Chapter Nine
“Why don’t we start with the affair?”
Rachel pasted on a grin but rubbed her sweaty palms on her pajama bottoms as Mick coughed into his napkin.
Though his story was no funnier than hers, it was easier to make light of the heavy information he’d dumped on her dining room table than to ask herself why she’d invited him to stay longer. And why she needed to hear more.
Wasn’t it bad enough that she’d agreed to involve him in her search?
She had plenty of her own problems without nosing into his.
Still, no matter how reluctant she was to admit she could have anything in common with the interloper working Riley’s job, she couldn’t deny that Mick’s life had been no more of a cakewalk than hers. Unless the batter was laced with glass.
“I guess that’s one way to dive into it,” he said with a tight chuckle.
“I’m a rip-the-bandage-off kind of girl.”
“Remind me not to let you anywhere near the hospital if I’m injured at work.”
Gooseflesh surprised her by peppering her arms. As a family member of first responders, she’d hated the backpack of borrowed trouble she’d always carried, dreading the call that could come. Why was she expanding those pesky worries to include Mick?
“We can start with something else if you prefer,” she said, continuing the joke that had fallen flat. “Like your parents—”
“No. The affair’s fine. Well, not fine.” He closed his eyes and shook his head before opening them again. “The truth is, I’m not exactly blameless there.”
“You said she had an affair. Did you force your wife to sleep with someone else?” Her insides tightened as she waited for a possible confession that he’d been a cheater, too. “Wait. Do I want to hear this?”
Instead of chuckling, as she’d hoped he would, Mick sighed, his shoulders lowering.
“My story’s not unique. I left Tina alone a lot when I was working. Too much.”
Tina. The name tasted sour on her tongue, her resentment immediate.
“It happens. We sometimes forget what’s important in life.” Her need to excuse Mick surprised her, but she’d forgotten some of those things herself.
“She always said I was married to my crew instead of to her.”
“Was she right?”
“I did spend more time worrying about their problems than hers. Or even ours. Can’t blame her for resenting that.”
“No one would.” The cheating part was a whole other story.
“That’s why I never understood why she slept with one of my guys.”
Rachel pushed back her chair, nearly tipping it. “Wait. She was involved with one of your crew members?”
“It gets worse.”
How it could, she wasn’t sure, but she braced herself for it, her hands slipping beneath the table to grip the sides of her chair.
“Gavin Wheeler—we called him ‘Wheels’—was one of them.”
“Them?” She shook her head, his meaning escaping her. Called? Was? The skin on her hands tingled as the pieces fell into place. “Are you saying…?”
“Wheels was one of the firefighters our department lost. Him and Miguel Suárez. Both of them were good out on a call. Only one, it turned out, was also a stand-up guy.”
Though Rachel was tempted to point out that the firefighter hadn’t been alone in that bed, she kept that observation to herself.
“I’m so sorry,” she said instead. “That had to make a terrible situation worse. You couldn’t even be angry, though you had every right to be.”
“And a ten-year marriage slid down the drain.”
“Ten years?” She couldn’t imagine that amount of time in a relationship since hers had always been calculated in months. And she hadn’t bothered with dating at all in a long string of those. “Any kids?”
“Never got around to it. Timing was never right.”
The image of Mick, sandwiched between Carly and Carissa, stole into her thoughts then. So sweet. It was easy to picture him holding his own child, too, but she blinked away the impossible picture that replaced it. One with two babies in his arms. Her twins.
“I can’t imagine,” she blurted and then rubbed her forearms to stop the chill.
“Not having kids?”
“No. The fire. And all the other— Wait.” Rachel tilted her head and studied him. “Did you find out about the affair before or after the fire?”
“A few days before. I never had the chance to call him on it, man-to-man.”
“Never?” She waited for him to squirm.
“No, it wasn’t intentional. I’d compartmentalized the information from my personal life like I was trained to do, but I was command on the scene, so I did send the two firefighters into that building.” He stared down at his hand as he brushed his finger along the scarred wood. “Neither came out.”
A lump swelled in Rachel’s throat over the many layers of that tragedy. “You were also cleared of any wrongdoing. Said so yourself.”
“I guess I did.”
His gaze caught hers and held, making her insides do an uncomfortable flip. Though they’d shared a similar conversation in his office two days before, she hadn’t defended him then. What had changed, causing her to take his side?
