After lathering my hands thoroughly, I soaped my body, my hand lingering over the scars on my side as it did every time I took a shower. It was almost as if I was reminding myself they were nothing more than surface scars. I’d always promised myself whenever anybody asked, I would just tell the truth, yet I hadn’t counted on telling the truth to someone like Alice.

  Or, rather, I hadn’t expected Alice. Since the shooting, I was certain counting on anyone, or counting on life to cut you some slack, was asking too much.

  Alice made me want to count on someone and for someone to count on me. I kicked those thoughts away, but they spun like a boomerang right back. Alice was steady, the kind of person you could count on.

  Things are getting complicated, my cynical, bitter mind pointed out.

  No, they’re not. She’s just my neighbor.

  Just a woman whose flame burned so bright I couldn’t look away. Just a woman who, in a very short time, I already felt closer to than anyone I’d ever dated. And we weren’t even dating. A few kisses and the hottest encounter of my life.

  When I turned off the water, Honey was waiting, and she blinked up at me, her tail thumping on the floor. She hadn’t mastered getting up quickly, and it took more than one try. I wondered what had happened to her leg. Alice had pointed out someone had paid for the surgery, and then she got dumped. She’d told me they’d checked the records at the clinic, and the surgery hadn’t happened there.

  Honey followed me to the kitchen, where Alice was wiping the counter. Alice turned, her eyes skating over me before she said, “I think you should stay here.”

  I didn’t even know what to think of the intense wash of relief and emotion that flowed through me. I didn’t want to leave.

  “You think?” I returned, keeping my tone light.

  She nodded. “Your grandmother will give me hell if I let you walk through those trees in the dark.”

  We studied each other for a long moment, and then her lips curled into a smile as she shrugged. I chuckled softly, replying, “Absolutely.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Alice

  The rhythm of Jonah’s breathing was deep and even. Within a minute of me tugging the covers up over us, he’d fallen asleep. He had to be exhausted after a week out in the backcountry fighting a wildfire.

  Meanwhile, thoughts were pinging in my mind. With all that I had just allowed to happen with Jonah, my brain chased worries in circles. I had wanted him, wanted what I felt with him, and had grabbed it with both hands. Even now, in the quiet darkness with him beside me and Honey curled up on her new favorite bed nearby, I got hot all over just thinking about it.

  I didn’t expect Jonah. I also didn’t expect how I felt with him. In all honesty, I was accustomed to being let down when it came to sex. Chemistry didn’t mean much of anything, or so I thought. Until Jonah. With us, it felt like one flame leaping into the next, the fire burning hotter and hotter.

  My mind spun to the scars on his side and the shocking cause. There were school shootings in the news so often that it was easy to feel inured to them. Having grown up in Alaska with parents who hunted alongside the basic risks of living on the edge of the wilderness, I’d been around guns my entire life and knew how to handle them. One was kept tucked on a shelf in the closet right by the door. It had been there as long as I could remember because one year we had problems with a black bear who had her cubs nearby. My father taught me how to use it in case I needed to scare her off.

  But school shootings? My very being recoiled at the thought of it. My heart felt cracked to realize Jonah had survived one.

  I had so many questions. Yet I knew from the look on his face when I’d noticed his scars that it wasn’t my place to ask. I curled onto my side, studying his profile. The moonlight fell through the window, casting the angles of his face in a silvery relief. I wanted to trace my fingertips along his cheekbone and lightly draw over his sensual mouth. But he needed to sleep, and I wanted that for him.

  “Jonah,” I breathed.

  Steam billowed around us as the water rained down in the shower.

  “Yes?” he drawled.

  His palm slid down to tease over my nipple, slippery from the soap he’d just rubbed all over me.

  “Your knee,” I protested weakly.

  I’d gotten a good look at his knee this morning. It was barely swollen. He told me it ached, but that was it.

  “My knee is fine,” he murmured as his palm slid over the curve of my belly and dipped between my thighs.

