Page 3 of From the Ashes

I was not prepared to have to pick up the pieces of my shattered heart fifteen years after it last broke.

“Del?Del?”I blink and realize that Yara is scowling at me. “Check her lungs.”

She’s always so sunny, but I can’t blame her for being unimpressed with me freezing up as soon as we arrive at a call. Our patient needs my full attention.

Colton Ross will have to wait.

“Is my daughter going to be okay?” the woman beside us tearfully asks as I press my stethoscope to the little girl’s back. She’s still coughing, so she’s not out of the woods yet. However, this is a hell of a lot better than being unconscious and not breathing.

“We’ll need to take her to the hospital to give her a check over,” I tell her. “But the fact that she’s woken up and is alert is a very good sign. I promise you we’re going to do everything we can for her.”

“She’s a fighter, I can tell,” Yara says warmly, speaking mostly to the little boy clinging to the girl’s mother. I’m guessinghe’s our patient’s brother, but I’ve learned never to make assumptions in this job.

The girl appears stable enough to move. “Let’s get her onto the backboard,” I say, preferring to get her into the ambulance as soon as possible where we have a lot more equipment to monitor her vitals. I turn to the mom. “Do you guys want to grab your things so you can ride with us?”

“Yes, yes,” the mom says, blinking and taking a deep breath as she regains some composure after her terrible fright. “Come on, Dashel. They’re taking your sister to the hospital.”

“I want to stay with Nevaeh, Mommy,” the little boy says tearfully.

“We’ll watch him,” I promise the mom. She’s not going to be thinking straight, and I don’t want her to leave her phone or her car keys behind. “You can meet us by the ramp.”

“Do you want to hold my hand?” Yara asks Dashel. He nods and shuffles to slip his palm against hers, not taking his eyes off Nevaeh.

“Thank you,” their mom says, her voice still thick with emotion.

Then she turns to Colt.

“And thankyoufor pulling her out of the water. I had no idea she’d gone in that far!”

In that moment, I’m forced to look at the boy—no,the man—who I naïvely thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with. I’m trying to remain professional with every ounce of self-restraint I have. However, it’s impossible to keep my body totally under control. My skin prickles and my uniform feels too hot and too tight.

I almost can’t believe it, but he’s even more beautiful than I remember. I think of the dogeared strip of photos I have pressed into my yearbook. It’s living at the bottom of a box under my bed. I might not have looked at it in a very long time, but that’snot necessary to recall every tiny detail in my mind’s eye. Colt and I had been seventeen, and with the curtain closed on that photobooth at the shopping mall, we’d gotten brave.

In one of those little faded rectangles, I’m kissing my boyfriend, both of us smiling shyly. In another, it’s obvious to anyone who might see it that we’re looking at each other with nothing short of the deepest, truest love.

They’re the only photos I had of us as a couple. The only evidence that we were even together at all. No one else has seen them. No one else ever knew.

Colt has been frozen in time for fifteen years to me. I memorized every millimeter of his teenage image. It doesn’t matter that he’s changed with age. I could pick him out of a crowd of thousands today. As it turns out, that really wasn’t necessary.

As he stands there, dripping wet in nothing but his swim shorts, I feel a soul-crushing pang that I never got to see him grow into the man he’s become today.

Hopefully, I haven’t been staring at his body for more than a second or two. Nothing matters more than the wellbeing of my patient. But there’s no escaping the fact that Colt is fucking gorgeous. A little paler than I remember, suggesting that wherever he’s been living isn’t as sunny as California. But his body is muscular, his jaw sharper, and his blond hair thicker than ever.

He’s definitely a man now. Not a boy.

My heart and mind might very well remember the devastating grief I felt for months after he vanished without anything more than a note that simply said ‘I’ll never forget you,’ but my blood is already thrumming with desire. If I’d met Colton Ross as a stranger today, I’d be very interested in getting him naked as quickly as possible.

As it is, our gazes lock briefly once more before I force my feet to do the unthinkable.

Walk away without knowing if I’ll ever see him again.

It’s not likeIever left. He’s known where to find me all this time. What the hell is he even doing back in Redwood Bay now? I thought he’d left all this behind.

I thought he’d leftmebehind. Forever.

Of all the people that could have jumped into the fray and recused this young girl, of course it was him.

He always was a decent, good, and kind person.

---