Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
“Did you guys know that the average kitchen sponge has more bacteria than a toilet seat? Like, twenty times more,” Rachel announced in her most cheerful voice, the one she reserved for all things grossly scientific or medical.
“And most single men don’t replace theirs for—wait for it—six months.
” She paused for dramatic effect. “Rush, please tell me you’re not using the same sponge from last summer? ”
Rush leaned back in his creaky office chair, propping his phone against a stack of paperwork, and squinted at the screen.
His sisters’ faces split the screen, staring back at him expectantly.
They ambushed him with a FaceTime call at least once a week.
He loved them more than life, but damn if they didn’t try his patience just as much.
At his feet, Riggs let out a loud, sleepy huff from his usual spot, curled in the corner of the office on his favorite blanket.
He lifted his head to give Rush a cursory look, making sure all was well, before flopping down again with a grunt.
Even in retirement, he never fully let his guard down.
Riggs was loyal to the core, and he didn’t take to many people other than Rush, although he tolerated Rachel and Sarah.
He was protective, stubborn, and a damn good judge of character.
“See? Even Riggs is judging you,” Rachel said, grinning.
He glanced at his watch. Friday night. He’d just wrapped up his shift when they’d cornered him.
Sarah wrinkled her nose, using the phone reflection to apply a thick coat of mascara. “Gross, Rach. Why do we need to know this?” She leaned in even closer until all Rush could see was her nose. Was that a—
“Sarah, is that a nose piercing?” Rush barked, narrowing his eyes.
Sarah shrugged, smiling innocently from her apartment in Buffalo, seventy-six miles safely out of his reach.
Rush braced himself. That look never meant anything good.
When Sarah was a toddler, one flash of that grin, and he knew he’d find crayon scribbled on the walls, Rachel’s Barbies floating face down in the toilet, or cereal trails stretching from the kitchen to the living room.
Now she was twenty-two, and the chaos just came with bigger consequences.
“I think it’s cute.” Sarah shrugged again. “It was this or a face tattoo to impress my new friends.”
Rush scowled.
“She’s joking,” Rachel soothed immediately. Always the mediator. “It’s just a piercing. She can take it out.”
Rachel had moved back to Northfield after finishing nursing school to help with Pop and start her new job at Northfield General. She was always the steadier and more responsible of the two girls, but right now, Rush knew she was gearing up for another ambush.
“And by the way, it matters because we’re worried about you.”
Rush rubbed the bridge of his nose, already regretting where this was heading. “My kitchen sponge is new, Rach.”
“You’ve been through a lot this year. It’s okay to admit it,” Rachel said gently.
Rachel might have caused him fewer headaches over the years than Sarah, but she was harder to fool. Still, he’d never burden them with what lived in his head.
Sirens. Limp bodies. Blue lips.
His mind blocked the images quickly, same as usual.
The three of them had always been close, even with the ten-year age gap between him and Rachel.
After the accident, his little sisters had clung to him like a lifeline.
Rush had stepped into the role of protector without hesitation, guiding them through the move from Texas to New York, helping them settle in with Gran and Pop, doing his best to keep their world from falling apart.
He took care of them in the best way he knew how, by protecting them.
But the accident on the canal had changed their dynamic, much as he hated to admit it. Lately, their roles had flipped. It was his sisters who hovered, calling and showing up at his house to check on him.
They were still young. They should be out living their lives. Falling in love. Traveling. Laughing. Not worrying if their big brother was unraveling one sleepless night at a time.
Icy-cold water. Blue, blue lips.
Jesus. Cold sweat broke out on his forehead. His skin went clammy.
A child whimpering. A blond head slipping beneath the black water.
He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes as the gray specks flickered in his vision.
“I think you just need to get laid,” Sarah said, smearing on red gloss. “I have some girlfriends who think you’re hot. Something about the uniform and cuffs.” She made a gagging sound. “Gross. But I could give them your number if you want?”
“Yeah,” Rush muttered automatically.
“What? For real?” Sarah’s face lit up. “I’m texting Monica now. She texts me every time you come into Maple and Main for coffee.”
Rush snapped back into the conversation, scowling. “What? Hell no.”
