Page 74 of Worth the Fight

“Do you want me to go to a hotel for the night so that you can have the house to yourself?”

“No. It’s fine. I’m fine.”

Uh-huh. Like I believe that for a second.

So, I sit on the steps of the porch and watch him work. Time passes, measured by the number of mosquitos I swat away.

“There was a fire tonight,” he finally says, but he doesn’t stop marking a piece of wood and lining it up.

“Are all the guys okay?”

He grunts again, which I take as an affirmative.

“You want to talk about whatever is bugging you? Tonight’s fire? The guys?” I take a deep breath and go there. “Your fire?”

“Jesus fucking Christ. Again? Which one of them called you or stopped by and set you up to pretend you’re my goddamn shrink?”

I exhale an unsteady breath. “None of them. I figured something was bugging you. I’m a smart girl, Grady. Most of those around you who care about you are smart too. I assume they all want to help you with whatever it is you need help with.”

“I don’t need help with anything.” He spits the words out despite their untruth.

I don’t push further. The cadence of the hammer becomes a metronome to his anger until it slowly eases with each and every stroke.

And then there is silence. Nothing but the silhouette of a man in conflict against the blinding light. His head hangs down, his hands fall lax, his shoulders sag.

“Today is the anniversary. Of my fire.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. It was convenient timing for my parents to have a barbecue at the lake.” He chuckles but shakes his head. “There was a fire tonight in the same set of warehouses where our fire happened. When I heard the call, my first thought was arson. The point of origin in our fire was never determined, and it’s always been easier for me to blame someone for everything that happened instead of faulty wires or some shit like that. So, I heard dispatch on the scanner, and all I could think about was if it was arson, the son of a bitch wanted to come back and take a trip down memory lane. Get a thrill from watching firefighters run in that building and get off if one of them didn’t make it back out.”

“Was it?”

He pauses momentarily and then moves toward me, taking a seat beside me unexpectedly. “Nah. It was just one of those things. A perfect storm of mishaps in an old building.”

“Well, that’s good, right? Not the fire part, obviously.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Did you wish you were there?”

“I was there. I watched it from afar.” His voice is distant and cold, but his body is warm beside mine. It seems like such a weird dichotomy to me.

“No, I mean, did you wish you were fighting it?” I ask despite Grant’s comments earlier.

“Are you going to push me on this too, Dylan?” He doesn’t look my way, just stares at the hammer in his hand.

“I wasn’t aware I was pushing. I just wondered if being back there made you want to get your firefighting fix.”

His laugh is long and low with a hint of self-deprecation. “My firefighting fix? I think I got plenty of that. I think the question you’re asking is why I’m being such a pussy and not grabbing my turnouts and laying down pipe like a probie running into his first fire. Am I right?”

Proceed with caution, Dylan.

“That isn’t what I said.”

“It may not be what you said, but it’s what you meant.”

I start to skirt around the issue but figure it isn’t going to do either of us any good if I do. So, I dive right in. “You’re right. It is what I meant.”