Chapter 3 Piper
PIPER
I dress in lost-and-found clothes and check out of the hospital the next morning with Sonny’s hand tightly squeezing mine.
These sweatpants are not the only things lost and found…
Caleb Rourke now apparently works for the Maple Crossing Fire Department. Did the senior role in the New York City Fire Department not live up to his standards?
I wobble over to reception with my son and enough guilt to last a lifetime, and sign on the dotted line. I consent to being released.
But where the fuck do we go from here?
I should give the stove company a call in the meantime and see if the compensation money will cover costs to recover my house.
But my father was never the frugal type when I was growing up, and loved to splash the cash on properties that were way out of his budget. So I know it’s gonna be an expensive job.
There might be something cheaper on the market, but it feels wrong. We’ve always called that place home.
But our home, according to Caleb, is gone.
And so were my panties yesterday when I saw the only man I have ever loved, alive in action and looking even more irresistible than before.
Not the time or place, Piper.
I slip the paperwork back to the enthusiastic receptionist and flash her a half smile.
“Where are we gonna live, Mommy?”
“Don’t worry, buddy. We’ll figure something out. Jessy has some clothes that the two of us can borrow in the meantime.”
“I don’t like girls’ clothes.”
“Her nephew is your size. It’ll be okay. You’ll see.”
Sonny grabs my hand and we catch the bus back into Maple Crossing.
The bus just has to take the scenic route, passing under pine trees that take me right back to the hikes Caleb and I used to take. We used to drive for miles in his rented truck…
He looks at me sideways while driving, and flashes me a smoldering smile, both panty-wetting and restorative. I’ve never felt this comfortable in someone’s presence before.
He sees me.
Trees surround us in every direction as we drive through a nature reserve of natural beauty. There’s so much to look at.
And still he chooses to only look at me.
I grab Sonny’s hand as we exit the bus. It drives off, leaving a cloud of smoke from the exhausts in its wake. It’s enough to make me short of breath.
It feels wrong to enter my place of work not dressed in uniform, and with my son on my arm. Jess zips toward us instantly and embraces the pair of us in a hug warm enough to almost make me forget about the disaster.
About how I caused the fire.
And how I’m now gonna have to lie to those I love in order to successfully play this off as an accident.
“Oh my god, you poor things.” Jess releases me and shoves two overflowing bags of clothes into my hands. I’m weak still from the night spent at the hospital. Sonny and I were on oxygen therapy all night to flush out the dangerous levels of carbon monoxide we both inhaled.
The bags drag my wrists immediately down to the floor.
But her kindness is the real killer.
I pick up a few of the items and see brand-new clothes for Sonny. No holes. No ruined stitching. The inside label is Sonny’s size.
And here come the waterworks.
Jess rubs a reassuring hand up my arm and tells me it’s no bother.
But it is. Because I realize now that I could’ve just asked Jess plain and simple for some clothes that would fit Sonny without needing to set fire to my house.
“This is more than enough. Seriously.”
“You take care,” she says. “And hey. My place is only one bed but I can make up the two couches. Stay with me for the time being. I know it’s small, but it’ll be comfortable. You’ll have some time to work out insurance logistics.”
“Are you sure you wanna—?”
“That really won’t be necessary,” interjects another voice.
I whip around and hope I’m just hearing things, still high from the oxygen.
Nope.
How dare he enter my place of work looking like this?
Seeing Caleb in uniform for the first time burned me almost as much as the shock of seeing him again now.
Time has done quite the number on him. His cheekbones are now rendered harder, even more so than yesterday, now that he’s not doused in soot-slick sweat. He shadows the entire coffee shop with his height and earns the attention of every single female in the room.
I don’t blame them for pausing their conversations to gawp at him. Anyone with a vagina and a pulse would.
The silver streaks in his hair are new. I have the passing of time to thank for that. The gray roots give him a mature, to-die-for look that has me forgetting all about the fire.
He folds giant arms over his even more giant chest, and looks down at me with a curious gaze.
I can’t yet bring myself to look into his eyes.
I’m still on the biceps, feeling my jaw lower closer to the floor as I work out how the muscles got that big.
His job is very physically demanding, I get it.
But even the outline of the bulge in his pants appears bigger than before, and he’s sure as hell not using that weapon to put out fires.
An annoying, jealous feeling crashes over me when I consider his dating life.
