Scarred

Suzanne Jefferies

Copyright © 2021 by Suzanne Jefferies

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Contents

1. Jasmine

2. Storm

3. Storm

4. Jasmine

5. Storm

6. Jasmine

7. Storm

8. Jasmine

9. Storm

10. Jasmine

11. Storm

12. Jasmine

13. Storm

About the Author

Also by Suzanne Jefferies

One

Jasmine

Timber-frame houses reduce to ash quicker than a frog can spit for its dinner. Cheap, easy to hammer together, they collapse easy too.

This isn’t one of those houses.

This one’s been built with brick and cement. Sand and stone. The flames shoot out from the windows, bursting out the glass, and tripping up the neighbors who’ve gathered to ogle and clutch their cotton nightgowns, with the ugly stench of fried plastic circling like a vulture.

Bill, one of my firefighter’s been a humpin’-pumpin’ on that hose for a good long hour, and the fire’s almost out. I’m usually guessing with house fires it’s an electric blanket, or a gas heater that called time.

But in this heat, unlikely. Lawn’s saturated with water that’s meant to be restricted. Rich folks…don’t give a fuck.

Mama, Papa, and the two girls gaze at their burning house from the safety of the sidewalk, stuck in that time warp that shock slaps up your back. Mama’s crying over her lost jewelry, her pretty paintings, her phone glued tight in her hand.

Tomorrow morning, they’ll come past this sooty shell, hoping, and praying to loot the wreckage for shit that will smell of smoke forever. But I guess if they can find even one graduation photo or wedding snap, they’ll take it, even if it’s burnt away at the corners.

They don’t realize it now, but they got out with everything they need—each other. Minor smoke inhalation, no fireworks.

Plenty ain’t that lucky.

Don’t I know all about that.

“Hey, Lieutenant Bullock, we just about ready here.” Bill’s switched off the pump. Job’s done.

I loosen my breathing apparatus. Air’s clear enough. “Let’s get moving then.”

“You got Tommy!” One of the girl’s voice squeals at a fever pitch, breaking my concentration in two.

I turn toward her, my heart yo-yoing in my chest.

It’s him.

From out of the space where the front door should be, Storm emerges, a ginger cat dwarfed in his arms. Well, holy shit. Where’s the wind machine and the fanfare when you need it? He’s a wet dream right there in his heat-protective gear. Everything you’d expect from a firefighter. He’s built, rock-hard abs, muscles in places most guys don’t have places, dark hair that swings by his shoulders like it’s doing them a favor. But with a cat, too? Shit. I’m just not prepared for that level of flame. Even in my heat-protective gear.

My mouth’s as dry as the Mississippi River in a flood.

He hands back the traumatized cat that I don’t need to be told has probably lost part of its ears, tail and definitely its whiskers.

He then yanks off his helmet, his mask, and I force myself not to stare. Mama Bear’s looking at him like he’s all trussed and ready for her oven. Guess who she’d like for dinner? The dashing fireman who rescues kitties? He’s doing his whole ‘aw-shucks’ routine. The humble fireman who has ‘hero’ written all over his stupid, handsome face.

He glances at me, and our eyes meet. I can feel myself blush. Damn.

It’s always been like this. Only back when I met him, he was the football hero. The guy who all the other guys wanted to be and who all the girls wanted to date. But that was seven years ago. Things are different now.

What would Mama Bear think if she knew the truth?

Firefighter Storm Cooper ain’t no-one’s hero. Not even on a day like today.

I turn my attention back to Bill and the boys.

We rewind everything we unwound, pack up the truck, ready to haul out onto the next call out. I’m so focused on my work it takes a second to realize one of those girls is staring straight at me. Her eyes are wide, her mouth slack open. Well, at least she ain’t pointing.

Or calling on her sister to have a good gawp too.

You think I’d be used to it, but I’m not. They say eyes are the windows to your soul, but they forget those windows are fixed into a building, just like that burnt out house. Days from now, people will slow down as they pass by, their eyes bugged at the sight of something darker, something that can come for them, anytime, but for the grace of God. I’ll tell you one thing—they ain’t looking into those windows. They’re driving by, bug eyes wide. And the ones who are looking? They’re scavengers, looking for scraps of something valuable, picking over the remains.

Eyes are only windows if you want to come close enough to the building. And my building looks like the aftermath of a mud slide. No amount of surgery has fixed that.

“You okay, Jazz? You look a little pale.” Storm’s ambled over. He stands close, closer than he needs to. His dark eyes seek mine. Scavenger. My whole body hums when he gets close. Like it’s found his rhythm and it’s self-tuning—synching—to him. I should never have let him in. Adrenaline fucks with your hormones.

I find my words. “Where’d you find the cat?”

He takes out a stick of gum and folds it into his mouth. I focus on his lips that have searched over my body, searching for the remnants of the girl I was. His eyebrow arches as he answers. “The dryer.”

“For real?”

“Sure.” The way he says it, I’ll put every cent I have and even what I don’t on his lying.

“It wasn’t in the tree round back? Or hanging out at the neighbor’s?” Cats ain’t that dumb.

He shakes his head. Liar. At least, this one wasn’t his work. Unless…I take in the suburb, the shiny SUVs in the drives, the occasional tennis court. My stomach flips over. “Whose house is this?”

He shrugs. “Beats me.”

I try to catch a better glimpse at the father who looks like he hasn’t put his arm round his wife in forever. Was he a local politician guy? A police officer? Lawyer? One of Storm’s ‘crusades’? My gut’s hoppin’ and boppin’ to a beat that’s not there. This wasn’t him. It couldn’t have been him. There are kids here.

“You sure you’re all right, Jazz?” The concern in his voice is genuine. I hate it. I hate him. His jaw moves as he chews. It’s to stop his smoking. He flips that piece of gum over and over in his mouth, and I’m drawn to it like a moth to the flame. Okay, no, that’s still too soon. Even for me. Even ten years later.

He reaches forward and wipes a smudge from my cheek. My breath can’t find the exit as my chest swells. “You look beautiful today, Jazz.” He’s gazing deep into my eyes, and I wish that casual flattery wasn’t so addictive. But to me it’s like catnip and Kryptonite. I know that melted skin doesn’t have a category on PornHub.

I wait for his next line.

It’s a coincidence.

Fires happen.

Would I do that? After everything...

He knows I know. He must know I do. And I have to do what’s right.

His voice lowers and I’m sucked in. “I’ll never stop making sure that you’re safe, Jasmine. I will always protect you. Always.”

He drops a kiss on my forehead that scorches through me and I hate him even more…because now he’s not lying. Every word he said is the truth.

And it scares me.

* * *

An hour later, I’ve written up my report, and taken long slugs of water from that machine that burps and gurgles in our rec room. The night’s not over. I’ve got another few hours on this shift before it’s home for some proper shut-eye, not a nap in the bunk.

My eyes scan around the room. Storm’s reading. He’s always reading some thick-ass book by some author I’ve never heard of. Unlike the rest of us, he’s educated. Went and did what his parents told him to, and went to college. I think it’s because they wanted him to recover from what happened—wanted to put distance between him and the rumors.

He came back, though. And signed up to the fire academy.

His parents don’t know why.

I do.

I shiver, even though it’s one of those hot nights that squash your chest like a squatting bull over your ribcage.

He looks up at me, and I turn away.

I wait a beat, two, three, then glance back. He’s still looking. The heat from his gaze splits me open. Lust widens up its jaws and licks up toward him. That night, he’d slid his fingers into my panties, while he’d sucked my tongue, and those soft thumbs, that hard tongue, his sweat smell of gasoline and lemon had burned on my memory like I’d been staring at the sun too long.

Even if I turn away now, he’s there, imprinted.

That night, I couldn’t believe I’d got so lucky. How wrong I was.

I lick at my dry lips, the wetness between my legs betraying me.

I have to do what’s right. That it will tear me in two? I’m going to have to live with it. Fucking hell, why does it have to be Storm? Why him? Why couldn’t it be some other whackadoodle with a thing for matches?

Maybe it isn’t Storm. My heart tumble-turns. Yeah, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice…

I get up from my chair, and leave the room. I know he’ll follow me. I head out round back. It’s midnight, and there’s barely a light on in the buildings behind the station. And no fucker’s taking a smoke break either. Good. I walk into the shadows, the heat from the buildings wrapping round me like a taco shell. It’s so hot, the whole town’s scorched.

His feet, in their boots, grind against the graveled cement as he follows me into the darkness.

He catches me, and I elbow him in the ribs. “We can’t do this. I can’t do this. It’s wrong, Storm. Fuck you.”

He grips me tighter. “It’s not right that they get away with it. You agreed—”

“Not to this.”

I can feel his hardness on my ass cheeks, and I push against him. He groans, and he runs his hands up over my breasts, squeezing my hard nipples. God, I want him to rip my pants off and dick me down, here and now, like a rutting dog. A fuck, fast and dirty. A fuck that can make me forget.

He gets hard after setting a fire. It’s his sick aphrodisiac.

His lips kiss and lick my neck. His fingers delve under my track pants toward my panties, and I spread my legs. I’m so ready for him. I’m such a slut for him, and the bastard knows it.

Somewhere, a shaft of light opens. We both freeze. A door slams opens. The sound of trashcans being filled, before the same door creaks shut.

He lets me go, his hands unravelling like a hose back in its stand. “Fuck this, Jazz, I want you in my bed. Not like this.”

I turn ‘round, my hands going for his dick. “Yes, like this.”

He grips my wrists. “I want to look at you. I want to see you when you come. I want to gaze at you, make lo—”

I break free from him. “Fuck you, Storm.”

He pulls me close. His hands are tender as they slide down over my back, as his lips push against me. Fuck, I hate him so much. His head dips toward my lips. I can’t.

