and deserved to know the truth about why, no matter how painful.
He would have chosen a hundred different places or times to do this. He should have done it somewhere else when he had the chance. Since he hadn’t, he could only think of one private spot where they might have a few undisturbed moments—his office.
He gestured to the front of the fire station, with a small reception area and his office leading off it.
She followed him as if in a daze. Cooper felt a tight pressure in his chest, as if he were inside his mask without the oxygen hooked up.
She pushed the door closed behind her. “Tell me what happened that night,” she demanded. “What really happened.”
He leaned against the desk, wishing he could take her in his arms, more for his sake than hers.
“Tell me the truth.”
He was silent, the words catching in his throat like creosote. “I was looking for a...friend that night. This friend was going through a hard time. I was worried she was...suicidal because of something that had happened to her a few weeks earlier. When she didn’t answer my text that night, I went looking for her. I knew she and some friends had broken into the house a few times to party, so I thought that’s where she might have gone. Turns out she did, but she had someone with her. A guy I didn’t know. A tourist, I think. She wasn’t suicidal. They were smoking weed and fooling around. I...tried to get her to leave but she wouldn’t. Since she didn’t seem in imminent danger, I left, feeling stupid for trying to help.”
“Sounds to me like you weren’t stupid. You were worried about a friend.”
She was trying to comfort him, despite everything. That was simply the woman she was. How the hell was he supposed to resist her?
“I left and went to the grocery store. On my way back home, I saw smoke and flames pouring out of the upper windows, where they had been. I called in for help, reporting there might be people inside. The dispatcher told me it would be at least eight minutes before the first engine could reach the scene and I was afraid that would be too late. I knew I had to go look. If she...if they were both stoned, they might not wake up. I should have waited for the engine, but I couldn’t stand by.”
He could so vividly remember the heat and the flames and the fear as he had tried to explain to the dispatcher that he thought people might have been in there earlier.
After waiting a few minutes, he couldn’t stand by another second. He had hung up, had poured water on his T-shirt and had rushed inside, using all the training he’d picked up along the way as a junior EMT and first responder, which hadn’t been nearly enough.
He had made his way upstairs through the heat, calling out without an answer. In a very short time, he knew the house was empty and that he’d risked his life for nothing. Then he heard Steve Harper call his name.
“I was sick that Steve had come in after me. I yelled at him that I couldn’t see or hear anyone else, that I thought the building was clear. We were both on our way out when...when it happened.”
He still had nightmares about it, still sometimes cried out in his sleep until he was hoarse, begging Steve to go back.
She looked pale and he could see her knuckles were white where she clutched them together. He didn’t want to tell her but she deserved to know the truth. It seemed wrong to keep it from her, especially with these growing feelings between them.
“By then the stairs were on fire. He yelled at me to go down first, probably worried it wouldn’t hold both of us. I made it, barely. As soon as I reached the bottom, he started down, but he only took a few steps before...”
“Before the stairs collapsed.”
She said the words flatly, without emotion, though he could see the stark grief in her eyes and had to grip his hands tightly at his sides to keep from reaching for her. Not yet, until he finished.
“The ceiling above gave way first and the weight of that collapsed the stairs. Your dad... I saw the beam hit him as he went down.”
“You pulled him out.”
“I couldn’t leave him there. He shouldn’t have been inside in the first place. That’s on