Chapter 2
Two
RYAN
“Tell me that’s at least got porn in it.”
Dropping my phone onto my lap, I took a second to register what my partner was saying, and my head snapped up as I looked over at her. Graciela was smirking at me the way she always did when she knew she was either under my skin or about to be.
“Can we not tonight?” I’d been reading for the last half hour as we sat in the ambulance and waited for a call. It was the calm before the inevitable New Year’s storm, and I was not looking forward to it. But at least I had some time to go through the book I’d just downloaded.
“It’s not my fault you’re a nerd who reads porn instead of watches it.”
“Girl, please. Written porn was invented by nerds, okay? One of the first widely circulated fanfics that wasn’t biblical was Kirk and Spock.”
“God, you even somehow make romance insufferable,” she groaned. I knew she wasn’t being unkind. She was simply pointing out what everyone liked to point out about me.
It was hard to care, really. My parents had cooked that out of me with their long-suffering disappointment in who I was as a person.
It was why I was sitting in the ambulance, half-freezing my ass off because the heater was on the fritz and it wasn’t on the schedule for repairs, staring across the street at the kebab shop, where our dinner order was waiting to be picked up.
“I think the food’s done,” she said as though she was reading my mind. “Who’s going out to grab it?”
“Rock, paper, scissors?” I asked.
Gracie sighed. “Really? Be a fucking man and go grab it.”
“I don’t need to walk in three feet of snow to prove that I’m a man. I’m wearing the wrong shoes, and I don’t want to get frostbite.”
“I’d save your toes before we had to amputate,” she said.
She tugged her coat closer around her shoulders.
“Please. I am begging. I’m starving, and I need a Diet Coke, or I’m literally going to die.
” It was her doe eyes that always got me.
I’d been raised a people pleaser, and she knew what buttons to push to get me to say yes.
Every time.
“You owe me,” I complained. I really couldn’t sit there much longer if I was actually going to fetch our dinner. The roads were absolute garbage, it was New Year’s Eve, which meant people were going to make poor choices, and this lull in calls was only going to stretch out for so long.
I glanced at the clock. It was eleven thirty. Fuck. Our first call would be half an hour out if the gods smiled on us.
“If I slip and get concussed,” I told her, “you’re paying my medical bills.”
She shot me a thumbs-up, and I opened the door, bracing myself against the frigid chill and jumped…into a pile of goddamn snow.
“Motherfucking shitting ass,” I hissed, trying to shake it off my pant legs.
There was no escape though. It was all powder and had been falling too quickly for anyone with a shovel to keep up with. Luckily, the streets were dead, so I managed to get across without slipping and knocking myself unconscious or getting hit by a sliding car.
The kebab shop with the flickering Open sign was warm inside, and the guy behind the counter shot me a smile full of pity the moment he saw my EMT badge under my parka.
“How’s it been tonight?”
I grimaced. “Slow, which means we’re going to pay for it later.” I turned to look out the window when I was suddenly blinded by headlights. And more. And more. My brows furrowed as I walked over and saw a line of cars heading near where the ambulance was parked.
“That’s strange,” the guy said. “Is that normal?”
“Uh, no, not really. It’s weird. Is…what’s over there? Is that a restaurant, or…”
He came around the counter and pressed his face to the window.
“Oh, it’s some little bar. I heard a famous person was playing a secret show tonight.
My sister-in-law texted me about it.” He dug around in the pocket of his apron and pulled out his phone to read.
“Some guy called…Atlas? From a band she’s obsessed with.
She was going on about their public breakup. You know about it?”
I shook my head. I loved music, but popular shit was rarely my thing.
My brothers called me insufferable about it, but that was one more in the long list of issues my family took with me.
I wasn’t successful enough, athletic enough, funny enough.
I wasn’t willing to live my life according to the expectations of others.
At least, until I’d cracked. Now I had a useless master’s degree in history and was working as an EMT, staring down at the MCAT because if it would get my mom to stop calling me every other day to cry about her youngest son breaking her heart for becoming a lowly, underpaid teacher, I’d at least give it a shot.
And maybe if I spectacularly failed at med school, she’d get off my back, and I could spend time figuring out what I wanted to do with my future. Which felt like the worst thing to think, considering I was well into my thirties and should have it figured out by now. I think?