“I don’t need your pity,” he said.
“Good because I’m not offering any.”
She needed to stop interrogating him, but her last question slipped out before she could stop it. “Now that the competition is…well…gone, do you think you’ll get back together?”
“The divorce was final last month. It’s over.”
The certainty in his words provided no room for doubt. His regrets were harder to gauge. She knew his answer shouldn’t have mattered to her, either, but for some reason, it did.
“I’m glad you have a chance for a new start here in town.”
Aware that her words sounded as empty as the condolences mourners offered at her father’s funeral, she pushed back her chair and stood. The sooner she sent him home, the sooner she could reset her thoughts about him and reclaim a more acceptable distance.
“Your turn.”
“What do you mean?” Since she already knew the answer to that, she shot a look at the front door, wishing for escape.
“I showed you mine, so…you know. Fair is fair.” He smiled for the first time since she’d asked him to stay for tea.
“I never agreed to spill my guts.”
“But you did say you have lousy taste in men. That begs for examples. Thought you were all about tearing off bandages. Just one quick rip…”
What he didn’t know was that the tear would probably come with a chunk of hair and probably some skin. He waved her back to her seat.
“Come on. It doesn’t hurt.”
“Speak for yourself.” She settled into the chair, reopening the laptop to have something to do with her hands. “My relationship history was an even bigger cliché than your divorce.”
“I wouldn’t think there was anything unoriginal about you.”
“I was the rebellious daughter of an overprotective dad, so I claimed my independence by trying to destroy my life.”
“Wait. I might have heard this one.”
She crossed her arms. “Do you want me to tell it or not?”
“Sorry.” He moved his hand in a circular motion for her to continue.
“Tyler Lawton was just one photo in my slideshow of losers, but he was a standout.”
“It’s always good to go for the best.”
As much as she wanted to be annoyed with him, her lips betrayed her by curving. He was trying to make this easier on her, and she couldn’t help but be grateful.
“We took off on an adventure to Indiana, planning to build a life on fairy tales and convenience-store hot dogs. And then I got pregnant.”
Instead of speaking, he crossed his arms, his jaw clenched, as though already furious over what she was about to tell him. She wasn’t sure what to make of that.
“At first, Tyler was almost on board with the kid idea. But when we received the news at the women’s clinic that we were having twins, it must have been too much for him. When I woke up the next morning in the crappy little motor lodge where we’d been living, he was gone.”
“What an asshole,” he said through clenched teeth.
“He left a note that said he had someone else. More than one, in fact.”
“Do you think that was true?”
“I still don’t know. Not that it mattered.”
“No, he didn’t matter.”
Though he hadn’t said he only cared about what happened to her and the girls, warmth spread in her chest, anyway. For one sneaky moment, she let it unfurl.
“Did you go home then?”
“You might have noticed that I’m stubborn.” She waited for his nod. “But after my clothes didn’t fit, and I got sick of not being able to scrounge up money for pesky things like food or shelter, I called Riley. Not Dad. Soon I was on a bus headed home to face my father’s disappointment.”
“And his support, right?”
That same angry expression he’d directed at her ex-boyfriend was back, but this time she felt compelled to defend the target.
“Dad came around, particularly after the girls were born. They wrapped him around their tiny fingers.” She paused, smiling at the memory.
“I don’t know what I would’ve done without him and Riley for those first few years.
But it was important to me to finish my degree, get my own place and support the twins on my own. ”
“You had something to prove.”
“I guess. But why did you say it like that?”
“Because you and I have a lot in common,” he said, chuckling. “I was a disappointment to my family, too.”
“You mean because of the divorce?”
“Before that. I dropped out as a second-year law student at Loyola to become a firefighter. My dad will never forgive me for it. I was supposed to be a third-generation attorney at Prentiss Law.”
Rachel’s arms crossed. “Anyone who thinks being a first responder isn’t a higher calling is just plain wrong. There’s more honor in that than for some dumb lawyer, who—”
“You don’t have to say it. I’ve heard all the jokes. Told most of them.”
“Still, what you’re suggesting isn’t the same thing at all.”
“Tell that to my dad.”
He was going for a laugh this time, but she wasn’t biting.
“You chose a different career. You didn’t desert your family when they needed you, return with two kids and still want nothing but to get out again.”