First Chapter: Wildfire
Kai
Then
The rain sizzles on the roof of the wrecked car. It’s a dark fall night on the deserted trail road, only fire from the burning Jeep lighting the inky sky.
Fire that grows with every step I take toward the edge of the steep hillside.
Every breath as heat burns my face, my shoulder, and the tips of my fingers as I stretch to reach the hand flailing from the smashed window.
I’m not going to get there. And it’s not my fault, or even theirs, despite the stench of liquor staining the air. Sometimes bad choices are split-second decisions that last forever. But it’s not going to be that long for the three men trapped in this car.
The Jeep starts to tip.
I shout and move faster, feet slipping on the storm-soaked ground. Slimy grass and mud. I struggle for purchase. For balance. But I don’t find it. I trip and my knees hit the dirt, bone crunching rock. Another shout tears from my chest, but it’s drowned out by the groan of struggling metal.
By screaming.
The car falls. I watch it tumble and flip, taking the sound of rain on the rooftop with it, and the eyes of the souls I can’t save.
In a split second, they’re gone, and I don’t think. I don’t breathe.
I jump.
And I land in a hell pit that will last me a lifetime.
* * *
Now
I’ve always been good with my hands. Better than I am with my brain, which is just as well, as my brain’s been kinda broken for a while.
“Not broken, dude. Just tired.”
Thanks, Tanner. But my newfound BFF isn’t here right now. It’s just me and the poky kitchen in V&V, the bougie wine bar he runs. The kitchen I’m rushing to get finished for a chef he’s yet to employ.
Either way, I push on, and my hands seem to work of their own accord, hammering, tiling, sanding. Maybe I’m not good with them at all. Maybe they’re just better than me, and I got lucky at creation. They didn’t have the crappy ones I deserved, and I got a fuckin’ upgrade.
Strange thoughts for a Wednesday afternoon, but I’ve accepted that life is a strange thing. A year ago, I spent my summers with the wind in my face, dirt beneath my fingernails, and the Vermont sun beating down on my bare skin.
These days, I prefer the dark. Except at night, when I’m supposed to. Because, you know, that would be too convenient.
Too normal.
Stop it. I take a breath, inhaling the familiar scent of the construction I’ve immersed myself in since Tanner gave me a job to get me off his couch and back into the real world. The land of the living. The land where people leave the house every day and walk down the street without their fucked up brain transporting them somewhere else.
You’re not fucked up.
True story.
Deep down, I know there’s nothing unique about what happens to me on a daily basis. I’m not ashamed. If anyone asks me why I’m shaking as I push through the crowds on Church Street, I’ll tell ’em. But the trouble with being Mr. Open About My Mental Health is that people talk to me like I’m made of fuckin’ glass.
Or they hide from me. I’m a big, brawny dude. I’m not supposed to cry when I can’t sleep. Or cry when I do. Whatever. My honesty trips people out.
All except a handful of freaks and geeks like me.
“There you are.” My favorite bartender skips into my peripheral, all bouncy curls and huge eyes.
Molly.
Man, I love this chick. She’s better than a Xanax any day of the week.
I sit up from the sink pipes I’ve been working on all day. This building is old. Some days it seems like I fix one thing and another breaks, and I feel that shit. The symbolism. The irony. But none of it matters while Molly’s dancing in front of me. She’s so fuckin’ cute. In another life, I’d have dated the shit out of her. But she’s twenty-one and full of life, and I’m careening towards thirty with nothing but insomnia for company. “What’s cookin’, sweetheart?”
She grins. “You’re a charmer, Fletcher.”
“I try. You need me for something?”
“Just your pretty smile.”
“Now who’s the charmer?”
“I’m practicing,” Molly tells me seriously. “I have a date tonight, and I’m trying to flirt without blushing.”
“How’s that going for ya?”
“You tell me, hot stuff.”
She almost pulls it off. Then she giggles, the flush comes in hard, and we both laugh, because this chick is ditzy sunshine in a Moo U hockey jersey, and whoever lucked out to score a date with her had better give her the damn moon.
Molly’s laughter fades. “I came to tell you there’s a delivery here, actually. The flirting was a spur-of-the-moment thing.”
“Delivery?” I eye the door. I’m not expecting anything else for the kitchen. Most of the equipment is already installed. It’s just the plumbing I’m wrestling with. Or maybe I’m stalling. I don’t know where life is gonna take me when the work at V&V is done, and I like it here.
“It’s a smoker,” Molly says.
“Barbecue?” That perks me up. I’ve spent nine hours a day in this kitchen for weeks now, and yet somehow, my fragmented mind still drifts through mealtimes like a maple leaf in a breeze. I forget I’m hungry till I’m pass-the-fuck-out ravenous.
“It’s not that big.” Molly peers back through the open door. “You’d never get a whole hog in there.”
Couldn’t swing a hog in this kitchen either, so I’m relieved about that. I scan the space, already redesigning the layout to fit whatever’s about to come through the door, but as it turns out, the mental effort is unnecessary. Molly disappears and comes back with a box that’s heavy enough to bend her slender arms, but barely big enough for a pork butt.
