Page 58 of Falling for My Grumpy Fireman

"Story of my life." Then he's inside me again, slow this time, deep, and every story I've ever known leaves my head.

This time there's no hurry in him at all. Long and deliberate, his forehead dropped to mine, my name low in his chest every time like it's the whole sentence. Not baby. Not honey. Nellie, Nellie, like a man saying grace.

"I've got you." His hand laces through mine against the pillow. "I've had you since the stitches. You know that."

I do know it. That's what breaks me. I come apart the second time with tears sliding into my hair, and I will deny them until the day I die, and he kisses every one of them like he's counting, and when he finally lets go it's with my name and his whole body shaking.

After. The real after.

Three a.m. by the nightstand clock. My ear on his chest, his heartbeat slow under it, his fingers moving through my hair like he's got nowhere to be for the rest of his life. The ceiling fan turns. The crickets have quit.

Two runners, lying perfectly still.

"This was one time," I whisper.

His fingers don't stop. "Sure."

Neither of us moves. Not a muscle. His arm stays heavy across my back, my leg stays thrown over his, and the lie stays on the pillow between us, and we let it lie there.

I fall asleep to his heartbeat. I don't remember deciding to.

***

I wake up reaching for him.

That's the first thing. Before I'm conscious, my hand is moving across the sheet expecting warm skin. That alone should scare me to death.

The sheets are cold.

I sit up. His boot is gone from the floor. The bedroom door stands open and the house holds that gray stillness that means dawn, and there's a smell of coffee nobody made.

The kitchen is empty. The pot is cold. He got a mug down and never filled it.

Then I see him through the window over the sink.

He's on the back porch in the gray light, sitting on the top step with his back to me, my flannel throw off the couch wrapped around his bare shoulders. Too small for him. Any other morning, that picture would make me laugh.

I'm reaching for the door when I see his hands.

The chain. The one he wears under everything, the one that lay against my cheek all night. It's off his neck and wrapped through his fist, and there's a ring on it. A plain gold band. A woman's.

His fist is pressed hard against his mouth.

His shoulders are shaking.

Owen Peterson, who carried a grown man out of a fire with a torn-open arm. Who took a ten-foot fall onto flagstone without one sound. Sitting on my porch steps at dawn with his wife's ring pressed to his lips, coming apart where he thinks nobody can see.

My hand is on the doorknob. Every instinct I own says go to him.

I don't.

Because I know what I'm looking at. He didn't sneak out of my bed to leave me. He snuck out to apologize to her.

I back away one silent step at a time. Down the hall. Into the bathroom. I run the water loud so he'll hear it and have time to put himself back together, because that's the kindest thing I know how to do. Then I grip the sink and look at the woman in the mirror with his beard burn on her neck.

One time. It has to be one time.

Because I will not compete with a ghost.