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She tucked her cheek against her hand on my chest. “I’m wondering if the universe is going to give me a hellspawn in retribution, let’s put it that way.”
I tugged her ponytail. “Well, there is red hair involved.”
She rested her chin on her hand and grinned up at me. “Did you know your family at all?”
I shook my head. “My mom dumped me on my grandmother when I was a baby.” I slid my hand under the hem of her sweatshirt to make little circles on her lower back. “She was thrilled as you can imagine.” I looked out the windshield. Snow was piling up, and the windows fogged. “She died, and I got gone.”
Ruby stared at me. “Died? You didn’t tell me that.”
“It didn’t really matter. She fed me because she had to. I hustled enough to buy clothes, and thankfully, school was tolerable. After she died, I escaped before CPS found me and put me in the system.” I cupped her cheek. “I’m a survivor, Ruby. Just like you.” I hated the sadness in her dark eyes. “Our kid will never think I don’t want him or her.”
She leaned into me, her kiss soft and caramel-flavored from her candy. Butch decided she wanted in on the action and climbed up to give us both a tongue bath.
Tish laughed and pushed the dog away enough to get her arms around my neck. She wrapped herself around me tightly and my chest eased.
I didn’t talk about my past because I would rather forget what happened. It wasn’t horrible, just a series of lonely stops. At the time, I hadn’t thought so, but I always moved on before someone else could.
I tightened my hold on her, and we stayed like that for a good long while.
Finally, she scrunched back down to rest her head on my chest. “You know, we aren’t that much different. I had my brothers, but Ezra took off as soon as humanly possible. Rhett and I were the closest in age, but he was always dreaming up ways to get out of Buffalo too.”
“And Cohen?” I didn’t want to ask. Part of me wanted to know all the details, but another part of me didn’t want to hear about it. To know she’d loved so hard that the scars had lasted years.
She laughed softly. “Our daredevil. He was always looking for a high. Not the kind in a bottle or pill or whatever, but his drug of choice was always adrenaline. One time, he actually broke his arm—like full bone sticking out of his damn skin broken.” She trailed her fingers down my arm to catch my hand and laced our fingers. “He got up off the track and was so damn excited about the jump. Of course then he got a look at his arm and passed out in the middle of the dirt trail.”
“So, you held that over his head for…”
She snorted. “Forever.”
“Shocking.”
“But then there was a field trip for school. He was seventeen when he got his first glimpse of a firehouse. Then bikes and motorcycles seemed tame compared to fighting fires.”
“A new high.”
She toyed with my fingers, her thumb drifting across the calluses on my palm. My breath backed up in my lungs. I was forever touching her, but this was the first time she’d relaxed enough to do the same. Well, when it didn’t have something to do with sex. She was plenty touchy then.
But this was different, and my chest ached at her words and touch.
“Yep, you got it. He went from a volunteer firefighter to part of the main crew in Buffalo. But even that wasn’t enough. He entered the California program and went through training to be a jumper.”
“And met Jimmy,” I murmured.
“Yeah. At first, he was just another dumb boy in my house for the holidays. I was too interested in the garage. If it had an engine, I could pull it apart and put it back together. It was the only way me and my dad knew how to communicate.”
“Sounds pretty amazing to me.”
“It was. I loved the puzzle of it. I started working on the custom jobs my dad didn’t have the patience for. Then people began asking for me. Fast forward a bit, and I was the one who was traveling all over. I had a knack. Even when I’d butt up against the boys’ club, they eventually had to let me in.”
I chuckled. “Because you were better than them.”
“Damn straight. Then I started learning about fabricators. The ins and outs of them, their pros and cons. Nothing could do exactly what I wanted. So, I came up with one on my own. I was so excited about it, I went home and told my family.”
My gut twisted as she tensed in my arms. “It was early summer. We tended to hang out as a family in those few weeks before fire season. Jimmy and Co would land exhausted from their brutal training programs. They loved it, of course. They played just as hard as they worked.” She relaxed and smiled against my neck. “They drank me under the table. There was always a little something between me and Jimmy, but it was weird with Co. So, we never did any more than flirt until that summer.”
I swallowed against the acid streaming up from my gut. “And you hooked up.”
“Yeah. It was fun. He was always fun. And I was high on the deal I had going with this manufacturer out of Georgia. They believed in my drawings. I didn’t have capital then, so I was looking to hook up with a company. It wasn’t even a good deal now that I look back on it. But at the time, I was too stupid to know any better.”