I sink to my knees, pulling his track pants down. I swallow his dick, shutting him up. His hands grip my head as I suck him. Now, I’ve got him. Some women don’t like to give head. They don’t get it. It’s about power. When I’m on my knees, I’ve got him where I want him. I get to make the moves, have him powerless. He’s focused on my lips, my mouth, my tongue as I take him to heaven and back. He can’t make this out to be something it’s not, with his dick in my mouth there’s no romance here. Lust, good and proper. And when it’s run its course, I’m turning him in.

How fucking dare he talk about love? Someone like him love someone like me? I’m still that sad, sorry loser. I’m still her, no matter how much he thinks I might have forgotten. I shove away those thoughts that are icky-sticky with shame, and concentrate on the head of his dick in my mouth.

Every time I see him, I remember.

His stomach muscles tense and taut. Yeah. Come for me, baby. Instead, he slides out of my mouth, his hands clamp on my arms and he lifts me up.

He brings my face level with his. I can’t see his eyes, they’re dark pits in the shadows. “I want to come with you. Properly.” Fuck. My cunt contracts and it wants me to grind hard against him, have him shove that dick into me, hard, fast, and deep.

“No.”

He sighs and lets go. I drop back down to earth. “Fuck you, Storm,” I say again, only the more I say it, the less impact it has. Words aren’t my thing. Books aren’t my thing. He and I cannot be a ‘thing.’ There’s too much that isn’t there. Too much that is.

I head back into the station, leaving him with his pants down and his dick hanging. Blue balls? Snookered, pal.

I’m gonna have to file a report—the real one. The one about the town hall and its mysterious gas leak, the one about the civic building down Main Street that probably would have toppled if you’d yelled ‘boo’ at it, the one about that night ten years ago. The one that started it all.

His taste is still on my tongue—salty, musky, him. My cunt’s still wet, and knotted tight with longing for him. I want to skip into the bathroom, and rub my clit till I come, clear my thoughts of him. But there’s that one thought, that one feeling that lurks underneath all of this—I don’t want to see, hear, or feel it. Fuck that.

I hate him. My gut swirls with emotions that fist it out. Unease wins, its cold clammy hands trickle down my back.

I shake it off and head straight to the desk, pick up my pen, and do what I should have done. Time to make things right again.

Two

Storm

Shift ended an hour ago. It’s too soon to do what I have to, what I must, what I need to. I pour another shot of tequila. If it’s supposed to make you happy, it’s failing miserably. It’s seeped into my veins, dulling my senses, and robbing me of sleep.

I twitch with the frustration of the unfulfilled. I should have let her continue. Let her work that tongue and its magic. Shit. I wanted it to be about her.

It’s always about her. Always been about her, right since that day in eighth grade. I doubt she even remembers that. Only what happened later. How I let her down.

My fingers flicker with irritation. I flick open the lid of my Zippo. Nothing in the world like that sound, that schlink as metal slides on metal, the remnants of lighter fluid, so oily, so delicious. I roll my thumb, igniting the flint. Whoosh. A flame burns high and bright. I clink the lid back, then repeat the process. A meditation for the lonely.

Ah, but I’m not lonely. She knows me.

No-one knows me like she does, and it comforts the bones of my cold soul to know it. If only she’d let me…

That fucking bastard had it coming. What do you call five hundred lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? A good start. Maybe not all lawyers. But that predatory piece of shit, yes. Watching it burn, burn, burn soothed me in ways that the tequila is failing.

What they did to Jasmine they can’t undo. But I can. I can make sure they lose what’s precious to them. Plunge them into chaos.

My apartment rustles as the wind picks up outside. There was no mention of rain. It never rains here. Not anymore. The city’s parks have dried from a lush green to spindly sick yellow. Sidewalks crack from over-baking. Tempers are at fever pitch. Reservoirs are running dry.

Drought is a dirty word that no-one wants to use so long as there’s enough water in the reservoir. Fucking politicians.

I click-flick my Zippo, this time not igniting the flame. It’s a plain lighter, no etched-on wings or chiseled-in sayings. Just plain silver with a two-groove pattern at the corner. Unremarkable. Unmemorable. Unrecognizable? Apparently not.

Nights like these, I wish I still smoked. But that shit will kill you.

I grimace.

Firefighting, that’s what I do.

Fighting fire with fire.

That shit will kill you, too.

Not yet.

The next morning, I hit the pavements, and get in a few miles. The running’s been better since I quit the smoking—the lifting, too. It’s too early, even for the most industrious birds, and the sun hasn’t quite peeked over the horizon. It’s the best time to run—when no-one’s awake, and the heat rests two inches from the tar.

It helps with the cravings. The monotonous thud-thud focuses my attention away from the need, at least temporarily. But the need will come back—it always comes back—and it will demand to be heard. All the running in the world isn’t going to make it go away.

If I light just one match and watch it burn to my fingers, letting it singe my flesh, I will be lost, and the need will swallow me whole.

I’ve switched up my normal route, and I know where I’m headed. I can’t help it. I have to. One more look. One last glance. Just the one, and then I’ll sweat it out at the gym.

Who am I kidding? I’m already drowning in its belly.

I cruise past last night’s work.

The air lingers with the acrid odor of Advocate Peterson’s burnt up belongings. Oh, he’ll just move on. Find another house, build another life, but this one, this one is no longer his.

My feet pick up speed as I get closer. Charred bricks, scorched debris, the detritus of his ugly, twisted life reduced to ashes.

I don’t know which of us is more surprised when Jazz emerges from the remains.

She looks straight at me, and in that second I know she knows it was me. I can tell by the way she sucks in her breath, by the way her mouth forms a perfect ‘O’, and the reach of her hand to that beautiful mouth that escaped the ravages of that night.

Somehow, the flames sculpted around her lips, those lips that held me in sweet submission only a few hours ago. My cock twitches at the memory.

One side of her face is still perfect. Beautiful warm skin, a slanting eyebrow over her deep, dark eyes that are ringed with thick lashes. There’s usually a touch of pink on her cheek, a rosy glow. Her hair is thick and curly, the kind that tangles a man up in knots, and she wears it long to hide behind. I wish she wouldn’t. She’s more beautiful now than she ever was before that night.

And her smile. I would drop to my knees and follow her everywhere for a glimpse of that smile.

She’s dressed in a t-shirt and shorts that reach mid-thigh. Her wet hair is pulled back. What is she doing here?

We both pause. I jog on the spot, treading metaphorical water as we each wait for the other to go first.

“It’s going to—”

“I didn’t expect to—”

We both break off our attempts at an excuse. Neither of us have business being here, but at least I can pretend that my route directed me this way. She’s in the site, no ifs, ands or buts.

Her t-shirt is damp where her hair has rested, wet patches that seep and stick to her skin. My gaze drops to her breasts that lie flat against her chest.

She loves it when I bite down gently on her nipples, grazing her flesh. Deep, dark brown hard bullets that swell in my mouth. The blood rushes to my cock that’s still desperate for release. I want to taste those nipples now, right here, in front of Liberty’s oh-so-proper bunch of assholes who run this town like a pack of rabid wolves.

She crosses her arms, and shuffles from foot to foot. Her legs might be short, but they’re perfectly proportioned and tightly muscled. My cock’s already hijacked my brain, flicking through our last time together on the roof of City Hall. She’d wrapped those legs round me, and let me drive into her while the building burned, burned, burned.

Always with fire, there has to be fire.

“Storm,” her voice quivers, and I stop with the jogging. “I have to tell you something. I—”

“Before you do…” I walk over to her, stepping through the carcass of Advocate Peterson’s life. I know I must stink of sweat and last night’s booze, but I need to get close. She doesn’t move away, merely offers me her ‘good’ side like she always does.

I reach out and touch her cheek. Her rosy glow flushes to a deep crimson. I want to kiss her, lick her, love her, worship her, everything. Make sure nothing bad ever happens to her again.

“What did you want to say, Storm?”

“Do you remember the night of homecoming?” I blurt.

Her eyes widen in surprise. Whatever she thought I was going to say, this wasn’t it. She nods.

“I’d scored the winning touchdown. It felt good that all that training had paid off. All the sacrifices, the running, holy shit, the running. But it didn’t get me here.” I tap my chest with my fist. “It should have. But it didn’t. And then they crowned me homecoming king—”

“With Chrissie Bennet, lead cheer leader.” Sarcasm drips from her words. She gestures round her, and her hands migrate to her hips. Under her feet, a decapitated Barbie struggles for breath. A stray dog sniffs through upended trash cans. “Fuck homecoming. Now you’re burning down people’s houses?”

Her words scald me. This was not how I wanted it to go. “I don’t burn down people’s houses.”

“I’ve written a new report.” My heart stops beating as I inhale and don’t let go.

She drops her gaze. “I can’t deny that I found you in the stairwell at City Hall. And I can’t deny that I found your lighter at that civic building—”

“There was nothing to indicate that was mine.”

Her hand skims over my shoulder, my cheek, her turn to reach out. “You need to get help, Storm. I know what happened. I was there, remember? There’s nothing wrong with needing help, getting help. There are people who care about you…”

I drop my lips down to hers. Her warm, soft lips. A chaste kiss that’s hard, that swiftly succumbs to something wetter, deeper, hotter. Her hands are in my hair, and I pull her close to me, desperate to feel the warmth of her body against mine, her heat, our heat. She smells like musky vanilla cream that has me wanting to bury my face in her pussy, in her scent. I cup her ass and squeeze and she lets out a sigh. This time, it will be all about her.

Her cellphone intrudes into the moment as unwelcome as a slap across the face.

She pulls it from her pocket and answers.

A second later she glances at me, and her eyes narrow. “Fire.” And she thinks it must be me. Her body stiffens as she listens, her answers short, sharp, and sweet. My phone’s not on me but I don’t need to guess that when I get back to my apartment, there’ll be missed calls and a message with one instruction: report in for duty.

She ends the call. “Massive blaze on the other end of town, out by the forest. It’s spreading quick.” Her voice holds suspicion, and nurses it. Forest fires are not my scene. If only I could explain to her, share with her—

“Heading to the station now. They need extra hands.” Her lips swell where I kissed her, where she kissed me. She pauses. “We’ll talk. Later.”

