If it wasn’t for him and the guys, I might not have been able to get my parents out. The fire had already blown into their front lawn, and I had to use the extinguisher to put it out, keeping the gloves pulled as taut as possible over my hands as I opened the doors to make sure they didn’t get burned. Sure, a part of me was terrified at the thought of going up there at all, but Carlisle and Dylan had made it easy to play the heroine, at least for the afternoon.
Before I can knock on the door, though, the choice is made for me—it opens, and I find myself staring at a shirtless Carlisle, wearing nothing but a pair of navy blue sweatpants. He stands there for a moment, clearly surprised to see me like this, and I bite my lip as I gaze at him, searching for something, anything to explain the mess inside my head.
“Do you mind if I come in?” I ask finally. I don’t want any of the other guys coming around the corner and seeing me standing in front of him like a damn lost puppy. I’m sure there’s enoughthey’re trying to figure out as it is. There’s a hell of a lot I need to talk to all of them about, that much is for certain, but at the same time, I want nothing more than to distract myself while I still can. I don’t know if it’ll do me any good, but I’ll take whatever I can get right now.
He pauses for a moment, as though considering his answer, and then steps aside and gestures for me to come in. “Sure.”
I brush past him and glance around the room. This place is pretty nice, I have to admit. Well-stocked enough to last them a good way through any potential crisis. I raise my eyebrows as I turn back to him, curious. “You have places like this all over the state, or what?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, your little firefighting force,” I reply, gesturing toward the door. “Is it just here, in Devin Ridge? Or do you have other places you can stay if some shit goes down?”
“We have about half a dozen,” he replies, not missing a beat. “Most of them in the woods, like this. Old logging cabins, for the most part, that we converted to serve as operations bases for anything like this…” He nods toward the window.
The fire, for now, seems to be under control, but I don’t know how long that’s going to last. I keep waiting for the alarm to tear through the silence and for them to spring into action again, forgetting about me entirely.
“Well, thanks for letting the quads and me stay here,” I reply softly.
He starts slightly at the mention of the children, and then pulls open a drawer, rooting through it for a shirt, though I get thefeeling he’s just trying to find an excuse not to look at me. I know he must want to know more about the kids. I’ve seen how close he and the other guys seem to be, and it’s hard to believe that Joe would have kept the revelation of their parenthood entirely to himself. But I don’t know how to broach the ridiculous enormity of it, how much I’ve kept from them, how much life I’ve lived without any of them at my side.
“And thanks for helping my parents today,” I continue, moving the subject along.
He shrugs. “You were right. You know this place better than we do. At least, now.”
I bite my lip as he pulls on a shirt, unable to not notice the way the muscles of his back flex as he moves. He’s strong, no doubt about it—not the kind of strong that comes from lifting weights and throwing things around at the gym, but the kind of strong that’s earned from actually getting out into the world anddoingsomething. Not that any of them were exactly in bad shape that night at the bonfire, but Carlisle has grown into the kind of man who would send most women into a dead swoon.
“Hmm, I guess,” I reply, forcing myself to answer so he doesn’t notice how distracted my mind has become. “How long…how long do you think it’s going to be before they can move back? My parents, I mean? And, well, everyone else too, I guess…”
“No idea,” he replies. “Could be a few days, could be a few weeks. Depends how long it takes for the real firefighters to get out here, bring some heavy-duty equipment to cut the fire off at the root. We can keep it from doing too much damage in the meantime, but we can’t get to the heart of it, just the four of us.”
“Wait, you’re not the real firefighting force?” I ask, surprised.
He smirks slightly, shaking his head. “Volunteers, that’s all.”
“Woah,” I murmur. “I guess—I didn’t think people would want to do something like that unless they were getting paid for it…”
I feel stupid for saying it out loud as soon as the words are out of my mouth, and wish I could take it back, not wanting to seem like some kind of asshole trying to dismiss everything they’re doing here. It’s clear that they’ve worked hard to establish themselves, coming together in a polished force capable of handling emergencies like this when the more formal services are unable to come out in time. It actually brings a lump to my throat, to think of them giving up so much just for the sake of taking care of people. I hope some of that compassion has passed down to their children, one way or another.
“It’s worth it,” he replies bluntly. “And it keeps me busy, gives me something to do with all the money my father…”
He trails off again, and I can tell that we’re skirting around the edge of an issue that he might not be able to put into words that easily. I know a little about his father—his family, really. It’s hard not to, when Devin Ridge got its name from Carlisle’s family line. Is he the first to leave? Even though he’s back now, there seems to be a heavy weight hanging over him, like he’s dragging something with him he can’t leave behind.
“Right,” I murmur, and I move a little closer to him. He still smells of smoke, but it’s mixed with something else, something deeper and darker that undercuts it—like amber mined from the midst of the earth.
“Well, I’m glad you’re here,” I continue. “All of you, actually. I don’t know what I would have done if something had happened to my home, or the?—”
“Hey,” he murmurs, cutting me off before I can go any further. “You don’t need to think like that. Nothing happened. You’re safe. That’s the only thing that matters.”
A sudden rush of emotion courses through me, and I clamp a hand over my mouth to contain it. All at once, my mind is filled with the sight of my house falling apart, burned to ashes, everything that the children have ever known gone up in smoke in a matter of seconds. Even the thought of it is enough to make me feel ill, and he moves to my side at once, hand on my arm.
“Hey, hey, hey,” he continues, reaching to touch my face, trying to guide me back into the moment with him. “Nothing happened, you hear me? You’re okay. The kids are—they’re okay, Angelie…”
I draw in a deep, shaky breath, forcing myself to calm down as best I can, though it feels like the world is still shaking beneath my feet. And the only port in that storm is his eyes, gazing back at me, locked on mine like I’m the only thing in the world that matters. His hand is on my face, thumb on my cheek, his gaze so dizzyingly near to me that I could almost lose myself to it entirely.
And before I know it, I have. I lean in, so close that I can feel his breath on my skin, our mouths reflecting the shape of each other’s. The door is shut, and all I can think about is the movement of his muscles beneath his skin, how badly a part of me aches for more of him, and how much I’ve missed him, how much I’ve missed all of them…
Our mouths come together at last, his hands sliding into my hair as he pulls me against him with a passion I haven’t felt in longer than I would care to remember. I can feel the blood throbbing around my veins as his hands clasp me, sliding down my neckand over my back to grasp my waist, pushing up the light cami that I slipped into after the shower, his fingertips digging into me like he’s trying to gorge himself on the feel of me.
