Home > Flashpoint (Forged in Fire #1)(4)

Flashpoint (Forged in Fire #1)(4)
Author: Skye Jordan

I shake Sorenson off. “The hell he is.”

Everyone pulls back, the doors close, and the siren sings. Logan exchanges information with the hospital and gets approved to administer more meds. Nothing works. The only blip on the heart monitor matches the pattern of my compressions.

By the time we reach the hospital, I’m drenched in sweat, my arms feel like they’re going to fall off, and my vision is blurred with tears.

Tears of loss. Tears of fury. Tears of failure.

They wheel us in, and I jump off, replaced by doctors and nurses. I stumble out of the room and pace the hall outside the trauma suite, praying harder than I’ve ever prayed before, making all kinds of crazy deals with God if he’ll just bring Evan back.

But in my heart, I know he’s gone.

How in the fuck am I going to tell Natalie? I battle with my conscience—if I’d just left him at the station… If I’d told the captain… If the fucker had just done what I said and stayed on the pump…

Time warps and I have no idea how long I’ve been berating myself when Natalie is here, standing at the other end of the hall with a nurse who gives a nod and leaves us alone. She’s staring at me with a terrorized look on her beautiful face. I’m frozen. There has never been a time when I’ve wanted to crawl in a hole and die more than I want to in this moment. I’d do anything—anything—to change what happened tonight.

She stumbles toward me, but stops halfway, using the wall to keep her up. Accepting the inevitable horror of the moment, I move down the hall.

“No.” Her voice is faint, weak, filled with pain.

We’ve been friends for years, and I know she can read my expression. I open my mouth, but my throat closes, and nothing comes out.

“No,” she says, choking out the denial before she drops to her knees.

I rush to catch her, but I’m too late. I crouch and pull her close. She’s limp, shaking with sobs as she buries her face against my chest. “No, no, no, no, no.”

All I can say is “I’m so sorry.”

So, so, so fucking sorry.

 

 

1

 

 

Natalie

 

 

Two years later

I park in front of the Cockloft and shut down the engine of my SUV. The warm metal ticks in the quiet night, and muffled music drifts from the bar and grill owned by three firefighters from the local department. Evan’s friends and coworkers. If he were alive, he would have been a twenty-five percent owner.

Evan came up with the name for this place. At the time, the guys didn’t have a specific location in mind for the bar and grill they wanted to run together, but that didn’t keep them from dreaming and planning.

In engineering terms, a cockloft is that space above the ceiling and below the rafters, similar to an attic. In firefighting terms, a cockloft is a potential death trap, where fire can travel laterally across multiple spaces below, often undetected.

As it turns out, the cockloft can also be defined in mansplain as a loft with a cock. Cole’s cock, to be precise. He lives in the loft apartment they created out of that space above the bar.

The guys dedicated the Cockloft to Evan. There’s even a plaque inside with Evan’s photo and kind words about his friendship with these men. And the fact that this building used to be a firehouse—one all the guys had worked at before the city built a new house elsewhere—just makes it all the more fitting.

“Okay,” I say to Tina, who’s been coaching me over the phone on my drive. “I’m here. Thanks for hanging with me.”

“You’ve got this, girl. Think of this as dipping your toes into the water to check the temperature.”

“Right.”

We both stay on the phone, silent. Tina waits patiently.

“God, you’re such a good friend,” I tell her. “I’d be so lost without you.”

“Right back at you. Have you got the bribes?”

I glance at the pie boxes in the passenger’s seat. “I do.”

“This is just a quick ask, a quick meet, and you’re out of there.”

I feel…off. In a big way. Unnerved, like I’m about to face a firing squad. “Why does this feel so messed up?”

“Tell me about him again,” she says, referencing the man I met in the grocery store earlier today and agreed to meet for a drink. Tina’s son, Trevor, now two, calls to her in the background. “You were okay with it when you first told me. There must be something about him that appeals to you.”

I close my eyes and bring back the memory of the grocery store and the way he and I kept crossing paths. He would turn down one aisle as I would turn up, and we’d pass at some point. We did that half a dozen times before he broke the ice with a joke that relieved the awkwardness of the meetups, though I can’t remember the joke now. Then he flipped his cart around so we were walking the aisle together instead of opposed.

“He’s easy to talk to,” I say, remembering how smoothly he transitioned into my grocery-store buddy instead of a total stranger. “And he didn’t make our meetup weird. Which means he’s either a sociopathic serial killer or just a nice guy.”

Tina laughs, and Trevor babbles in two-year-old talk. She must have pulled him onto her lap, because he sounds closer, and my ovaries are screaming. The only way they’ll shut up is if I focus on the prospect of dating…or investigate the possibility of a sperm donor.

Sperm donor sounds far more appealing than dating right now.

“He’s got a sweet sense of humor.” I blow out a breath. “He’s cute. I think. I don’t remember exactly. Okay, I’ve either got to get out of the car now or disappear.”

“Imagine how you’ll feel if you stand him up and meet him in the grocery store again. You know it’s going to happen.”

“Dammit. Okay, I’m going in. I’ll call you later.”

“You’ve got this,” she says again before we disconnect.

I grab the boxes holding two of my pies that didn’t sell at Mom’s café today and stand from my SUV. The mid-May evening is cool, the air clean and scented with pine. I don’t need “bribes” to ask Tucker and Logan for a favor, but it makes me feel better when I’m going to ask for their time.

Positive self-talk is flowing through my head on the walk in—you’ve got this, it’s no big deal, gotta do it sometime, it’s been over two years…

My eye catches on a dark blue Ford F-250, and my feet stop. A tingle courses through my stomach. “Shit.”

Cole should be at the firehouse tonight, but he’s clearly not.

“Dammit.”

I glance at my car, chewing on my lip as I seriously consider bailing. But, as the president of the firefighters’ benevolent fund, a volunteer position, I have a mother of three depending on me. I also have Mom and Tina nagging me to start dating again. And I can kill two birds with one stone tonight. Maybe even three now that Cole’s here. As uncomfortable as it will be for Cole to see me dating a man other than Evan for the first time, it’s going to be three times as uncomfortable for me to date that man.

“Dammit, dammit, dammit.” I drag my feet toward the front doors. Maybe I’ll get lucky and Cole will be upstairs in his apartment, studying.

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