“What’s a little rain when you’re from Seattle?”
“Because I always look awful when I see you, and I actually tried to look nice this time!” She giggled and tried to pull away again, but stopped when I pressed her back to my chest.
“You wanted romantic,” I whispered into her ear, and tightened my arm around her waist. I played with the sliver of skin exposed on her stomach, and smiled when she shivered against me. Taking the loose collar of her shirt in my other hand, I pulled until it fell down her arm, and moved my mouth in a line across her shoulder. “Dance with me.”
Harlow turned her head slowly toward mine, and our eyes locked for heated seconds as I swayed us back and forth. An audible exhale blew past her lips when I traced the bridge of my nose along her jaw and trailed the tips of my fingers up her stomach, across her chest, and down her arms. Grabbing her hands in mine, I turned her around so we were facing each other, and pulled her close again as I resumed the slow dance.
I’d played this out differently in my head when I’d stopped her from running back to my truck. I’d thought of having fun with the dance and making her laugh in that way that always got to me. But this . . . with our slow movements in the pouring rain with the girl I’d waited years for . . . I wouldn’t want it any other way.
Drops of rain raced down her face and dripped off her nose and lips, and I watched as her breathing grew heavier and her eyes moved over my face and down to my chest. I’d never seen her look more beautiful than she did in that moment.
I’d waited years for her, and that time of waiting was almost up, but somehow it still felt like I’d never been waiting. It felt like I’d had her all this time. Like I’d spent the past two years loving her and making her mine in a completely different way than what I knew we were both craving.
Harlow unwound her arms from me and moved her hands across my rain-soaked shirt while her eyes watched her fingers in fascination. With a slowness that both drove me crazy and gave me more time to remind myself that I should stop her, she moved her hands inside my shirt, and let one hand press against my stomach while the other gripped the top of my jeans.
I should stop this. I should grab the blanket, and walk her back to the truck right now. She needs to know that she affects me more than she realizes.
My will to stay away from her had already been weak when I first met her, and had only weakened every time I’d seen her—tonight and the night in her friend’s apartment were proof. Now I wasn’t sure if I had any left at all.
“Knox,” Harlow began, her voice barely audible above the rain.
“We should go,” I said, cutting her off.
Her wide eyes met mine, and her head shook faintly. And goddamn if that wasn’t the exact response I did and didn’t want.
I crushed my mouth to hers so fast she gasped in surprise, and I used the movement to slide my tongue against hers. She met my kiss greedily as her fingers curled against my abdomen; but suddenly they were gone, and before I could stop her, she pulled her shirt over her head and pressed her body and mouth back against mine.
I instinctively put my hands around her waist to push her back, but the feel of her slick skin beneath my fingers had a growl building in my chest, and soon I’d forgotten every reason why I’d needed us to stop.
Grabbing her up in my arms, I walked her back the few feet to the now-soaked blanket and laid her down. I wanted to study every inch of her exposed skin—later. I rested my body on top of hers, but propped myself back up to tear off my shirt when she began pulling at it. She captured my mouth with hers as soon as I was lying on top of her again, and I slid my hand up her leg until I got to her knee, and curled it around my hip as I began moving against her.
Harlow broke away from the kiss and dropped her head back on the blanket, and the sexiest noise I’ve ever heard escaped her lips when I rocked against her again. I would’ve done anything in that moment if she would make that sound again.
Releasing her knee, I slowly slid my hand up her thigh and pushed up the material of the skirt she was wearing until it was bunched around her hips. I pressed my mouth to the swell of her breasts, and gently bit down as I trailed my fingers to the inside of her thighs.
“Knox, please,” she whimpered just before I touched her.
And that plea, those two words I’d fantasized about for years and were finally hearing, was what snapped me back.
