Some Like It Wild (18 page)

THIRTY-FIVE:
Laney

“N
ooo!”

The word is ringing so loudly in my ears, I hear nothing else. Pain is resonating in my chest so deeply, I feel nothing else.

I know that there are arms wrapped around me. I know that someone is preventing me from going after Jake, from stopping him. From saving him.

I didn’t want for him to risk his life for theirs. I simply wanted him to let me go, let me make the choice, make the sacrifice if it had to be made.

But not Jake.

Never Jake.

A burn more devastating than ten fiery buildings is consuming my heart as I watch the very spot where I saw him disappear into the flames. My entire being, my entire world is focused on that one sliver like my life depends on what comes back out.

Because it does.

I won’t be able to live with myself if Jake doesn’t come back out. I won’t be able to survive the rest of my days without him. And knowing that he died to save the people I love . . .

I crumble inside the arms that restrain me, my legs no longer strong enough to support me. I hear someone screaming Jake’s name in the distance. The voice sounds like mine, but it can’t be. It can’t be me. I can’t move. I can’t speak. I can’t even think past the mind-numbing panic that’s coursing through my body, through my soul. All I can do is stare, stare at the place where I saw him last and wait . . .

It seems an eternity has passed when I see movement. My lungs cease to expand, my heart ceases to beat until I see the clear form of Jake cutting through the haze. My relief is more profound than any emotion I’ve ever experienced.

Until he lays down his human cargo and turns to go back inside.

The arms that held me suddenly disappear, and I see people rush to the man lying prone on the ground. After a few seconds, I see my mother come into my view, falling to her knees beside the person just sitting up. It’s my father. I squeeze my eyes shut over my tears when I see him wrap one arm around her shoulders and lean into her.

But then an even more painful realization slices through me. Jake went back in.

To get Shane.

He’s risking his life for a man like Shane. Because he thinks it matters to me.

The tears come freely now, and without end. I sit on the ground, surrounded by hurt people and emergency workers and stretches of hose, and my heart melts right inside my chest.

“Please God, please God, please God!” is all I can make out. Over and over and over again. Every nerve, every cell, every bit of light that I am as a person cries out to Him for mercy. And I watch the doorway . . .

When Jake appears this time, he sets down the body he’s carrying. As he turns, stripping off his helmet as he goes, his eyes search for me. I struggle to my feet, to stand until he can see me.

And he does.

And he waits.

He waits for me.

Maybe like he’s always waited for me.

Like I’ve always waited for him.

THIRTY-SIX:
Jake

I
watch Laney take shaky step after shaky step toward me. Toward
us
. Shane, her fiancé, is lying in the grass just behind me. If ever there was a choice for her to make, now’s the time. Her actions will speak volumes. And I’ll do nothing to influence them.

Closer and closer she gets. Harder and harder my heart beats. What will she do? What will she do?

When she’s five or six steps from me, she glances down at Shane and my chest gets tight. But then, as if she was only paying him the simplest of courtesies, she launches herself into my arms and smashes her lips to mine.

I’ve always heard Jenna and her friends go on and on about all the different things a kiss can mean. Now I think I understand what they were talking about.

In this kiss is declaration. In it is acceptance. In it is passion and perseverance, hope and happiness. In it is everything I’ve ever needed and everything I never thought I’d want.
It’s
everything because
she’s
everything.

All the voices, all the sounds, all the activity around us is muted when she leans back and looks deep into my eyes. “You saved me, Jake.”

I smile. “You saved me first.”

For a few seconds, I think of spilling my guts, right here in the middle of a disaster area. But I think better of it when I hear a voice to my left.

“All right, hero, was there anyone else inside?” Chip asks. “If not, we need to get these flames put out and wrap this up.”

Leave it to a guy to interrupt such a great moment. I feel like snarling at him,
Can’t you see I’m in the middle of something here?

But I guess my personal affairs are actually doing the interrupting. I’m here to do a job. To save lives and put out fires.

One down.

One to go.

I set Laney on her feet and wipe away a smudge from her pale cheek with my gloved finger. “Are you all right? Really?”