  I gasped when he sank two fingers inside me.

  Jonah was blowing all of my low expectations about sex to smithereens. After I’d taken Honey for her morning walk and fed her breakfast, he caught me by the hand and tugged me into the shower.

  I cried out, arching back as he pumped his fingers skillfully in and out of me. In another moment, he turned, seating himself on the corner shelf in the shower. It was a nice shower with two rainfall showerheads above and additional ones mounted on the walls. There was a bench just outside of the fall of the water on one side. He sat down, stretching his leg out. His arousal jutted up, and my body clenched in response.

  “See, I’m sitting down,” he teased as he pulled me to him. He’d thought ahead and reached for the condom on the shelf nearby, opening it and rolling it on swiftly.

  I couldn’t help it. I needed him inside me. I craved the feeling of him filling me. When I knelt over him and sank down, my body trembled as my release raced through me. He was as primed as I was, thrusting into me with several deep surges before I felt the press of his fingers on my hip. With one arm wrapped around my waist, I felt the heat of his release spurting inside me.

  When I opened my eyes, my heart felt jolted by the shock of intimacy. He gave me a lingering kiss and then helped me up. The rest of our shower was entirely practical.

  Jonah was solicitous, handing me a towel after we got out. I worried when I saw the subtle hitch in his gait as he walked out of the bathroom a few minutes later.

  I made omelets with smoked salmon and cream cheese. After we finished eating, his phone rang, and I turned away, busying myself with cleaning up.

  “Everything okay?” I asked when he set his phone on the table a moment later.

  He looked up. “That was the hospital. Gram’s okay. They plan to discharge her later this afternoon after running a few more tests.”

  “Do you want me to give her a ride?”

  Chapter Twenty

  Jonah

  “What kind of tests?” I asked Dennis.

  “They originally said they’d discharge her this morning, but they want to run some kind of test on her heart.”

  My own heart twisted with worry. I had intellectually accepted my grandmother’s choice not to go through another round of treatment for her cancer.

  Yet my mind’s rational acceptance didn’t erase the emotional pain. Grief was waiting in the wings.

  “I’m surprised she’s letting them run any tests,” I said dryly.

  Dennis chuckled, the sound holding a sharp edge to it. “I know. She said she wants to be comfortable.”

  “Alice already said she’d give her a ride home.”

  “I like Alice,” Dennis offered. “She’s solid.”

  “Solid?”

  He grinned. “Yeah, solid. The kind of woman you want to settle down with.”

  I cocked my head to the side, studying him for a few beats. “I’m not looking for someone to settle down with.”

  “Yeah, I know. Because you’re a dumbass. The fact you wondered what I meant proves my point.”

  I pressed my tongue into my cheek as a dry laugh rustled in my throat. “Oh, so you weren’t talking about me?”

  “Yeah, I was, but my point is you thinking I was is what means something.”

  I took a breath, letting it out in a quick sigh. “Dennis, I’m not cut out for romance.”

  “Your Gram thinks otherwise. She said she saw you two kissing,” he pointed out.

  I pressed my lips together and shook my head. “It was a kiss. That doesn’t mean I’m settling down or even thinking about it.”

  I couldn’t even believe I was having this fucking conversation with my grandmother’s new husband. My grandmother was dying, but that clearly didn’t stem her tendency to nose into my business.

  “I expected Gram to be nosy, but not you,” I pointed out.

  Dennis shrugged, unabashed. “Why do you think we love each other?”

  I chuckled. “Good point.”

  Dennis was quiet as he finished off a piece of toast. After Alice had gone to work, I stopped by my place to change clothes before making my way over to check on Dennis with a minor limp. He was having toast and poached eggs for breakfast.

  “I know you don’t like to talk about it…” he began.

  “Talk about what?”

  “The shooting,” he offered calmly.

  My heart started pounding. For a second, I thought I was going to break out in a cold sweat right here in front of Dennis.