“Fuck,” I groaned against her skin, and righted her skirt. “Fuck. I can’t,” I said through harsh breaths. Everything in me was roaring with the need to taste of her, but I knew I couldn’t. This night would end up meaning a lot more than it was ever supposed to if I let myself continue. “As much as I want you right here, and right now, I will hate myself later for it if I don’t do this the right way.”
“It’s a few months, Knox, it doesn’t matter to me!”
“It should, because nothing has ever been as important to me.” Shaking my head, I pushed myself away from her and had to drop my head back so I wasn’t looking at her anymore. After taking a minute to gather myself, I looked directly into her eyes. “I’ve waited for you, Harlow Evans, and I will continue to wait for you until you’re eighteen.”
A sharp breath burst from her, and I could see the hurt in her eyes, but she tried to cover it with a teasing smile on her face. “I can’t try to change your mind when you say things like that.” Cupping my face in her hands, she pulled me down to kiss me softly. “I will never love anyone the way I love you. But you better understand that in three months there’s no more running away from me. You’re mine after that.”
I smirked. She had no idea.
Present Day—Richland
THE SHRILL SOUND of a bell jerked me awake. I didn’t know how long I’d been asleep, but in the two seconds it took for me to realize what was happening and fly off my bed and out of the room, I’d already noticed it was dark outside, and I hadn’t moved from the rigid position I’d fallen asleep in. My body ached as I ran to the bay, but soon the adrenaline that always pumped through my veins had me forgetting about the stiff muscles, and I was shaking for a different reason than I had been when I’d gone to sleep. There was a house fire that was quickly spreading to the dwelling next to it; these kinds of calls were what I lived for, were why I became a firefighter in the first place. Being there for EMS to help people who were hurt, yes, any day. Helping old women get their cats out of trees, yeah, it actually happened. Small fires, of course, were the majority of our calls, and were just as important as the freaking cats in the damn trees. But huge house and structure fires, judging by the excited energy that rolled through the truck as we sped through town, were why we were all here.
We’d barely pulled up and started jumping off the truck when a teenage girl in nothing but an oversize T-shirt came running up to us, screaming, “She’s still in there! Please, you have to get her! I can’t believe I did this,” she murmured.
I didn’t have time to ask about that last statement but knew we’d need to talk to her after. “Who?” I yelled over the noise of the roaring fire and other members of my crew.
“Shit, shit, shit. Natalie! The girl I’m babysitting, she’s only three! I swear I didn’t know anything would happen. We fell asleep. The candles!”
She was pulling at her hair and obviously panicking; her breathing was shallow when she wasn’t swearing over and over again. I grabbed her arm and pushed her back a few steps toward my sergeant as I quickly asked, “Where was she when you last saw her?”
“Sleeping in her room. We tried to go to her window, but the fire was too big there!”
“Where is that?”
“Th-th-the very back of the house on the first floor! Last room on the hall!”
I was already running toward the house before she’d finished telling me. Our rapid conversation had barely lasted a minute, but that minute still could’ve been too long. The fire was too big—most of it near the back of the house where the girl’s room supposedly was. The smoke alone
had been doing damage the whole time.
“Natalie!” I yelled as I rushed into the house with another firefighter, Pete, right behind me, echoing her name.
“Natalie, call out to me if you can hear me!” I yelled again, even though I wasn’t near the rear of the house. The front was covered with smoke and it was hard to see, but there was a possibility she’d gotten scared and tried to run from the fire.
We slowed as the smoke thickened and flames licked at the walls and doorways of the hall we were going down, but we never stopped calling out her name. With only a second to assess the flames coming into the hall from the room where I bet the fire had started, Pete and I barreled through and came to a closed door.
“Natalie! If you can hear me, back away from the door!” Pete roared only seconds before he forced the door open.
The back wall of the room was covered in flames, the rest of the room was filled with smoke, and there was no child on the unmade bed.
“Natalie?” I called out, and crouched low to the ground.
I’d only gone a few paces before my flashlight went across a pair of eyes looking back at me from under the bed.
