Burned

“Stop moving away or I swear to f**k I will drop this match right now!”

I immediately halt my backward movement while he continues to shout.

“You spread your legs for another man. How in the f**k am I supposed to get those images out of my head, Finn?” Jordan asks, the anguish in his voice ringing through my ears.

The fact that he’s the biggest hypocrite in the world doesn’t even register with him. He just admitted that he’s been cheating on me our entire marriage but he’s so filled with jealousy that he can’t even see it.

“Please, Jordan, don’t do this,” I quietly beg, the tears escaping from my eyes and falling down my cheeks.

The match has almost burned down to his fingers and my only hope is that it will go out and I can get him to put the rest of the matches down before he does something stupid. He stares at my face and I watch as his anger starts to melt away with every tear that burns its way down my face.

“We can talk about this, okay? Please, Jordan,” I whisper brokenly.

Like a switch being flipped, the anger is back and his lips curl up in a sneer.

“We’re finished talking, sweetheart. You’re dead to me now. Might as well make it official.”

The scream rips from my throat as the match drops from his fingers and flutters to the ground, the carpet in front of him bursting into flames in a whoosh of air and crackling of heat as it heads right towards me.

Chapter 20—Raging Fire

GODDAMMIT ALL TO hell I’m going to kill Wilcox.

After two straight days of work and only a few hours of sleep once I got home, I was called back into work because we were short handed. Of course it had to be because of that ass**le Wilcox. I should be at Finnley’s house right now, but instead, I’m stuck in a barn filled with the smoldering ashes of the south-side wall.

As I remind him yet again about the dangers of smoking in a barn filled with dry bales of hay, the boys finish loading the hose back on the truck and I keep my temper in check until I’m in the jump seat and we’re pulling away from his house.

“I swear to Christ I’m going to just burn that f**king barn down myself and be done with it,” I complain.

D.J. unbuttons his insulated coat and slides his helmet off of his head, tossing it onto the empty seat next to him. “Now, now, you’ll be home soon enough. I hope to God you’re going to get laid tonight because this whole moody, PMS thing you’ve had going on the last few days is starting to worry me.”

I punch him in the arm and give him a dirty look even though he’s right. I have been extra bitchy since I last saw Finnley. Being away from her is nothing short of torture. Even though we talked on the phone several times during my recent forty-eight hour shift, hearing her soft, raspy voice and knowing she was curled up in bed while she spoke to me did nothing to ease the ache I had for her. It only made me think about being inside her body and watching her beautiful brown eyes widen as her pu**y clamped down on my cock. Trying to push my need for her aside during my downtime at work by lifting weights didn’t help, either. Just like I predicted, every f**king time I walked in that room and looked at the subwoofer, my dick got hard and I had to lock myself in the bathroom to rub one out.

I feel myself getting worked up again, so I deliberately turn my mind towards the only thing that fires my blood as much as Finnley—my absolute and total f**king hate for her soon-to-be ex-husband. I think about every conversation we’ve had over the last seventeen days and it makes me want to hunt down Castillo and end his miserable excuse for a life. He had it all. He had the woman who should have been mine and he didn’t even care. He treated her like garbage and he smothered her creativity. She should have gone to art school. Her gunpowder designs should be hanging in galleries all over the f**king world but instead, she was forced to take a job just to pay the bills while Castillo blew all of their money on gambling, drugs and God knows what else.

He had a beautiful, smart, sexy, talented woman and he took her for granted every day for seventeen years. I can’t even believe the strong woman she’s turned into after all the shit she put up with from him. Any other woman would have been beaten down and afraid to trust again, but not Finnley. She put every ounce of her trust in me and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let her down. Finally, after several days away from her, I’m going to sit her down and tell her what she means to me. What she’s always meant to me every single day, even when we were apart, and just how much my feelings have grown since we got back together. I want her to know that no other woman could ever compare to her. I want her to understand that I will do whatever it takes to make her happy. We can take it slow, we can speed it up, we can do whatever the f**k she wants as long as we do it together.

As the truck pulls into the bay, I hop down and walk into the gear locker room stowing my turnout gear in my personal locker while D.J. does the same right next to me.

“So, is this going to be like high school all over again where you ditch me for a chick and I lose my wingman?” he suddenly asks.

I pause in the middle of taking off my rubber boots and stare at him. “What the hell are you talking about?”

D.J. shrugs, refusing to look at me as he shoves his helmet into the locker and toes off his own boots.

“I don’t like this whole you having a girlfriend thing. It makes me feel unloved and neglected,” he jokes.

I shake my head at him as I finish removing the rest of my gear. “You do realize we’re thirty-three years old. It’s okay for one or both of us to settle down.”