Page 5 of From the Ashes

Yara folds her arms and leans opposite me, her expression sympathetic. “But you do know him?” I nod, unable to deny it after what she saw. “Did he break your heart?”

For a moment, I just focus on my food, even though I’m not hungry. I can’t lie to her, but I can’t out Colt either. That’s what got us in all this mess in the first place.

“It’s not my secret to tell,” I say eventually.

Yara makes a whimpering noise and stomps over to me, throwing her arms awkwardly around my side. “I get it,” she mumbles into my shoulder. “I know you’d never betray anyone, even if they hurt you. But I can read between the lines and assure you he’s obviously an asshole for doing that to you.”

I give up and put the plate down so I can return her hug. “He wasn’t an asshole,” I tell her truthfully. “He was just young. I understand what happened, even if it devastated me.”

“How long ago are we talking here? High school?” Her powers of observation never fail to amaze me. I grunt noncommittally, and she takes that as the affirmation it was intended as. “Urgh, teenage boys suck. Believe me, I know.”

I don’t doubt it. Her brother is almost a decade younger than her, and after they lost their parents, she’s practically raising him on her own. She loves him dearly, but, well…she’s right. Teenagers can be a lot to deal with.

She jerks her head back and blinks at me. “Wait…is this guy the reason why you never date?”

I scoff and gently push her off. Unsurprisingly, my unsupervised meal has already been cleaned by a very naughty puppy. But all I can do is shake my head and admit I should have put the now licked clean plate up higher. At least he didn’t swallow the fork.

“I date,” I say defensively. But I don’t meet her eye, instead reaching up to let Smokey sniff my fingers from where she’s having a post-lunch bath out of reach of certain misbehaving dogs.

“You hook-up,” Yara counters. “You take guys out to fancy places, you go home with them, then you’re gone before morning with no intention of ever seeing them again.”

I wince, regretting being so honest with her now. But she’s not wrong. I’ve tried long-term in the past. But I could never trust myself to get close to anyone and it would always fizzle out. So now I keep things simple so nobody gets hurt.

“I’ve just never met the one,” I say with a shrug.

Yara jerks her thumb toward the station’s open front. “And who was the Ken doll back on the beach, then?”

I think of the faded photos pressed in my yearbook. The rivers of tears I cried. The numbness in my chest that I managed to shrink down over the years but never got rid of.

“The one that got away,” I say sadly.

Yara whistles. “But he’s back now?”

I shake my head. “Nothing’s changed. I doubt I’ll ever see him again.”

My partner looks like she wants to protest that fact, but I get saved by the bell, literally. We rush back to the ambulance, this time with the rest of the One-Thirteen with us to tend to a house fire.

I know Yara’s a romantic. She wants to believe the best in people. But I know myself and I know Colt, for better or worse.And what’s better for us both is if we just let sleeping dogs lie. Anything else would undoubtedly be worse in the end.

My heart barely survived being broken the first time. There’s no way I’m going to risk it again.

Colton Ross is going to stay in the past, where he belongs.

CHAPTER 3

Colt

I’m not evensure how I’ve made it to Monday morning. I feel like I’ve been in a daze since I stumbled back onto Redwood Bay Beach, a little girl in my arms as I fell at the feet of the love of my life.

Okay, it wasn’t quite as dramatic as all that, but it certainly wasn’t the chilled-out afternoon of surfing I’d hoped for, either.

Zahir Delacroix. All grown up into the most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen in all my thirty-three years. In that moment, I was faced with everything that I gave up, everything I walked away from.

Everything I lost to be the person my father insisted I had to be.

As I sit at my desk staring listlessly at the affidavit I’m supposed to be working on, I wonder what I hell I had been I thinking.

Over the years, I tried not to think about the boy I loved so desperately in secret back in high school. We were each other’s firsts in all the ways that mattered most. That last summer before college was the happiest I can ever remember.

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