Burned

Epilogue



FOUR MONTHS LATER…
I watch from across the room as Finnley chats to a group of people, smiling to myself as her hand comes up and tugs on her earlobe.
Quickly making my way over to her side, I wrap my hand around hers and bring it down between us.
“Calm down, you have no reason to be nervous,” I whisper in her ear.
She excuses herself from the group and tugs me a few feet away until we’re out of earshot of other people. “How in the hell did you know I was nervous?”
I smirk down at her and shake my head. “Baby, you always tug on your ear when you’re nervous. You did it right before the first time I kissed you at the end of tenth grade, when I stuck my hand down your pants three months later, five seconds before you gave me my first blow job and-”
“Alright, smartass, you made your point,” she tells me with a laugh, cutting me off. “What’s the deal with D.J. and Phina?”
Glancing in the direction where she’s looking, I see the two of them on the far side of the room, quietly arguing. Phina starts gesturing wildly with her hands and then D.J. points at her and says something that makes her face fall. I hold my breath, assuming he said something really stupid and she’s probably going to smack him across the face, but it never happens. She says one more thing to him and then turns and walks away. D.J. grits his teeth, shoves his hands in his pockets angrily and then storms off in the opposite direction.
I have no idea what the hell that was all about. D.J. hasn’t mentioned one word about Phina since that night at Slammers when he drunkenly made out with her at the table in front of everyone. I hope to God she doesn’t have some sort of misplaced infatuation with the guy. D.J. will never settle down, no matter how hot the girl is.
“Shit, I better go see what that was about,” Finnley states quietly, pulling away from me.
Grabbing her hand, I bring her back towards me. “Leave it alone for now, babe. This is your night and I don’t want anything ruining it. We’ll deal with those two later.”
She sighs, looking off in the direction Phina went for a few seconds before turning to face me. “Have you seen all the people who showed up tonight? This is insane.”
Her hand starts to move back up to her ear as she glances around the room but she quickly drops it when she realizes I’m watching her with a huge grin on my face.
“Can you be serious for one minute? Someone from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation is here tonight. The GUGGENHEIM, Collin, the f*cking Guggenheim in New York City! I think I’m going to throw up,” Finnley complains, pressing her hand to her stomach.
Wrapping my arms around her, I pull her close and kiss the top of her head. It’s almost hard to believe how much has happened since I first saw her again at Slammers all those months ago. After Finnley was released from the hospital a week after the fire, she moved into my house since there was nothing left of her own. While her burns healed, my broken leg mended and she dealt with the bullshit of filing the claims for her homeowner’s insurance, she poured herself into her art. She worked night and day on new pieces and, when I wasn’t helping her light them up in the backyard, she was curled up next to me on my couch coming up with new ideas in sketch pads.
I kept a close eye on her and swore to myself I wouldn’t let it get to me if she ever showed even an inkling of sadness about Jordan dying in the fire. Regardless of what he’d done and how close he came to bringing us both down with him, I would never fault her for her grief. Seventeen years is a long time to spend with someone and, even though it didn’t end well, I know she had many good years with him and a lot of memories that wouldn’t just disappear over night.
Every time she woke up screaming in the middle of the night, I’d kiss away her tears and hold her close. Each time she got quiet and stared off in the distance at nothing, I’d kiss the top of her head, reminding her how much I loved her and that I was right here if she needed me.
I didn’t agree with her decision not go to Jordan’s funeral, but it was hers to make and I didn’t pressure her. It’s not that I expected her to go and cry over his casket, I just didn’t want her to have any regrets. Even though she’s angry and hurt by what he’s done, I don’t want her to look back ten, fifteen, twenty years down the road and wish she’d said good-bye to him.
I hovered over her that entire day until she finally threw her sketchpad on the table and glared at me.
“If you don’t find something to do, I’m going to kick your ass. I’m fine, Collin. I have no regrets about not going to his funeral, I swear to you. I don’t need to go to that f*cking cemetery and pretend that I’m sad just because people say it will give me closure. I got my closure the day I filed for separation. I’m not going to waste one minute of my life mourning someone who tried to take you away from me.”
Seeing her attitude and fiery spirit come back to life was proof enough that she was going to be okay.
The shock came a month after the fire when I brought in the mail that included Finnley’s, since she had everything forwarded to my address. When I handed her an envelope with Jordan’s parent’s return address in the upper left hand corner, she opened it quickly and with confusion. When she pulled out the letter inside and read through it, she let out a small sob and her hand flew up to her mouth.
That was the one and only time she ever cried over Jordan Castillo and his family after he died. Even though he made her life hell off and on for seventeen years and came close to ending it with one swipe of a match and his mother did her best to make Finnley feel guilty for all of their problems, at least they did one thing right.
Inside the envelope was a letter from Mrs. Castillo. She said she wanted to tell Finnley this information at the funeral, but she understood why Finnley didn’t attend and thought it best to write to her instead of upsetting her with a phone call. The letter explained that they had filed a claim for Jordan’s life insurance policy and that as soon as it came in, every single penny of the $300,000 would be Finnley’s. With Jordan’s never-ending cycle of unemployment, Finnley had just assumed he’d stopped making the payments long ago and even if he’d kept up with them, the money wouldn’t go to her since she’d filed for divorce before the fire and his parents would most likely do everything in their power to keep her from it.
Mrs. Castillo explained that she and Mr. Castillo had covered Jordan’s payments when he couldn’t make them and never let the policy lapse. Finnley was pissed at first, figuring they were only doing this out of guilt because of what their son had done and that they never took her claims of addiction seriously. When I couldn’t get through to her that she should take the money, I brought in the big guns and called her mother over. It only took a few words from Finnley’s mom to convince her that she should let the Castillo’s do whatever they could to try and make things up to her. Losing a child would be bad enough, but knowing that he almost took several lives in the process would be pure agony. If giving her that insurance money eased some of their guilt, why shouldn’t Finnley benefit from it? She’d suffered enough at the hands of their son and it was time for her to live her life to the fullest.