Her smile is wide and bright, and she nods enthusiastically. “I know it sounds weird, but I’ve never been better.”

I grin down at her. I know just what she means.

“I’ve gotta finish up here. I’ll find you later, ’kay?”

She nods again, her smile still intact. “Okay, I’m gonna go check on Daddy.”

She walks backward for a few steps, as reluctant to leave me as I am for her to go.

“Stay away from this building,” I say as I move toward the side of the hall, getting ready to replace my helmet. “You hear?”

She nods again and turns to walk to her father. I round the smoking structure to make my way to the back, to put this baby to bed.

* * *

Almost six hours later, I’m on my way home. The chief called in the backup shift to help with cleanup, which is something the bigger fire departments don’t get involved in. But Greenfield is small, and it’s more a neighborly gesture than anything else. With the reinforcements onsite, it allows those of us who were first-responders to come home for a break before resuming our shift.

My first thought was to go to Laney, but that might not be the best thing. If she’s still at the hospital being medically cleared with the other people from the church (which I heard had the ER backed up for hours) then there’s no reason for me to bother her there. If she’s at home sleeping, I definitely don’t want to bother her there. So I figure the best thing I can do is wait until morning. What I have to say can wait until then. It’s waited this long . . .

Coming down my driveway, my headlights hit a patch of blue just barely visible through the trees. That’s when I know I won’t have to wait. Laney’s at my house.

I pull up and park beside her car. The house is dark. I’m assuming she’s asleep since it’s late and she had a big night.

I cut the engine and get out, reaching into the back to get my gear. I jump when I hear a soft voice from the opposite side of the Jeep.

“Took you long enough.”

“Holy hot damn! You scared the shit out of me!”

Laney giggles. She must’ve been on the front porch, waiting.

I can hardly make her out on such a cloudy night with only a sliver of moon to see by. It looks like she’s changed clothes. She’s wearing something pale and, when she puts her foot on the tire and swings up into the Jeep, I can see that it’s short. Even in the low light, I can see lots and lots of long, tan leg.

My pulse picks up, and it has nothing to do with her sneaking up on me.

“What are you doing up? I figured you’d be asleep. You need rest.”

Laney moves to stand on the backseat, her bare feet on the cushion and her back braced against the roll bar.

“Who can sleep after a night like tonight?” She pauses before she adds, “And I don’t mean the fire.”

Here we go!

I take a deep breath. I knew this was coming. By giving in to what’s between us, that means I have to be open with her. She’ll expect that. But hell, she couldn’t even wait until morning?

For a few seconds, I have a burst of doubt. How will she react? Will it change anything?

Setting my bag on the ground, I hop into the backseat of the Jeep, repositioning her feet to the space on the seat between my legs. She might as well get comfortable. If we’re gonna talk, there’s no time and place like the present.

THIRTY-SEVEN:
Laney

J
ake settles my feet back between his legs and leans his head back. Looking down on him, all I can see is his shadowed face and the occasional sparkle of the low light in his eyes.

I didn’t come here to pressure him. I came here to . . . to . . . I don’t know what. To be with him. To see if what happened was real. To see where we go from here.

I came because I couldn’t stay away.

And because, once again, I feel hope. And, this time, I need to know if it’s shared.

But I don’t want to move too fast. Jake has ghosts. Demons. Things he hasn’t wanted to share. Since I don’t know what they are, I can’t possibly know if I’m about to step on a landmine. It makes proceeding tricky. But not impossible. I just have to be patient.

That’s what I’m telling myself when I hear him sigh and feel his fingers touch the top of my bare feet and start absently making slow circles.

I’m thinking of how to start, of
where
to start when Jake speaks. His voice is low. And distant. He’s somewhere else in time. And, this time, he’s taking me along with him.

“When I was little, before Jenna was born, Mom and Dad used to take me out into the orchard with them almost every day. Sometimes we’d pick peaches. Sometimes we’d play hide-and-go-seek in the rows of trees. Sometimes we’d walk in the shallow parts of the river. We had breakfast and lunch and dinner together more often than not. Even after Mom got sick, we did a lot together. It was after she got pregnant with Jenna that things got so much worse.”