I take it off her and set it on the counter, kind of disappointed that Tanner isn’t morphing this place into a beer and ribs shack. I mean, I drink the wine he passes across the bar sometimes, because booze is booze is booze, but given the choice, I’d rather drown myself in Goldenpour. “Damn, that really isn’t big enough for a whole hog. What’s it for?”
“Ask the new guy.”
“What new guy?”
“Tanner found a chef.”
News to me, but I’ve been busy. So busy. Building the kitchen, avoiding my meds, and losing staring competitions with Tanner’s living room ceiling when I have a perfectly good bedroom in the apartment next door. Trying to stay sane is a full-time job.
You are sane. Just sick. Be kinder to yourself. It helps, I promise.
Tanner’s voice has been a constant in my brain for months now, even when he’s not in the room, and I love him for the brick wall of support he’s been since he scraped me from my own kitchen floor, but heck, I wish I didn’t need his semi-regular pep talks to survive.
A heavy sigh escapes me.
Molly slips her arm through mine. She doesn’t say anything, and I’m grateful, but the silence gets under my skin too. I drop a platonic kiss to her auburn curls and pull away. “Guess I should go meet this chef dude. Check I’ve put all this stuff in the right place.”
“He’s not here yet. Jax bought him the smoker as a gift for when he comes tomorrow.”
“Oh.”
“Maybe you should go see Tanner anyway, though.” Molly’s round-eyed stare intensifies, and I swallow another sigh big enough to turn my belly into a hot-air balloon. Lord only knows what my face is doing to make her say shit like that to me.
Me? I don’t want to know. I want a shower and an evening that doesn’t end in me creeping across the hall to sleep on my buddy’s couch because my empty apartment scares me.
Damn it, I want a life.
I need a life.
“Do you want me to come with you?”
I brush Molly off and make for the door. “Nah, Mols. I’m good. Have fun on your date, yeah? But tell that dude I’ll kick his ass if he’s not the perfect gent.”
“You think I can’t kick a man’s ass, Kai?”
“No, sweetheart. I think you shouldn’t have to.”
I leave her and hurry through the bar, already busy with the happy-hour crowd. No one notices me, and I’m glad of it. Once upon a time, I was a people person. Now it feels like every pair of eyes can see into my soul, sense the phantom burning in my chest, and I hate it so fuckin’ much. Tanner says it passes, but it’s been months. Sooner or later, it’ll be a year, and then what?
Keep going. One day at a time.
Easy for him to say, he’s got Jax, and it’s his voice I hear first when I finally reach the stairs and hightail it to the top. He’s laughing, and Tanner is too, and I gotta tell you, my guy didn’t laugh that much before his Cornish husband swept him off his feet.
Their apartment door is open, and I walk right in, drawn to them, as ever, because they’re in love, and it’s beautiful, and I like beautiful things. Also, I’m fairly sure they’re not boning right now. I learned that lesson the, uh, hard way.
More than once.
Tanner pushes Jax onto the bed, face down, caging him with his ripped thighs and—
Nope. Not today, you strange and fucked up brain.
I push the image away and catch their words instead. They’re still laughing, but Tanner seems exasperated, the beginning of a scowl twisting his handsome face. “You already told me all this. You don’t have to remind me he’s a bit fucking different every time he comes up in conversation.”
“I’m not reminding you,” Jax argues. “Just making sure you know what’s coming. I know it’s worth the crazy days and broken crockery, but you gotta see it to believe it.”
Tanner makes a disgruntled sound.
I pick my moment and rap my knuckles on the door to the living space. “Knock-knock.”
They’re in the kitchen. Tanner is at the stove and Jax is leaning over the counter, disguising how tall he is. As tall as his husband, though Tanner has twenty pounds on him. The guy is stacked. Honestly, if I wasn’t six-four, these bros would make me feel small. “Your smoker arrived,” I tell them. “I left it downstairs, but I can bring it up if you want.”
Tanner and Jax exchange a look, and Tanner kills the flame beneath the burner. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.”
“The smoker?”
“No, the kitchen it’s going in.”
“You want a progress report, boss?”
Tanner grins a little. “Not unless something dramatic has happened since we spoke this morning.”
“You’re shit out of luck if you were relying on that for entertainment.”
“He’s got me for entertainment,” Jax banters. “He’s the unluckiest bloke in the world.”
Tanner rolls his eyes. “All right, all right. Can we cut this short by agreeing you’re both idiots?”
Pigs will fuckin’ fly before Tanner says those words and means them. About Jax, at least. And I’d rather he thought I was an idiot than a basket case, so I let it slide and give him my full attention.
He takes a breath. “We found a chef.”
“Molly told me.”
“She did?”
“Yup. When the itty-bitty smoker arrived.”
“What else did she tell you?”
A frown pleats the skin between Tanner’s dark brows.
I match it. Not on purpose, it just fuckin’ happens. My grandma says I’m an empath like her. I say she’s cray-cray with a side of too much blow in the seventies, but still. Tanner is an emotive guy. It’s hard not to absorb his moods. “Something I should know about this dude?”
