Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Elias, don’t forget your lunchbox. Hannah, you’ve already said goodbye to Nix twice; come line up. Danny, don’t even think about it.” She waggled a finger at the little boy who’d wound an elastic band around his thumb and index finger and mounted a pencil stub to the makeshift bow/slingshot.
Miles hid a grin.
Danny reminded him a lot of himself, though compared to the old hag who’d been his third-grade teacher, Jif’s patience surely meant she should be nominated for sainthood.
After the kids had all trickled out in ones and twos, Jif crossed the room and tucked herself up on the floor beside the wingback armchair, running a hand down Nix’s spine and leaning one shoulder against the velvety pile by his knee.
He clenched his fist as it rose slightly off his leg, almost of its own accord, as if it wanted to stroke her hair the same way she touched Nix’s coat.
Starting at the crown of her head and tangling itself in the long strands until he found the ends, then wrapping them in his fingers and tugging until her chin lifted. ..
He cleared his throat, then shook his head as she glanced up at him, arching a questioning eyebrow.
Quiet reigned for a few more moments, then her hand paused on Nix’s head, so close to his own as he fondled the dog’s ears.
A spark of electric static crackled between them, waiting to leap.
If he’d been stunned by her gorgeous eyes, shiny hair, and full, plush lips the first time they’d met, unreasonably gruff as he’d been forced to recover in front of a classroom full of youthful voyeurs with more observational skills than good sense, his visits since then had cemented his opinion not only of her external beauty, but the beauty of her soul, as well.
Endlessly patient with the kids, unfailingly kind, even on his worst days when the pain made hobbling into the classroom a near-Sisyphean feat and his temper was too short to do much good beyond holding the leash.
She always offered snacks and water, not only to him, but also to her students.
A few made regular visits to her desk, gobbling down granola bars or apple slices between visits to Nix on the carpet and the quiet work they’d been assigned.
One or two stopped before lining up for the bus, packing a few more into their backpacks.
She never raised her voice, no matter how chaotic the scene, and she never forgot a child as she doled out encouragement, funny comments, and an occasionally necessary correction.
He’d initially been baffled when she used words like yeet, rizz, and slay, but the kids burst into wild laughter, so though it sounded like a foreign language to him, she obviously connected with them in a way he couldn’t understand.
Breath-takingly gorgeous, of course, but she’d been right to resent his easy dismissal of her because her brother played football with Abby’s husband.
He winced.
If he’d made the same assumptions about Abby, she’d have put him in his place, too. Firmly, kindly, but without any sympathy for his preconceived notions.
Jif frowned, banishing all thoughts of Miles’s nascent attraction from his mind.
“My best friend is going on a date with, well, not my ex-boyfriend, but someone I’ve spent time with.” Jif waved a hand dismissively.
“Mmm.” Miles rubbed Nix’s ears while Jif stroked his back, holding silence and space until she got to the point.
“I’m not jealous,” she assured him.
“Okay.”
He waited.
And pondered the queasy sensation rolling through his stomach at the thought of Jif going on a date.
“Well, maybe a little. Not of them, exactly. More, well, I thought my boyfriend was going to propose to me last month, but instead he moved to Ohio.” She wrinkled her nose. “He didn’t even ask me to go with him.”
What an idiot.
He’d only met her a few times, and he already knew you didn’t let go of this kind of girl once you had her.
Not that he’d ever stand a chance.
Not that he even wanted to try, his heart still healing from...
He forced words into his mouth to head off the painful memories. “Would you have gone?”
“Maybe, we’d been together almost a year. He didn’t even ask me what I thought; he simply decided for both of us.” She paused, her hand hovering over Nix’s fur. “Huh. I didn’t realize how angry that made me until right now.”
He understood all too well. Sometimes talking through something lets those buried feelings bubble to the surface.
He wasn’t a therapist, but he’d taken Abby’s orientation classes seriously and recognized himself in many of the lectures.
Turned out first responders had an incredibly high rate of undiagnosed PTSD.
He and Nix couldn’t provide his brothers with an overnight cure, but they could help, and at least now, if they were open to it, he had resources he could share with them.
“You’re allowed to be angry,” he assured her. “Or sad.”
She hummed. “So you’ve said.”
Even short of resounding acceptance, her response beat what he typically got at the station, where feelings tended to bring out hives.
Abby had tried visiting the firehouse when she launched her First Responder program, and while the few women on the squad liked her well enough, she’d been unable to crack the brotherhood.
But when they’d allowed Nix to jump on the couch beside them after a bad call, or sat vacant-eyed at the kitchen table, silent but sharing pain with their very presence, she’d pivoted and offered him a job.
He had plenty of downtime between shifts, so visiting some other stations and a few police precincts hadn’t been a big deal.
She’d found others, too, doing the same: already embedded in their close-knit community, but learning how to be more intentional with their canine companions.
Then, a few months later, he’d had his accident.
“My girlfriend dumped me three weeks after...” He couldn’t finish, his throat closing, though he’d never admit the betrayal still stung.
