Page 26 of Ablaze

For the first time in years, the pain of not having my parents felt duller.

Me: Dean?

Sparky: I know, sprinkles. I’m glad you’re here, too.

Chapter Eight

DEAN

Six years ago

Opening the door to my truck, I pull the phone closer to my face. “There’s something different about you today. I mean, you always look like an angel, but you’re even more breathtaking today.”

“Oh, you hush,” Grams chides, gleaming back at me through my screen. She purses her lips, pretending not to glow under my compliment, but I know she loves it. “Between you and Garrett, I don’t know which one of you is the bigger flirt.”

“Me. I’m the one with the bigger everything.” I smirk.

“Dean Emerson Meyer! I am your grandmother, not one of the women you pick up at a bar with innuendos and false representations of yourself. Behave!”

I throw my head back and laugh. “Please, Grams, you know you’re way more than our grandma. You’re like our second mom and a cool elderly best friend combined in one beautiful package.” I tilt my head to address the last few words in her statement. “And what do you mean, false representations? I know it’s been a while since you’ve had to dress us, Grams, but I’m sure even back then you saw the truth . . . that I had the bigger–”

“Don’t you dare finish that sentence, young man. And who are you calling elderly? Don’t think that just because I’m getting older, I won’t be able to take a spatula to your rear end.”

My smile widens as I shut my car door and start walking up the steps to the little café that’s become another home to me. If I’m not at the station or my own house, I’m here. “My mistake, Grams. I’ve never considered you a day over thirty-five.”

Gram’s gray bob ruffles in the cool Colorado breeze. She’s sitting in her favorite chair on Mom’s porch. “That’s more like it. Now, where are you off to?”

I linger on the steps, leaning to look through the door but not seeing anyone inside. “Mala closed the bakery for the day.”

Grams lifts her brows. “Oh! Why on earth would she do that? It’s a Saturday. I imagine she’ll lose a good amount of business.”

“It’s Rohan’s birthday, but he’s on shift all day, so Mala and I decided to throw him a little surprise party for when he gets off. In fact, we’re having a bake-off. We’re both going to make our favorite cakes and see which one everyone likes more. We have a few guys from the station coming in later to help decorate the place before Rohan heads over here.”

Grams’ eyes glitter, and I see the same mischief in them I’ve found in my own from time to time. “I see . . . A bake-off with your ‘friend’, huh?”

“Yes.” I pull on the bakery door, only to find it locked. Mala must still be on her way. “No need to put air-quotes around the word. Whatever you’re stewing inside that perfectly coiffed head of yours, stop it.”

Grams brings up her white handkerchief–something she carries inside her purse, no matter the time of day–and wipes the corner of her lip as if her lipstick was smudged. It isn’t. “Hmm? I didn’t say anything, dear boy. I simply said ‘I see,’ which is what I’m doing. I’m seeing. Observing.”

“Right,” I scoff. “I don’t think you’ve had a single simple thought in your entire life. But for the umpteenth time, it’s not like that between her and I.”

It can’t be. It won’t be.

There’s too much at stake. Not only would it fuck up my relationship with Rohan–a friend who trusts me the same as I trust him–but I won’t let Mala get trapped in the whirlpool that is my life. Not like that, and definitely not forever.

Not when I see the devastation it causes to those we leave behind.

“Because if I knew what I know now–the anguish I’ve felt for the past three years–I’d tell that naive girl sitting at the bar, looking into those alluring brown eyes and making wishes that should never have been made, that the worst thing she could do for herself would be to fall for a firefighter.”

‘The worst thing she could do for herself would be to fall for a firefighter.’

It doesn’t matter that things got a little . . . hairy that one night a couple of years ago in her apartment when we were just supposed to be watching TV and shooting the shit. It also doesn’t matter that I’ve thought about that night more often than I care to admit. It doesn't even matter that that tension and electricity buzzed around us for weeks, if not months, after that. We both needed to move past it, and we did. Eventually.

I shouldn’t have asked her to show me her scar in the first place. And even as the words left my mouth, I knew I had crossed a line I’d never come back from.

But enough was fucking enough.

Time and time again, I’d seen her tug on her damn collar, raising it like she was trying to disappear behind it, and time and time again, all I wanted was to pull it the fuck down. Make her show me. Make her see me as someone different. Someone she never had to hide from.

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