Three

Storm

Later is a relative term when you’re confronting an out-of-control blaze that leaps, skips, and jumps like a petulant child throwing its toys.

I’m baking under my uniform, the sweat trapped between the layers. Walls of heat close in as we unroll hoses that so far have been as effective as holding up an umbrella to a tsunami. The team’s working with the forest guys to get the aerial help out here. Direct the fire toward Liberty Lake, contain the blaze, and break it off there.

For a second, I recall Advocate Peterson’s sprinkler system that shush-shushed round their lawn while their house chargrilled from the inside. The upmarket fire brake.

The wind caresses us as it passes, igniting sparks over long-dead branches that have snapped and torn in the drought. The forest creaks on tired bones as the flames devour everything in their path. There’s not enough moisture in the air, or in the ground to slow down its progress. The forest is a dried-out husk that’s one giant tinder pile.

And it burns, burns, burns.

The more we advance, the more it flirts with us, escapes our grasp.

Where’s that asshole’s sprinkler system when you need it?

She’s further out than the rest of the team, her strong body holding on as the fire laughs at us. Fuck, it’s spitting in our faces, and we have to keep going, keep trying, keep working to put the bastard out. She’s incredible, the way she confronts the flame, never quitting, always moving forward.

She thinks I started this. Wrong.

She thinks I must be enjoying this. Wrong again.

It’s an urge, a desire, an itch that can’t be scratched. I want to tell her about it. About all of it. It’s swelling up in me like those flames, pushing at my conscience, urging me forward. I need to make it right. Make it better.

Bill, my fellow firefighter, gestures to me to join Jasmine. Provide her with back up.

I glug my oxygen as I make the few paces to her side. She barely glances my way. Smoke lies thick and ominous as branches snap, crackle, and pop.

For a second, I’m mesmerized by the flames. Such a primal expression of destruction that we think we can control but we can’t. It rages, it screams, and it will be heard. The flickering orange tongues speak only of devastation. How many lives will it ruin before it’s over? It will never be over. My throat constricts with emotion, and I have to steady my hand on the hose, to refocus.

I glance at Jazz who faces down the opponent with grim determination.

She thinks I started this. Wrong.

This all started long before now. All of it.

Four

Jasmine

Fuck and dammit all to hell, the fire keeps creeping forward, the greedy bastard. I swallow smoke into my dry mouth. Tastes like four-day-old grill. Storm’s next to me, and I pray for his namesake. The only thing that’s going to stop Liberty from lighting up like the Fourth of July is a whipass storm.

We haven’t had one of those for two summers now. Well, fuck.

Hope wrestles with reality as we battle it out.

Storm and me. Or is that I? He’d know. I wouldn’t.

Why didn’t he leave and go get some fancy pants lawyer job in a big city? No, comes back here and joins the academy.

And then the fires start.

I switch to a more aggressive flame challenge that needs to die, starting now. I’m angry that what happened bonded us. I’m angry that ever since that first time, I haven’t stopped wanting him. And I’m angry that I don’t have the fucking balls to report him. Sure, I’ve written it up, I just haven’t submitted it. Not yet.

I’m angry that I’m paralyzed to do any goddamn thing.

Fuck that forest fire.

A whoosh of heat rushes at me, and I shoot it down as best I can. It’s hotter than a Mexican tamale in here, and I’m sweating buckets everywhere.

Fuck you, fire. You don’t get to take everything away from me and think I’m not going to come back for your ass. An eeeeek and a groan rattles through the smoke and ash. The ground shakes. I lose my balance. Storm’s there, propping me up. Fuck. That was close. No-one around to yell timber when it matters most.

Once upon a time, I reckoned Liberty forest, with its creepy ass trees, would survive a nuclear holocaust. Wrong. That night, we were supposed to head up here, crank up the volume on Frank’s truck, get shit-faced, and dance the white man shuffle. All the footballers, and the cheerleaders, including the magnificent Ms. Chrissie with her perfect hair and big boobs. If we had headed up here, if they’d headed up here, things would be different. This fire would be burning, but I doubt I’d be one of the people fighting it.

Every day, I’m fighting.

I glance at Storm who’s roaring at the flames that we knock back but just keep coming. He definitely wouldn’t be here. On that, I’d bet my entire Linkin Park CD collection.

Ahead of us, another tree gives up the ghost and kersplats onto the inferno below. Sparks sputter everywhere, and instinctively I step backward, away from the rush of flame that’s sliding under Mr. Tree’s carcass. Screaming animals have long since bolted, but every now and then, a shadow moves and I swallow back the reality that another squirrel or bird or coyote didn’t make it.

This is life. Nothing quite as jolting to the soul.

Almost nothing. Storm slides in behind me, and we’re both working that hose like some obscene over-sized bad joke. Now ain’t the time for dick talk, Jasmine.

Anyone in the emergency services will tell you, it’s all about the teamwork. Without someone watching your back, you’re not good as dead, you are dead. Storm has my back. He may have some nocturnal habits that are right up there in the total fucking dodge, but I know he won’t let anything happen to me. Not if he can avoid it.

He was the one who pulled me out that night. If he hadn’t done that…I don’t want to think about it. He didn’t have to do that. Like me, he was just a kid. What the hell did we know about fires, and smoke inhalation, and cracking beams, and noxious gases?

The smoke’s layering in thick. The sun’s already moved past its midday high and is dipping toward sunset. What’s worse than smoke? Smoke and starlight. Hah, only kidding. No starlight out here.

My bones feel as if I’ve attached fifty-pound weights to each with every half-hour we’re clocking. I’ll need to switch up some fresh oxygen, and chug a gallon of sweet stuff pretty soon or I’ll be a fire hazard myself. Storm’s presence next to me calms me. How the hell can he start fires like this? Why? And then stand next to me, out here knee deep in the blaze, and fight it? Fight it like he means it. I just…don’t get it.

Storm taps my shoulder, and I suck in my breath at how much I read into that tap. My rescuer, my tormentor, my team member, my lover. So much emotion whirlpools through me, sucking me down. I shake myself back to reality.

He points ahead. I push up on my tiptoes. Somewhere through the devastation, a slither of Liberty Lake appears. I smile. Relief floods through me. Shit, we made it. We got lucky.

We drive the fire down to the lakeside, and memories of that night filter through the smoke, the smog, the devastation. Storm in his father’s shiny car, Chrissie and her band of merry bitches, my old schoolbag that had survived throughout junior high and senior year, his asking me to take a drive—

One of the forest guys runs toward me across the rocky shore. My mind snaps back to the present. Storm rides the last of the hose’s work as if it were an electric guitar, and he’s about to close off a world tour.

Maybe we’re all rockstars in our own heads, but he’s always going to be mine. Guilt twists like a bendy toy.

Steam sizzles upward. No more flames, no more pressure. Adrenaline still buzzes and fizzes in my veins, and all I want is to drag firefighter Cooper into that water and fuck him till his dick’s as pumped out as that hose. Under that uniform, his body’s rock-hard, and those hands can grip my ass, his fingers can slide into me, and shit, his tongue, his dick—

It’s not him, it’s the fire, you horny slut.

Taking a tango with a forest fire will do that to you. I breathe. No chance of a quick anything with the entire team out here, and extras to boot.

Exhausted, we head back to the station. How many hours was that? Night’s settled in, and the smoke clings like an unwanted lover. Storm catches my eye and the burn reduces me to a lust-humpy mass. Tomorrow, I’ll deal tomorrow. You keep saying that. When the chief finds out that you knew, that you didn’t report it, then what?

Storm’s gaze makes my knees buckle, my panties dampen. He knows I want him. Want him now. Right now. That I’m counting down the seconds till we’re back at the station, and we can disappear for as long as it takes for him to fuck me in the bathroom or behind the building or shit, even his place, but fuck I cannot wait that long. My clit is swollen hard. He can attend to that first, with his tongue thankyouverymuch. He likes to eat pussy, and fuck I love it when he eats mine. He likes to ask me first, “Can I eat you, Jazz? Would you like me to eat you, Jazz?” He says it in a hot, sleazy voice that has me so wet. Sometimes, I can’t believe that Storm Cooper is eating me out, and begging me for the privilege. Heat swells over me as the truck ambles along with all the enthusiasm of a seventy-year-old. I bite down on my index finger which does jack shit to distract me.

How come when he looks at me, I can feel it everywhere I shouldn’t? Like my heart. He’s knocking so hard on that door and I’m struggling to keep him out. Fucking is one thing, loving is another.

The truck crawls back into the station, the fluorescent lights blinding after all that haze and smoke-sting. My body sings a sweet, slutty hallelujah. Relief is a tongue-licking away.

It takes about two seconds to recognize the chief standing there, straight-backed like one of those mountain gorillas, only less friendly. He’s chewing on the end of a toothpick. Fire Chief Bradshaw, your regular all-American boy scout, that one. His hair’s cut short to his head, and we would never get him to do the Movember challenge. His dark eyes narrow and laser in on me.

Fuck.

I run through the day’s activities. We followed procedure, did everything right. Right?

Then I see what’s in his hand and my heart buckeroos like a bronco in heat.

I put those in my drawer. Didn’t I? Didn’t I?

I don’t dare look at Storm. Too late. He’s shooting the shit with Jim.

Aw shit, and Chief Bradshaw just caught me eyeball him. “Cooper, Lieutenant Bullock, my office.”

The blood’s drained clean away from me. I’m sorry, Storm. No, I’m not sorry. You need to be arrested. Two wrongs don’t make a right. He got lucky—no civilian deaths so far, but what about next time? Hell, there cannot be a fucking next time.

Storm places his hand on the small of my back to guide me, and I damn near spit at him. Get angry, Jazz. You hate him. This is a good thing.

But, I’m not even sure I believe myself anymore.

Five

Storm

Chief Bradshaw doesn’t do bullshit. He’s a one beer kind of guy and he screws his mistress on the other side of town, far far away from his wife and three daughters. The only reason I still respect him is because he runs this place with an iron fist. Any number of this town’s residents can sleep easy at night, and that’s all down to this guy.

