Kade's Rescue (Detroit Heat Book 1) (8 page)

She pointed past me and added, “Are you all right? Do you want me to call 911?”

Marco.

Hearing that only made things worse. The last thing I needed was for some of my friends to show up. I knew paramedics and firefighters in nearly every district. If word got out, I could never work again.
 

“No! I’m fine. I just need some air.” I should have turned back to the table, but I just didn’t have it in me. Fight or flight had kicked in and there were no enemies to fight, only the ones inside my head. I had to run, even though I knew I wasn’t going to escape.

I pushed through the door and felt the night air on my face. I realized I was drenched in sweat and the air felt downright chilly. Standing at the curb, I spotted a cab and threw my hand up, praying that he’d stop.
I’ll pick my car up some other time.
There was no way in hell I could have driven home.

Marco.

“Is he all right?” The waiter stared over his shoulder as Kade made his way back inside the restaurant.
Great fucking question.

For reasons unknown to me at the time, I decided to cover for him. Trying to give the waiter my best polite smile, I said, “Yeah, he just needs a minute.”

My heart sank to the ground. Kade had gone from a sweet and charming man to an utter disaster in a split second. I sat staring at the empty chair, my mouth open just a little bit. In my head I was screaming, but on the outside I was frozen stiff.

The waiter didn’t know what to do, “Um… I’ll just come back, then.” He walked away. I was sure there were others on the outside patio watching, but I couldn’t see them. Still staring at the empty chair, I grabbed my purse and dug out my phone.

Before I stood up, I sent a text to Shatrice.
Somehow my new worst date.

I stood up, trying to ignore everyone who had stopped what they were doing to stare at me. My face was beet-red and my pulse was racing. I was trying so hard not to cry. Kade had seemed like a really great guy, right up until the moment he’d flipped out and disappeared on me.

My phone buzzed.
I’ll be over in a half hour.
What would I do without my best friend?

I explained it all to Shatrice between blending our very strong margaritas. It wasn’t a complete story, because Kade basically abandoned me with no rhyme or reason.

She listened, and when I was done, she asked, “And?”

I shrugged, “And what?”

“What happened?”

I gave her a blank stare while I gave the ice one more spin. “No idea. No fucking idea. Everything up to that moment was really amazing. He’s a firefighter, you know.” She already knew what he did, but maybe I was saying it more for my own benefit. Even after what he did to me, I still felt some need to defend him.

Shatrice rolled her eyes, “I know he is. He fits all your precious musts, doesn’t he?”

I handed her a margarita and plopped down onto my couch. “Yes and no. He doesn’t do it for the community. At least, that’s what he said.”

“Of course that’s what he said. He wanted to be all macho and shit. Do you think Darnell goes on and on about the virtues of making steel in America? No, he just flexes his muscles and talks about how dangerous it is.”

I laughed, feeling a tiny bit of relief sink in. “He said something different, actually. Kade said that firefighters were broken, looking to fix themselves.” His words had stuck with me. He had even admitted to me that he was broken. He’d been well on his way to telling me, too, until I’d stopped him.

“Ugh,” I muttered, thinking of the wasted opportunity. No wonder he’d stormed off. He probably thought I was pushing him away in a vulnerable time, or something terrible like that. I wanted to kick myself. I wanted to call him and apologize, but the shame was slapping me around.

“Ugh, what? There’s more, isn’t there?”

I nodded, taking a big swig of my drink. “I think he was going to tell me how he was broken when we first went out. I thought it would be romantic to do one of those
No, I don’t need to know
things, but he probably thought I didn’t care. Oh, God. I really fucked it up.”

Shatrice shook her head. “I’m sure you didn’t. If he’s that flaky and he’s not on his period, he is not worth your time.”

I knew that my best friend was trying to help, but she hadn’t been there. She hadn’t seen Kade’s eyes go cold. It was… terrifying. I wanted to help. I wanted to grab onto his hand and beg him to tell me what was going through his mind. Kade was right. He was broken, and I had thrown away an opportunity to help him.

My life’s work was helping people, and somehow I had thrown that away. It would be another night of asking myself
why
?

Shatrice knew me all too well. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Hell, maybe even
he
didn’t do anything wrong. Life is messy. Sometimes your best friend sets you up on a terrible blind date, other times you think you found a great guy and he has a meltdown in the middle of a magical evening. Life. It’s just life, Layne.”

“Yeah, I guess it is.” I shook my head and realized that my margarita glass was empty. “I just really, really felt something with him, you know?”

“Mmhm. I know. I could see you two eye-fucking each other from across the kitchen. I almost threw up in my mouth on more than one occasion. And I mean that in the nicest way possible.”

I nodded, the tequila already helping ease my pain. “I know you do. It
was
nice, too. I was gonna bring him back here tonight.”

