Chapter Twenty-six
Megan had her arms tightly wrapped around Gabe and with her hands spread out over his chest, she could feel his heart beating, hard, steady.
She hadn’t come to him this morning for sex, hadn’t come simply to scratch the itch that only he could reach.
The truth was that she’d come for this connection.
For more happiness than she’d ever thought was possible.
For love.
“Gabe?”
“Mmm?”
He brushed the damp hair from her forehead and pressed a kiss to her skin. She loved his easy affection, that he wasn’t a man who felt he needed to hold anything back to be macho or manly. Not for the first time, she was struck by how well his mother had raised her sons. Yes, many of them were clearly big-time players with the ladies, but she couldn’t imagine any one of them purposely hurting a woman.
And, from meeting Chase and Marcus, she could see that once they fell in love, it really was forever. Chloe and Nicola were clearly the center of Gabe’s brothers’ worlds. She had a hunch about Chloe, one she hoped she was right about. It would be so lovely to be able to hold—and spoil—a little baby in the not-so-distant future.
As she luxuriated in the warm caress of Gabe’s eyes on her, the vision of Chloe and Chase’s baby morphed into something different. Something that should have frightened her even more...but only sent more joy moving through her, instead.
Gabe would be the most incredible father. He was already one of Summer’s favorite people on the planet. But Megan was getting ahead of herself.
First he needed to know how she felt about him.
“There’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you.”
“I can’t wait to hear it, sweetheart.”
Megan was silent for a moment as she marveled at being this lucky, that Gabe had been the one to find her and Summer in their burning apartment, that they’d connected afterward and found such amazing sparks, that they’d managed to work through their issues and...
“I tried to make myself stay away from you, to keep you at arm’s length, to keep you from getting too close to me and Summer. But I’ve come to realize that even if I succeeded in keeping my distance from you, even if I told you I couldn’t be with you anymore, it wouldn’t protect me. Not in the least. Because I’d still be scared every time I turned on the news and heard reports of a big fire. And I’d still die inside if anything happened to you.” She hated to even think it, let alone say the words, but she knew she needed to. “I’ve come to realize that pushing you away won’t protect anyone’s heart. All it guarantees is that I’ll miss out on the joy of being with you.”
This was it, this was the big moment when she would finally tell him, “I—”
His cell went off just then, a special ring, and although he was clearly frustrated by the interruption, he reached out to grab his phone from the table beside the bed.
“What does that ring mean?”
“It’s an urgent fire call.” His frown deepened with every word he read.
She sat up in bed, pulling the covers over her naked skin as if that would somehow protect her from what was happening. “It’s a bad one, isn’t it?”
He nodded, already moving from the bed to put on his clothes. “A truck potentially carrying hazardous materials crashed into several stores in Chinatown.”
Oh God, she thought. It’s a sign.
It had to be.
All the fears she thought had been loved into submission raised their heads and called out to her, screaming for her to listen, to heed their warnings.
What, they screeched at her, are you doing? You can still run to safety, before it’s too late.
She’d been lulled into thinking she could be in a serious relationship with him, that she could accept the fear of losing Gabe, but now she realized why. He hadn’t been called in to any fires while they’d been together...and she’d purposely kept from asking him about what happened during his shifts because she’d known she couldn’t have handled hearing about any dangerous situations.
And here she’d just been about to confess her love to him.
He was fully clothed within seconds and moving back to where she was frozen on the bed. “Megan? Sweetheart?”
She shifted in Gabe’s arms, moved back toward the headboard, away from him. “Your crew needs you. The people in the burning buildings need you. You need to go.” Her words came out harsher than she wanted them to, even as her heart was screaming, I need you, too.
But instead of leaving, Gabe put his hands on either side of her face. “I love you, Megan.”
He kissed her softly and when he lifted his mouth from hers, she knew what he was waiting for. It was her turn to say the words, to admit just how much she cared about him. It was what she’d been on the verge of doing a split second before the urgent call came in.
But she still couldn’t do it, not when fear for him was eating her up from the inside out.
No matter how much she wanted to, she couldn’t stop him from going to the fire. Chaining him to her and Summer, forcing him to live a “safe” life, would kill him inside faster than a fire ever could.
His cell went off again and she hugged him tight, then forced herself to push all the way out of his arms and let him go do his job.
“You need to go,” she said again, her brain stuck in an infinite loop of dread, of dark premonition.
Gabe stared at her for a long moment, everything he felt for her in his eyes. “You’re right, I need to go now and fight this fire, but I promise I’ll come back to you. To Summer.”
She shook her head. It was hard to breathe. “How can you make me that promise?”
He moved closer again, took his hands in his, laid them over his heart. “Have I ever broken a promise to you, Megan?”
“No.”
“I’m not going to break it now.”
With a final kiss, his mouth warm on her suddenly cold one, he was gone.
* * *
As Gabe drove to the location of the fire, he knew he had never loved anyone the way he loved Megan. And Summer, too. He wanted them both in his life. He wanted to be a husband to Megan and a father to Summer.
He’d long ago let go of his concerns about dating a fire victim. Megan was so much more than that, and the truth was, he had never really been able to think of her in those terms. She was the antithesis of a victim.
He’d thought Megan was moving past her own concerns, that she was getting used to the idea of his job. But the way she’d just reacted to the fire call...well, she was clearly still fighting those demons her husband had left her with.
Still, hadn’t Gabe purposely kept some of the more extreme fires he’d been to from her? Not because he liked keeping her in the dark, but because he didn’t think it was fair to shove it all down her throat at once. Judging by her reaction to this fire, he wanted to tell himself he’d done the right thing by keeping from her the truth of the danger he faced on a regular basis.
But, he suddenly realized, he hadn’t been fair to Megan by protecting her from the reality of a future with him. Didn’t she deserve to have all the data at hand before she agreed to love him back?
His gut twisted at the way she’d told him to go, at the uncertainty in her previously clear eyes as she looked at him as if her heart were breaking.
Able to see the smoke from several blocks away, Gabe drove in as close as he could before grabbing his gear from the bed of his truck, and walking straight toward the fiery mess in the center of Chinatown.
Gabe could hear gas screaming from the ruptured pipes of the gas main the truck had slammed into right before it hit the buildings on the east side of Grant Street. The crew from Engine 5 was already streaming water to disperse the gas to make sure it didn’t ignite.
Quickly noting the crew had been too busy with the gas leak and the building’s occupants to lay a supply line around to the narrow alley between buildings, he grabbed the hydrant valve, hose from the nearest engine, and laid in the line.
His captain arrived with his partner, Eric, just a step behind him. “Let’s see if we can save some of these stores.”
Gabe grabbed tools and the hose line, put on his face piece, and pulled up his hose. He took the nozzle with Eric backing him up and advanced into the building. Turning into the doorway, he opened the nozzle at the ceiling until the flames subsided.
He didn’t have any ventilation and the smoke was thick, thick enough that he dropped to his knees to crawl across the room to a window. He got it open but, unfortunately, it didn’t make much of a difference.
Slowly, he moved forward into the building, the hose leading the way, Eric at his back.
The situation was bad. Really bad.
But he’d made Megan a promise, damn it.
And he had to keep it.
No matter what.