3. That Others May Live
Chapter 3
That Others May Live
Reece raised a pickax and brought it down hard, striking a hunk of granite. The impact juddered up his arms. Ignoring the unpleasant sensation, he raised it higher and swung down with more force. The pick buried itself in the ground beside the rock, and he pried at it, straining to dislodge the small boulder.
“Why don’t you just use the chisel side and pry it up that way?” Six feet away stood Charlie’s helper, Cade, a smug smile on his peach-fuzzed face as he rested an elbow on the haft of his own tool.
“Why don’t you get back to what you were doing and let me focus on what I’m doing?”
“What are we doing?”
“Trail maintenance, and when we’re done here, we pick up the Christmas decorations for downtown.”
Cade’s beanie rode low on his eyebrows, so his squinty eyes were barely visible. “You mean Bowen Street, right?”
“Yeah. Downtown.” All four blocks of it.
Charlie hadn’t been able to keep Cade busy today with his own projects, and the kid had been getting in the way, so he had pawned him off on Reece. “Better you work him than we let him sit home alone, where he can get into a mess of trouble.” His mother, Luanne, was working the day shift at Miners, and while Cade was a good kid used to being home alone, he was also nineteen years old. Besides, Reece reasoned, it was good for kids his age to be exposed to civic duty. And yeah, sometimes it did take a village to raise a kid.
“So what are we doing with Christmas decorations?”
“We’re going to put them up.”
“Wait. Fall River has a shit ton—I mean, Fall River has a lot of Christmas decorations. We’re going to do all that work?”
It was true. Fall River had been getting decked out for the holidays every year for the past decade, ever since Reece had taken on the project. And it wasn’t that they got the town dressed up for tourists. Nope, this was strictly for the residents. Other volunteers would take care of the ice rink and the entrances to the town—all two of them, on the same road—but Reece always decorated the lampposts and trees lining Bowen Street. Charlie was in charge of the old train depot, even though the place was in shambles. Someday it would be completely remodeled, but those strings of white lights outlining it during the holidays added to the town’s festiveness while disguising its peeling paint, rotted wood siding, and boarded-up windows.
“Yeah. Do you think elves hang this stuff every year? They’re too busy putting in long shifts at the North Pole, dude.”
Cade’s mouth opened and closed. For several beats, he seemed to process Reece’s joke. “Are we getting paid for this?”
Reece adjusted his leather gloves. “Yeah. In attaboys.”
“Attaboys? Do they spend like Andrew Jacksons?”
“Nope. They spend way better.”
Cade gave a slight shake of his head, took a swig from his water bottle, and moved to the opposite side of the trail .
Reece’s phone chimed, and he slid it from his cargo-pants pocket and silently groaned. This was text number eleven—and that was only today. She was stepping up the pressure. He slipped the device back into place and returned to taking out his frustrations with his pickax. Other than the pile of texts and unanswered voicemails, which were a recent constant in his life, he wasn’t exactly sure where his aggravation stemmed from.
It had started back at Neve’s clinic, when he’d been trying to be cagey and instead had come off like a complete idiot. Not that Neve hadn’t seen him act like a doofus before. She’d witnessed it plenty of times, especially when they were growing up. Outside of his brothers, she knew him better than anyone. The good, the bad, and the cringeworthy. She’d seen it all. But where he hadn’t given it a thought before, it had started to bother him lately.
Maybe that was why his recent discoveries about her had poked at him and made him rush inside her place without a believable excuse to rush in. He’d been lying about seeing Shane’s patrol car, which had actually been parked around back. Thank God neither Neve nor Shane had questioned him about his supposed X-ray vision. If he had seen the vehicle, Reece would have come back when Neve was alone.
Shane had let slip a few details about controlled substances disappearing from Neve’s pharmacy, and it had raised Reece’s hackles. He had wanted to make sure for himself that her clinic was okay—that she was okay—except he wasn’t supposed to know about the theft, and he didn’t want to betray Shane’s confidence, so he’d been at a loss for words when he’d seen his buddy standing beside her. Which had led to another lie.
His knee was fine. But when Shane had shot him a skeptical look, Reece had amped up the deceit by telling the deputy that it needed time to heal. Yeah, he had been told to stay off it all right—by an imaginary orthopedist. Hopefully, Shane wouldn’t go doing Shane things and snoop into Reece’s untruth. Or Cade didn’t out him. Reece wouldn’t have volunteered his time and energy to work on the trail today if he had truly been hurt. It needed it, though. Turned out he needed the trail too.
And that other thing he’d overheard Hailey talking about: Neve going out with Leo Cantrell. That guy was all wrong for Neve. Reece wasn’t sure who was right for her, but it sure as hell wasn’t that tool. Yeah, that big-brother dynamic had come into play there too. He hadn’t been kidding when he’d told her she was like a little sister to him— little being a relative term. She was small in stature, not age and certainly not in fierceness.
Well, sort of like a little sister. Maybe.
A knot that had been forming in the pit of his stomach all day locked down tighter, tighter.
Fuck.
