Chapter 11
Tim
Fuck, I’m exhausted. We just got back from a 2nd Alarm Assignment in a high-rise necessitating five engine companies, two ladder companies, two battalion chiefs, a rescue battalion chief, a safety battalion chief, and tactical support units.
In other words, it was a major fucking mess.
The good news is that we got the fire contained pretty quickly, although it took the better part of half a day to get all the hot spots fully extinguished. The bad news is that I am so tired as I enter the last day of my three-day shift that I can’t even muster up the strength to call Holly to check in.
Instead, I pull out my phone and send her a quick text. Just got back from major fire. Going to get shower and some shut eye. Will call later.
I set my phone on my rack while I sit down to take my boots off. She usually responds back pretty quickly when she’s not working, and I know she’s off today. We had briefly talked yesterday afternoon when she got a small break at work. The conversation hadn’t gone the way I wanted it to, mainly because I was sitting in the break room of the station house surrounded by four other guys that were watching a baseball game on TV. What I really wanted to do was tell her how much I missed her.
Her smile.
Her laugh.
Her green eyes.
Fucking that gorgeous body.
But that’s so not appropriate in a room full of firemen.
Instead, I let her update me on her job hunt, which had proven to be futile so far. This had been the subject of many of our conversations, and Holly was getting more dejected by the lack of prospects with every phone call we had together. I tried to buck up her spirits, but that was hard because I was fucking dejected right along with her.
But when we talked yesterday, while she still had no good news, she didn’t seem quite as bummed. Instead, she seemed a little chipper, teasing me about wanting to give me some dirty phone sex talk but she knew couldn’t since I was at the firehouse. I grinned into the phone, my eyes cutting around the room at the other guys seemingly interested in the TV, but also knowing they kept one ear on my conversation. I had been quite vocal upon my return from vacation about the amazing woman in my life, and they were always razzing me about her.
Sadly, our call yesterday was cut short by the station speakers crackling to life and alerting us to another fire in progress. I was only able to give her a quick, “I miss you. Talk later,” and then I was running toward the front bay to get suited up.
Holly doesn’t text me back, which has me frowning slightly. The pure exhaustion I was feeling a minute ago is replaced now by an even more desperate need to hear her voice. I flip to my favorites and tap on her name, deciding that I did have time for a quick conversation.
The phone rings four times before going to her voice mail.
Well, fuck.
I set the phone down on the small, square wooden table beside my rack and lay back on the mattress. Shower forgotten, I put my hands behind my head and stare at the ceiling, listening to the soft snores of a few of the guys who already crashed.
I think longingly about the day that Holly will be here, and we can finally start our life together.
“Hey Davis,” I hear from the doorway to our sleeping quarters.
Lifting my head up, I see Butch Heywood, one of my teammates, standing there. “What’s up?”
“You got a visitor out front,” he says and starts to turn away.
“Who is it?” I ask, without any real actual interest, but suspecting it might be this woman, Tashia, I had gone out with on and off over the past year. It wasn’t serious, and we would go weeks without seeing each other, but she would sometimes drop by if she was in the area to check up on me. I haven’t seen her in probably over a month, and of course, there’s no real commitment there, so it’s not like I ever thought to call her and tell her that we couldn’t see each other anymore.
“No clue,” he says as he turns back briefly. “Flynn caught me on my way back to the head and told me to tell you.”
“Thanks, man,” I say and sit up, swinging my legs over the edge of my rack. I stick my feet back in my boots and swiftly lace them.
As I walk toward the front bay, I start mentally constructing what I need to tell Tashia. She won’t be upset or put out, but I still want to be nice and gentle about it.
I push through the swinging door that leads into the bay where we hold the three engines that belong to our company. A quick sweep of the area and I don’t see anyone, but I hear muffled voices coming from the far side of the bay behind one of the trucks.
Walking that way, I hear Flynn’s voice become clearer. “Tim’s a stud. Oh, the things I could tell you about him,” he says with a laugh, and I groan internally.
I do not need him building me up any further to Tashia, especially when I’m getting ready to cut things off. And why the fuck would he do that? He knows how I feel about Holly. Other than Denise, Flynn is the only one that knows what truly went down between us and the entirety of our history. I filled him in on it when I got back from vacation over beer and wings one night after we got off shift.
Rounding the front of the engine, I say before I even see Flynn and Tashia, “Now, quit filling her head with those lies.”
I see Flynn first, his back to me, blocking my line of sight to Tashia. His head turns toward me, and he gives me an evil grin. I glare at him.
