Page 43 of Found Through Fire

Willow opens her door and climbs out of the car, and I can tell that the pain in her side is really starting to get to her. She reaches for the bags in the trunk that she loaded before we left this morning. She takes one, and I huff out my frustration as I cut her off, grabbing her three remaining bags. She looks at me with a raised brow, and I jerk my head towards the plane, wanting her to get on it and leave the luggage to me. She just shrugs and walks to the plane with the one bag that I let her take.

The flight attendant—Tom? Or Tim? I don’t really care—takes the bag and smiles down at her. I realize that he is one of the dumbasses that worships the ground she walks on, giving in to her princess behavior.

When I’m done loading the rest of the bags onto the plane, I walk into the cabin and see her laying on her side as Tim-Tom is trying to clean her wound. She hisses in pain, and I’m moving to her without even realizing it. It’s a normal response, seeing as I am her “spotter” on this trip, and her safety is part of my job.

“You’re done,” I bark at Tim in a tone that leaves no room for argument while grabbing the cloth he was using to clean the wound from his hand. On the floor next to her is an open first aid kit. I look on the couch next to her and see the supplies that were taken out, and pick up where he left off.

“He could have done it. He’s stitched me up before—” Willow starts, but it ends on another hiss when I continue to clean it.

“I have more experience with patching people up,” I say, not giving any more information than needed.

“It’s not that bad. I just needed help cleaning it since it’s in an awkward place for me to do myself,” she says as she shrugs her shoulders and closes her eyes. I keep cleaning it in silence; the only sound in the cabin is the sound of her taking deep breaths to help ease the pain. The captain waits until we’re done before taking off.

“When are you taking another job?” I ask when the silence becomes too much for me. I’m not sure why, but seeing her in pain is starting to bug me, so I spark the conversation to try and distract her. She peeks out of one of her closed eyes at me, probably to see if I’m really trying to talk to her. I know I have been standoffish, but she shouldn’t be this wary.

“Not for a while. I wasn’t going to take this one in the first place because of how behind I am with work, but when it involves a woman or child, I tend to push it to the top of my list,” she replies as she talks to the ceiling instead of me.

“So, this isn’t your only job?” I ask, curious now. I thought that Michael paid for everything when she is between jobs.

“Nope,” she says, not elaborating. Why does she have to be so irritating?

“I’m assuming that the jobs make decent money. I thought you wanted to stay out of Vital. Why not just stop altogether and get a job that is less reckless? One where your family doesn’t have to worry about you every fuckin’ second that you are gone?” I ask, and even I can hear the irritation coming out of my voice that I am trying to hold back, thinking about how selfish she’s being. This is why no woman will come close to Addison. She was the most gentle, selfless woman that I have ever encountered.

“You’re still new around here, so I won’t hold what you just said against you. You don’t know how our family is or what we have been through,” she answers in her irritated voice that she only seems to ever have directed towards me.

“I’m just failing to see how you came to the conclusion that this is what you should be doing. Your brothers told me about your kidnapping, and it sucks, but that should have been something that you moved on or grew from. Not throw yourself back into danger every chance that you get,” I accuse, trying to rein in my temper.

She goes quiet for a few minutes, and I figure I pissed her off again so much that she’s done responding. Then, all of a sudden, she starts speaking.

“When I was four, I was diagnosed with cancer, and I fought it for years. I hated what was happening to me, and I hated the pain that I saw in my family’s eyes every time they came to see me. It was hard and painful for me, but I knew that it was so much worse for them because they had to watch it. I remember being scared all day every day. I guess the treatment ended up working after a few years, because they said it was gone. All of it.

“I changed a lot when I was able to come home. Everyone thought that I was never leaving the hospital from the conversations that I heard between my parents when they thought I was asleep. When I just wanted to give up and stay in my room, my dad had me start training, and it started to give me some routine that I could fall into after my life had been a guessing game for the last few years. Two years after I was in remission, I got kidnapped. I loved the feeling—not so much the killing people. I actually feel indifferent about that. But the fact that I was able to save someone that needed it, and myself in the process.

“Not long after that, we found out the cancer came back, but this time it was so much worse. I went back to being scared allthe time. I was older the second time around, so I figured out the stuff that my parents were able to hide from me the first time, like how bad everything actually was. It was close the second time. So close that I accepted that I was going to die and waited for it with open arms, but it never came. A person changes somewhere in between being scared to die every day to taking comfort in the fact that it will happen. This transition lasted two years for me. When they told me that I beat it,again, I was never the same.

“My parents put me in therapy, but I already made up my mind that while I would never willingly leave my family. I am at peace with the fact that it will happen. I decided that I spent so much time being scared of everything: scared of dying, scared of my family’s pain if they lost me, and, at the end, scared of living. I didn’t want to be scared anymore. I wanted to be scary instead. In my mind, it was ‘safe.’ I wanted to be the scariest thing in the room, and what is scarier than death to people that haven’t faced it before?

“So, I started taking jobs every now and then. My dad set rules. I know it helps him not to worry so much, so I don’t mind.”

She ends her story as I put on the final bandage. I wish I didn’t, because she was finally making sense to me. But when she was finally all cleaned up, she sat up on the couch.

“Thank you for helping. I’m going to grab some clothes to change into, then we can take off.” She gets up and starts to walk to the bedroom in the back of the plane.

I’m starting to get why everyone is obsessed with her. She seems more concerned about everyone else than of herself. I still think that her being in this field of work is unnecessary and reckless, but after the way my head was fucked up after my life went to shit, I can slightly get what she wanted to do. I guess damaged people can understand each other.

A few minutes later, she comes out wearing a giant hoodie that is so big on her, you can’t see the shorts she probably has on under it. Why can’t she just wear normal fucking clothes? I started to notice her toned, short legs more and more over the two weeks of living with each other. I haven’t noticed another woman since I lost Addison, and I’m not planning to act on it. I got so irritated with the clothes that she would strut around the way-too-small house in, I started spending most of the time in my room after we ate dinner together.

I’m not sure why I’m so irritated when Willow is around. Realistically, I know that she just goes off how I treat her, but to see her give a smile and laugh, and have a conversation with every man at Vital—even the old retired guys that still hang around for some reason—annoys me.

Everyone acts like she’s the center of Vital; I know that her and her brothers grew up with most of the men, but why is she close with the newer guys? I wonder how many of them she has gone through. With how much they worship her, I’m guessing she earned the attention. What if we were in a situation, and everyone was more concerned with her and getting their dick wet? What about all of the shit it will start among the men when jealousy kicks in? But at the end of the day, that’s her dad’s issue to deal with, not mine.

CHAPTER 17

FLAME

Two weeks. For two fuckin’ weeks, Willow has been in another country, and I have slowly been losing my goddamned mind. I know she’s alive, but only because Smoke has been texting her since she left. I know it from the scraps of information he’s been throwing me the few times I was able to ask him about her, without tipping him off about my small obsession with his new sister. He already asked me about how I acted when I first met her, but I brushed it off, saying that I wanted her to feel “welcomed to the family.”

That was the closest that I ever came to lying to Smoke. I need to know her better, but that’ll take time if I have to do it without going through him to get her number. I need to know if she was being safe while working her job. I need to know if the asshole that was waiting for her on the plane treated her with the respect that my woman deserves. I need to figure out if she’s single; I mean, it wouldn’t matter, really. I would just let any boyfriend know that it would be in his best interest to stay the fuck away.