Ignite (Firefighters of Montana Book 3) (14 page)

They just did. As much as she’d been determined to live a life where
she
would define it, rather than follow in the steps her mother would have preferred—molding herself into wife material—these months had changed her, shaped her into a different person.

A better one, really. It wasn’t just Ace. It was all of it—leaving Marietta, having non-McArthurs in her life, wanting a change and making it.

*

Ace was…good at
reading a room. He knew how to flatter people, how to put people in their place. He could turn on the charm, or ice it off completely, and she found she was improving her bedside manner simply from spending time with him and observing him.

She was a better person with him, which was great and concerning and a whole mix of things she was trying to compartmentalize in a way that wouldn’t make her blurt out crazy words like love and commitment.

She mused about all those words the entire way home. Because obviously for as
good
as things were, there was still that little…thing. The Dean thing she didn’t want to face. How could she think of love and commitment when that hung between them?

She chewed her lip, wondering if she should push it. Ace had texted this morning that he’d be waiting, with breakfast, and then he’d let her sleep. But they could talk, they could…

She couldn’t help but shut that thought away. She didn’t want to do that. She didn’t want to
ruin
how good things were. Maybe the pretending was important. After all, she’d been letting him pretend for this long, and she’d been the one to keep him from telling her in the first place. So… It wasn’t time for all that yet. There was still so much to enjoy.

Ace was on call tonight, so she and Cherrie had made plans to see a late movie and keep each other awake so their sleep schedules for their two-week-long night shift didn’t get totally messed up.

This was her life. She’d actually made it into something that fit her and made her happy and better. Leaving Marietta had truly been the best decision she’d made, and bringing Marietta business into it would only ruin everything.

*

Determined, pushing those
little slivers of guilt away, she pulled her car into her parking spot. But as she walked up to her apartment, she found some of Marietta had found its way to her doorstep.

“J-Jess. Cole.” Lina nearly dropped her bag at the sight of her brother and her best friend standing in the hallway outside her apartment door. “You…”

“Surprise!” Jess offered, unlinking her arm from Cole’s and moving forward to pull Lina into a hug.

It was a quick squeeze and release and when Jess pulled back, she cocked her head. “I know it’s a surprise, but it’s not an unpleasant one, is it?”

“No! Of course, not. I’m just…surprised.” Lina laughed uncomfortably, looking around and behind her brother. Ace had said he was waiting, but where was he?

Lina tried to breathe, but panic was banding around her lungs. Because if he
had
been here, if he had…

She closed her eyes against the wave of guilt swamped her.

“Did we come at a bad time?”

Lina forced herself to open her eyes, to smile at her brother. “No, I just worked all night and I’m really feeling it.” She focused on Cole because his familiar blue gaze seemed safer than Jess’s warm one.

Blue eyes just like…
Oh, Lina, you idiot. This is what you get for being happy.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she managed. “I’ve missed you both.” But only one of those was true. She wished they’d go back to Marietta or Wyoming or wherever it was they’d come from since they split their time between the two places.

She swallowed, her throat closing. Damn, she wished they’d given her more time in the little fantasy life she’d created the past two months.

Because if Ace had been here, and now he wasn’t, there were no explanations, there were no more excuses. She had to face what she’d always figured. She had to face what he’d wanted to tell her that night they’d first slept together.

He was Dean. He was her best friend’s brother and she’d kept him to herself. She’d
known
that, of course, but she’d been so desperate to ignore it, to push it away, because she’d finally simply
fit
with someone the way everyone else seemed to do so easily and…

It had been a betrayal. Of Jess, of friendship, maybe even of the budding relationship she’d started with Ace—knowing he was lying, him
knowing
she knew he was lying, and both of them accepting it because the now had felt better than truth and reality.

“Are you going to open the door?” Cole asked, his tone teasing but…gentle, too, and they were both looking at her as though they were concerned. Concerned she wasn’t okay.

Because she wasn’t. Not at all.

She pulled her keys out of her pocket and forced some approximation of a smile she knew didn’t fool either of them. But she pushed inside and waved them in. “Come inside. Make yourselves comfortable. Let me just…wash up and try to wake up a little bit. Then we need to catch up.”

“You can sleep first, if that’s really what’s wrong,” Jess said, concern etched in her furrowed brow and all-too-assessing eyes.

Lina felt like crying, but she didn’t. “Maybe I’ll lay down, just for a little bit. You guys can help yourselves to anything in the kitchen, and I’ll leave my keys here if you want to go anywhere. I just… I’m dead on my feet.”

Jess nodded and Cole settled himself onto the couch. “Sure thing. Get some sleep. We’ll talk when you wake up.”

