Page 67 of Starting Back
A laugh escaped me. “So people keep telling me.”
“People are wise,” Jake said, his brows raised.
“But it’s not just me that I have to worry about.” My eyes drifted to Emma. “In Florida, things were a lot simpler. I’m a package deal in Kelly Lakes.” I sputtered out a laugh.
“I remember someone telling me that when I found the one, she’d be good for both Mike and me.” He leaned back and crossed his arms. “It was one of the few times in our lives I was happy to admit you were right.”
I nodded, remembering the very night I’d said those words. I was trying to push Jake to take a chance with the woman he wasn’t supposed to fall for, while I was still entrenched in saving a miserable marriage for the sake of my girls.
Every date I forced myself on was doomed before it started because they didn’t measure up to the idea of Leo. Now that I could have the real thing, all I did was fight it.
Who knew getting exactly what you wished for was so damn terrifying?
TWENTY-FIVE
LEO
“Wow, this is a lot of food,” I mused, taking in the tower of various canned goods, boxes of cereal and pasta, and packages of baby food and formula.
“This isn’t even half of what we’ll get,” our captain, Vic, said as we tried to clear a path inside the firehouse through the growing pile. “Kelly Lakes may be small, but we show up for our own, especially on holidays. On Thanksgiving Day, the restaurants donate hot food too. Wait until the festival. All those businesses will fill up the whole damn truck with food.”
It wasn’t the first fire department food drive I’d been involved in, but Thanksgiving was still two weeks away and we were already receiving donations in droves.
“I guess you’ve lived here your whole life, too.”
Vic laughed. He was in his sixties but was in better shape than any of us. His grandkids stopped by the station all the time.
“I have. It’s small enough to get a little claustrophobic at times, I grant you, but I never wanted to live anywhere else. I’m sure it’s an adjustment for you.”
“I grew up in a small town, a long time ago.” I laughed, covering up the pang at how long ago it really was. The strong sense of community here reminded me of the neighbors we used to know.
My parents loved to get involved in all the local events, and everyone would beg my mother to cook rabo encendido.We were the only Dominican family in town, and Mom’s oxtail stew was considered a local delicacy.
The entire town had piled into the funeral home to express their condolences and love for my parents. Everything after their death and before I moved in with my aunt and uncle was a blur. Since arriving here, the memories I would always bury before they’d surface hit me from all directions and I couldn’t stop them.
The town my aunt and uncle had lived in was small but bigger than where I was originally from. I didn’t get to know the residents that well over the two years I’d lived with them, and I was never back long enough after that to create any kind of attachment.
After moving from place to place to avoid attachments for most of my life, I’d ended up in a town built on roots and entanglements.
“I would never have left the Keys,” Bobby, one of the other lieutenants, said. “You could have stayed on the beach with no one in your business.” He snickered as he piled some of the goods into a cardboard box.
I nodded, not wanting to get into how empty that was after a while, despite how enticing he imagined it to be.
“There she is,” Bobby said as he glanced over my shoulder. “The love of my life.”
“Ugh, please stop that.”
I froze, whipping my head around to Kristina’s voice. She didn’t notice me as she carried two large boxes over to the piles of food we were stacking in a corner.
She stood, stumbling for a moment when she noticed me.
“Oh hey, Leo,” she said, breathless as she set her hands on her hips. Her chestnut hair was pulled back in a ponytail, the loose strands falling over her face and accentuating her delicate cheekbones. She still took my breath away, and it was impossible to hide it.
“I’m in charge of delivering the donations from Emma’s school this year. I’m sure there’ll be more, but I don’t have the room on my garage floor to keep piling them, so I’m just bringing it all straight here.”
“Why didn’t you text me to come to help you?” Bobby crooned, the lilt in his voice combined with how he gave her body an obvious perusal when she turned around filling me with a white-hot rage that I could do nothing about.
It wasn’t as if she was mine and I could tell him to back the fuck off. That night I claimed her in front of the jerk at the bar flashed in my mind, but if I brought her into my arms and kissed her now, she wouldn’t be so pliable and willing.
