“I absolutely will not. I’m not your maid, and you were just treated for smoke inhalation, for godsakes.”
“So which one of those little old ladies called you to come over here?”
As he got to his feet, she turned away and needed a place to go, so she wandered down the hall toward the bedrooms. It seemed weird to look into two of the four spaces and see nothing but dust bunnies and forgotten hangers, Moose had moved in with Deandra, Mick was in rehab out of state—the addiction kind, not the physical. The third bedroom, Jack’s, housed little more than a stripped bed and a bureau that looked as if it were throwing up the shirts and pants that were in its drawers. The final crib was Danny’s, and she merely glanced in as she pivoted around for the return trip.
Anne stopped. He was leaning against the hallway wall like James Dean, that cigarette lit between his fingers.
His eyes were hooded as he stared at her, and she wanted to tell him to put some damn clothes on—except that seemed like an admission that she was noticing his body.
“I’ve lost two and a half of my roommates as you can see.” He motioned to the vacant rooms with his free hand. “Moose and Deandra. Then Mick went into that rehab program. Now Jack is worried about that sister of his again and staying with her. They’re dropping like flies, I tell ya.”
“Times change.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Your face is busted up.”
“Vic needs to lose your number.”
“Moose was the one who called me.”
“Him, too, then.”
“What are you doing, Danny.” She nodded toward his trainwreck of a room. “I mean, look at this place.”
There was laundry on the floor—in two piles that she guessed meant one was clean and the other dirty. The bed was a shambles of sheets and blankets with a bald pillow at the headboard. And the window’s curtain had bought the farm, the rod hanging cockeyed, a blanket nailed in place so he didn’t flash the neighbors.
“I don’t spend a lot of time in there,” he muttered before taking a draw.
She bent down and picked up a flimsy piece of lace. “At least you’re not alone, though.”
He shrugged. “I might as well be.”
“Oh, come on.” Anne let the lingerie dangle. “What was wrong with her? Given the cup size here, I’m thinking her anatomy was just fine.”
Danny was quiet for a while. Then in a low voice, he said, “She wasn’t you. That was the trouble.”
chapter
15
In the suddenly charged silence, Anne decided she hadn’t heard that right. Nope. She most certainly hadn’t heard that.
“Enough with the bullcrap.” She dropped the Victoria’s Secret and wiped her hand on her hip. “Moose is worried about you. A lot of people are worried about you.”
Danny shrugged. “No reason to be.”
“You got into a fistfight.”
“No, I didn’t. I choked the bastard after he insulted Josefina. So I didn’t actually punch him.”
“I’m talking about Vic. You hit one of us—I mean, you. You hit another firefighter—”
“He was in my way—”
“—because he wouldn’t let you kill someone when you’d had six beers in sixty minutes.”
“I’m sober.”
“Not when you were strangling him. And if by some miracle your liver was able to process all that alcohol load by now, then you need to follow Mick’s example and go inpatient.” She shook her head. “Seriously, what the hell are you doing to yourself. You risked your life today at that fire. You blew off procedure—”
“Moose really needs to forget he knows you.”
“—and endangered yourself—”
“This coming from you?”
“—and nearly didn’t get out of there. All for a kid’s homework.” She put her palm up. “And don’t give me that holier-than-thou about how important it was to get it for her. That’s an excuse. If you’re looking to commit suicide, do your department a favor and just put a bullet in your head or hang yourself from the ceiling. But don’t do it on the job where every single man or woman on-site will feel like it’s their fault. That is not fair to them. It’s just not.”
There was a tense silence. And then his eyes dropped to her prosthesis.
As they lingered on the model of her hand, she shook her head. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you for a second use what happened to me as a justification for self-destructing. You do not get to do that.”
“You expect me to feel good about cutting your fucking arm off?”
“It was my wrist and hand, for one thing. And what I expect is for you not to pretend like it happened to you.” She held up the elephant in the room. “I have to live with this. I lost my career. I am having to reinvent myself. You, on the other hand, still have your life, your job, your friends, and your calling. You’ve got everything you had the moment you jumped into that stairwell. Nothing has changed for you.”
Danny straightened and walked toward her, his body filling the distance between the corridor’s walls. As he stopped in front of her, he swept his hard stare over her face. “I was buried under a thousand pounds of debris. I lost part of my colon, all of my spleen, and a quarter of my liver. Not as dramatic as a hand, granted, but as long as you’re bringing that kind of crap up, let’s be accurate. And how about you not tell me how I’m supposed to feel? Thanks for giving me the suicide tip, though. I’ll put it in my back pocket for later.”
The memory of him in that ICU room made her nauseous. “I’m not suggesting you weren’t hurt.”
“Oh, I guess I misunderstood the nothing-has-changed-for-you part. Sounded to me like you think it’s been a cake walk on my end. But yeah, I got that wrong. Clearly.” He leaned forward. “It’s not like I single-handedly maimed one of the best firefighters this city had and then spent three months trying to walk again. It’s not like I was stuck in the belly of the beast with you. It’s not like you and I were both surrounded by that fucking monster that’s been picking off members of our department one by one, year by year—”
“Shut up.”
As he recoiled, Anne took a step forward and lifted her chin. She was tall for a woman, but he still managed to dwarf her by a good six inches and more than a hundred pounds. Not that that his size advantage mattered when she was standing up for herself.
“You don’t get it.” She shook her head. “Fire isn’t a beast. It isn’t evil. It’s not an animal that prowls around and takes revenge for all of its buddies we’ve killed by extinguishing them. Jesus Christ, Danny.” She motioned to his tattoos. “You’re taking everything too personally—”
“What did you just say.”
“You heard me.”
“I—” He looked to the ceiling. “Wait, actually, this is a relief. Because the fact that you just told me I shouldn’t care about my friends and my family being killed in the line of duty means this is a fucked-up dream—”
“You’re wrong—”
He yelled over her. “—and I’m about to wake up hungover and pissed off that I have to go to work!”