He’s one of the few good ones.

Jazz is pale. Her hair’s sprung out from her braids, and soot-smudges cover her cheeks. She sits in the chair on the far side, her ‘bad’ side away. It’s getting tired. I’m not that guy anymore—when is she going to get it?

Chief Bradshaw starts with the formalities. “I wanna talk to you about that fire over at Town Hall.”

Jazz perches on her chair’s edge. Her sweat’s turned sour under her jacket, and lines of perspiration dribble down her forehead. Aircon’s turned up way high, so what gives?

“What about it?” she asks, her voice tremoring. She didn’t…say anything, did she?

She can’t meet my glance. Fuck, damn. Did she turn me in? Where’s the police? My fingers twitch in anticipation. She wouldn’t do that. Not after everything.

Chief Bradshaw has the face of a stone gargoyle, about as ugly as one too. He points at me. “You.” My heart’s somewhere in my mouth.

If Jazz lurches any further forward, she’ll be in the chief’s lap. I brace myself. I’m a big boy. I’ve played with fire, and now I face the consequences.

“You need to sort this out.” He nosedives the paper he’s carrying into the desk. “You’re the media lee-a-son, you say the fancy words, and get them off our backs.”

Jazz coughs. Her body’s slunk back toward the chair’s seat. Not what she was expecting then. Yeah, and what was she doing at that site, this morning?

I take the page and read. It’s a media request for an interview. Police suspect foul play. Ain’t that cute of them. I suppress a smile.

“No problem, I’ll get onto it.” I fold up the request in my blackened hands. “Permission to go shower?”

“Hang five.” The chief directs his attention to both of us. “I want you two to head back to the site, meet with the fire inspectors at 08h00 tomorrow morning. They’re opening up a case of potential arson.”

“Arson?” I can’t quite keep the disgust out of my voice. Arson? Setting fires for money?

“Did I stutter, Cooper? And clock off. Thanks for coming in.”

And dismissed.

We stumble back out of the arctic breeze pumping in Bradshaw’s office, and make for the showers. “You seemed a little jumpy, Jazz.”

“I don’t have a guilty conscience.”

“Ain’t that the truth.”

Someone’s whooping and hollering from the men’s ablutions. Probably Bill.

“You seemed a little edgy, Storm.”

“I don’t have a guilty conscience either.”

She reaches the ladies’ room, her hand on the door. “Hmmm.” Before she can push on that door and disappear, I grab my chance. “Cold beer? Hot dinner?”

“Better than the other way ‘round.” Her voice drops. “And dessert?”

My cock twitches at the thought of her in nothing but whipped cream. “Lickety-split.”

I’d take her right here, right now, but the smoke’s baked into my skin. I must stink. But when she looks at me like that, I don’t care. “My place?”

A hesitation. “All right.” Yes.

She disappears into the bathroom. I hot foot to the guy’s.

I strip down and get under the blessed wet of the shower, a feeling which never gets old. Standing so close to that moisture-stripping heat is as if someone vacuumed all the water out your body. Under the shower, I soap quickly and efficiently. Liberty’s got a water shortage problem no-one’s talking about. I refuse to feel guilty as I linger under the stream, feeling the cool liquid seep over me. She’s on the other side of this wall, naked and soapy and I will my thoughts elsewhere before I’m slapped with a public decency violation.

I remember her how she used to dress—jeans that turned up at the hem, over-long sweaters, and her hair tied on her head. The woman she is today was somewhere behind those awful clothes, her schoolbag always pulled across her chest.

I’d kept a seat for her at the back of the classroom, every day for a year when her dad died. She’d cried behind her books, so no-one noticed. And then when my dad had skipped town, she kept a seat for me. We didn’t hang out together but we’d write each other messages. Silly things, like ‘this teacher’s so boring.’ Like we had a secret no-one else knew about.

It was us against fourth grade.

“We just need to hang together,” she’d said.

We. Always we, never I or you. We.

What the hell did we know?

We’d been kids then.

It changed when we got to junior high.

I don’t remember who first started to call her Spazzy Jazzy or why it stuck. But it did. And that was the better of the names.

“Hey, Storm, you gonna come watch the game with us?” Bill’s dressed and ready to head out. He’s onto wife number two who he swears understands him better than wife number one.

“I’ll catch up with you.” I shut off the water, wrap my towel round my hips and head for my locker.

Some of the guys like to wind down with drinks and football. Not me. I know how I like to relax.

I dress, grab my things and haul ass out front.

Ten minutes later, she emerges, wet hair, clean jeans, her head down as she walks the four blocks to my apartment. I swiftly follow.

Six

Jasmine

He’s trapped both my hands above my head, his face between my legs. His tongue circles my clit so slowly I growl in frustration. I try to buck my hips but he ain’t having any of it. He pushes my hands further into the pillow. I ache for release.

“Fuck, Storm, just fuck me already.”

His tongue slips inside me and I squirm. It’s not what I had in mind, but it’s making me pant. I open my eyes. His eyes are closed as his mouth moves over me and a wave of pleasure ripples over me. I’m such a no-good slut for getting a kick out of Storm Cooper eating me out, fucking me, rimming me. Fuck, whatever’s hot, dirty and gets me off. God, he looks good tonguing my pussy.

I groan. “More.”

He looks up at me and grins. He lifts his knees until they’re up under my butt. I am splayed like a butterfly beneath him, all anchored to the bed, some kind of kinky experiment. I hate you so much, Storm, but fuck when your tongue’s doing its thing, I forgive you.

He gazes me down and the look in his eye makes me blush. Suddenly, I don’t want him eyeballing my lady bits. There’s tenderness in that look that has no business being there.

“Are you going to fuck me, or stare at me?”

He lets go of my hands and lifts my hips toward his.

“I like to watch when I go in you.”

I feel the throb like it’s doing me a favor. He puts his thumb and two fingers in his mouth lathering them up good and proper before he slides that thumb in my cunt, and the fingers over my butthole.

Fuck it feels good, but my clit’s waiting like a cold caller on hold.

“Storm, I’m begging you.”

“You just want my dick.”

“Fuck, yes.” What does he think I want? A four-page analysis on the Dow Jones? I thrash on his cheap polyester sheets and his hard mattress, reaching my hand down to do the dirty.

The only time he’s hard is when we’re in the aftermath of a fire. Otherwise, he’s kinda there, but it slides away. I don’t push it.

He grabs my wrist. “I want to watch you lose it.” The fucker’s purring. He brushes over my clit and I gasp. “Is that what you want?”

God help me, I widen my legs.

No issues with his dick today. It’s rock solid. Ready.

I often wondered if he’d be a good fuck. Even when he was calling me names and tearing up my homework. What would it be like to have Storm Cooper’s dick giving me a good time? I never imagined this though.

He reaches for the lube that’s migrated somewhere round the sheets. His thumb keeps with that push, push, push motion that’s not enough but better than nothing. Then he quits with the stroking and dips his head back down to my clit where the jerk hovers.

I growl again. He gives not one ounce of fuck. He lubes up and resumes with the finger fuck that’s not his dick, but shit, the night’s young. And then, sweet Jesus, he takes my clit in his mouth and sucks.

My orgasm builds solid and hard. If you asked my name right now, I’d have no fucking idea. The more he pumps me, licks me, sucks me, the greater the release beckons. I hit the plateau hard, waves and waves of holyfuckingshit crashing through me. I feel that orgasm in my soul’s children. I may have shouted, or screamed, something. All that adrenaline, that fear that pumped through me in that forest pulses out of my body, scorching my nerve endings, fraying my pleasure receptors.

His mouth’s on mine and he kisses me like he’s won the cum lottery. I wrap my legs round him, pull him as close as I can, and his dick nudges against me.

“You know the rules.”

“Yes, Ma’am.” Teenage me creams. He fumbles about on the nightstand and has that condom on faster than a kid promised candy will accept a lollipop from a stranger. I’m so wet he nearly slides back out, but there’s no fucking way I’m letting that happen.

A struggle war ensues as to who gets on top. He likes to be in control. It figures. But I like to have my way, some of the time. “Give. It. Up, Storm.”

He gets the message and I straddle his fine ass, his equally super fine dick hitting all the good spots. Man, I could get high on fucking him, having him exactly where I want him. He’s too gorgeous for words as he pumps up into me. He’s like a wish come true and a nightmare haunting my dreams.

I lean forward, moving his hands that grip my hips and push them back. Let’s see how he likes it. I curl my feet round his thighs, squeezing him tight with my pussy muscles and it’s his turn to groan. Good. I can’t proclaim to be some knockout lay, but I know I like it when I milk his dick like it’s dairy season. Slow, tight, and strung out, keeping him from the pump, pump, pump he wants.

Two can so play your game, Storm.

“Jazz…”

“Don’t call me that.”

He sighs. “Please, Jasmine.”

“Better.” But I don’t let up. I rotate my hips, and fuck him so slowly, his perfect features have scrunched up in frustration. I lean in close to him and he moves for my breast with his mouth. I pull back, and he groans again.

He takes his opportunity and flips me over onto my back. The kiss he delivers is soft, gentle, and probing. Nice, warm…close. I melt for a second and there’s a whoosh of intensity that burns through me. I cut the kiss short. His eyes gaze deep into mine and I’m sliding fast into quicksand with no safety rope. There’s that tenderness I spotted earlier. I look away and focus on his nightstand, and his dick which is still moving slow and deep in me. Fuck, damn.

I arch my hips against him, speeding him up. “Fuck me properly, Storm, none of this other bullshit.”

“I want to—”

I roar in frustration. He picks up the pace but for me the moment’s lost somewhere back there when this fucker decided to catch feelings. What kind of a mind-fuck does he think I need? Not this one, that’s for sure.

I squeeze my eyes shut and will my clit, my pussy, to get with the program, but it’s not gonna happen. Too many emotions, too many memories are getting in the way of my good time.

