The Anti-Social Season (First Responders #2)

Chapter Nineteen

Nineteen

S omething was definitely wrong with Simon. Thea tried to banter with Larry like she always did with her firefighter colleagues, but Simon’s mood was putting her off. They did a few takes and Larry was great: witty, friendly and informative. But Simon was distracting her, and she felt like she was just a stiff sidekick.

Maybe that was okay though. This was supposed to be more Larry’s show than hers. After all, while she’d certainly seen plenty of menorahs, she wasn’t Jewish, and aside from the basic fire safety principles, she had nothing specific to bring to this particular party. The best she could do was to be a reliable sidekick.

But she wasn’t even doing that properly.

They finished another go and Simon frowned. “Can we try it one more time? It’s fine, but usually you’re more animated, Thea.”

“Yeah, what’s up with you?” Larry playfully grabbed her shoulders and gave her a gentle shake. “Man, you’re tight as a board.” He followed up with kneading her muscles, and she couldn’t help but let out a tiny groan. “That’s better. Loosen up, girl! Make love to the camera!”

He said that last thing with such an exaggerated impression of a fashion photographer from a bad movie that she finally laughed, but it felt weak. They launched one more time into their now-familiar routine and that felt a bit better. Just as they’d finished and were taking deep breaths, Simon fiddling with the camera, an alarm ripped through the old brick building.

“That’s me. Sorry, gotta go!” Larry hollered as he raced out of the room. Thea fought the impulse to hustle, to suit up, to slide into her familiar place in the driver’s seat of her old ladder truck. To slot back into her old life and the comfort of familiarity. She could hear the familiar sounds of people moving, gear clanking and trucks starting under the blaring alarm. The desire to respond was even more hardwired into her than she’d thought, and the loss of it felt so final, like a vault door slamming shut.

Suddenly, everything seemed too much. Her eyes stung and her mouth trembled. She looked to see if Simon had noticed her moment of weakness, willing him to not glance up from the camera he’d been studiously focused on.

His eyes lifted from the tripod and met hers squarely, his hard expression melting as the trembling of her mouth infected her jaw and her eyes filled with tears. She barely registered the way he rushed across the room to cradle her jaw in his palms, his touch so light, so gentle, so warm that the tears spilled, flooding her cheeks, her nose running despite her desperate sniffling.

“Thea. Sweetheart. What’s the matter?” His worried eyes scanned her face—including the snot fountain of her nose. Her eyes closed without her consent, and she let him gather her into his chest, her lungs heaving with the sobs that had hijacked her body.

“I... I just...” The sobs were too big, her grief was too huge to contain. And too sudden . Why, after all the therapy and everything else, why was this happening now?

“Shh.” One of Simon’s hands wrapped around her waist, drawing her close. The other cupped the back of her head. She felt impossibly sheltered, cherished.

Loved.

Oh god. This wasn’t love. She really was Gia’s stage-five clinger. She sniffed and reared her head back, Simon’s fingers spearing into her hair. “I’m okay,” she gurgled.

Okay, that wasn’t convincing.

His worried eyes said the same. “You’re not okay. And it’s okay to not be okay.”

The tears that she’d thought she’d wrangled into submission surged back into her eyes. “Is it? What do I have to cry about? I have a cushy job now—if I can keep it. I’m not running into burning buildings anymore like Larry.”

Simon’s restless hand settled on her neck, warm and comforting. “Do you want to run into those burning buildings again? Or is your real worry that you’re still on probation?”

She heaved a huge, shuddering breath. “Yes?”

Thea’s body was so warm, so lovely, so present that Simon wrapped his hand around the back of her head and pulled it back to his chest, feeling a little like a heel for enjoying her closeness as she heaved a shuddering sigh and looked up at him. The anger, the defensiveness he’d felt about her rejection had melted away the instant he saw her trembling chin and watery eyes.

Smoothing a thumb over her cheekbone and catching a tear, he brought it to his mouth, licking the salt of her sadness away the way he wished he could make all her troubles disappear.

Her pupils dilated as he pulled his thumb away with a soft pop.

“I’m a mess,” she said, her eyes filling again.

