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  I huffed out. Not because I was frustrated with Cal, but because I hadn’t been taking actual breaths. Just short puffs of air. One long inhale did help, so I took another. My body relaxed a little.

  “At least I know why he’s been on campus,” I whispered, hating the idea of Brock being with my sweet advisor. She was kind and smart, and he obviously had her blinded to the real monster that hid under the cultured manners and expensive clothes. But that was his strong suit. Making people buy into his charm and charisma.

  “You said you meet with her every Monday. Why not talk to her then?”

  “That’s a week away.” And so much could happen in a week. Hell, someone’s entire world could change forever in a single night.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Cal said gently. “But I don’t think Brock will hurt her. It’s not the same situation.”

  “I know, but she deserves to know the kind of man he is. What he’s capable of.” I patted his chest in rapid succession. An idea striking me. “She’s gone this week in Phoenix, maybe I could call the school and get her cell phone number! Or maybe I can figure out what hotel she’s staying at.”

  “Shhh, calm down, Kitten,” Cal’s voice was the only thing calm happening right now. “I know you want to tell her, and you should. But, like you said, she’s gone this week, and even if the school gave you her number, which they won’t, this isn’t exactly an email or phone call kind of situation.”

  He had a point. This was a big issue, and not something a quick call could cover. But I hated the idea of waiting. Still, I didn’t have much choice.

  “Okay, I want to talk to her face to face.” My brain went into overdrive of what I’d say. How could I say it? It’s not like you could just walk up to someone and say, “Hey, the guy you want to spend the rest of your life with is a monster, now, let me tell you why…” Still, it was definitely an in-person chat, no matter how difficult.

  “I think that’s best,” Cal said.

  Okay. Monday, one week, and I’ll tell her. It would give me time to collect myself and think of how to approach this logically. Because the more the craziness of the moment cleared, the more I realized how difficult this was. For all she knew, Brock was wonderful. Her fiancé. The man she loved enough to spend the rest of her life with. And, in one moment, I was going to ruin all of that.

  I knew what that felt like, to have your entire world ripped out from under you, and I realized I was going to tell her something truly awful.

  “Okay,” I said on a heavy breath. “Monday.”

  He rubbed my arms. “Good, now that you have a plan, I want to know if you are okay?”

  “Yeah, I mean, he didn’t do anything.”

  “That’s not what I mean. This is a big blow, you’re worried about your advisor, but how do you feel?”

  I looked at the ground and a cold chill pricked over my skin as I remembered his eyes on me. How he winked. How he looked so evil. How terror engulfed me. It was paralyzing. And I hated that he still had that power over me, even in the smallest way. Even for one moment.

  Did Brock pick Erica because she was my advisor? Did he do this on purpose? It was too coincidental to think this was purely random. Brock always had a plan. He also had a hobby of evoking fear. But I didn’t know for certain what his end game was, or what Erica had to do with it.

  “Things are falling apart,” I whispered. School was my one sanctuary. My domain. My place of acceptance and success. And now Brock was, once again, there with all the baggage and drama and pain that came with him. There was nowhere left to hide.

  Cal had warned me from the beginning about hiding, but I wasn’t ready to be a part of the world right now. I wasn’t ready to face the mess that was raining down. I’d been fighting a losing battle for a long time. Right when I thought I’d finally gained ground, I was pushed back. My body couldn’t take anymore. Couldn’t handle the weight of all the stress. I couldn’t bear to lose one more thing.

  I said the same thing I’d said to Cal the night I met him. “I need a win.”

  His face was like stone. Did he remember that first night? When we’d won a silly fireman’s race, but it made my night, my week, seem better. It was a brief moment of easy happiness.

  “I can’t hide,” I admitted, and he nodded in agreement. “But I don’t want to be like this. I feel trapped in a bad situation and just want to…”

  “Run?” he asked.

  “Right off the edge of the world.”

  A devilish grin came over his face. “I can help with that.”

  “What?” I asked with curious shock.

  “You want off the world?” He grabbed my hand and whistled loudly, calling out the other firefighters on duty, while walking me toward the garage where they kept the trucks. “I can get you off the world, Kitten.”