Jess, even knowing my history with the man, falters the same breathless way.
“You can stay with me a while,” Caleb announces.
His stoicism makes it hard to know what he’s thinking.
“Both of you.” He looks at our son and finds it in himself to smile.
“Ummmm…” I trail off, knowing this is not a fucking good idea. Me and Caleb in the same house? With the son he doesn’t know is his? Sounds like the recipe for a disaster. One even bigger than the fire. “I don’t think that’s…”
Jess elbows me forcefully in the side and presents a positive smile at the man who still has the entire coffee shop at his mercy.
For us small-town locals, this is a big deal. Caleb shouldn’t have many fires to put out in an uneventful town like ours. People in Maple Crossing work, eat, sleep, and occasionally socialize when in the mood. Nothing dramatic ever happens. Houses stay intact.
So do panties, because there’s never a good enough reason to rip them off.
But for Caleb, women of all ages would do the latter in a heartbeat.
The bedazzled look on people’s faces suggests that nobody’s seen him around. And why would they? Maple Crossing is a safe town where nothing ever happens. When Caleb’s not on shift hiding in the fire station for hours at a time, he’s probably taking hikes.
I’m still unable to bring myself to go on one, even nine years later.
The fuckwit tainted the very pine trees we used to walk through. And now he’s tainted my workplace.
Fuck. Him.
“It would make sense for you and your boy to stay with Caleb for a while,” says a new voice. “Seeing as though the two of you have already been acquainted.”
Another man appears behind Caleb—not as tall, but with a face rigid enough to scream authority. “Ryan Keller,” he says, producing a firm hand for me to shake. “Chief officer at Maple Crossing Fire Station.”
I awkwardly take his hand and offer a smile, hoping that locker-room talk doesn’t exist at the fire station.
If Caleb has gone into bedroom details with his friends the same way I did with Jess when I described the “six months of eroticism” he and I spent together, I’m screwed, and have lost both dignity and my house.
“It would make perfect sense for the two of you to stay with me,” Caleb adds after another beat of silence. “You have nowhere else to go.”
“That’s not true,” I say, grabbing Sonny before he ventures too close to the fireman he seems awestruck by. “I can stay with Jess.”
Jess snorts. “On an old couch that will break your back? I don’t think so.”
I fold my arms and raise a subtle eyebrow at my friend.
But Jess waggles her eyebrows excitedly in response, flashing me a cheeky grin.
Turning back to Caleb and Ryan, she says, “Your generosity won’t go unnoticed.
Thanks so much for offering to take in my best friend.
She’s super clean and respectful, and Sonny”—she scrunches his hair—“is the best boy you’ll ever meet.
I promise you won’t regret it. Free coffee on us!
” she cheers, rushing over to the coffee machine to get started on the drinks.
To that, Caleb smiles sincerely, which gets my ovaries trembling.
Stuck between a rock and a hard place, I flick my gaze between Jess and the one man I once considered a future with…
And flee the coffee shop.
“That man is the one who saved us yesterday,” Sonny states when we make it back outside.
“Yes,” I feel like responding. “And he’s also your father. The one who took off all of a sudden and left me to realize I was preggo with you a week later.”
I settle for an unproblematic reply that’s more fitting for the circumstance. “Yes, he’s one of the firefighters from yesterday.”
I tousle Sonny’s hair through my fingertips. The brown color is the only feature he inherited from me. The onyx-brown eyes are from Caleb. So are the straight chin and angled nose.
I look out to sea and watch the yachts undulate gently in the harbor. Bells ring softly through the summer breeze. It’s a pleasant, balmy day, and the ocean that stretches out in front of us is a beautiful shade of blue—made more vibrant by the shining sun.
The weather does little to untangle the knots in my stomach, but I manage to loosen a few of them when I realize that Sonny and I both survived the fire. That’s all that really matters.
“Okay,” I say, addressing my little trooper with an action plan that is bound to be a success.
“Tonight we will stay in the Maple Crossing motel, and on the way there we will stop and get you another Boeing airplane. All I want you to focus on tonight, buddy, is getting a good night’s sleep. Can you do that for me?”
Sonny’s eyes peel wide at the mention of a new toy aircraft.
My heart skips a beat as I regard the innocent joy in his eyes. I’d bankrupt myself for his happiness, which, come to think of it, I’ll probably be doing tonight, since I’m prepared to blow savings on a motel room.