Storm slows down again. “What’s wrong, Jasmine? Am I hurting you?”

Can’t he just hurry up and finish already?

Our eyes reconnect, and I then flicker my glance over his cheekbones, his mouth, his chin, anywhere but those soulful eyes that seem to want to give me something I’m not sure I want. “It’s fine, you carry on.”

His eyebrows raise. “I’m not going to carry on unless you’re there with me.”

There’s a silence and then he pulls out. I reach down and wrap his sheet round me while he snuggles up next to me. He props himself up and I pull that sheet up high so that I’m no longer as naked with him. For some reason, I really don’t want him to see me this way, and yet, seconds ago, he had a full on gyno inspection in hand. Go figure.

“Do you want to talk about it?” His voice, fuck damn his voice is so gentle, I want to weep.

His hand migrates over the sheet round my waist. Fuck. Are we…cuddling?

I move the hand and keeping the sheet up as if I’m in some PG rated TV show, I swing my legs over the bed and scrabble about looking for my clothes.

“You don’t have to go, Jazz…Jasmine.”

“Yes, I do.” I search for my panties, then remember that I didn’t wear any. Hell no, I was dripping for him to give it to me. “This is my way of dealing with the shit we deal with. Physical release, that’s all.”

I wriggle back into my jeans, and find my t-shirt. I get up to go and stub my toe into his nightstand. “Holy seven mothers of hell!” The pain demolishes the last of any good time feeling pumping round after my first, and as it turns out, only orgasm. I swallow back tears that spring up. “Fuck that fucking nightstand. Who puts a fucking nightstand there?” Even in my own head, I’m answering, duh, everyone. But there’s an anger there that’s flaring. “We can’t carry on with this shit, Storm. It’s messed-the-fuck-up. Everything about it. You were a fucking dick to me at school. Every fucking day, you gave me shit and for what? Because you’re an asshole, that’s why. Some guys are just born that way, like you.” He opens his mouth and I hold my hand up. Half of this shit, I don’t even mean, but I can’t stop myself from saying it. “Yes, you saved my life, and yes, I am grateful for that. Not for this, though…” I gesture to the fuck up that’s my face. “That shit’s forever. And, yes, what happened to you—”

“I got you out.”

I roll my eyes. “And now, tomorrow, you’re going on TV to tell the whole town that you have no idea about these fires. No idea. None whatsoever. And you want me to defend you in this, when I couldn’t in…” His eyebrows raise. “Answer me this, when do you think I can stop with this charade? And I don’t mean this.” I spit the words out. Anger blazes its destructive trail through me and I truly don’t give a fuck.

“But what those guys did—”

“No worse than what you did.” I remember him sitting next to me, the boy whose secrets I kept. He’s gone now. And I’m left holding his fucking secrets.

He looks at me and God fucking help him, there’s a look of sadness in his eyes. I should never have said that he was as bad as them. Never.

How fucked up is this shit?

“I always loved you, Jasmine.”

“Funny fucking way of showing it.” I let out an aargh sound from the pit of my belly. “Where’s my fucking t-shirt?” Standing here with my tits out, yeah, that’s me. Me and my tiny tits that the pretty Ms. Chrissie would tease about into next year. Looks like you’re cooking eggs on your chest. Spazzy Jazzy and her two fried eggs. Spazzy Jazzy, the lesbo licker. As if anyone’s sexual orientation is anyone’s business. But that bigoted bitch aimed and fired the everything in her arsenal that had her little clan of fucktards laugh-a-minuting. Chuckle time with Chrissie.

Storm’s gaze drops to my nipples. Pervert. Did he think they were a breakfast? Or just a snack?

Like my fucking tits had anything to do with being a goddamn woman. And yeah, Chrissie, part of why I’m letting this guy dick me is because he fucking lurves these tits. He’s all over them. So, fuck you.

Fuck me.

That shit happened years ago, and here I am proving what to who exactly? That I can survive? That I’m okay?

Storm slides off the bed, no sheet, no need. All six-foot whatever of gorgeousness. I kick over the shit on his bedroom floor looking for my escape ticket out of here. “Did you throw it somewhere?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Take one of mine.”

“No, thank you.” My pussy’s rubbing against my too tight jeans. A reminder that I didn’t really get what I came for. Hehe. Chuckle time with Jasmine.

I spot my t-shirt outside the bedroom door, yank it down over my head, and make tracks to the front door. All over his hall are items of clothing we ripped and pulled off to enjoy orgasm central. Yeah. About that.

“I’m sorry, Jasmine, for all of it. I didn’t know—”

“Whatevs. Save it for someone who cares.” There’s a punch in my gut with those words. That someone’s me. I care.

I just can’t keep doing it. That’s all.

I pick up my abandoned bag and slam his front door behind me.

Seven

Storm

I lay out my ‘media’ outfit: pressed shirt, pants, a tie. Station representative Cooper ready to report for duty. Assure the public. I swallow back the desire that I’d hoped last night with Jazz—Jasmine, would relieve. It didn’t.

Jerking off to a porn clip did the trick, but the guilt swills round me.

I clench my fingers, working the joints around a stress ball that’s not a lighter. There’s no whoosh of spark meeting flame. No release.

This morning, when I lie to Liberty’s public, I’ll have to focus my craving somewhere else. I can control this. It doesn’t have a hold on me. I can quit anytime I want. But I haven’t finished yet. I haven’t finished with them.

At oh-eight-hundred hours exactly, I’m stationed outside what’s left of the Town Hall. I get rid of the gum I’ve chewed to oblivion. My throat’s raw with the smoke choke I inhaled yesterday. My eyes sting. Is she okay? Does she feel all right this morning? Or is she also reeling with the relentless chipping damage that fire inflicts long after it’s gone out?

If I could go back in time, I would do everything different, I would be different.

There’s a pack of matches in my pocket. It shakes with its own rhythm that’s as enticing as a vodka shot to an alcoholic. Only, I know I can stop it. I take out the box, and feel the strip on each side with a reverence reserved for holy worship. Fire is life. I slide a match out, and light it up. That sound, God help me, that sound. The Sulphur, the saltpeter, the bit of wood that burns away in the time it takes to light a cigarette, a birthday candle, a fuse. Then, poof, it’s gone, a trail of smoke scurrying in the wind.

She’s walking toward me, her shoulders back, her head tilted to the side. I slip the matches back into my pocket. I swear to you, Jasmine, when they’ve all paid, I’ll stop. I promise you that. I promise.

Her gaze flutters upward. “Good morning, Cooper.”

“Lieutenant.”

We stand a good distance apart, the respectful distance of colleagues. Although we’re two consenting adults, fucking your superior is not exactly going to win you a holler of encouragement. Especially not from Chief Bradshaw. With his mistress who drives his wife’s old hatchback that he ‘sold’ to her.

I’m still close enough to catch her scent of vanilla cream that’s mixing with the telltale bitterness of smoke. I close my eyes and for a second imagine a different ending to last night. One where we made love, entwined, together until we woke this morning, wrapped in each other.

That will never happen.

“Here he comes.” Jasmine’s voice is a warning. Jim Jones is an expert, of that much we can be certain. A sudden frisson of unease ripples through me. What if I missed something?

“Lieutenant Bullock, Cooper, thank you for meeting me this morning.” His rimless eyeglasses perch on his nose. It irks the living crap out of me. Tucked under his arm is an old-fashioned clipboard, over-stuffed with papers.

I shake his outstretched hand. “Only a pleasure.”

Revisiting the scene is a feast of memories. Of her. It’s all for her. Jim busybodys his way through the burnt-out building, boring me rigid with his scribbling on that clipboard. He clicks away with his phone here and there, and I’m already thinking about my next target. The lawyer, the mayor, the congressman, the school principal, all of them dealt with. Only one person left on the list and then I’ll walk away. Stop with it all. It will be over.

It will never be over.

“Fire looks like it started in the mayor’s office,” Jim mumbles as he shuffles round, half-talking to himself. He bends down to inspect each electrical socket. I don’t say anything, but Jasmine’s eyes are all over me. “Maybe there was a short.” He strides around the room, examining the scorch marks on the floor. “Looks like arson though.”

Shit, that word again. Blood pumps hot in my veins. A fucking arsonist. I want to scream at something any time someone suggests that. It’s not about money, it was never about money.

Jim’s still making with his crystal ball predictions. “Maybe someone was hopeful to catch him working late.”

I can’t keep my mouth shut. “At midnight? Place is like a morgue.”

It is. It was. Not a single soul. One security guard fast asleep at his post downstairs. Whole place pretty much wide open. Shit, I didn’t even have to break in.

Jim looks up at my statement, furrows his eyebrows together and pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose with his middle finger. Yeah, fuck you too, asshole.

He turns to where Jasmine’s bent over a pile of half-burned papers, her ass round, tight and perfect in her smart pants. He ogles her ass, before clearing his throat. “Jasmine, watch your step there, angel, it’s uneven.” She swings back round toward us. This time when she looks at me there’s an urgency there. My heart speeds up and my palms sweat. I don’t like that look.

She shifts her weight, hand on hip. “Jim, we’ve got a media briefing at ten, do you think we could…”

“Won’t be much longer, Jasmine.” He gives her a big toothy grin. Shit, is he flirting with her? I readjust my shirt collar. “Yeah, we’ve got a live slot on the Liberty roundup.”

“Aha.” Jim’s voice is triumphant. My spine straightens as if I’ve just been doused with a bucket of ice. “Look what I found!” He picks something up out of the charred remains. My heart races faster, faster. Found what? I kept my lighter, it’s at home, isn’t it? It’s the only thing that could link this to me.

Jasmine rushes over to Jim. He prods at something with his pen and my heart beats even faster. Most of the polyester’s curled up as its burned, but there’s no doubting it’s a jacket. My jacket. Every member of the team at the station have one just like it. But I wouldn’t have left it here? My brain’s frantically retracing my steps on that night, and I can’t remember taking it off. Did I?