  I took a slow breath, and the icy feeling inside started to dissipate. I had begun to notice the horrible feeling didn’t last as long whenever I thought about that day. “What do you mean?”

  “I went to war. I know something about things you’d prefer to forget, things you’d prefer never to have happened. Some of my friends came home and got drunk for years. Some came home and buried themselves in whatever—work, life. Some of us came home and drank for a little bit and then figured out it didn’t help to get lost in it. I’ve been sober for forty years now. I know something about facing down bad memories. I promise you it gets easier. I’m not saying it’ll be the same way for you as it is for me, but I am saying the only way to get through to the other side is to stop running. You know that, uh, thing. Fear.” He circled his hand in the air.

  “Fear?”

  “I don’t mean the word. The acronym,” he clarified.

  “What acronym?” I prompted.

  “F-E-A-R,” he spelled out. “Fear. Fuck everything and run, or face everything and recover,” he said with a little shrug. “It’s one or the other, no matter how you go about it.”

  I stared at him for a minute and then laughed softly as I shook my head. “Not a bad acronym.”

  He flashed a quick grin before his gaze sobered. “Your Gram’s worried about you.”

  “I came to Alaska like she wanted,” I pointed out.

  “You did, but running isn’t a geographical thing.”

  I took a slow breath, my mind spinning back to last night with Alice. I knew what he meant. “You know I was just dating her. We weren’t serious.”

  Her being Tina, the guidance counselor who died in the shooting, who was dead while I tried to save whoever I could. I had liked Tina. Maybe it would’ve become more, but I never got the chance to find out.

  Dennis nodded. “Sure, I know. But you think it’s not worth it. That’s all I’m saying. It’s always worth it.”

  “Even marrying Gram, knowing she’s going to die soon?”

  “Hell yeah. About only one thing in life is guaranteed: we all die.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Jonah

  That afternoon, I climbed out of Nate’s truck, glancing in before I closed the door. “Thanks for the ride, man.”

  “Anytime. Glad you’re doing all right. When can you drive again?”

  “Two weeks probably. I’m supposed to swing by and have Charlie clear me.” I leaned my weight on my knee, testing it. “It really feels okay.”

  “Well, if you need another ride, just call me. Or walk down to Firehouse Café. You can find someone to give you a ride.”

  I grinned. “Good point.”

  I watched as Nate drove away, thinking it was nice to be in a place where I could walk down to the coffee shop, and somebody would likely offer me a ride.

  I mulled that over later when I walked through the door to the vet clinic and looked around. The waiting room was full. Someone had a goat on a leash, an unhappy cat was in a carrier meowing rather dramatically, and someone else had a wiggly puppy in their lap. A woman I didn’t recognize was at the reception desk, checking someone else out. I approached the desk, waiting.

  After the person in front of me paid, the receptionist looked up. “You must be Jonah,” she announced by way of greeting.

  “Yeah,” I said slowly.

  “I’m not a weirdo. You don’t have a pet, and Alice said to expect you. She’s giving you a ride. Everybody in the waiting area is done. I just have to check them out. I’m Tiffany Mills,” she explained, her dark hair swinging in its ponytail as she turned to set down some papers next to her.

  I grinned. “Nice to meet you,” I returned. “I’d introduce myself, but you already know I’m Jonah. The place is busy.”

  Her blue eyes brightened when she smiled up at me. “Exactly how we want it.”

  The cat let out another operatic wail, and Tiffany met my eyes, laughing softly. “Alice is in the back.” She gestured to the door on the side of the reception desk. “Go on back.”

  The cat’s wailing was muted as I walked into the hallway. I was about to call Alice’s name when she appeared from a doorway toward the end of the short hall. She smiled when she saw me. “Hey, I wasn’t sure if it was you or Tiffany.” She watched as I approached, commenting, “Not much of a limp.”

  My lips tugged into a smile as I stopped in front of her. The urge to kiss her was almost overwhelming. “I see Charlie in two weeks, but I honestly think I’m okay to drive now.”