Lately, his mind had been doing that—drifting back to that night without warning. One second he was present; the next he was back in the water, the cold sinking into his bones and the sirens blaring in his ears. He shook it off. Now wasn’t the time.
“But you just said—”
“Sarah,” he barked, “don’t you dare set me up with your friends again. They’re babies.”
“We’re not babies. We’re twenty-two,” she said indignantly. “And they date guys way older than you. You’re not still mad about what Monica did, are you? She said she was sorry.”
“Don’t say another word,” he growled, pointing at the screen. Good Lord. He wasn’t desperate, and even if he was, he still would never even consider dating one of Sarah’s friends.
Especially not after Monica. Monica, who’d snuck into his truck during the Fourth of July fireworks, wearing a tiny red bikini and smelling like spiked lemonade.
By the time he’d found her, she’d taken her top off and was sprawled across the seat, snapping selfies like she was doing a damn photo shoot.
He’d marched her straight back to Sarah while Monica pouted and tried to climb him like a tree. Then he’d put the fear of God into the whole giggling group, found them rides, and went home, wishing he could scrub the whole night from his memory.
Never again.
What he actually needed was to get the hell out of Northfield and away from the well-meaning people who kept thanking him, shaking his hand, calling him a hero like he hadn’t failed.
Like he hadn’t stood in ice-cold water and watched a mother slip below the surface while he cradled her daughter in his arms.
Every time he saw the Whitmores around town, it twisted the knife.
He needed space.
Quiet.
Somewhere he could go without being reminded of everything he couldn’t save.
“Fine,” Sarah huffed. “Rachel’s friends are older. What if she sets you up with that one girl who calls you Sheriff Sugar Buns?”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Rachel said. “Lyssa and Kaylin have both asked about you since you helped me move.”
“Oh yeah.” Sarah nodded. “Bold move, leaving their panties in your coat pocket. Did you ever give those back?”
Rush groaned, heat crawling up his neck as his sisters cackled. This was what he’d been dealing with for months, and it was getting worse. The girls had it in their heads that all he needed was a girlfriend or a hookup.
What he really needed was distance—to get away from the guilt, the praise, the pity, and the memories that hit like a sledgehammer when he wasn’t expecting them.
Besides, he’d already had a hookup. If you could call a weekend snowed in with Lily Hart a hookup. Which, technically, you could.
But he hadn’t exactly walked away from it feeling lighter. Yet another avenue he didn’t let his mind wander down, at least at the office.
But in the middle of the night, her breathy little moans haunted him.
Definitely not appropriate thoughts at work.
He dragged his mind back to the present.
The girls didn’t know yet, but he’d flown to Boston for the interview with the security firm he’d be contracting with.
They’d offered him the job, and he’d accepted it.
The words had come out easily enough, but ever since, he’d been talking himself into it like a man trying to believe he wanted what he didn’t
The girls didn’t need him around anymore.
They were grown and living on their own, building lives that didn’t revolve around him.
Still, the guilt gnawed at him. The idea of leaving town, leaving Pop in the nursing home, leaving the girls, sat heavy on his chest. He told himself they’d be fine.
That he’d come back often to visit and that they didn’t need him like they used to.
Rachel was a nurse, and she’d moved back home to help take care of Pop.
Sarah had her own apartment, and she was a semester away from graduating. They were okay. They would be okay.
He didn’t want to abandon them.
But living and working in Northfield was starting to bleed into him in ways he couldn’t shake, even a year later.
Every siren brought him back to the water.
Every time he drove the long, winding road next to the canal.
The ice. The little girl’s soaked hair tangled in his arms. The mother he couldn’t reach in time.
He was slowly unraveling.
Grant Clairmont had seen it in him when they met for a drink over the summer.
Grant was Mayor Theo Clairmont’s older brother, a Boston detective, and one of the few men Rush still trusted from his days in the Marines.
They’d been through fire together overseas, and it was Grant who’d quietly pulled strings to get Rush an interview at the private security firm in Boston.
If not for that, Rush might’ve talked himself out of leaving. But Grant had given him an out—a chance to disappear into a city where no one knew his name, where no one called him a hero, and no one looked at him with pity for not saving her mother.
Rachel snorted. “Sex releases endorphins. It also boosts your immune system and burns about one hundred calories per session.”