Telling himself to stop thinking, he wielded his pickax to claw at his confused thoughts. By the time he broke for water, sweat matted his hair and rolled down his back, making his undershirt stick to his skin. Yet his churning mind had quieted, and a familiar harmony had settled over him. Physical labor always did that for him, which was one of the reasons he missed search and rescue. Sure, he absolutely loved helping people out of tough spots—he was almost addicted to the rush it brought—but the job also required him to be in tip-top shape. Most of his workout came naturally from traversing mountains in thin air and lugging weight for extended periods.
Finding a way to replace the physicality and maintain his stamina hadn’t been easy. His choices ranged from trail work like today, skating during their rec league’s few practices and games, and running up and down trails. Combining those with swimming and pumping iron at the rec center didn’t tune up his body the same way; besides, it was boring as hell.
He had to get back to the work he was passionate about. “That Others May Live” wasn’t simply a motto on a wall; it resonated deep inside his bones. But how could he return to his calling? San Juan Search and Rescue was the only outfit Reece had ever been part of. At times, it felt as though his heart had cables attached to his home county, and that they in turn were pinioned to Fall River. Those ties didn’t bind, though—not in a negative way. He liked being part of his hometown. While he’d served San Juan, he had loved being close to home and helping people in his backyard.
But as long as Chelsea was there, that option was off the table.
An incoming call rang shrill, shattering the peace in the pines, and pulled him from his wandering thoughts. Unsurprisingly, the same number as the texts glowed on his screen.
He got a visual on Cade a fair distance up the trail before steeling his spine with resolve and tapping the green icon. “Hey.”
“Why didn’t you answer my texts?” Chelsea Selkirk’s demand bordered on hysterical, which was way out of character for her—normally. The woman was calm under fire in the most dire situations, and he had admired that quality about her. Lately, though, the panicky tone was the only one she used when she called, and where he used to find her smoky timbre sexy, now it merely grated.
“I’ve been at work. I’ve been busy. Couldn’t pull away.”
“At work,” she deadpanned. “As in slinging beers behind the bar for your brother? You must be raking in the tips.” The contempt lacing her words was so thick he could hear it oozing through the airwaves.
“Yes, slinging beers for my brother, who needs the extra help.” She had no idea Reece didn’t need the pay, and he was relieved he’d never opened up and shared that part of himself with her.
He bit back the question “What can I do for you?”—because she wouldn’t be shy about telling him what she wanted him to do for her, or to her—before blurting, “Why are you blowing up my phone?”
“Haven’t you read my texts?”
“I have. They’re all one variant or another of ‘Call me right fucking now.’ Where’s the fire?” Holy Christ Almighty. “Bad choice of words. I mean, what’s up?”
“I need to see you.”
“Because?”
“First and foremost, I need you back here, Reece. We’re short-staffed, and you’re the best the county’s got.”
“There are plenty of qualified people trying to get into SAR. I know of at least a half dozen volunteer firemen, and there’s—”
“I miss you, Reece. I want you back.”
“Back at the station or in your bed?”
“Yes.”
He rubbed his forehead. “And what about your husband, Chelsea? Where does he fit into all this?”
The question hinted at an opening for them to start up again, but that opening was barred shut, and Reece had no intention of flinging it open. When he and Chelsea had first gotten together, he’d known it was a bad idea to mix work and pleasure, but they’d talked about it like two mature adults and had decided they were both in it for one thing: sex without complications. Given that she was his commander, it was the only way any sort of intimacy could have worked. No strings, no attachments, no expectations. His first boneheaded mistake had been not contemplating the consequences of a breakup. On some vague level, he had assumed the affair would run its course and die a natural death. His second blunder? He had never considered adding any other romantic relationships—like husbands—to the list of conditions.
Chelsea, as it turned out, had been clever at hiding the evidence of her married life. She never talked about a partner with him or anyone else. She had pushed to spend their intimate encounters at his place before he’d sold it. The few times they’d had sex at her apartment forty minutes from Fall River, Reece had never picked up on the telltale signs of a committed relationship. No pictures or men’s toiletries and no rings on her fingers to tip him off. Unbeknownst to Reece, the husband fought fires in a different state, occasionally traveling to Colorado to visit his wife. It had been easy for Chelsea to tuck away clues of his existence.
Reece didn’t believe in sleeping with women who belonged to other men—ever—but he’d been duped, and it pissed him off that his moral compass had pointed the wrong way without his knowledge.
The sex had been … great, and it had filled a yawning need. The arrangement had also been a perfect fit. Chelsea understood where his mind went when they struck out on a mission, and he had grown accustomed to sharing more than their ordeals and the inevitable suck that came from them—especially when faced with search and recovery . That emotional component was more important to him than he’d ever realized, even though the connection was based on the purely physical.
Most women thought he was some kind of hero with a dangerous edge, which was ridiculous, but they got off on the crazy image of some white knight charging in to the rescue. They had no idea what he did day in, day out and how unglamorous and dull it could be. Consequently, they didn’t understand his motivation, his fuel. What filled him up and tore him apart. What kind of glue he needed to put the pieces of his soul back together again.
