Things You Save in a Fire - Katherine Center Page 0,59
was a little teasing. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
I was mad, and the teasing made me madder. “I’m serious.”
“We’ll figure this out.”
“How?” I demanded. “You said we wouldn’t get caught!”
“We won’t!”
“Hello!” I said. “The captain just saw us!”
“But there’s no way he recognized you.”
“Why?”
“Trust me,” Owen said. “You look nothing—at all—like you do at the station.”
Was that an insult or a compliment? I frowned. “I’m recognizable, though. I’m not in a clown suit.”
“Whatever he saw out there, it wasn’t Hanwell the firefighter.”
“What did he see?”
“He saw me holding a sexy drunk girl who was all legs and hair.”
“I’m not drunk!” I blinked. “Or sexy!” Did he just call me sexy?
“That’s my point. That girl out there was the opposite of you.”
Guess not. “Thanks.”
Owen had already shifted into problem-solving mode. “There are a million ways to get you out of here. We just have to take a second to think it through.”
I didn’t want to have to solve this problem. “What was I thinking coming here?” I demanded into the darkness. “This was the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.”
“You were helping me out,” Owen said.
But I was just getting started. “I knew this place would be lousy with firefighters. Even if the captain wasn’t coming, there was no way we weren’t going to get caught somehow, by somebody. I knew that, but I came anyway. My captain in Austin specifically told me not to do this. Of all the ten thousand things I was not supposed to do, this—right here—was number one! But here I am, like a chump. Sabotaging everything I’ve ever worked for. I’ve never even been kissed, and now I’m going to get fired for sleeping with a rookie!”
The rookie held very still. “Wait. You’ve never been kissed?”
I gave an angry sigh. Tried to think of a way to backtrack. Then gave up. “Not properly.”
“How is that possible?”
“I’ve been busy, okay? I’ve been working.”
“Yeah, but—no one’s that busy.”
Silence.
“What?” I said.
“Nothing.”
“What?” I demanded, stepping closer. My eyes had adjusted now. I could see him.
“It’s just,” he said, shaking his head like he was trying to shake the idea out, “hearing that makes me want to kiss you.”
“Don’t kiss me,” I said, pushing him by the chest back up against the closet wall. Our faces were just inches apart. I stood my ground.
Was I trying to put out a fire? Or trying to make it worse?
I should step back, I thought. But I didn’t.
“I will get you out of here,” the rookie said then. “I promise.”
And that’s when I kissed him.
He was startled but not too startled. In a flash, his arms were around me and he was kissing me right back—and not just with his mouth, with his whole body: arms, legs, shoulders, hands. He leaned into that kiss so hard that we stumbled backwards and bumped against the back wall of the closet. Then he was pressing against me, running his hands all over that silk hankie dress, and up my shoulders, and behind my neck, and into my hair—and I was doing all the equivalent things right back.
It was like a wave crashing.
And I got swept right in.
Is it too dramatic to say time stopped?
Because time stopped.
Maybe kisses are special for everybody, I don’t know.
But this was my first one.
My first good one, anyway.
When the rookie’s mouth touched mine, somehow everything in me that had been aching—for years, it seemed, now that I noticed—got soothed.
I felt some new kind of joy that I’d never felt before.
Was this what love was?
I had no idea.
I did know that this kiss, this moment right here, was something special. I’d seen and done and felt a lot of amazing things in my twenty-six years. But nothing like this.
The rookie slowed down but pressed closer. I tightened my arms around his neck. I touched my fingers to the velvety hair at the back of his head. I slowed down, too. Savoring. Relaxing into the moment.
He was kissing me. And I was kissing him back.
Impossible. But true.
Somehow we slid against the closet door, and he pressed up against me and brought his leg between mine, wedging us together in a way that made every cell in my body hum. I started melting like a stick of butter in a hot pan. I just dissolved into him and gave in to all of it—all this amazing, heart-thumping, breathless goodness.
This was what I’d been missing. All this time. Huh.
The thing that would astonish me later, looking back, was that nothing was bad.