Page 30 of Once Upon a Summer Night

“Damn, man. I had no idea.” Dylan shook his head. “We heard rumors as kids about your family from some other people who lived on your street. Parents always fighting, doors always slamming. But you always seemed cool as a cucumber. Most of us thought they were just made-up stories.”

“I wish they were.” Chase looked to the ugly round scar on his forearm, compliments of Lena’s cigarette for “not listening” when he was seven.

Seven. That was Noah’s age. Chase felt bile rise in his throat. What kind of demon did you have to be to want to harm an innocent child?

“Did he do it?” Joey asked from the kitchen’s doorway, joining their impromptu story time. “Did the chief confront your stepmom?”

Of Chase’s current fire brethren, Joey was his closest friend. Which meant he knew more than the others about Chase’s horrendous childhood, and why Chase still saw a therapist from time to time to keep the nightmares at bay. Chase trusted him implicitly, and the feelings went both ways. But this was more than he’d shared with his friend in the past.

“Yeah. Shortly after our high school graduation. My dad, he drove semi for as long as I can remember, and had asked me not to move out until he could find a local route so someone could keep an eye on his wife while he was gone. He knew her drinking was out of control.

“Anyway, he was on the road out west and Lena had clocked me good after she’d drank her dinner just before my high school graduation. The chief saw my black eye, and when I stopped over there to visit the next day, he dragged me home to confront her. Had Earl Brice meet us there. They pounded on the door until she woke enough to answer. She denied everything, of course. Started crying and swearing she hadn’t done it. ‘Tell, them, Chasey. Tell them I would never hurt you.’” He snorted.

“You didn’t, did you.” Joey’s comment wasn’t a question.

Chase shook his head. “I thought I’d be letting my dad down if they hauled her off to jail, so I kept quiet. She didn’t like that I hadn’t defended her, though. The next day when I came back from Hannah’s graduation party, she asked me to go get something from the basement. I was halfway down the stairs before I realized it was a trap. The lock clicked behind me, and she screamed through the door that she would teach me a lesson for not defending a lady’s honor.”

His fists clenched at his side, too many emotions boiling just below the surface. He drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, refusing to break in front of the others. Damn, he was going to need some serious treadmill time tonight to have any chance of falling asleep.

“How long were you down there?” Dylan asked.

“Three days. Hannah had left town, and none of the Brooks sisters could get ahold of me to give me the news. Idiot me had left my cell phone upstairs. Eventually, the chief stopped over to check on me, but no one answered the door. He saw Lena passed out on the couch through the front window and called 911, claiming he was worried that she’d drunk herself to death. It wasn’t long after they broke down the door that they finally found me.”

“Damn,” Cody murmured. “And I thought my family was f-ed up.”

“Nothing a few days in the hospital and several years of therapy couldn’t fix,” Chase joked to ease his way out of the spotlight. “Anyway, I’ll forever be grateful to the chief for coming to check on me. If he hadn’t, I’m not sure how that all might have turned out.”

“What happened to your stepmom?” Joey asked.

“Eh, they hauled her downtown to sober up. She got a slap on the wrist and did some community service to avoid jailtime. She and Dad moved from Bourbon Falls after that. Rumor on the street is that some of the town elders convinced them it was time to go. Not sure where they ended up. Dad passed away four years ago now, his liver finally gave out. Services were in Warsaw, where his family was from. That’s the last time I saw Lena.” Chase grinned. “Chief volunteered to go to the service with me. Think he enjoyed playing bodyguard one last time.”

Joey shook his head. “Damn, bro, that’s one helluva story. Does Hannah know all of that?”

“Nah. Hannah’s heard enough Lena horror stories over the years. No sense in burdening her with another.”

“Well, since she’s only here until the chief comes back, I’d suggest skipping that one,” Cody said. “Don’t want you accidentally scaring her off. So far, she’s been way better than that douche I thought they were gonna send us from Kosciusko County.”

The others agreed, and thankfully the conversation soon shifted from Hannah to more normal, nightly firehouse topics: baseball and Max Williams’s latest concoctions at the Tipsy Barrel Distillery down the street. Even so, Chase’s mind never fully detached from those dredged-up memories of his childhood. Five miles on the treadmill helped him to tune them out for a while, as did his nightly meditation and breathing routine, but sleep was no friend of his that night. By the time Hannah arrived to start her shift the next morning, he’d long since given up on it.

He waited for her in the chief’s office, sitting in the now-cleared side chair to his desk, listening as she came up the hall, greeting each of their staff members with a “Good morning” as she passed. Eventually, she stepped into the office, her smile a welcome ray of sunshine.

“Good mor—Yikes, Chase. What happened to you last night?”

I’ll tell you what didn’t happen: me catching some zzz’s. “Too excited to sleep, I guess.”

“Then it’s a good thing your shift is ending so you can go home and get some shuteye.”

She came around the desk to put her things away, her lilac scent invading his senses once again. He resisted the temptation to pull her into the hug he could use after a night full of bad memories. His luck, someone would walk in at that moment and misinterpret what they were seeing.

“Too bad my shift at Oak Barrel Farms starts in an hour and a half,” he said.

Hannah shrugged. “Call off.”

“You forget that I own half the company. Which means if I skip a shift over there, it hits my pocketbook.” He leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees, sleep finally calling to him. “Maybe if I hurry, though, I can fit in a cat nap before then. Thought I’d give you a quick update before I head out. That’s our normal routine—handing a verbal baton from one captain to the next. I know you’re not going out, but didn’t want you broadsided by anything, either.”

She grinned. “We do something similar. And, by all means, make it quick so you can get some sleep. Besides, the faster you go, the fewer chances we’ll have of you accidentally trying to kiss me again.”

Chase felt his cheeks catch fire anew. Of course, she’d brought that up again. And of course, he’d replayed it a hundred times in his head since it’d happened, while grappling with the other two main concerns in his head: Would she give him a chance, and was she even sticking around?

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