“There seems to be some sort of embroidery on it.” Jim’s nose to garment as he scrunches his eyes. Yeah, it says, What the Firetruck? Merry Christmas to us from Mrs. Bradshaw.

“I can’t make it out…uck?”

Fuck. It won’t take them long to figure out who wasn’t on the schedule that night. And who that jacket might belong to. “Could have been the mayor’s?” I suggest. It’s a long shot. No-one’s ever seen that guy out of a suit and tie, his respectable uniform. His mask to the public. I shudder. Everyone wears a mask. A memory trick-tracks through me, as vicious as a sniper on a mission.

“It could.” Jim’s voice suggests not. He removes a plastic sleeve from his clipboard and lifts the jacket into it.

Double fuck.

I can feel Jasmine’s eyes all over me. She’s also got one of the jackets. Fuck, how could I have been so stupid? To miss something so obvious? Why had I been wearing the damn thing? Temperature’s been sky high for months.

Jim beams like he’s found the holy grail. “I’m going to take this to the lab. Maybe it will reveal something. I’m pretty sure this is the same guy who hit that other building.”

Jesus, we need to get out of this office before I find something else I might have dropped—my identity card, perhaps? Or my badge? A full set of my prints?

I hustle Jim back out the crime scene. And that’s what he’s calling it now. A crime scene. The morning lingers with the smoke of yesterday’s fire, but there’s no doubt we’re heading into another full-on scorcher. My tie garrotes my neck and I adjust it. “Give me a call if you need anything, I’ve got to head to the studio.” I clap Jim on the back. Both he and Jasmine raise their eyebrows. I’ve got to get a grip here. What does that jacket prove? Nothing.

But if I left something at Advocate Peterson’s house or the civic building…the same guy. Jim’s words haunt me. There’s one more on my list and I intend to follow through. They deserve it, my God, they deserve it.

It took a long time to look at Jazz and not see her strung up, left for dead, as the flames danced round her in celebration. Her over-long jeans stretched beyond her feet, her hair loose, dipping into the gasoline they’d dumped round her.

Jasmine trots up alongside me. “Tell me that’s not yours.”

I automatically turn back to make sure nosy Jones is nowhere near. Her hair’s grown back, and it’s almost as it was. Almost—nothing truly goes back to how it was. “It’s not yours.”

“Fuck, Storm, be serious.” She drops her voice. “How could you leave that there? Everyone has—”

“It’s not mine, okay.” My hands clench and unclench into fists. She steps back. That memory—why’d I call it up?

She grits her teeth and turns her head as she looks up into the sky for answers that aren’t there. “I can’t stop Jim from doing his job. He’ll find out about those jackets, and then he’ll look at—”

“You think I don’t know that?”

“I can’t protect you. You must know that.”

“I don’t want you to protect me, Jazz...Jasmine. I want to protect you, from what they did—”

“You keep saying that, but I’m okay. The one setting fires is you. You need to—”

Shame white-washes over me. I have to jump from a moving car, step out off a bridge, tumble down a flight of stairs, now. “Are you going to tell me to see someone again? Because they’re not going to help.”

“You have to deal with it, otherwise this is going to keep happening, don’t you get it?” She peers up at me, her eyes ablaze with anger. Her voice tests the limit of outside decorum. I couldn’t let it go then, I can’t let it go now.

“They need to pay. All of them.”

“Nothing could be proved, Storm. You know that. And you didn’t want to—”

“But we know—”

“Let it go. Before you end up killed, or behind bars. Or you end up killing someone.” She whispers, almost to herself, “I know your secret. You have to let it go. Or deal with it. I’d rather you deal with it. But not this way.”

Those words crack me apart inside. The something buried deep, buried dark, remembers her, remembers what I said to her to coerce her to that place. And she’s still here, still standing in front of you, in spite of it. I don’t deserve this woman’s pity. Her understanding.

I rub my temples. Sweat’s already skidding down my forehead and I’m nowhere near the studio. I grip my fingers, then find hers and hold on tight. “Let me make this right, Jazz, it’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.” I kiss her knuckles, let go her hands and glance at my watch. “I’m running late.”

“Storm.” It’s both an exclamation and a lament. I don’t turn back, and oh man, do I want to. But I have to deal with this. Put an end to it all. Once and for all.

Eight

Jasmine

It’s only when I get back to the station that I unwind my breath. My stomach a mass of knots and intestines and guts as I remember what those fuckers did. And maybe that memory would go hide behind a door if Storm didn’t keep opening it up and yelling, “look here!”

I don’t want to look there.

I head for the kitchen and find the antacid. Stomach acid’s eating its way up the back of my throat. Hello, anxiety. You’re all I fucking need.

How stupid do you have to be to leave the station’s year jacket in the mayor’s office? So much for your fancy ass degree, Storm. Unless you want to be caught?

I shiver.

I never could identify those creeps in the line-up. I was supposed to be d-e-a-d by then. Without their stupid masks, I didn’t know who they were. Couldn’t figure out their voices, their nothing. Blankety-blank. What could I say? Porky Pig…he did it.

Then Storm came back into town and told me he knew. That he knew.

I pop another antacid.

Jim’s card burns a hole in my pocket. No antacid for that. I can’t obstruct justice any more than I have. How long before an innocent life is claimed? I catch a glimpse of my face in the chrome microwave door. No prizes for guessing why I don’t handle the media queries. No one wants to see me when they’re eating their breakfast. Or slugging back their morning coffee. No one wants to be reminded that fire destroys, whether it finishes the job or not.

I hit the rec room. TV’s already on and there’s Storm’s handsome face chewing up the screen. If he wasn’t so good looking, would I still be this stupid for him? My heart twists and shouts an answer I already know.

It wasn’t fair to blame him. He couldn’t have known. What sick fuck has some sort of secret society? Those guys. The same guys who run this town. Storm’s on the money—someone’s gotta take them down. But not Storm.

Why’s he gotta be the hero? You play with fire, you get burnt.

You know why. I shut my eyes tight. Maybe things will abracadabra themselves better.

The chief comes in and hikes the volume up to deaf-friendly. Storm’s voice echoes through the place, and I swallow the insta-heat that strong, bass tone stirs up. “There’s no reason to suggest foul play…at this stage.” His dark eyes challenge his interviewer. I know he wants to just get out of there, I want him out of there too. If anyone knows that I found him at city hall…that I didn’t report him, that I let him screw me on the rooftop like some dumb hormonal teenager—

I turn cold. All of them, he’d said. Four incidents so far. One left then. Must be. Has to be. That he’d leave them till last makes sense. I shake my head.

The siren wails, and I switch onto work mode. Storm will have to wait till later. I’m wrong. Too much work, not enough sleep. But as I gear up, I know I’m right, can feel it the burns on my face. He’s going for her home. He’s not going to sleep till he’s burned it down. I can’t let him. Not while there’s a chance to end this.

Bill hands me my helmet. “Ready, Captain?”

I grab my helmet and charge out of there.

Nine

Storm

By the time I’ve left the studio, I’m not sure if I can walk a straight line without bumping into my own lies. The matches shuffle and shake their calypso rhythm in my pocket.

They’re all I can think of. Flicking that match, lighting that fire, the relief, the relief, the blessed relief.

I want a smoke so bad I shove two sticks of gum into my mouth. On a scale of one to ten, it’s a minus a thousand in terms of efficacy. It’s the smoke I want. The fire, the burn, the scald of the inhale on my tongue. That.

Gum-chewing sloshes spit around like it’s in a washing machine, shining up my teeth and my tonsils.

I have to go back to the station. The urge eats at me, nags at me, floods my thoughts. One match, just one. Let it go, see what happens.

I walk and walk, the desire swelling until it sucks up the space in my head. One match. One flame. One whoosh. And it will all be over. All of it. Everything that’s important to them will be gone, obliterated, burnt up, ashes.

All the mayor’s ‘insurance’ documents tied up in external hardware, gone.

All the advocate’s dirty cash stored under the house, gone.

All the congressman’s precious collection of baseball cards, balls, gloves, gone.

All the school principal’s hunting trophies, the dead carcasses, the mounted heads, gone.

All things. Not people. All they want is power, more power, so much it will rot their souls. I can’t do anything about that. They wore masks, they fucking wore masks and they still wear them.

But I can take their things.

Fire cleanses.

I walk and walk, and the shuffling of those matches eats me up. I have to light one, just the one, and see it burn. But, I can’t do it here. It has to be there. Her house. The one thing she has, the only thing she has.

It’s a run-down, ramshackle of a place on the outskirts of town. It won’t take much to raze it to the ground. I bet the electric board is a mass of tangles and wires. I bet she overstuffs her sockets with hair straighteners, and dryers.

The sun’s high in the sky. Midday is risky. But one match, just the one match, and I’ll quit. It will be over. And I can begin again.

I’ll have done right by her. Undone what I did. Made it right.

I walk and walk, and the sweat traps under my shirt. The matches are in my hand. I don’t have any lighter fluid or gasoline. But there are other ways.

She won’t be home. Chrissie didn’t do as well as her high school resume might suggest. She works as a waitress in the diner down the street from the station.

We weren’t dating. Fooling around sure, hung out in the same crowd, but our hearts didn’t beat in-sync.

“Hey, Chrissie, ready to head up to the forest? Guys are having a bonfire, mark the end of an era.”

“I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t we head somewhere quiet, just the two of us?”

“Aren’t you giving your cousin a ride?”

Her eyes had narrowed. Any talk of Jasmine freaked her out. “How about we both give her a ride?”

I’d liked the sound of that. Horny asshole with no moral compass. Idiot fool who thought… yeah, what had I thought? Sure.

My stomach turns, and I walk faster.

She’d said it would be for fun. That Jake, high school hero, only wanted to scare Spazzy Jazzy a little. Jake, the current high school principal who’s had three wives, all who’ve laid charges for domestic abuse against him. The hunter. Predator.

