Chapter 36
Ash
“Full moons are the worst,” Chase said as he climbed into the driver’s seat of our vehicle. “It feels like we are back-to-back with the wildest situations. This damn speaker hasn’t stopped going off, either, since . . .” He glanced over to me and patted my shoulder. “Dude, what’s wrong with you?”
“What? Nothing. I’m good.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Liar.” Chase Johnson was my partner in crime when it came to being a paramedic.
He was about five years older than me and probably one of the funniest people I’d ever met in my life.
He was a Chicagoan, born and raised, and he lived life to the fullest. He was also my father’s former partner.
Chase was a straight-up golden retriever.
Yeah, the dude was a chatterbox, but he had a heart of gold.
He was one of the friends who I truly valued in my life.
Not only did he manage to make me laugh at least fifteen times a day (and I meant those deep-gut Santa Claus types of laughs), but he was damn good at his job, too. He was a stand-up human being who cared so deeply about the well-being of others.
He probably saved more lives than anyone else I could think of.
He didn’t only make my job easier, but he made my life decent, too.
Unfortunately for the little shit of a golden retriever, Chase’s empathy was at an all-time high, and if there was a shift in any kind of situation, he could sniff it out.
Including the physical intensity as I sat in the passenger seat of our vehicle—Old Betsy, as we called her.
“You look like you saw a ghost,” he mentioned as he put the truck into drive.
“Something like that,” I muttered as I sat back in my seat and brushed the palm of my hand against the side of my face. I needed to shave. It had been a while since I gave my thick beard some TLC, but truthfully, my mind hadn’t been in the greatest place over the past few months.
April was a hard month for me, but that evening felt like a burst of light.
Karla East.
As I live and breathe.
She was the last person I expected to run into when Chase and I received the call to a bookshop, that was for damn sure.
I knew it was her the moment I saw her. Her eyes.
God, I missed her eyes. Piercing blues that matched the sea at dawn.
There was something so different about her eyes than the last time I saw her, though.
I wasn’t exactly sure what the difference was yet, but there was something about her gaze that felt different.
In a good way. Maybe. Heck, I didn’t know.
All I knew was it was hard as hell to pull my stare away from hers.
Leaving her side when Chase called me was hard, too, and ever since I’d sat back down in Old Betsy, Karla’s voice had been echoing in my ears.
What are you doing back in Chicago?
That question was easy. After my father passed away, he left my childhood home to me.
To say I didn’t handle his passing correctly would’ve been an understatement.
I spiraled hard, and I pushed Karla away.
I felt awful about it, too, but I didn’t know how to handle losing yet another person in my life.
I’d hardly had time to recover from losing Rian.
Losing my dad shortly after felt harder than I wanted to admit.
When I found out on my eighteenth birthday that my father left the house to me, I figured I’d sell it.
Yet when I went back to Chicago to handle the paperwork, I stood outside of Rian’s bedroom door, and I just couldn’t do it.
I couldn’t let it go. So I moved in. I asked Maa to come with me, but she was convinced that there wasn’t much for her in Chicago anymore.
I understood that. It was hard for her, after losing Rian.
Dad’s passing probably was the nail in the coffin for Maa’s connection to Chicago.
Regardless, I stayed in Chicago.
Since I moved back all those years ago, I thought about Karla often. A small part of me wondered if she was still there, walking the same streets that I walked. Riding the same bus that I rode. Drinking at the same bars that I’d drank at.
I foolishly daydreamed about us randomly crossing paths.
As if life was a romantic comedy and God was the author.
After years passed and our crossing didn’t happen, I let go of the idea.
Besides, I disappeared all those years ago because Karla would’ve made me face my feelings.
I wasn’t interested in doing that at all.
Instead, I kept myself busy. With work, with basketball, with women.
Anything that kept me from thinking too much was good for me.
It seemed as if I hadn’t felt deep emotions in years, and that was how I liked life to be.
That was why I was known for my random hookups with women.
They’d come for a night and leave right in the morning.
We’d say we’d see each other again, but we both knew we’d never see each other again.
I liked it that way. No deep feelings. No real conversations.
Just meaningless sex and fake connections.
Then Karla had to go and screw up my rhythm. She had to knock my system off kilter.
The moment I saw her eyes, I felt a burst of energy inside my chest. Every inch of my body heated up.
The echoes of her voice kept vibrating off my skin. It wasn’t until she knew her grandmother was all right that her tone calmed down. If honey were a sound, it was Karla’s voice. Sweet, with a slow whisper of crackling warmth.
What are you doing back in Chicago?
While she looked a little different, she was still the same. Same eyes, same build, and same smile. She was curvy, too, thicker in the hips. I liked that. I loved that. She looked remarkable.
She didn’t hide in all black anymore, either. She dressed in color.
I liked that change. She looked good in lavender.
Her hair wasn’t dark anymore; it was a light golden tone and had been pulled up into a high ponytail. That was another change I liked. She used to always hide her face with her hair. Now she let it show. Her scars were still there, too, and they were still beautiful.
She looked different, but the same.
She looked less broken, more healed.
I loved that for her. I wished that for me.
“Spit it out, man,” Chase said, tapping my leg before focusing on the road. “What’s up?”
“Nothing. I’m good. I knew the woman at the last stop.”
Chase’s brow shot up. “You knew her?”
“Yeah.”
Chase narrowed his eyes. “Don’t tell me you banged the old lady? Now I know you have a wild side and like to get around, and I know I shouldn’t yuck your yum but—”
“What? No. Not the old lady. The woman next to her when we arrived. Her name’s Karla. We went to high school together.”
Chase wiped invisible sweat from his brow. “Whew. Good. I’m sure you’re an easy lay, but I was hoping you weren’t that easy.”
I didn’t have a rebuttal for his comment, because it was ridiculous.
“Did you two have a thing?” Chase questioned, bringing me back to reality.
A thing.
That seemed a bit cold for what Karla and I shared with each other.
“I loved her.”
He arched an eyebrow. “No shit? I didn’t know you knew how to love people aside from me.”
“Are you getting a little jealous?” I joked as I pulled out my laptop to update my records for the day. There were many positive sides to being an EMT, but the paperwork was my least favorite part.
“Maybe a little, sweet cheeks.” He winked my way before focusing back on the road. “She break your heart?” he asked.
“Nah.”
“You broke hers?”
I stayed quiet.
Chase shook his head. “You motherfucker.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Love always is. And you haven’t seen her in . . . ?”
“Since my father passed. At the funeral.” I felt guilt for the way I’d pushed Karla away all those years before, but I wasn’t in a good place. I knew I wouldn’t be any good for her and her own healing while I was so deeply stuck in my own darkness.
Chase’s eyes widened. “Wait. Was that the girl who you told me about from high school . . . ?”
I nodded.
“Holy shit,” Chase murmured.
Yeah . . .
Holy shit.
“I knew I saw something different when I walked up on the two of you,” he said. “I’ve never seen you look at someone the way you looked at her.” Before I could reply, the dispatch radio went off with our next stop. A person with chest pains calling in for assistance.
Luckily for me, Chase dropped the conversation before I had to think about Karla some more.