“Shh.” He covered her mouth with his, thankful for the empty room. “You’re okay,” he mumbled against her lips, and the intimacy of it nearly undid him.

“I’m not okay though. If I was okay, I could watch someone run off to a callout and feel nothing.” Her voice was still clogged with tears and she sniffled hard.

“Hang on,” he said, letting her go and rummaging in his messenger bag. Pulling out a travel pack of tissues, he handed her one and watched as she wiped her eyes and gustily blew her nose. He handed her another, and she gave him a watery smile, then blew her nose a second time. When he tried to hand her a third, she held up a hand.

“I’m okay. Thanks.” Her voice was raspy, but it wasn’t so congested anymore. He tucked the tissues away, then pulled her over to a nearby sofa. The silence after the insistent alarm felt deafening. Pulling her down beside him, he wrapped his arms around her and held her against his chest.

“Tell me, what’s wrong?” He rubbed her back, hoping to soothe her somehow. He thought he knew why she was so upset, but assumptions were pitfalls. She might not answer, but he had to ask.

She sighed, her back rising and falling under his sweeping hand. “I guess I just wasn’t ready to be in a firehouse when the alarm rang and not be, well, not be a part of it.” The last words came in a rush, and he squeezed her close to him, as if sheer proximity could make everything better. “I thought I was more okay,” she went on. “I thought that the time and the therapy and the new job... I was doing so well, I thought...”

He waited to see if she was going to finish. When she didn’t, he stroked her hair and murmured, “That’s not how people recover from stuff though. It’s rarely fast and it’s never linear. And a new, very different job is its own kind of stress. It’s okay if you have big emotions.”

She twisted in his arms, looking up at him with red-rimmed eyes. “Big emotions? You sound like you’ve been studying up to talk to your nephew.”

Okay, so yeah. Maybe he had. “Having big emotions isn’t just a little person thing though. It’s an every person thing. And our society is really bad about letting people know it’s okay. But it is.”

“Are you looking forward to seeing your family next week?” Then she paused, her brow furrowing. “No, it’s this weekend. You leave on Sunday, don’t you?”

Exhaustion flooded through him at the thought of flying to the West Coast on Sunday—Christmas day. “Yeah. And almost as soon as I get there, I have to turn around and come back.”

She straightened, and while he didn’t love the loss of her warm body tucked against him, he did love the indignation that sparkled in her eyes. “You’re going to the other side of the country for just a couple of days ? How is that okay?”

He took a deep breath and held it for a few beats of his heart, then let it go. “Well, my family is demanding and my job didn’t give me a lot of holiday leave this year. It’s a combination of history and seniority. So I made the best of it.”

“By spending as much time traveling as you will seeing your family?”

Reflexively, he said, “It’s not quite that bad.”

She rolled her eyes. “Okay, how bad is it?”

Simon’s face flooded with several emotions in quick succession. Exasperation, contemplation, then he gave her a keen-eyed glare. “Fine. It’s annoying as hell. It’s a waste of time and money. But what else was I supposed to do?”

She blinked. “Um. Maybe not do Christmas with your family this year? Just throwing that out there.”

“I wish,” he said, scrubbing his hands over his face. “But my sister will lose her shit so entirely you will be able to hear it from space.”

“Your sister, who moved her family thousands of miles away, will lose it if you don’t relocate your own carcass to where she is?” Thea willed all of the disbelief she felt into her question.

“I know,” he groaned. “But I don’t know what else to do.”

Say no? But she didn’t voice the thought. She didn’t exactly have much of a leg to stand on with unreasonable family demands. Having your sister show up at your house because she was being nosy about your sex life was pretty much the definition of an unreasonable family demand, after all.

He sighed. “My sister is... How do I put this? She’s difficult. She’s demanding. And she almost always gets her way. Frequently, she does this by being incredibly difficult.”

“Ah.” Thea was reminded of her cousin Joe. His tantrums were legendary when they were all kids, and her aunt and uncle’s family had basically rewired their entire lives around his demands. Looking back, she guessed that in the short run it had seemed to make life easier.

In the long run, it had been disastrous.