I wasn’t even sure anymore.
I shoved that thought aside. I was tired of my disappointed parents occupying so much fucking space in my head without paying a dime of rent.
“Sorry to be a pain, but is my food done? I ordered on the app like fifteen minutes ago. My partner’s starving, and if I don’t get her a Diet Coke soon, she’s liable to murder me.”
The guy grimaced. “Two minutes, but our soda machine is down.”
“Dude, no. Don’t say that.”
He sucked in a breath. “I’m so sorry. The bar across the street does to-go drinks for us when this happens. Our machine goes down a lot.”
The prospect of going over there was hell on earth.
There was now a massive crowd outside the doors, but…
I could probably wave my badge to get special privilege and get her drink if that’s all I was there for.
It would at least make the rest of the night peaceful since Gracie wouldn’t try to actually murder me between calls.
“Hey,” the guy said, pulling me out of my thought spiral, “why don’t I bring the food to her, and you can go get the soda. If you go to the side door, there’s a guy working there, and he lets my customers come in. His name is Fred. I’ll text him and let him know to expect you.”
That was the best deal I was going to get. I actually didn’t mind getting Gracie what she wanted. She was one of the few people I worked with who would listen to me bitch about my family for hours on end without making me feel like a burden.
And she was genuinely kind, which seemed a rare thing these days. I was gay, but she was the closest thing to a partner I’d had in…hell, years. Maybe ever? That was also a very sad thought I pushed away.
“Thanks, man.” I offered my hand, and he shook it. “My partner’s name is Gracie. She’s in the passenger seat, and the ambulance is…oh fuck.” There were at least three cars blocking it in. This was going to be a fucking fantastic night. “We’re in that alley right there.”
He grimaced. “Oh.”
“Yep.” I shot him a wave, then pulled my parka tighter around me. “Wish me luck.”
“Good luck,” he called as I stepped back out into the snow.
The quiet street was now alight with loud chatter, people shouting, and someone arguing with the bouncer to try and get into the club. I knew celebrities had to make their money, but did they have to fucking disrupt my night like this?
Part of me wanted to get a glimpse of the fucker’s face so I knew who to picture when I was throwing darts back at the station. Especially if it was his fault I had to dig my way out of a goddamn snowbank to get to our next call.
Ducking past the crowd, who were not paying attention to me at all, I made it into the alley, then gently knocked on a thick metal service entrance.
I didn’t want to be too loud and draw attention, because I didn’t think this Fred guy would appreciate me bringing the horde of demanding people to his doorstep.
Luckily, they were too busy yelling at each other and the guys working the front to notice me.
After what felt like a short forever of shivering in my wet shoes, the door opened a crack, and I could see a single eye staring at me.
I offered an awkward wave. “Uh. I was sent here from the shop across the street?” I waved my EMT badge at him. “The kebab shop guy said I could come grab our drinks.”
The door opened further, and Fred—I assumed it was Fred—appeared. He was basically Mr. Clean come to life. Bald, tall, tan skin, and a white T-shirt that left nothing to the imagination. And fuck, were those leather pants?
I didn’t have to imagine anything with those either. The man was packing.
He towered over me and gave me a look. “You can come in, but make it quick. It’s a nightmare out there.” He had a pretty heavy accent. I wasn’t great with being able to tell one from the other, but it was definitely something like Ukrainian.
“The celebrity guy playing tonight?”
“Mm,” he grunted. The further we walked into the building, the louder the sound got.
I started to be able to make out the sound of an acoustic guitar and then a voice.
It was a low, rough, gorgeous rumble, which immediately irritated me because I didn’t want to like the source of tonight’s complications.
“Around the corner,” Fred said, pointing a meaty finger toward a swinging door.
“Go around the counter. Bartender is Alice. She’ll help you. ”
I crept forward, feeling entirely out of place and wrong in the employee hallway. I nearly bumped into a couple of harried cocktail servers, who gave me withering stares before I made it through the side door and darted across what was obviously a server station.
The music in the bar immediately overwhelmed me, though it wasn’t a heavy rock show or, god forbid, EDM.
From where I was standing, and without my glasses, I couldn’t quite make out the guy onstage apart from shaggy dark hair, pale skin under the bright stage light, and an amber guitar in his hands.