Not Just Friends (Hot in the City #3) - T. Gephart Page 0,63
I was so excited, the smile so wide on my face I was probably going to develop laugh lines. I didn’t even care, squealing and dancing in the wide space of my living area with a feeling of happiness so huge I thought my heart might burst.
And that was it, wasn’t it.
I was happy.
Not just content, but happy, all the pieces of my life finally falling into place all at the same time. And it wasn’t the job and the new expansion, or that I’d proved I didn’t need to be a forty-year-old man to be successful. It was that I had that, and finally someone who was worthy to share it with.
Jared.
God, I’d always thought he was just the guy I had a crush on, wanting to sleep with him because he was my older brother’s hot best friend. The forbidden fruit. And even though the sex had been beyond anything I could’ve imagined, he was sooooo much more.
He was kind and gentle, and never once told me I should do something else. Hell, it couldn’t be easy for him, us spending almost every night at the club instead of doing fun stuff like other couples. We’d barely even dated, catching a lunch or dinner either in between my schedule or his. Not a lot of guys would put up with that. In fact, the long list of my ex-boyfriends was pretty much the testimony.
But he was different, and when I got my good news, he’d been the first person I’d wanted to tell. Not Bennett or Raelle. Not even my parents or Justin.
Nope, it was him.
The guy who I could let into my heart and trust not to break it.
The guy who had been there all along.
Jared
COLLISION.
A family sedan had played chicken with a semi just outside the Lincoln Tunnel.
We’d responded, expecting the worst, the scene the kind of stuff nightmares were made of.
“Get the kids,” yelled Cap, a toddler and a baby still strapped to their car seats were crying in the back. The mother was unconscious, trapped behind the steering wheel, the hood of her car wedged under the grill of the truck.
Rev and North took the front, using the piston-rod hydraulic Hurst, most people knew as the jaws of life. We had no idea if she was still breathing, our priority, getting the kids out of the car ASAP and I could already smell gasoline.
“Locked,” Tibbs cursed, the door not budging.
I shook my head, pointing to the front passenger side. “Smash the front, it’s too risky to do the back.” He nodded, popping out the front passenger side window, giving us enough access to reach the central locking.
“Mommy,” howled a little girl, her face stained by endless tears as she reached out in fear. “Mommmmmyyyyyyyy.”
There was no time to get emotional, our objective to secure the two kids while the others took care of their mother. Cranking open the door, I reached inside, doing a quick visual check for injuries before cutting loose the tethers for the car seats. With no idea what we were dealing with—and until one of the EMTs could make sure one or both hadn’t snapped their spinal cord—we were moving them as little as possible.
“Take the baby,” I hollered at Tibbs, the smallest of the two screaming so loud he or she was literally gasping for air. “I’ll grab the other.”
We each took a kid, ripping their seats out from the back and carrying them away from the wreck. The driver of the semi was already out, dazed and in severe shock.
Darcy, one of the EMTs, took the toddler while Cole took the baby. Both were doing their best to calm the kids while North and Rev were getting closer to slicing a hole into the car’s metal.
We’d barely left the kids when Cap yelled, “Get some foam down on that gas,” the small leak of gasoline quickly spilling onto the street. All it would take was one fucking spark and the whole thing would go from a really bad accident to a fucking disaster, so we wasted no time in getting the AFFF out and smothering it.
North got the ram, using it to push the dash back so they could finally get to the mom. She wasn’t breathing, North starting CPR the minute she was on the ground, yelling for the EMTs.
McGee was at his side, bagging her while North continued with compressions, not stopping until she finally gave a cough.