Page 70 of Hearts Storm

Then he’s gone.

Snorting out a laugh, I shake my head. Of course he’d bolt the second things got real.

I let my guard down. He runs for the hills.

“Unbelievable,” I mutter, dropping back against my pillows.

The pain in my head is now a dull throb.

Dragging my hands down my face, I groan. Why did I do that? Why did I spill my darkest secret to the one person who’s made it abundantly clear he wants nothing to do with me beyond a professional level?

Because he held you while you cried, you idiot. Because he calls you, Angel.

Because for one brief, beautiful moment, it felt like maybe...

I cut that thought off before it can fully form. Nope. Not going down that road again. Not when every interaction with Logan ends just like it did only moments ago. Like it always does.

With him slamming up his walls.

thirty

After a fire, the smell of smoke and burnt everything clings to your skin like a memory you can never quite wash away.

The locker room is blissfully empty. Every muscle in my body twitches with residual adrenaline as I start shedding my gear.

Stripping off my sweat-soaked undershirt, I toss it in the laundry bin. Every visible scar on my skin stands out under the lights. Some are tiny souvenirs from fires past, some not.

I step into the shower, letting the cold water soothe my overheated skin, thinking about how the hell I ended up here.

My dad was a chain-smoking, bourbon-guzzling rancher with a temper that could lay you out if you weren’t careful. He wasn’t cruel, exactly. Just... tired.

He’d built the ranch up from nothing, only to watch it all fray, coming apart at the seams when our mom left, leaving me and my three older brothers behind.

He was killed in a barn fire when I was fifteen. Even then, I was old enough to understand the difference between a spark and a slow, deliberate burn. He’d fallen asleep on a bale of hay with a lit cigarette dangling from his fingers, bottle of bourbon at his side.

I was told he never even woke up, just drifted off on a cloud of black smoke. The fire department showed up too late to save the barn, let alone him. The last of my childhood went up in flames while Dex, Rune, Ace and I watched from our front porch in silence, tears nowhere in sight.

After high school, I bailed as soon as I could, working odd jobs to put me through college until I came to the realization—thanks to Logan—that I could get paid to put out fires instead of watching them burn.

Firefighting was the first thing I ever gave a shit about. It made me feel useful, like maybe I was breaking the Saint family tradition of self-sacrifice, one call at a time.

As I shut off the water and grab a towel, I have the sudden urge to go check on Reyna.

I dry off, drag on a fresh T-shirt and jeans, and head down the hallway to Reyna’s room. Her door is wide open, but it’s empty. She’s not in the EMT office either. So I head upstairs to the kitchen, following the sound of boisterous laughter.

The kitchen smells like pizza and coffee. I round the corner to see her sitting at the table with a slice of pepperoni, one bare foot perched on the rung of her chair, the other tucked underneath her. She looks so much better.

Color flushing her cheeks, her hair is up in a messy knot on top of her head, face still soft from sleep. Other than the red scratch marring her cheek, she doesn’t look too much worse for wear.

Alan, the world’s most obvious flirt (aside from myself), is sitting kitty-corner to her. Not even trying to hide the fact that he’s checking her out, he’s throwing down jokes like he’s headlining at the local comedy store.

“So,” he says, grinning wide. “Will you let anyone take one of your pole dancing classes or…”

She laughs, eyes crinkling as she leans into his orbit.

A sharp pang of jealousy hits. I love her laugh. But I want to be the reason the world gets to hear it.

The image of her pinned beneath me, body trembling, is burned into my brain, right alongside all the other fucked up things I can’t seem to shake—like what I would give to be inside her right now.