Instead, he gestured at his leg. “She said she thought she could handle being with a firefighter, but after my fall, she worried I’d die. She couldn’t live like that.”
Abby had been a godsend, then. As soon as he transferred from the hospital to the acute care center, she’d added it to her rotation and visited him twice a week.
It took a month and a half for them to let him go home—longer than if Tessa hadn’t dumped him.
With no one to help care for him, he had to be able to walk and drive before they’d release him.
As soon as they did, Abby offered him a part-time job if he wanted it.
His disability pay wasn’t terrible, but the extra helped, and it gave him something to do in between his three-times-weekly grueling physical therapy sessions. He’d never hurt so badly in his life.
“I was angry for a long time. Then sad. Then...” he trailed off. He didn’t necessarily want to share his emotional baggage with this beautiful woman, even if it would help her.
Jif lowered her hand to Nix’s back, her fingers tremoring slightly on the fine, short fur, and Miles let his rest beside it, the slow, even breaths of the dog raising and lowering them together.
They didn’t touch, but an electric zing leapt between them, tightening the air until Miles pulled away, afraid if he didn’t, he’d do something stupid, the urge to touch her skin a temptation even his considerable willpower struggled to resist.
Nix’s eyes blinked rapidly as he dreamed, exhausted from the attention the horde of children had lavished on him all afternoon. He whined low in his throat and thumped his tail twice before settling more deeply into sleep.
Jif took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. Getting dumped in the hospital seems way worse.”
He shook his head. “Not comparing trauma. Just saying, I can identify. You think your life is going one way, and then suddenly it changes direction.”
“Exactly.”
The silence spooled out between them again.
He’d always been comfortable not filling the space with mindless prattle, but most weren’t.
“Will you go back to firefighting?”
His lips twitched when Jif spoke again. Seven seconds. A new record.
“Absolutely.” He infused his voice with firm surety, convincing himself as much as her. “I’m already signed up to take the CPAT in July. I’ll be ready by then.”
He hoped.
“CPAT?”
“The physical fitness exam for firefighters.”
She eyed his cane. “Are you worried?”
“I have a little over three months to get ready for it. My PT...” he trailed off.
Truthfully, James, his physical therapist, didn’t think he’d be able to pass by July, but the next one wasn’t until October, and that would mean close to a year out of work.
No, he’d do it by July. He could push through the pain if he had to. “I’ll be fine.”
He ignored the ache winding from his knee to his hip.
It never really went away, even with the pain meds, and he couldn’t risk an addiction, so he never took too much.
Ibuprofen and Tylenol during the day. Stronger stuff only if he couldn’t sleep at night.
Sometimes the pain spiked into a knife-edge, dragging along his nerves.
They’d been heavily damaged when the bone shards had shredded the surrounding muscles as he escaped the burning house.
“You should tell your friend how you feel. It’ll help.”
Jif shrugged, as if she didn’t believe him.
“She probably already knows.”
She jerked at his words.
Nailed it.
“Telling her shows trust.”
Jif fitted her nails to the grooves between Nix’s ribs and gently scratched the dog’s side until he rolled to his back, offering his belly, even in his sleep.
“I don’t want her to think less of me. She already thinks I’m...” Her voice went quiet, then trailed off completely.
He grumbled. He may have only just met Jif, but how could anyone not like her? “She won’t.”
She stood, brushing the fine furs from her hands, then handed him his cane. After the first day, she’d laid it on the windowsill while he visited with the kids. Out of sight, they forgot he needed it. He wished he could forget, too, but his leg couldn’t bear his full weight, yet.
“The kids collect Nix’s fur and call it his glitter. The two of you have made a huge difference. I know you can’t come forever, but I wanted to say thank you.” Her brow furrowed for a moment, then smoothed, almost too fast for him to catch.
He pushed to his feet, resenting how such a simple thing took so much effort. Resenting the pity in her tone.
Nix leapt to his feet beside him, shaking off his nap, then sitting obediently at his side.
“You trying to get rid of me?”
Her eyes widened, and he immediately regretted his harsh accusation.
“No, I want you to keep coming, but you have other places you’re supposed to go, too.”
The dog cocked his head, glancing between the two of them, their tension seeping into the peaceful space Nix had come to trust over their visits. He yawned, pinning his ears back.
“Don’t worry about it,” he finally replied, and Nix’s ears relaxed. “I have time.”
More than she realized. He could only do PT and visit fire stations for so long each day. It left far too many hours to fill any way he could.
The kids might have thrown him at first, but they were growing on him, and his visits clearly made an impact.
Hannah had waited until they came in and got settled before launching herself at Nix today.
Elias had read a whole book on the carpet while the dog rested his head on the boy’s leg.
Even Jif’s hands had stopped shaking when she answered the door.
“Okay, if you’re sure.”
She was so patently uncertain as she said it, he quelled his first, gruff instinct. “I’m sure. We’ll be back on Friday.”