Surprisingly, there’s no bitterness in his voice. Obviously, he doesn’t resent Jenna for what happened to his mother.

“Her cancer fed on the estrogen. It spread like wildfire while she was carrying Jenna. After she delivered, Mom started chemo and radiation. She took treatment for a couple of years, but the disease was always a step ahead of the cure. The last few months, all the doctors could do was keep her comfortable. Even as young as I was, I knew what was going on. I guess I just didn’t know how much it would change things. And what my new role would be.

“Dad was busy taking care of the orchard and Jenna. Mom was in bed all the time, so I was kind of lost. I spent a lot of time in there with her. I’d color on the floor in her room or play with my cars. Sometimes we’d watch TV together or she’d read me a story. If I ever went out to play, it was always by myself, which was never fun, so I didn’t stay long. I always ended up back in Mom’s room. With her. I got an up close and personal view of what she went through and how miserable she was.”

I listen with rapt attention. My heart bleeds for Jake the child, as well as Jake the man. I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like for a little Jake to have to watch his mother go through so much, and to have to do it all by himself for the most part. In the midst of it all, everyone got busy with life and Jake got pushed to the side. Forgotten.

“It was nothing unusual for her to ask me to bring her something—ginger ale, ice chips, a washcloth—so the day she asked me to hand her one of her pill bottles, I didn’t think anything of it. I guess some part of me wondered why Dad had started keeping them up in the cabinet rather than letting her take them by herself like she’d always done. But at eight years old, you just don’t really think about stuff like that. So I didn’t hesitate to get them for her.”

Pulse pounding and lip trembling, I have an idea where this is going. It’s all I can do not to cry bitter, heartbroken tears for this man that I love.

“She had me hand her the glass of water that always sat on her nightstand. Then she had me get up on the bed so she could hug me. She told me she loved me and that I would always be her big, strong boy and then she told me to go play outside until dinnertime. So I did.” His pause is deep. And dark. And haunted. “That was the last time I saw her alive.”

I can barely swallow past the lump in my throat. The ache in my chest explodes into an unimaginable spray of sympathy at his next words.

“My mother overdosed. She killed herself. But she didn’t kill herself out of weakness or selfishness. She didn’t do it to end
her
suffering. She did it to end ours. I once heard her tell Dad that she could live with what she had to go through, but that it was breaking her heart to see what it was doing to us. Dad told her we were fine, that we would
always
be better off with her around. No matter what. But she didn’t believe it. I could see it in her eyes more and more every day. She thought her life was hurting us. So she took it.”

I’m doing everything I can to let my tears fall in silence, to let Jake have this time, without interruption.

“When Dad found her, he yelled for me to come upstairs. He was sitting on the floor crying, holding Mom in his arms. The pill bottle was still in her hand. All I remember is him screaming at me, ‘You did this! You did this!’ I tried to explain, but he wouldn’t even listen to me. He told me to get out, that he didn’t even want to look at me. So I left. I went back outside for a while.

“For hours, I watched the door. I kept waiting for him to come back downstairs, but he never did. I remember that it got dark and I was so hungry, so I went into the kitchen and opened a can of SpaghettiOs for me and Jenna and we ate ’em cold. Nothing was ever the same after that night.

“She turned four two days later.

“Dad got her a cake and presents, and celebrated like nothing was wrong, but every time he looked at me, I could see how much he hated me. How much he blamed me. It went on like that for a couple of years. Until I finally got up the nerve to ask him about it. He told me he could never forgive me for taking her from him. He said there was something wrong with me. He said I didn’t know how to love the right way, that I only hurt the people I was supposed to care about. He never let me forget it, either. After that day, he only hid his feelings from Jenna. Never from me. He blamed me for everything after that. If Jenna fell off her bike and scraped her knee, it was my fault for not watching her closely enough. If she got in a fight at school, it was my fault for being a terrible big brother. He never said anything in front of her, though. He wanted her to have a good life, one without all the pain we’d known. And so did I. I didn’t want her to have to feel like I did all the time. I even tried not to love her. I was afraid if I loved her like I did Mom, something would happen to her. Like Dad said. So I never did. And nothing bad ever happened to her. I learned early on that the best thing I could do for people I cared about was to stay away from them. To care as little about them as possible. And it’s worked. I haven’t lost another person I loved since the day Mom died. And neither had Dad.”