Shatrice stood up and grabbed my empty glass. “And that is my cue.”

I laughed. “Really. You thought the margaritas were for you? Sorry, sister, but you are sorely mistaken.”

Shatrice leaned over the sink in my kitchen. “I was under the impression you were going to seduce me. I was about to text Darnell and tell him to pack his shit and get out.”

She came back into the living room and knelt down in front of me. “Layne. I’m sorry this didn’t go well, but maybe it was meant to be. Maybe he’s not right for you. I’m gonna head home, but if you need anything, you call me. Deal?”

I nodded. “Deal.”

After Shatrice left, I thought about her words. She may have been my best friend, but she was dead wrong. I couldn’t stop thinking about Kade. There was something that he had kept from me. It might have been my fault, but even if it wasn’t, he needed help.

And helping was what I did best.

“So, what happened?”

I sighed. I should have known that the doc would make me relive everything; he always did. I knew he would pry the emotions out of me, pulling each painful shard from beneath my skin. How had Layne made it seem so easy while this guy made it unbearable?

I didn’t want to do it, but I knew I had to. I wouldn’t have come back to therapy if I didn’t want to try to fix it. “We were having a great time. I really liked this girl.”

“The one you met when you did your volunteer work?” I could hear the smugness in his voice.

“Yes, the one I met doing volunteer work.”

He nodded, a smirk on his face. Jesus, this guy. “Go on, Sergeant McCaffery.”

“Things were going great. I mean, amazing. After two weeks, I’m crazy for this girl. The first night we went out for drinks before dinner, and everything was great. I told her a little about firefighting and almost told her about what happened in May.”

The doc looked up at me from his notebook. “Why didn’t you? Did you think she’d look at you in a different light?”

“No.” I turned to the window again. “I was actually about to tell her—I wanted to tell her—but she stopped me. Maybe she thought she was intruding or being to nosey, or something. I let her stop me because I didn’t want to be too morbid, you know?”

He jotted something down on his stupid pad, then asked, “What if you had told her? What do you think her reaction would have been?”

“I don’t know, doc. She’s a kind person. She works at a soup kitchen feeding the homeless. I’m a firefighter. I pull people out of burning buildings and car wrecks. It’s not that different, when you think about it.” I was getting fed up. I was looking for answers, and the doc was only giving me more questions.

“It’s true, you are both serving the community. Okay, enough about that. I can see that you don’t want to talk about it. Back to the relationship, then.”

“Yeah, back to that. Two weeks, and everything was going really great. We were out to celebrate. We found a nice spot for dinner and we were sitting down to order when our waiter showed up. His name was Marco. I don’t know why, but it triggered me.”
 
Hell, even saying the name was difficult.

The shrink nodded.

“I started to have a panic attack. I tried to keep it together and play it off like it was nothing, but I kept picturing Marco’s coffin. My fingertips started going numb and I had to get out of there. I didn’t say anything to her. I just got up and left. I grabbed a cab home and got my car the next day. It was fucking embarrassing.”

“Kade.” When the doc wanted to make a point he used my first name. “It’s nothing to be embarrassed about. This sounds like post-traumatic stress disorder.”

I shook my head and turned back to the window. The rain was falling. Of course it was. “I don’t have PTSD. I’m not a combat medic that hit an IED, or whatever.”

“Anyone can have PTSD. Any traumatic event can cause it. This isn’t something that is strictly limited to soldiers. Firefighting is one of the top five most stressful jobs in the world. You know that, right?”

I did know it. HR always loves to bang that statistic into our heads. They would tell us how hard our job was, then tell us that another department was being shut down. Our response area would get bigger while our paychecks would get smaller. The stress was high before we even went on our first call of the day.

I nodded. “Yeah, I know it. I just thought it was something I could handle.”

“I know you thought time would be enough to heal this, but I don’t think that will be enough. Do you think therapy is helping you at all? Would you say we are doing effective work?”

I wanted to laugh. Coming to the shrink was like getting ridiculed for the problems I was already having. It was like standing in front of a crowd while someone explained everything that was wrong with you.

“Effective work? I don’t know what that is. I’m good at taking personal risks. I’m good at walking into burning buildings and working for eighteen hours without a break. I’m not good at answering questions about myself. I can’t answer that question any easier than I can answer, ‘what are you thinking?’ ”

“You make an interesting point. You said you’re good at taking personal risks, right?”

I nodded, unsure of where he was going. That wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, though. I could never follow what the doc was saying.

He smiled and continued. “But you said
she
asked
you
out, correct?”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, if you wanna twist my words. When I say ‘personal risks,’ I mean jumping out of a second-story window or walking into a building that’s twelve hundred degrees. I can do that without thinking. Asking a beautiful woman out? It’s not even in the same league.”

“I want to switch gears, again. How’s Firefighter Baggio?”