I can barely walk fast enough, my feet trip me up as I charge to my destination. Some sense calls for me to cool it, act calm, like any pedestrian clogging up the street. But those matches are hammering louder and louder, and I can’t get there fast enough to douse those sirens that lure me in, promise me…relief.

My insides are twisted inside-out. Wait till later. No, now. It has to be now. Jim Jones will make the connection with the jacket, the roster, and there won’t be any more time. My pulse races, my muscles pump, the adrenaline’s got me in its revved-up clutches and there won’t be relief until I strike that match.

Until I burn it all down.

It has to be now.

The sun’s climbing higher and hotter, and the sidewalk clings to the soles of my shoes. The dryness in the air is like a whip-crack. Chrissie’s house is hammered together with old wood planks so splintered you can see it from the other side of the road. Her garbage slumps defeated outside her front door and the stench is thick in my nostrils. The front yard is chewed up with sand and dirt. It’ll be a pleasure to put this place out of its misery.

I look around. A station wagon’s parked a few houses down. No chance of security cameras or circling patrols in this area. No-one cares.

I trespass on her property and head up to the front door. I knock knowing she’s not home. Still, I give it a little time before I open the screen door and push down on the handle. The door gives way and I’m in her home.

The place suffocates. There’s no open windows, no fresh air circulating. Thick curtains, heavy netting keeps the world out. On her lounge table, the remnants of the previous night remain. Empty bottles, overflowing ashtrays, traces of white powder.

Maybe she’s already paying her dues? I push the thought down. Did Advocate Peterson deserve it more because his house had a fancy alarm system, and super slick pine flooring with faux chandeliers dangling from his ceilings? A twenty-four-hour patrolling security van? That’s why I wore the jacket—dark with a hood. The memory clicks back. Though why I’d forgotten…

I shake my head.

No, they all deserve it. Advocate Peterson, Jake, the Mayor, Chrissie, that other guy. All of you deserve to know what it’s like.

The matches in my pocket sing songs of celebration. Any second now, I’ll set my plan in motion, and the whole place will burn, burn, burn.

And maybe then the voices will stop.

The pain will leave me.

Maybe then I’ll be at peace.

I search about for what I’m looking for, something that can be an accident. The air in here violates me. It’s clogged with the sourness of urine, rotting meat, and rich perfume. An electric blanket’s out. But, there’s an overcommitted socket.

I can almost taste the relief with that first burst of flame.

A woman’s voice intrudes on my thoughts. “Don’t.”

Ten

Jasmine

We’re standing in her bedroom. Not what I was expecting of the woman who had plenty to say about my clothes, my hair, my face, the way I walked, the words I didn’t use, my voice, fuck every little thing about me that she had an opinion about.

My cousin. The cunt.

Her bed’s unmade and I sure as hell don’t wanna know what those stains are. The whole place reeks of decay.

So much for your shiny bright future, Chrissie. Where did that get you?

Storm’s standing there, a lit match in his hand. It burns down to his fingers and he doesn’t even flinch. He likes it now. It’s what gives him the power. Wrong. He may think that but he’s wrong.

“This isn’t the way, Storm.” His fingers shake like an addict with the tremors. His mom used to look like that when she came to fetch him from school sometimes. After his pa passed.

“Burning down Chrissie’s house isn’t going to change what happened. Don’t you get that?”

I wade toward him through the discarded crap of Chrissie’s life. Stuffed toys with eyes missing, faded t-shirts, and empty condom packets. Shit me, there’s a used needle lying about like we’re in a medical waste facility.

“I have to do this. It’s the only way.”

He strikes up another match. He’s aiming it toward a pile of shit where a broken kettle lies on its side. I can’t smell gasoline. I can smell dirt that’s caked on years-deep, and thick too, the kind you could cut with a knife. Human dirt. Rotting dirt. I glance through the door to the kitchen at the stove. Gas.

“You want us to go up in flames?” He hasn’t switched it on. At least, I can’t hear that telltale hissing sound and I can’t smell it either. Not a single window’s open…it wouldn’t take long.

The second match burns out and he rustles the box. “I want it to be over.”

His face collapses. He reminds me so much of the guy I sat next to in eighth grade. “It is over. It happened years ago. Here we are. Sure, we’re…scarred, but we’re still here. Doing good. At least, doing laundry.”

He doesn’t smile. Shit, damn. “But what they did to you. Who they were. Why they never—”

“And there’s nothing we can do about that now. I was so drugged I couldn’t recognize anyone, you know that. I couldn’t press charges, nothing. And Chrissie, we couldn’t link her to it, not directly—”

“Bullshit, Jazz. She set you up. She knew what she was doing.”

“She was a seventeen-year-old bitch who wanted to pull a prank. That’s all. She’s a mean, horrible, selfish bitch, but fuck, you can’t go to jail for that. I agreed to go with you.”

Looking ‘round her place, I can’t even get happy at the fuck mess she’s made of her life. Spazzy Jazzy’s standing in your kitchen with her fucked up face, no tits, stringy hair, fat ass, and dyslexic brain, but she’s still standing, and making a difference. And what the fuck have you got?

“How can you say that? Look what they did—”

“Storm, you can’t change the past.”

He roars, and punches his fist through a cupboard door that shakes then splinters. “I hate them, I hate them.”

Tears swell up behind my eyes. He’s so big, strong, handsome, dazzling, it’s so easy to forget that he’s still dragging it round with him. “I hated them too.” His nostrils flare and his jaw’s set so tight it might shatter.

“But what they did…”

I move closer to him, slowly, as if I’m corralling a stallion that’s gone rogue. His face turns away from me, but I’m closing the distance. “I can’t change it.” I rest my hand on his forearm. “You can’t change it.”

“Fuck them.” He takes out another match with shaky hands, spilling out the content onto the dressing table. “Burn it down, Jasmine. Let them burn the way they made us burn.”

I swallow hard. “We got out. You got us out.”

He strikes the match hard and fast. As if hypnotized, he focuses on the flame. “I wasn’t fast enough—”

“You were. I’m here. I’m safe.” But, he’s caught up in remembering his version of the truth. The part where he convinces me to meet him at the old house in the woods that Chrissie suggested. The part where I agree and he drives me up there. The part where we stop off and kiss, and grope, and bathe in sweat and hormones and recriminations. The part where she’s there with her much older brother and three of his closest friends. I didn’t know that’s who they were—they wore masks. A game, they called it. All so fucking high, you could feel the crazy heat from their bodies a thousand paces away. One of them had a gun. The other…I shudder.

He’s stuck in its loop. “What they did to you…”

“To us.” My voice is so soft I can barely hear it. “What they did to us.” His fingers stop twitching and he sinks against the wardrobe. “Oh, God, Jasmine…”

He turns away from me. There’s so much anguish on his face, the pain in my chest is an everglade swamp that will never drain. I keep his secret. I have always kept his secret about what happened out there.

I always will.

But he’s already shoved the truth down again. “I couldn’t protect you from—”

“It doesn’t matter anymore. They can’t hurt us, not like that. Not anymore, remember?”

His eyes have clouded over. “I don’t want to remember.”

Eleven

Storm

One of them had the gun, he’d trained it on us. Both of us. He wore a Mickey Mouse mask. Chrissie, so out of her mind, she rode the porch railings, cackling. She passed out…I don’t remember. She wasn’t there though, not all the time. Or was she?

An initiation, they’d called it. One wore a Mike Myers’s mask, the other a wolf, the other Porky Pig. Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?

I can hear him, Mickey Mouse. Fucking Liberty High superstar—who the fuck do you think you are?

Jasmine’s eyes glisten.

I remember. Oh, Christ, I remember. “You ran, Jasmine.”

She nods. Images flash past me, prodding me, daring me to turn them over, to look. I don’t want to. My breath hovers somewhere at the back of my throat. My chest’s so tight, it might crush my heart. I’m back in that wood, running. Leaves crunching underfoot, branches, the branches. “You hit your head.”

She nods again. “Out cold.”

“You weren’t drugged?”

The horror keeps coming, and I can’t stop it.

She shakes her head. “When I came to—”

I fill in the gaps that are suddenly crispy clear. “They’d strung you up. Naked. You weren’t wearing your clothes.”

She shakes her head again. “No. No clothes.”

Why did I remember jeans? Why had my brain remembered something different? I don’t want to know. My skin crawls with a memory that’s unravelling.

I’m in a cave of memories so dark, so buried, I can’t find the way out.

All this time, I’d remembered something else. An image of her, but it wasn’t right, it wasn’t the truth. A worm of doubt squirms in my belly. I can smell the gasoline in there, they’d poured it all round that splintered dark wood floor.

Porky Pig lit one match after another, singeing the hair on Jasmine’s legs. She was awake. They’d shoved a rag in her mouth. Where was I? I was there. I cut her down. What was I doing?

My eyes meet hers and the horror there jolts my subconscious. “They’d strung me up, too. Hadn’t they?”

I can see her now, hanging there, vulnerable—

“They didn’t…?”

“No.” She pauses, then drops her head. “…not me.”

Not me.

Shame shakes me down. What they did to me. My fingers twitch, my body shakes, it’s frozen. Fear. My body remembers, dear God, it remembers. How much of a man are you now, Mr. Big Shot Quarterback? “After, they’d, he’d…oh, Jesus, Jasmine.”

I can’t say the words. Her arms are round me. “You’re all right now, Storm. Everything’s okay.”

They’d left us there to burn. For the fire to gobble up their ugly secrets. To destroy their shame. My shame. I cling to Jasmine as I recall the agony ripping through me, the brutal violation gouging away a piece of my soul, the helplessness as I battled to undo the ties they’d bound round me.

My body shakes as it recalls. “If that beam hadn’t broken…”

“But it did.”

“And I took so long to get the ropes off and I couldn’t stop the fire, it was all round you, burning you.” The stink of her flesh burning, her hair as it singed to her scalp. “You didn’t even cough. I thought you were dead.”

“No such luck.”

