Page 35 of Combust (Everyday Heroes 2)
“No, I can’t. It’s just terrible.”
She loads a gallon of milk and a bunch of bananas on the conveyor belt behind my order. “Grant said he’s been doing better lately. I’m thinking that’s because of you.”
“I can’t take any credit. I haven’t done—”
“Oh, shush.” She swats at my arm. “If I was doing a Malone man, I’d declare it outright. Wave a flag over my head. Write it in smoke signals. Girl, you want to claim him fast before someone else does. If they do, I have a feeling they’ll never let go.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I say as I laugh and hand the clerk money for my groceries.
“Well, you keep that man of yours happy, and I’ll stay over here and keep dreaming about one for myself.”
“There’s always Grayson.”
She licks her lips and rubs her hands together. “I think I kind of scare him.” She laughs and waves her hand. “I’m a bit forward if you couldn’t tell.”
“Didn’t notice,” I joke as I grab my three bags. “Nice to meet you, Desi.”
With that, I leave the store, my mind buzzing about Grady Malone, my curiosity growing by the second. I think about him all the way home. The burns. How he couldn’t save his best friend. The emotional scars I’ve seen. The gruff exterior hiding them.
Every part of me rails against searching Google, but the first thing I do when I walk in the door is drop the groceries on the counter and head for my laptop.
I can’t resist.
I search Grady Malone and Sunnyville, finding page after page of accolades and charitable deeds by the youngest of the Malone boys. There are a few articles on the trouble he got into as a teen, but it’s the newspaper articles from two years ago that have me catching my breath.
“Tragic Loss of one of Sunnyville’s Finest.”
“Today we are a city in mourning,” says Mayor Dan Jensen.
Tragedy struck the Sunnyville Fire Department last night in the four-hundred block of Crosby Court. Firefighters entered the engulfed Cooper Warehouse to check for occupants and knock down possible internal accelerants. During the search, a section of compromised ceiling fell, trapping firefighters Grady Malone and Drew Brooks inside the building. Despite t
he efforts of fellow firefighters, they were unable to reach them in time. Drew Brooks succumbed to the injuries he sustained from the fire. Grady Malone remains in Sunnyville General Hospital, where he is receiving treatment for third-degree burns to his back.
The cause of the fire is still under investigation.
Drew Brooks leaves behind a wife and three-year-old son. Services for him will be announced at a later time.
I stare at the article from two years ago, my mind filling in assumptions that only answers from Grady can confirm. I click on the next article, which is about the funeral service, and then the next, which is an update on Grady’s condition. One about the cause of the deadly fire—inconclusive. And yet another with a picture of Grady leaving the hospital with his brothers on either side of him and a man, who I can only assume is his father, pushing his wheelchair.
The nightmares make sense now. The words he shouts. The groans of agony. The discomfort with his scars. The glassy-eyed fear he wakes up with that takes time to clear away.
The little boy and the woman from the farmers’ market—Drew’s wife and son.
I immediately feel like an ass for the conclusions I jumped to. My unfounded anger at Grady for not owning up to having a child. My distrust of men rearing its ugly head from both my father’s and Jett’s betrayal.
Lesson learned. Irrationality stemmed.
The scanner goes off. I jump at the sound and reach to turn the volume down, but it only serves to reinforce the magnitude of what Grady’s been through and how much he masks. Putting myself in his shoes, I understand the dark moments that glance through his eyes. His use of his sexuality to avoid talking about anything to do with it. The survivor’s guilt that most nights I’m sure wages war against the memories competing for which one gets to take the biggest bite of him.
My stomach churns, and my heart hurts for him. Feeling like I’ve betrayed him by searching, I close my laptop but the pictures of Drew and Grady that accompanied the articles remain fresh in my mind.
Needing something to busy my hands as I process his hurt, I head for the kitchen and begin to unload groceries. With a quick check of the clock, I know I have about an hour before he’ll be home from helping his brother. The least I can do is make him a nice meal as an apology for a judgment I passed on him that he knows nothing about.
“You really should lock your doors, you know.”
The voice stops me in my tracks. That voice. The one that owned my thoughts and heart for over two years.
My heart wrings. My spine stiffens. “I’d only lock them to keep you out, and since I wasn’t expecting you, I didn’t think I had to. Don’t worry, as soon as you leave, I’ll run out and buy padlocks.”