Flynn steps to the side, and I turn my face toward Tashia.
Except, it’s not Tashia.
It’s Holly, and my heart almost bursts out of my chest from the sudden explosion of joy with in me.
“Hey baby,” she says softly with a smile.
Two long steps are all I need before my hands are on her face and I’ve got her mouth crushed to mine. I kissed her ravenously… starved for her touch and her taste.
“Geez… get a room,” Flynn says, but then I hear his footsteps receding away from us.
Holly’s hands come up to my wrists, giving them a slight squeeze before she pulls her lips away from mine. I don’t let her withdraw too much though, pinning her with my eyes.
“What are you doing here?”
“Surprise,” she says with a grin.
Too fucking much.
I pull her back to me and kiss her again, this time turning her and backing her right into the side of the engine. Holly purrs into my mouth, and lust shoots through me.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I pull away from her quickly, because I cannot be going there with my mind or my cock. I’m on duty, a fact that makes me hate my job right this very minute.
Giving her a soft kiss on her nose, I release her face and take her hands. “Baby… what in the hell are you doing here? And why the hell didn’t you tell me you were coming?”
Her grin gets bigger. “It would sort of defeat the purpose of a surprise, right?”
Deep, hot kissing is out but hugging isn’t. My arms shoot around her waist, and I pull her into me hard. Putting my face in her neck, I breathe out, “God, I love you.”
Holly’s body jerks in surprise but immediately melts into me further. Her arms grip me tighter… her voice is thick with emotion. “I love you, too.”
It’s the first time we’ve said those exact words since we were eighteen years old, and I realize the power of them is magnified immensely just by sheer virtue of everything we’ve been through to get us to this point in our lives.
I don’t feel a need, though, to make a big deal out of those words. They simply are the truth. Something we’ve both known in our hearts.
Instead, I pull back from her and ask her one more time. “What are you doing here? And how long can you stay?”
“How about forever?” she asks, her eyes shining bright.
“What?” I ask carefully, my breath caught in my chest. Afraid to hope.
“I just had a job interview at St. Joseph’s on Long Island that went amazingly well. So amazing, in fact, that they offered it to me. I start in three weeks.”
My knees almost buckle from the complete euphoria coursing through me. “Please tell me you’re not kidding.”
“I’m not kidding,” she says as she leans back into me.
“But how? How did this happen so fast? We just talked yesterday, and you didn’t say a word.”
She’s quiet… her hands rubbing my lower back. I can sense hesitation in her, so I prompt her, “Holly?”
“My father helped me,” she says quietly.
I pull back from her, taking her by her elbows and leaning back to look at her. “What?”
“He pulled some strings. Got me the interview. I just found out about it two days ago. I didn’t tell you yesterday because I wanted to surprise you with a visit, regardless of how the interview went.”
“Your father helped you,” I murmur in wonder. Clearing my throat, I ask, “He just helped you out of the blue?”
“No,” she says with a wince. “I called my mom and asked her if he would, and apparently, he did. I haven’t talked to him, but she called me with the details and told me they wanted to meet with me right away. I hopped a plane here this morning and just finished the interview about an hour ago. They offered me the job on the spot.”
Shaking my head, my lips curve upward. “This is just unbelievable.”
“I know,” she says with an excited grin. “Three weeks and we can be together again.”
“We’ll need to move out to Long Island. It will be easier on you to be closer to the hospital. I can commute into Brooklyn.”
“You want to move in together?” she whispers, her eyes wide.
“Yeah, don’t you?”
“Well… yeah, but—”
“Sam thinks it’s a good idea, and so do I,” I tell her quickly.
“Sam thinks it’s a good idea?” she asks with a grin.
“Yup, and I’m expecting he’s going to demand we get a house with a fenced-in yard so he can have a dog.”
Holly laughs, wraps her arms around me, and pulls me back down for a kiss. When she releases my lips, she says, “I think we should get the kid a dog for sure.”
I kiss her again… swiftly, because I hear the swinging door bang open and the voices of a few of the guys coming through.
Sobering a bit, I ask her hesitantly, “Are you going to talk to your dad?”
“Yeah,” she says with no hesitation. “It needs to be done. I need to thank him at least, and I don’t know… maybe talk to him.”
“Want to go over there tomorrow when I get off duty?”
She shakes her head. “No, I only have one more day here and I don’t want to spend it with anyone other than you. But I do have an idea of how I want this to go down.”
I look at her in question, but she doesn’t give me anything else. Instead, she steps back into my arms and hugs me with a sigh of contentment.
My life just got very fucking good.