“Natalie, I’m a firefighter, I’m here to help you!” I shouted as I crawled toward the bed. “Can you crawl out to me?”
Seconds passed before she started coming toward me, and by the time she was out from under the bed, I had made it over to her. I sat up, grabbed her up into my arms, and took off out of the room at the same time I put an oxygen mask over her face. Pete reached for my shoulder just as I slid to a stop in the hallway—I’d forgotten about the fire that separated us from the other side. There was still a sliver of space left that the fire wasn’t touching, but I was now holding a little girl wearing only a nightgown and holding a small blanket.
I moved the mask away for a few seconds as she coughed, then gave it back when she was done. She tried to move away from the mask and cried out for her mom. “I’ve got you,” I promised near the top of her head. “We’re going to get you out of here, and then we’re going to get you to your mom, I promise.” Glancing at Pete as he spoke into his radio, I said, “Get the comforter off her bed.”
Natalie turned her blackened, tear-streaked face on me, and though her bottom lip continued to tremble violently, it was obvious she was trying to put on a brave face. I held up the mask and she moved toward it, so I offered her a reassuring smile.
“You’re brave, Natalie, huh?”
She nodded, but didn’t try to speak.
“Can you trust us for a few minutes?”
Again, she nodded without any hesitation.
I set her down when Pete came back, and spoke as quickly as I could while trying to keep my tone calm for the girl’s sake. “We’re going to wrap this around you, and I want you to squeeze your eyes real tight when we do. When I pick you back up, I want you to pretend that you’re flying, okay?”
Behind the mask, I got a hint of a smile, and I was going to take that as approval, because we didn’t have any more time to waste. Wrapping the comforter so there wasn’t a part of her showing, I yelled for Natalie to close her eyes and get ready to fly, then followed Pete through the fire. We didn’t stop running, but Pete slowed to go behind us, and I knew he was making sure that the comforter had made it through without catching.
We passed the guys with the hose just as they were coming into the house, and as soon as we were a good distance outside, I set Natalie down and ripped the comforter off her. I brushed the hair off her blackened face, and smiled when I realized she was still squeezing her eyes shut.
I grabbed the oxygen mask again and said, “You can open your eyes, brave girl.”
She cracked them open before letting them widen, and greedily took the mask from me with the hand that wasn’t holding her blanket. “I flew,” she said matter-of-factly before she put it to her face.
Pete came up behind me and held a hand up for her. “That was some great flying, little girl!”
Natalie slapped at his hand with her blanket-covered one.
“Natalie!” the babysitter screamed as she ran toward us. “Oh my God, Natalie!”
On some unknown instinct, I grabbed Natalie into my arms before the babysitter could get to her, and stood.
She looked at me with a frenzied expression. “Please, let me hold her.”
“Have you spoken to anyone about how the fire started?”
“Y-yes, I just finished. Please let me hold her.”
“She needs to be looked over by EMS,” I responded, just so Natalie wouldn’t have to go back to her, and began walking over to one of the trucks.
“Parents are on their way here,” Sergeant murmured as we passed him, then followed us. He quickly became enamored with the brave three-year-old, and stood there talking with her as she told him about how she flew in the dark while the EMTs looked her over.
“Is she going to be okay?” the babysitter asked, and tried to get into the truck, but I shot an arm out in front of her. “W-we didn’t mean to! I had no idea what would happen. I thought the candles were far enough from the curtains.”
“We?” I asked in a dangerously low tone.
She looked at my sergeant, then back to me, and after her mouth opened and shut a few times, she stuttered, “M-m-my boyfriend came over. We used the guest room next to Natalie’s room; I lit a bu— A few candles. Some were on the window seat, and there are long curtains there, but I thought they were far enough away, I swear, I thought they were!”