A sob is torn from my throat. I clamp my hand over my mouth to hold it in, but like pressure building up behind a kinked water hose, the dam eventually breaks. And when it does, nothing can control the flood. I bury my face in my hands and let go.

Even behind my hands, behind my closed eyes, I see the picture of Jake’s tortured face. He’s learned not to let his pain show, but for these few seconds, in the quiet night and pale, silvery moonlight, he let me see. And it’s almost too much to bear.

I feel him lean over me and wrap his arms around my shoulders, smoothing my hair with his wide palm. “Shhh,” he whispers. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

I wind my arms around his waist, lay my face against his chest and I cry. I cry for Jake. From the deepest, darkest part of my soul, I cry for him. For all he’s been through. For all he’s lost. For a lifetime of feeling he’s to blame. And for a lifetime of missing out on something so simple yet so profound as love.

“Oh God, Jake, I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry you’ve been through so much. No one deserves that.”

“It’s over now. I just wanted you to know who I am. Who I was. But that’s in the past now. There’s no need for you to cry.”

I lean back and look into his handsome face. “
You’re
comforting
me
?” I reach up to cup his cheeks. “If there was some way I could help, some way I could take away the pain, I would do it, Jake. I would do that for you. I’d give anything to go back and make things different for you. You’ve missed out on so much. So much love and happiness.”

Jake grabs my wrist and turns his lips into my palm then smiles a small smile. “But it’s made me who I am today. And today, I’m a different man. Because of you.” Reaching up to brush his thumb over my cheekbone, Jake’s eyes pour bits and pieces of his heart into mine. “Today, I realized that I’m not the person he thought I was. Today, I realized that I don’t always hurt the people I love. Today, I realized that I’d rather walk into a fire and carry out your father, who hates me, and your fiancé, who’s marrying the woman I love, than to see you hurting for one more second. Today, for the first time in my life, I felt like I could love somebody like they deserved to be loved. Like I could love
you
the way you deserve to be loved.”

Taking my face in both his hands, he tilts it up to his. “Laney, I don’t deserve you. I could never deserve you. But I can promise you that there’s not another man on the planet that will love you like I do. That would lay down his life for your happiness. That would give up his whole world if it made you smile. And I’m not letting you go without a fight. I watched you walk away once and it nearly killed me. I won’t let it happen again.”

I’m crying again. But this time, tears of pure joy. My heart is near bursting from the most intense, overwhelming happiness I could ever imagine feeling. Nothing else in my entire life has ever come close to this. And I have a feeling that nothing else ever will.

“I love you, Jake Theopolis,” I whisper, scattering kisses all over his face. “I love you more than anyone has a right to love another human being. Do you hear me? Promise me you’ll never leave me. Promise me.”

In my fervor, my lips cross his. And, like always, there’s a spark. Only this time, there’s more. There’s love. And there’s salt. And there’s tenderness. And there’s hope.

And, right in the middle of it all, there’s heat.

“Never,” he murmurs against them, his tongue licking over the crease.

Like the fire at the church—sudden, explosive, raging—everything I feel for Jake and everything he feels for me bubbles to the surface. We are hands and lips. We are mouths and tongues. We are passion and desperation. And it is beautiful.

When Jake slips his hands beneath my skirt and tears my panties off, I reach behind me for the roll bar, winding my arms around it. I hear him fumble with his zipper and then he’s lifting me off my feet, slamming me down on him, rocking me against the cushioned bar.

My legs around his waist and his long, thick hardness buried inside me, Jake moves me against him. Over him. Through him, it seems. And when I come apart, in a shower of bright white stars and crackling heat, I hear his hoarse, velvety voice breaking the silence. With every stroke, he whispers, “I love you. I love you. I love you.”

Those three simple words have never meant so much.