  She rested a hand on her hip, her eyes giving me a once-over. That now familiar electricity shimmied to life in the air around us, snapping and crackling. “Well, you’re not driving on my watch. Come on in here.” She gestured with her hands as she turned and walked through a doorway. I followed her in, glancing around. Shelves lined the walls, and a small table in the center had a laptop sitting on it.

  “Finishing up for the day?” I prompted.

  “Yeah.” She tapped a few keys on the keyboard, waiting a moment before closing the laptop. “We’re busy,” she announced.

  “I noticed the waiting area was full. Do you need to wait before we leave?”

  She shook her head, slipping out of her white lab coat. “Nope. Tiffany’s checking everybody out, and she’ll lock up.”

  I followed her into a break room across the hallway, where she hung her lab coat in a small locker and fetched her purse and keys. A few moments later, we were driving toward the hospital in her car. “So how was your day?” she asked.

  “Definitely not as busy as yours,” I offered with a chuckle. “I had breakfast with Dennis and talked to my parents. They are planning to come up sooner.”

  “What do you mean?” She turned onto Main Street, asking, “Do you mind if I swing by Firehouse Café? I could use some coffee.”

  “Not at all. I’ll get one myself. We should get something for Gram. She loves their hot chocolate.”

  “Perfect. Anyway, back to your parents. They’re coming to visit?”

  “Yeah. They were planning to come to visit no matter what for a little bit because…” I paused.

  Alice filled in, “Bea is sick?”

  “Exactly. They want to stay until she passes.”

  “It’s really nice they can do that,” she said, her tone soft.

  “It is. My dad is a professor, and he can work online. My mom’s retired from teaching. They decided to bump their arrival up when they heard she went to the hospital.”

  Alice turned into the parking area at Firehouse Café, and we walked in a moment later. “Where will they stay?” she asked when we stopped at the back of the line.

  “That’s a good question. Gram’s place isn’t that big.”

  “Is her house where your dad grew up?” Alice asked as we waited.

  “No. She had a bigger house with my grandfather, who passed when I was little.”

  “I don’t even remember him,” she said.

  “He died when I was little, massive heart attack back in the days when they couldn’t make people live forever,” I explained.

  “I’m sorry,” Alice said quietly.

  We stepped forward with the line as I replied, “Thank you. It’s been a long time. After that, she decided to downsize, and that’s when she bought the house where she lives and the cabin. She’s been renting out the B&B for years.”

  “It’s weird how people have lives before you know them, and it feels like what you knew was how it always was. All I remember is her being next door. It’s like she’s been there forever.” She paused, glancing ahead. “Oh, it’s us!” She bounced forward to the front of the line.

  Janet was waiting behind the counter and smiled at us. “How’s the knee?” she asked by way of greeting.

  “How do you know about my knee?” I countered.

  Janet grinned. “I know almost everything, plus Nate was just here and told me he dropped you off. He should’ve brought you here.”

  I chuckled. “Alice is taking me to pick up Gram. We’re getting coffee and whatever Gram’s favorite hot chocolate is.”

  “The peppermint,” Janet said firmly. “And I don’t have your usuals memorized. What can I get for you?”

  “I’ll just take the house coffee. It’s plenty strong,” I said.

  “I’ll take an Americano with a little bit of cream,” Alice offered.

  She reached to open her purse, and I slipped my wallet out of my pocket quickly. “This one’s on me.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely. You gave me a ride home yesterday, and you’re helping me pick up Gram tonight. This is the least I can do.”

  Janet grinned as she prepped our coffees. “How is Bea?” she asked.

  “Good, I think. I talked to her today on the phone. She was annoyed they didn’t let her loose this morning.”

  “You mean discharge her?” Alice prompted dryly.

  “She called it being let loose. As far as I know, she feels fine. Apparently, she needs to stay hydrated. My parents are coming up early. They’ll be here this weekend,” I explained.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17