With Finnley being off of work for so long to let her burns heal, her bills and those that Jordan left behind were quickly piling up. No matter how many times I told her not to worry about anything and that I would take care of her, she put her foot down. She spent too many years not standing up for herself and it was extremely hard for her to take any sort of handout, even if it was from me. She was fiercely independent and determined to take care of everything on her own and I can’t say that it didn’t make me love her even more than I already did. I just hated the fact that she was still stuck in the same place and not able to fully move forward with her life.
With that check and the chunk of change she got from her homeowner’s insurance, Finnley was able to pay off every single bill, quit her job and immediately enroll in art school. After a few weeks, her teachers were so impressed with her work that they invited her to showcase some of her art tonight at a local gallery. Every time I look around the room and see one of her gunpowder designs hanging on the walls, my chest swells with pride.
“I’ve got a great idea to get your mind off of the fact that there are fancy people looking at your art and thinking about buying it,” I tell her as she turns in my arms and slides her hands around my waist. “I saw an empty supply closet next to the bathroom a few minutes ago. How about we see if my twenty-second record can make it down to ten?”
She laughs in my arms and stands up on her toes to kiss my lips, peppering kisses along my cheek until she gets to my ear. She runs her tongue along my earlobe and I shiver, my dick hardening in my charcoal dress pants.
“Do you want to f*ck me in a supply closet, Mr. McDaniels?” she whispers in my ear.
My hands tighten on her hips and I pull her closer so she can feel how much I want to do just that. Turning my head, I whisper the same words I said to her that day outside of her office by the tree.
“You’re playing with fire, Lee.”
She takes a step back from me, reaching for my hand and tugging me across the room, right towards the supply closet.
“It’s a good thing we’re not afraid of a little fire then,” she tells me with a smile as she backs into the dark room and pulls me in behind her, flipping on the light as soon as we get inside.
I kick the door closed with my foot, wrap my arms around her waist and turn, pressing her back into the wall next to the door. She wraps her legs around my hips and I push myself against her.
Making quick work of the button and zipper of my pants, I free my cock and slide the thong she’s wearing under her dress to the side. In one quick thrust, I’m deep inside of her welcoming heat, right where I belong. She wraps her arms around my neck and locks her ankles together above my ass. As I begin a slow, pounding rhythm inside of her, my hand skims along her upper thigh. She winces in embarrassment and reaches down to try and remove my hand from her leg.
“The scars… don’t, they’re so ugly,” she whispers.
I hold myself still inside of her and look down at her thigh, puckered with scars where they took skin grafts for the patches of second-degree burns on her shins, calves and hips. Running the tips of my fingers all over the red marks on her skin, I lean forward and place a kiss on the tip of her nose.
“They aren’t ugly. Nothing about you is ugly, Lee. These scars are just proof that you’re a fighter and you survived. I’m never going to stop touching them and kissing them and being thankful every single day that you AND your scars are here with me, so you better get used to it.”
She cocks her head and smiles at me, wrapping her hands around the back of my neck and pulling me closer. “You’re crazy and I love you so much.”
I immediately start moving inside of her again, doing everything I can to make her forget her anxiety over wearing a dress for the first time since the fire and the fact that people are right now looking at her art and thinking about buying it to display in their own galleries.
She has no idea that my own anxiety is threatening to overwhelm me. As I slam in and out of her and bring my hand between our bodies to rub my fingers over her *, I try not to think about the items in the back pocket of my pants.
As she comes hard and fast around my cock and I follow quickly behind her, I try not to allow my nerves to get the better of me.
I make sure she doesn’t see the tension on my face as we right our clothes or feel how hard my hand shakes as I hold it against her lower back and lead her out the door and back into the main part of the gallery.
When we’re standing in front of the first design I ever watched her create, I quickly stop and turn around to face her.
“It seemed fitting to do this right here,” I tell her with a smile, tilting my head in the direction of the Japanese pagoda art piece that first brought us together so many years ago.
She looks at me in confusion as I grab both of her hands, rubbing my thumbs across the tops of them.
“Fire brought us together seventeen years ago and fire almost ripped us apart seventeen years later. It left behind a few burns and some scars that will never completely heal, but it didn’t destroy us. Nothing can destroy us, Finnley. It’s been seventeen weeks since I almost lost you. I can handle anything that life throws at me, but I can’t handle even a day without you by my side.”
Dropping one of her hands, I reach into my back pocket, pull out a folded piece of paper and hand it to her.
She takes it from my hands, wiping a few stray tears from her cheeks as she unfolds the paper. “If you’re breaking up with me right now, this is seriously the WORST break-up in the history of break-ups.”
I chuckle at her and shake my head. “Just read it.”
She looks away from me and stares down at the piece of paper. I can see the exact moment when she realizes what it is. Her mouth drops open and she gasps. With a little help from her parents and a lot of digging through their attic, they were able to help me put this together and do what I can to make up for the biggest mistake I’ve ever made. When she looks back up at me, I slowly get down on one knee and hold the other item from my pocket out in front of her: a black velvet box with the lid popped open so she can see the diamond ring nestled inside.
The note flutters to the ground as Finnley’s hands come up to either side of my face and she stares down at me with tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Yes! Absolutely, without a doubt, yes!” she exclaims with a watery laugh before she closes the distance between us and presses her lips to mine. I quickly stand and wrap my arms around her, the crowd that gathered around us erupting into cheers and applause. As I hold her close and we rock back and forth in each other’s arms, I glance down at the note on the floor and smile.