Like no lovers before her, Chelsea understood what drove Reece because she was wired the same way. With her, he didn’t need to explain. She understood when to give him space and when to fuck his brains out, making it easy to kid himself that he could pull off friends-with-benefits with her. Plus, he liked her. He had trusted her. Until that god-awful moment the husband Reece hadn’t known existed had walked in on them while they were naked in bed. Reece had been shocked to the core of his being.
The husband had also been left shattered. Chelsea had destroyed them both. Not because Reece was in love with her, but because trust was a precious commodity he didn’t hand over to just anyone, and she had tromped all over it.
Damn her.
The line was quiet. If he was lucky, maybe the signal had dropped. “Chelsea? You there?”
She came back with a small voice. “Pete and I are … talking things over.”
“Then work on your marriage, Chelsea. You have history with Pete, and priority one should be salvaging that. My working beside you is going to be a distraction neither of you needs while you’re trying to keep your marriage in one piece.”
Christ, he felt bad for the dude! He felt worse that he’d caused that kind of pain. And he couldn’t imagine being in a situation where his partner had not only cheated on him but continued to work side by side with her ex-lover.
“Reece, I meant we’re separated. Pete understands that I need to figure things out, and one of the things I need to figure out is if it could work between you and me.”
Reece’s tongue tied itself in knots of disbelief. Was she kidding? A beat passed before he recovered himself.
“I can answer that for you right now. It’s not going to work. You lied, Chelsea, and even if you divorced your husband and you and I started up again, I wouldn’t be able to trust you.”
“I didn’t lie, Reece.” Her voice trembled with tears.
“You lied by omission, and that’s just as bad. In what world is it okay to cheat on a man you exchanged vows with?” He told himself to tread carefully, to keep his temper at an even temperature, before he said something hurtful he couldn’t take back.
“We … we kind of have an open thing.”
“Really?” he scoffed. “Then I don’t think he got the memo. And what the hell is ‘an open thing’?” Besides a moral affront. Was Reece a prude? Maybe. But if a woman were his, he sure as hell wouldn’t be willing to share her, under any circumstances, nor did he have any interest in sharing another man’s wife, no matter how good the sex was.
“It’s … it’s hard to explain, Reece.”
“Forget I asked. It’s none of my business anyway.” A weepy hiccup came from the other end. In a soothing voice he usually reserved for the injured who weren’t going to make it, he said, “Why don’t you forget about us, about me, and turn your energy on your marriage? Pete seems like a decent guy who truly cares about you.”
And stop trying to coax me back. Ain’t gonna happen anyway.
“I can’t just turn off what I feel for you. I’m in love with you, Reece.”
Two thoughts battled for supremacy in his head. The first was, “No, you aren’t,” while the second and louder voice hollered, “Fuck this!”
He had to end this call before he burned down the fragile bridge spanning between them. “Chelse, you’ve got some sorting out to do. Us working in the same unit together isn’t going to help you do that, so let’s just keep going our separate ways.” If he repeated it enough times, maybe it would sink in.
“But you love search and rescue. You can’t give it up.”
“I don’t intend to. They’re hiring in Summit County, and they need trained people in Chaffee.” Taking a job at either station meant starting at the bottom; it also meant moving away from Fall River. And then there was the opportunity in Vermont. His heart sat heavy in his chest at the thought of leaving Colorado, but the role was made to order. He’d be starting a rung higher than where he’d been with San Juan.
Chelsea’s tone turned harsh. “Don’t count on getting a recommendation from me.”
He sighed, suddenly bone-weary. “I understand, and I won’t.” His well was as dry as the Great Sand Dunes.
When she started to cry in earnest, he couldn’t tell if the sobs were real or if she was faking. Now that the blinders had been ripped off, he had a glaring view of Chelsea’s manipulative capabilities.
Sometimes he wished he could be happy-go-lucky like Shane and go pick up some cutie at a bar and forget about Chelsea and that whole fucked-up situation. But that wasn’t him. No, he’d brood on it, and no amount of alcohol would drown it into oblivion. It would keep him up tonight … and tomorrow night … until he finally exhausted every what-if in the universe .
He’d volunteered for duty at the bar tonight, and the buzz of normal conversation would be a welcome change from this pile-of-shit day. The chatter would pick him up, even if he didn’t participate in any of it.
Hopefully, Neve and her date wouldn’t decide to eat at the tavern, or the most raucous laughter in the world wouldn’t pull him out of his funk.
Where the hell did that come from? Christ, he was messed up.
In the distance, Cade’s head swiveled toward the dark timber. He loped to the edge of the woods, then sprinted back and hefted his pickax onto his shoulder.
Coming toward Reece at a fast clip, he shouted, “Hey, I think I heard someone cry out for help!”
“I gotta go.”
“Reece, wait!” Chelsea yelped.
He hung up. When his ringer went off again, he silenced it. He had other priorities right now. Adrenaline flooded his veins, and his heart rate kicked up as he ran to meet Cade.
“Where?”
Cade motioned for him to follow.
This, right here.
Reece was right where he was supposed to be.