“Everything’s okay, right? It’s not Dad or…”

“Everything is fine,” Jess said, starting to maneuver Lina toward the hall. “We just wanted to visit. Get some sleep. We’ll take you out for dinner, okay?”

Lina nodded weakly, allowing Jess to propel her toward the back of her apartment. But when she stepped into her room, she didn’t immediately fall onto her bed. She dug her phone out of her bag and typed a text to Ace.

Where are you?

On call—big fire north.

She frowned at the text, because he wasn’t supposed to be on call until this afternoon, and because…well, the word fire suddenly meant a lot more to her than it used to. Because as much as she respected his work, knew he was good at it, every time he got sent out, her heart seemed to…hold a breath.

He had said he was
here
, and now Jess was here, and he was going to jump into that danger without telling Jess that he was here, that he was okay. He was going to face that threat without facing his own sister.

She’d let that be okay for the past two months, but with Jess here, right outside the door, Lina knew she couldn’t keep the status quo any longer. Not for her own happiness, or for his.

She had to do what she should have done in the first place.

*

Ace fidgeted as
a crew got ready around him. They’d jump, and then he’d go with the next group. Probably closer to evening.

He hated waiting. Especially when, right now, he’d sure as hell rather be fighting a forest fire over facing…

He had to clutch his hands into fists to keep himself from coming unraveled completely.

Jess had looked so much the same. Those ten years that separated them and she was the sister of his memories, only smiling, happily linking her hand with a man as they chatted in the hall outside Lina’s apartment.

Ace had crested the stairs, had one heart-beating second where he’d considered stepping forward, considered facing her.

But she’d been smiling and happy, and he hadn’t been able to get himself to do anything but turn right around and go back down the stairs. Hadn’t been able to text Lina. Hadn’t been able to do anything except what he’d been doing since he hitchhiked out of Marietta as a teenager.

Run.

He shoved his fingers through his hair and tried to get his shit locked down. He was shaken, and he had to let go of it all before it was his turn to jump. There would be a fire to fight and
thank Christ
because he knew how to do that.

He knew how to jump out of a plane, how to do his best to cut the heart of a fire out. He didn’t know anything about fixing all the ties he’d severed. He didn’t know anything about being a brother.

He wasn’t the same little boy who ruined everything he touched, no, but…

But what?

“Clark. Someone’s looking for you,” Jacqui’s voice called into the hall.

Thank God, something to do to keep his mind off—

“Ace.”

He stilled at Lina’s voice, turned slowly. There she was, something like battle shimmering in her eyes, determination in the rigid straightness of her back. People moved around them, but he couldn’t focus on anything that wasn’t her.

“Lina. I…” God, she was beautiful, and somehow she’d wrapped herself around him so that she felt like a part of him. He should have never let it happen, but there it was.

“You need to come with me.” She took another step toward him, using that calm doctor voice on him that made him want to bolt. “You should come with me.”

She stood there, a few feet away from him and, for the first time in all the days he’d spent falling for her, he felt unworthy and tainted. The kid he thought he’d escaped. Because she was strong and telling him what to do and he didn’t know how. “I can’t. I have to jump.”

“You can’t jump into…
that.”
Her voice wavered and she swallowed, as if she were scared—scared for him. But he didn’t have time to dwell on that when she kept talking. “You can’t jump into that without talking to her.”

“Who?”

“Don’t. Don’t. You know I know.” Something in her face crumpled, and he thought she might cry, but whatever tears filled her eyes didn’t fall. “I’ve always known,” she said in little more than a whisper.

She took a step toward him again and he had to fight the urge to turn, to flee. He didn’t want this, not her to look at him like this, to demand more of him, to
know
.

Yeah, he’d known she’d understood he was really Dean, but she hadn’t pushed it. So, he’d thought… Somehow he’d thought if she didn’t push it, it never had to matter.

It had been stupid to think it, but he’d wanted her too much to be smart. He’d fallen in love too easily with her to want to pull the plug.

“You have to understand—”

“Please, Ace. Please. I know this is bigger than me and there’s all kinds of baggage I don’t understand. I’m not asking for… You just need to talk to her. To let her know you’re alive, that you’re here. I won’t make you do anything el—”

“Bullshit.”

She flinched, then looked at him all wide-eyed and shocked, but surely she knew bullshit when she spewed it.

“You’d push. You’d push and you’d demand and you would tell me what was right, in your mind, until the situation was resolved the way
you
want it to be.”

Her mouth quivered before she firmed it. “I haven’t. All this time I haven’t.”

He shook his head, feeling so many swirling emotions fight for prominence he just wanted to negate them all. He’d rather face the blaze that was quickly burning out of control up north. “Because you could pretend, but we can’t pretend anymore.”

“Ace—”