Note from the Author


THE STORY OF Burned is one that came to me in a dream. A dream that just wouldn’t let me go and continued to haunt my dreams for several nights in a row until I had to do something about it. Though the story of Burned is fictional, the bravery of Collin and every other real individual who fights fires for a living is true, as is the story behind the Maltese Cross that Collin has tattooed on his arm. I went on a tour of our local fire station and did an interview with a few of the men and to say I was overwhelmed by what they do is an understatement. Just wearing that air mask on my face for a few seconds was enough to throw me into a panic and want to rip it off. The fact that these men and women attach that to their face, add on twenty-five pounds of turn-out gear as well as strap a forty-pound air tank on their back and then voluntarily walk into a burning building just blows my mind.
If you know a fireman or woman, tell them thank you! The next time you’re stopped at a red light and you see one walking towards your car with a boot in their hand asking for donations, roll down your window and donate! If you’re ever invited to a spaghetti dinner to help raise funds for your local department—GO!
These men and women are heroes and I take my hat off to them.



Acknowledgements



FIRST AND FOREMOST, I’d like to thank Donna Soluri. Thank you for not wanting to cut me when I sent you eight million texts every single day about this story, and for being 100% on board with it when I told you about my dream. I can never thank you enough for your support and your faith in me.
To my beta readers: Stephanie Johnson, C.C. Wood and Michelle Kannan—I love your faces! I’m so sorry I made you read this a few chapters at a time, and yet, I’m not! Your text messages, PM’s, emails and suggestions made this story into what it is today and I felt less crazy about my obsession with it. Thank you from the bottom of my cold, dead heart.
To Nikki—Shush. I kid, I kid. Even though you call me a dork, I still love you and I thank you so much for the care you took with this story. Knowing that it was as important to you as it was to me made the editing process much less painful than normal.
To the men at the Carlisle Fire Station, especially Dave Keener and John Lauer—thank you for taking the time to explain everything to me, letting me take a ton of pictures and for your patience when I asked a million stupid questions. Thank you for letting me climb all over the trucks, handle all the tools and for forcing me to put that damn air mask on my face! Also, thanks for letting me play with the very awesome, very expensive thermal imaging camera.
To every single blog, fan, fellow author, family member and friend who shared the teasers and information about this story and who support everything I do– you are AMAZING! I would be nowhere without all of you and I thank you so much for going on these journeys with me each and every time.
To my core group of author friends—you know who you are. Thank you for keeping me sane.
To Niki Lasky and Tina Storrow– I’m so glad we’re related! I love you both and you have no idea what your support and understanding means to me. Actually, you probably do since we talk about it all the time!




About the Author

TARA SIVEC IS a USA Today best-selling author, wife, mother, chauffeur, maid, short-order cook, baby-sitter, and sarcasm expert. She lives in Ohio with her husband and two children and looks forward to the day when they all three of them become adults and move out.
After working in the brokerage business for fourteen years, Tara decided to pick up a pen and write instead of shoving it in her eye out of boredom. She is the author of the Playing with Fire series, the Chocolate Lovers series, the Chocoholics series, the Fool Me Once series and Watch Over Me. Her novel Seduction and Snacks won first place in the Indie Romance Convention Reader’s Choice Awards in 2013 for Best Indie First Book and her novel Love and Lists won first place first place in the same awards in 2014 for Best Humor Romance Book.
In her spare time, Tara loves to dream about all of the baking she’ll do and naps she’ll take when she ever gets spare time.