The floorboards cracked beneath me as I tried to untie her feet, her legs bumping against me, the heat blistering my feet, eating away at my skin. Somehow, I got her down, and her head landed in that pool of gasoline and…and…and…

I gulp down the horror of that night.

“I carried you through the wood, until we got to the forest.” Naked, burnt—bleeding— changed.

“You saved me, Storm.”

I open my eyes, and I take in where I am, who I am, why I’m here. I let go of Jasmine, rush to the kitchen where I hurl my guts over the sink that’s chocka with last year’s dirty dishes. I use my shirt to wipe my mouth. “I’m no better than them, Jasmine.”

She doesn’t answer. There she is, saving me from myself, looking so beautiful my heart is cracking into pieces that I’ll probably never be able to glue together.

I make no attempt to clean my mess.

When she eventually looks up at me, I’m bulldozed with longing for her. With her, I will always be naked, vulnerable, running through a wood, escaping a building that’s on fire, wishing and hoping and praying for something better, but knowing that the flames will always be following me, hunting me, waiting for me.

She says the only thing that makes sense. “We better get the fuck outta here before someone comes home.”

Twelve

Jasmine

I gotta head back to the station. My shift doesn’t end till tomorrow morning.

We run some drills, write up reports, check the equipment, all the usual. Storm’s on my mind. I left him at my place, something I always swore I’d never do.

For so long, I just wanted to stay the fuck away from him. Seeing him meant remembering. Who the fuck wants to remember that? That I couldn’t help. That I watched. I drop my head. I can’t vanish into the floorboards. How I’d like to.

And somehow, he thought he had to protect me. A tangle of pain knots in my gut. I deserve that.

I left him with the coffee machine, a bottle of Jack, and the hope that he won’t head back to Chrissie’s. I don’t think he will.

There’s an email from Jim Jones. They’ve sent the jacket—Storm’s jacket—to forensics. Yeah, who knows what that will turn up.

Guilt oozes through me. He burnt down that shit down, and I’ve said nothing.

I knew why, and I said nothing.

I run my hand over my face, the damaged side. The past is always with us.

I can’t wait for eight a.m. to get there. I tossed and turned on my bunk and ended up waiting out the night watching a twenty-four-hour news channel that really needs to do something about its content. How many people can be interviewed to guess at the future when they don’t even have the facts of today, let alone the past?

Our honored mayor made a call in on the upcoming elections. The guy’s so connected, shit doesn’t stick to him, it slides off down the crapper and is flushed away. Was he Porky Pig? Or Mike Myers? Sometimes I wish I knew, but I don’t.

And I will never know.

It’s something I have to deal with every day. That I will never know. And he will never have to answer for it. Not by me. Not by Storm.

Life isn’t fair.

Finally, the clock drags round to eight, and I’m outta there.

He hasn’t called me, or texted me, and my heart double-flips to the pit of my guts at the thought he might do something stupid.

I run up the four flights to my apartment, unlock the door, and call his name the second I step my foot inside.

He’s not watching TV, and he’s not in the kitchen.

I find him curled up on my bed, holding one of my pillows. Asleep, his face has lost all its tension and anger, his lips curl upwards, and his jaw’s relaxed. I slide off my shoes, socks, and pants and crawl in next to him.

His arm slips round my waist and pulls me close. “Any more big fires?”

“Not today.”

He’s had a shower, and used my shampoo that’s a delicious coconut Mai Tai scent. I breathe it in and exhale the past twenty-four hours, longing for sleep. His body’s burning like he’s suffering a fever. He presses his lips against my shoulder and winds his arm tighter round me.

I will never not love the man who carried me, bleeding, naked, and beaten from a burning shack, who held me aloft over needles and thorns in bare feet, who whispered over and over, you’ll be all right, while his own world had shifted on its axis never to be repaired.

And I will never stop feeling guilty about all of it.

If we could always be like this. Close. Together. Alone. Tucked away from the world. Safe and cocooned. But it’s not like that. Jim will be coming for him, if not today then sometime in the future.

I’m not aware that I drifted off but when I wake, the sun’s moved further into the afternoon, and the rays stream through the window. The heat between his body and mine has ramped up a thousand volts or so as the day’s heat has grasped my apartment with its clammy hands.

His arms are still round me. I move to find water, and he keeps me close. “Don’t go. Not yet.”

“Water, Storm. And the bathroom.”

He pauses, and then releases his grip.

I head to the bathroom, finish my business and head back into my room. It’s funny. I never wanted him in here, in my space, it would make everything too real. But now that he’s here, it’s like he belongs, like he was always here.

He’s taken his shirt off, and he’s in his skivvies. Almost naked in my bed. I hesitate before I climb back in. He’s watching me, waiting for me to tell him to fuck off, to go, to say how much I hate him, how much I blame him.

I don’t blame him. That’s the problem. I blame me. For the stupid decision I made to climb in that car. For the useless female I was. I will never be that weak female again.

I slide off my t-shirt, and take off my panties. When I get alongside him, I don’t turn my back to him. I put my arms round him and hold him close. We don’t kiss. I’m hyper-aware of his body—the heat from his skin, the hair on his chest, the strength in his legs. We lie like that for a long time.

I don’t mind that sweat sticks me to him. Or that the longer we lie like this, the wetter I’m getting. I stroke his hair, and he groans, so I stop. He kisses me then. A soft kiss that builds, deeper, longer. His hands tremble as they move over my back and down to the cleft in my ass. My skin is a thousand points of light.

Gently, as if I might break, he rolls me over until he’s lying on top of me. I can feel he’s hard, and I don’t want to draw his attention to it. No fire to ignite him this time, only him and me. His kisses keep up, deeper, more urgent. There’s nothing else there—this bed, this moment, this kiss.

I can’t stop from rolling my hips toward him, and he groans.

Our lips part and he gazes down at me. Any last piece of armor I had has melted entirely. I want him to look at me like that, his eyes glazed over with love, with tenderness. But it’s me who’s letting him in, not the other way ‘round.

I have to forgive myself for what happened.

I help him unpeel his underwear, and then wrap my legs around him.

“Wait,” he says, “we’re breaking the rules. Condom first.”

I don’t give an actual fuck. “In the drawer.”

My hand’s already reached over and we scrabble together to get the damn thing open. What seemed slow and gradual seconds ago is now a heat-searing rush to get closer. I find a condom, tear it open and unroll it down on him. I surrender entirely to him as he kisses my face, my forehead, my cheeks, my lips, my chin. I half-expect him to stop. To hit the brakes and pull away.

But this time, he slides inside me. It’s different. He’s different.

His fingers link with mine and we move together.

He kisses me with such an ache of tenderness, I want to cry. I read somewhere once that sex is really disgusting when you think about it: two bodies linked together, sweating, and shoving until one or both feels really good. There’s nothing disgusting about what we’re doing.

It’s the kind of sex that I imagined didn’t exist. The more we move, the more naked I feel, the closer he gets to me, the deeper inside me, the more I feel known, accepted. Not for who I was, or who I have been, but for me, right now, as I am. And it’s not about my melted skin or my small breasts, it never was. It’s about him and me and what we’ve shared together. Who we are. How we love.

And now we’re growing that love together.

There are no boundaries, no barriers, no borders.

No more secrets.

For just this moment, we are one.

Afterward, we lay together, and if I could have eternity, I would have this moment. Fuck, I sound like a love song, one of those shit awful corny ones, but it’s the truth.

He’s drowsy next to me, his love hormones knocking him sleepside.

Thirteen

Storm

Hours later, the sun’s vanished, and the moon’s out. Selenophilia. I find the moon soothing. I find her soothing. She is my balm, my safety. She snores softly.

I wrap my leg around her and she stirs. I never want to leave this bed. I never want to leave her.

She mumbles something that sounds like ‘fuck off’ but it’s soft and gentle.

“Jasmine?”

“Whaddaayawa?” Her husky voice that’s weathered so many blazes, touches me to my core. Inside to the boy I was. To the man that I’ve become.

“Jasmine, why did you go back to his house? Asshole Peterson? After the fire?”

She turns and buries her hand in my chest hair, her head on my heart. “To make sure.”

When she doesn’t say anything further, I nudge her arm. “And?”

“To make sure we got it all. No loose ends.”

We.

“Do you think seeing someone will help it go away?”

She shifts against me. “It will never go away. But it will help you make peace.” She brings my hand to her mouth and kisses it. “We’ll get through it together.”

We.

The next morning, she’s gone again, back onto her next shift, the same shift I’m supposed to report duty on. I’ll take whatever the consequences are. For the first time in a long time, the urge to jump from a moving car isn’t riding shotgun. I shower and dress, ready to hit the station and face the music. If Jim’s forensics come back and point my way, I’ll do the time.

Either way, I can’t wait to walk in and see her there. Brave, beautiful Jasmine, a phoenix risen from the ashes. My Jasmine. My love. My fire.

I pick up my keys, ready to head out. My heart skips a beat.

Next to the coffee machine, she’s left a blue polyester jacket, with embroidery that reads, What the firetruck? She was on duty that night. She knows I started that fire.

And she is willing to cover for me again.

We.

About the Author

Suzanne is an award-winning author based in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Her novel, The Joy of Comfort Eating, won the 2016 ROSA Imbali Award for excellence in romance writing, and in 2011, her novella, The Hunt, won the Mills & Boon Voice of Africa competition.

As a writer-at-large, she writes for both corporate and government clients.  She is also a writing coach.

Thanks to an epic cake addiction, she is chasing a half-marathon PB and lives with three cats, two of whom started as the neighbour's.

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The Jozi Series

The Joy of Comfort Eating

The Ex-Factor

The Jozi Series: Omnibus, includes String Theory: A love story

Standalone

The Romeo Prototype

Dance of Desire

Twelve Days of Christmas

The Hunt

The Voluptuary Pleasures series

Watched

Touched

Priest (Wedding Season)

Heard

Young Adult

Caitlin Riddler Makes a Wish

Caitlin Riddler Runs for President

Caitlin Riddler: All I want for Christmas

Caitlin Riddler put her foot down