Page 31 of Combust (Everyday Heroes 2)
“It isn’t very interesting to watch.”
“I’d like to, though.” He scoots over before I consent and rests his back against the headboard. “I’ll close my eyes if that makes it easier. That way, I’m not really watching you.”
“Semantics,” I say with a laugh.
“Semantics are important.”
Our gazes hold for a moment before he makes a show of closing his eyes and leaning back on my pillows as if he’s settling in for the long haul.
“What does two-in, two-out, mean?”
I told myself I wasn’t going to ask him and yet there it is. Out in the open. Me and my big mouth.
The hand he’s bringing to put behind his head jerks momentarily, but he never opens his eyes. “Where’d you hear that?” His voice lacks all emotion.
“You yelled it last night in your sleep.”
His sigh fills the silence and weighs it down. I study him. The fan of lashes against his cheeks and the way he purses his lips.
“It’s just a saying I used to say to someone.” His eyes remain closed as I debate whether I should speak or let it go. “Technically it means that when two firefighters go into a building, two more remain outside to initiate a rescue just in case shit goes south. Two-inside, two-outside.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“But my old partner and I . . . we would say it to each other before we entered a fire. We used it to mean that the two of us were going in together, and the two of us were going to come out together, safe and sound. It was our way of saying we had each other’s back no matter the cost.” He pauses and his Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. “The rest of the crew used to razz us over it and say we sounded like an old married couple when we said it. That’s all. There’s nothing else to it.”
But the emotion swelling in his voice and the fact that he hasn’t opened his eyes at all says there’s so much more to the story.
“Grady . . .” Thanks for sharing. Who was your old partner? Is he the one your nightmares are about?
He clears his throat but doesn’t speak. As the silence stretches I battle my need to ask more, but figure I’ll leave it be. So I turn my focus to my work. To my notes and my guitar. And the moment I strum my fingers over its strings, the tension in Grady’s shoulders eases some.
Music is my therapy, so I offer the same to him.
I look at him often as I work through the lyrics. Words about love and loss pass over my lips, run through my head, and are jotted down, and yet, he’s the one I keep looking for a reaction from. His fingers thrumming to an imaginary beat he hears in my work the only response he gives.
I’m self-conscious at first, worried he’s judging me or laughing to himself as I repeatedly work through verses and chords. Then, after a while, I almost forget he is there—if you can forget a six-foot-plus man sitting on your queen-size bed as you work.
And who knows how much time passes before I look up from my guitar, lyrics on my lips, and find Grady’s eyes open and watching me. My words falter, but he shakes his head and tells me to continue. And so I sing and play and keep my gaze locked on his.
“Your tongue on my skin,
My head begins to spin.
Your heart in my hand,
Falling like endless quicksand.
Words are spun and lies are told,
But in the end it’s you I hold.”
The connection causes that ache in my lower belly to simmer to life. It’s sensual. It’s intimate. It’s as if he’s hearing the very inner workings of my mind and heart and soul, and as much as I tell myself I need to look away, I can’t.
“That one,” he murmurs when I finish. “I like that verse better.”
My pulse pounds in my ears. How can he hear anything when my heart is beating so loudly I can’t even hear myself?
“Why?”