“Only good things.” Jax straightens and slides into Tanner’s orbit, nudging him. “Tanner’s freaking out because Joss is gonna need somewhere to live while he’s here and I kinda told him he could live with you.”
“You did?”
Jax winces a little. “Remember that night a couple of weeks ago when Molly cracked the IPA keg and we had to drink it all before it went bad?”
“Your wedding party?”
“It wasn’t a party,” Tanner gruffs. “You guys have no fucking chill.”
“Anyway,” Jax continues before Tanner can get pissy that his staff went on a bender to celebrate the fact that he eloped on the other side of the world. And that a whole keg of craft IPA paid a price that Jax enjoyed a little too much. “I was talking with Harrison that night about the remodeling, and I had a world-changing idea. I called an old mate and blurted out that he could be your roomie before Tanner had a chance to talk to you about it.”
“So it’s a done deal?” My voice sounds distant, and it’s my turn to cringe. I’m not upset that they made a decision without pandering to me. Me living here…it was a favor from Tanner in the first place. A fuckin’ lifeline. I can’t be mad that the earth keeps turning.
“It’s not a done deal.” Tanner rounds the counter and gets all up in my space. “It’s an idea that makes sense on a practical level since the renovations gave your place an extra bedroom. It doesn’t have to happen. He can live with us for the summer.”
“The summer?”
“It’s not permanent,” Jax says. “Joss never stays in one place longer than a couple months. Gets itchy feet and fucks off into the sunset.”
Joss. I file that away and try to catch up with everything else they’re saying. Match it to the reality of how we all live.
I focus on Tanner. “You only have one bedroom, bro. You’re gonna make this guy sleep on your couch?”
“It’s not the worst place to kip,” Jax says. “I spent a few weeks on it before Tanner cast his spell on me.”
He doesn’t need to tell me how the lumpy couch in the undecorated living room is a sanctuary. I know it. I slept on it last night. And that’s why Tanner’s staring a hole into the side of my head. He knows wherever this arrangement lands it’s gonna fuck with me, because I’m such a messy human that my bullshit stretches over two apartments. “It’s fine.” The words rush out. “He can sleep wherever he wants. It’s not like I don’t have other options if it doesn’t work out.”
Tanner shakes his head. “You aren’t ready to hole up in your fucking wilderness shack, Kai. If you and Joss don’t mesh, we’ll figure it out. This is your home as long as you need it to be, and that isn’t going to change.”
Sweet of him to say, but the cheap apartment above V&V isn’t my home. It’s a care package he pulled together when he caught my mental-health implosion before I did. “It’s fine, dude. Honest. Maybe we’ll become BFFs enough that you don’t have to babysit me anymore.”
“Kai—”
“It’s fine.” I’m not a snappy kind of guy. Call me lazy, but I’ve never seen the point when a smile is so much easier. But I haven’t been myself for a while and the Fletcher growl falls out of me before I can stop it. Fuck, I sound like my dad. Ergo, I sound like an asshole. “Sorry. I mean, it’s fine. Of course it is. It’s your apartment.”
“It’s Harrison’s, technically,” Tanner says. “But it is your home as long as you want it to be. How you feel is important.”
“I—”
“To me, Kai. I’m aware you don’t give enough of a shit about yourself.”
Ouch. I sink onto a nearby stool and dump my elbows on Tanner’s breakfast bar.
Jax rubs my back. “You know he’s trying to be nice when he rips you a new one, right?”
“Yeah.” Underneath the gruff, Tanner is the sweetest dude in the world. “But it’s okay, really. I don’t like being alone, and maybe having someone else around will stop me barging into your place every night.”
“You don’t barge, mate. I never know you’re here till I fall over your feet in the morning, and I’d take that a thousand times before I could live with you being on your own when you’re upset.”
“Yeah, but I must be on, like, seven hundred and forty-two times by now.”
“You’re far less trouble than you think.”
“Amen.” Tanner goes back to the stove and relights the flame. “Why don’t you trial it with Joss, okay? Day at a time.”
I’m beginning to think I need that phrase tattooed somewhere I can see it. Like my dick. Or your hand, jackass. Unless you plan on jerking off every ten minutes. Tempting, but…no. It’s been months since I had a sexual thought about myself. That part of me feels dead, and I’m okay with it. Can’t think of a single reason a girl would want to date me right now, and trying too hard zones me out while Tanner and Jax discuss my new roommate over my head.
I come back in time to learn his name is Joss—which I kinda knew already—and that he’s British as fuck, like Jax. “Is he a surfer too?”
“Nah, that’s how I met him, though. Crazy bastard used to cook at a clifftop burger shack in Fistral Bay. Nothing but an oil drum and a spatula to his name. It was just one summer, but, fuck, we ate well.”
Jax slaps his ripped stomach. His T-shirt rides up, revealing a sliver of the scars he bears from a legit shark attack. The kind of scars that put everything in perspective. Jax and Tanner. Tanner and Jax. They both went to hell and back before they found each other.
If they can survive it, maybe I can too.