I nodded slowly and shrugged. “Well, accidents like this can happen if you’re not careful.” Relief started washing over her features at my reaction to what she’d been telling me, but quickly left when I leveled a glare at her and asked, “What I want to know is, why you didn’t grab Natalie on your way out. You said you tried to go to her window from the outside, but if the fire started in the room next to Natalie’s, then why wouldn’t you have just grabbed her before you ran out?”
“Alexander,” Sergeant warned, but I didn’t stop glaring at the teenage girl in front of me, or waiting for a response.
“Because it got too big,” she said too quickly, and her eyes darted everywhere except to look at me.
“No, you could’ve easily gotten her. Try again. Why didn’t you grab her?”
She swallowed roughly a couple of times, and her body seemed to crumble. “We left the room to get ice cream, and then never went back in there because he wanted . . . because I—” She started sobbing and slapped a hand over her mouth. “I didn’t know it would happen!”
“So you didn’t fall asleep then?”
“What?” she asked with wide eyes.
“Earlier, you said you fell asleep. Are you saying that didn’t happen?”
“N-no.”
I watched as she looked all around, her shoulders jerking with silent sobs. “Are you going to arrest me?”
I huffed. “No, I’m not a cop. I’m just not letting you near that little girl, and I wanted the real story because the first one didn’t make sense. Where’s your boyfriend anyway?”
Her eyes got impossibly wider with fear, but before she could make up some other bullshit excuse, she shrugged like she was exhausted and said, “He was afraid he was going to get in trouble. He ran as soon as your truck started coming down the street.”
“Well, he sounds great. Some advice: dump him, and stay away from me for the rest of the night.”
“Alexander,” Sergeant said again in an annoyed tone.
“I’m done,” I responded, and turned back to the truck to find the EMTs finishing up with Natalie; her smile widened when she saw me. “Superman!”
I barked out a laugh. “Superman? Is that who I am?”
“Yes, because you can fly,” she responded, as if it were old news.
I sat down near where she was sitting on the stretcher and made a face. “But I don’t have a cape,” I said lamely. “Superman has a cape.”
Natalie looked like I’d just given her the worst news i
n the world, but then gasped and held up the blanket I’d seen her gripping earlier—a blanket covered in stars. “Here!”
I gently took the blanket from her, and couldn’t stop the smile in response to hers. “But this is your cape; it helped you fly.”
“Only because you fly,” she whispered, like we were sharing a deep secret.
Most of her face had been cleaned, and I couldn’t stop smiling at the brave, dimpled girl who thought I was Superman and wanted to give me her starry blanket. “I think you should keep this.” Natalie’s face fell, so I quickly continued. “That way you can remember the night you got to fly with Superman. Besides, it looks like it’s a special blanket.”
“Cape!” she corrected with a stern look.
“Cape,” I amended.
She took the blanket back and ran her tiny fingers across it a few times before admitting, “The stars kept me safe until you came to save me.” She poked a few of the stars on the pattern as she spoke. Without waiting for me to ask what she meant, she gave me a shy look, slowly placed the blanket around her mouth and nose, and took a few exaggerated breaths.
“That was a very smart thing to do.”
Natalie nodded and removed the blanket, then looked up toward the night sky, which was blocked by what little remained of the fire and the dark smoke. “Do you like stars, Superman?”
My lips twitched into a smile. “The stars and I are old friends.”
She gasped excitedly and asked, “You’re friends? What do they say to you?”
Without missing a beat I said, “That you’re the bravest little girl.”
“I am,” she responded seriously, and patted my arm with her tiny hand; her head was still tilted back in a vain attempt to see the stars. “And you’re my bravest Superman.”
Chapter 10
Harlow
Summer 2010—Walla Walla
I STARED AT my phone for a few seconds once it stopped spinning, then put my fingers on the screen and gave it another spin.
“Just call him,” I whispered to my empty dorm room for probably the twentieth time this afternoon. “He’ll answer this time . . .” He has to. I thought the last words to myself, unable to voice them.