“So basically she runs roughshod all over everyone else, doesn’t respect boundaries, and as far as she’s concerned everyone else is completely unreasonable and nothing is ever her fault, huh?”

He blinked in obvious surprise. “Yeah. Pretty much. How did you know?”

Textbook narcissist , she thought but didn’t say. It wasn’t her place to diagnose anyone, let alone someone she’d never met. “I had a cousin who was similar.”

“You make it sound like a syndrome or something.”

Shit. Busted. “Yeah, well. It’s a type,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound too evasive. “Speaking of sisters, I want to apologize for the way mine showed up and...” Ruined everything? She took a deep breath, regrouping. “I’m sorry she showed up like that. I had been really enjoying our time together.”

His expression, which had been keenly focused on her, softened. “Yeah. I had too.” He looked around the empty dayroom as if he suddenly remembered where they were. “Do you need to get any additional footage or anything while we’re here?”

Dammit, she’d hoped for more than I had too from him. For a second she dithered, wondering if she could think of additional footage that she did want. Maybe a close-up of lighting the menorah? But no. Larry had done that during their demonstration, and fiddling with religious objects that weren’t hers felt wrong. “No,” she said.

This might be it for them. He was leaving Sunday, and their training time was up.

He checked his watch. “Okay then. I guess we should get packed up and go.”

Heart heavy, she pulled out her laptop and opened it up for him to transfer the video files. They stared at the progress bar in silence for what felt like hours and when he pulled the cable out and started to pack up his gear, Thea wanted to sink right through the floor. Then he took a deep breath and his shoulders set as if he was about to say something difficult.

“Can we start over?”

Simon felt like he’d jumped out of a plane with no parachute. Thea just looked at him as if he’d lost his damn mind.

“What...what would that entail?” she asked.

Okay, fair question. Terrifying, but fair. “Um, since this is the last time we have together as sort-of colleagues, I was kind of wondering if we might actually date. Just date. Not worry about nosy or bossy sisters, not worry about social media campaigns. Just spend time. You and me.”

“You mean like a relationship?” Her voice came out on a funny sort of squeak.

He gathered himself. He’d thought he was jumping out of a plane before? That was a toddler’s jump into a puddle. This was the real thing. “Yeah. I mean like a relationship. You make me crazy, Thea, but I just like you so damn much and I can’t imagine not having you in my life.” He watched her face closely, looking for a shift, a softening, anything that could let him relax, to let go of the tension of waiting for her answer, a lessening of the horrible vulnerability that he couldn’t seem to run away from.

He’d told her once that she was brave. He’d thought he knew what that meant. He hadn’t had a clue.

“You left,” she said. “After Gia came by and said all those horrible things, you just walked out.”

He blinked, confused...and, yeah, hurt. “You didn’t seem to want me to stay. You seemed embarrassed that I was there, that your life was so out in the open in front of her.”

Her mouth tightened. “My sex life, you mean.”

He angled his head to acknowledge the truth of her statement.

She took a breath, let it out. Then she said in a rush, “Did it ever occur to you that having you walk out like that made me feel that you were embarrassed by me ? And after I’d told my sister to leave because she was being a total bitch to you and about you.”

Shock and denial blazed through him, followed rapidly by shame. Caught up in the moment, he’d only considered that she hadn’t seemed to push back against her sister’s characterization of him as a user, maybe even a predator. But he hadn’t heard Thea’s side of the argument at all. Her voice, in contrast to her sister’s, had been barely audible. “You did?”

“I thought you heard everything.”

“I heard everything your sister said. You weren’t as loud.”

She chuckled, a low, almost mirthless sound. “Yeah. My sister’s loud. Did you think I wouldn’t stand up for you when she said something that awful about you?”

Confusion roiled his gut. “I didn’t know what you said.”

“So you assumed I didn’t?” Her dark eyes blazed with challenge.

How had he gone from trying to get her back to defending himself from her? “I didn’t know . You were miserable and seemed to want me gone. I went.”

She sagged as if some cosmic marionettist had suddenly cut her strings. “I was miserable. I’d had a wonderful night and a great morning and I was looking forward to spending more time with you. Instead, I got Gia being a nosy, bossy big sister. And you left.”