looked into his eyes again and suddenly thought about how comforting and familiar they’d been the whole time, even though I hadn’t understood why. “Oh. Oh, whoa.”
He went on. “What most people don’t know is that the rookie was getting ready to quit. There was a fire the night before, and he wasn’t able to save the elderly man that lived there. He felt like an utter failure and was certain he wasn’t cut out for the job. When he found a kid in a ditch, though, bleeding and barely conscious, obviously in shock, all thoughts of the previous night were moved aside. He pulled the kid out because there was water in the ditch and yelled for a stretcher. He applied pressure to the wounds on the boy’s face and shoulder, while reassuring him that everything was going to be ok. The boy’s eyes finally cleared and he looked up with trust so deep, it made the rookie question everything. They got him on the stretcher right before they got the aunt out and got them to the hospital. When he found out they were both going to be ok, it made that rookie keep going, keep trying to save the people he could even though he understood then that he wouldn’t be able to save them all. It made him understand that the ones he could save still mattered more than his fears.”
“And he became chief,“
I added quietly.
He smiled. “Yeah. Eventually.”
“You saved my life. If you hadn’t found me…”
“I just did my job.”
“No, you made everything ok. You pulled me out of the place I thought I was going to die. I couldn’t even call out for help. You made me feel like it was going to be ok when I was more scared than I’d ever been. You stayed calm, and you stayed with me. I trusted you. You were always cut out for the job.”
He moved forward and kissed along the scar on my face. “I’m glad you’re ok. I’m sorry you’ve been dealing with shit people all your life. Those scars are part of you, though, and I think all of you is beautiful.”
I moved forward into his arms and he wrapped them around me. He still felt strong and safe, but in a different way. It still made me feel like everything might be ok, though, because he was there. I wanted to get to know him. The fact that we lived so close made me ecstatic. I may have found a reason to stick closer to home more often. It sounded like he truly wanted to see me again, like he hadn’t been after a one night stand. Like maybe he was the one I was supposed to find again all along. The one who saved me once, and might save me again in a different way.
Right before I fell asleep I thought of how funny it was that I was an electrician and he was a firefighter and we were making our own sparks. That was probably one of those corny, awkward thoughts I had, but he seemed to find all the things I was embarrassed about charming. Maybe I’d say it out loud in the morning. I fell asleep in his arms, happier than I could ever remember feeling.