  Chapter 6

  “So, you ready for this, Lana?” Dave asked, as he put big block things on each side of the wheels, “stabilizing the truck.” I had met Cal’s crew briefly before, but standing in the dark, with the big fire truck pulled out into the back lot while four men went to work on pulling out beams from secret compartments on the rig and securing it, I was getting to know both the crew and the details of how this massive machine worked better.

  “Yeah, I am,” I answered, crossing my arms, warding off the cool night air. Thank goodness it had only sprinkled for a moment earlier. The sky was now clear and black with the stars like diamonds shining down.

  “You know, Cal’s been gabbing like a tween about you ever since you were here last.”

  “Shut the fuck up, Dave,” Cal said, walking from the garage toward the truck, holding a fire jacket in his hand. Another thing I was learning quickly was that the guys seemed to enjoy giving each other a hard time. But they had a dynamic like a family. Cal had merely asked for some help, and they came running. Help for what, I wasn’t clear on yet. But it had something to do with this massive fire truck that was both turned on and had a few guys standing by.

  “You ready?” Cal asked and held up the heavy yellow jacket. I eyed it with question.

  “Ready for what? You leading me into a fire?”

  “No, way better. Put this on, it’s cold.”

  I slipped into his coat. It smelled fresh, as if it’d just been cleaned. And, like Cal, it was warm and instantly comforting. Sure, it dwarfed me, but I wasn’t cold anymore.

  “Now, smile!” Dave said, and snapped a photo on his camera phone.

  “Oh!” I said, when the flash took me by surprise.

  “Cal’s throwing up the stick and taking a lady, gotta document this stuff for the scrapbook.”

  “I’m sorry, I only understood half of that,” I said.

  “We make scrapbooks,” Cal said in my ear. “Well, Dave mostly does. He’s our arts and crafts coordinator, aren’t you, Davy?”

  “No, I’m the Tickle Tuesday Ambassador. Rhett is in charge of the arts and crafts. He has those delicate hands and all.”

  “I heard that!” Rhett called out from the other side of the truck.

  “Good, maybe then you’ll stop stealing my lotion!” Dave called back.

  “Are you two arguing over lotion again?” Mark said, coming around to stand at the back of the truck. It appeared he was attempting to grow a mustache since I’d seen him last. “Rhett needs it more than you do, Dave. That guy hasn’t gotten laid in a while.”

  “Will you shut up,” Rhett said, looking at me, then at Dave and Mark. “There’s a lady here.”

  “The lady probably can tell you’re not getting laid either. It’s no secret.” Mark made a hand gesture that signified exactly what everyone thought Rhett to be doing with said lotion.

  I tried not to laugh, but the way the guys were with each other was hilarious. Dave just slapped his buddy’s back. “It’s okay, Rhett. You can keep the lotion.”

  “Sharing is caring,” Mark finished.

  “Jesus Christ,” Rhett muttered and walked off.

  “Aw, poor guy,”
I said. “You embarrassed him.”

  “This is nothing,” Cal said. “Rhett may be stomping away, but he’s already plotting revenge. Within the hour, he’ll unleash some kind of hell on us. Probably take that lotion and spread it all over our pillows.”

  “And you all are friends?”

  “Best of,” Dave said. “Don’t worry, after you leave, we’ll give Cal shit too for having you over again. But we’re wearing our polite hats now.”

  “Oh, boy,” I said with a small laugh. These guys were so laid back and funny it was hard not to get caught up in it.

  “Throwing the stick is what we say when we take the ladder out,” Cal clarified part of Dave’s earlier statement. He stepped up, one, two, three, big steps to get to the first level of the fire truck. He held a hand down, reaching for me.

  I looked up at him, then at the big ladder that was currently resting happily horizontal on top of the truck.

  “I’m going on that?” I asked.

  “Nope, we’re going on that.” He glanced at the ladder.

  With a deep breath, I reached for the handle, put my foot in the first rung, and started my climb up the truck.

  Cal was right there, hand out, and I reached for it.

  It wasn’t until he pulled me up to face him that I realized what I’d just done. But I pushed the notion away.

  No reaching…

  “You okay?” he asked, hands on my hips, keeping me steady.

  I nodded quickly, adrenaline already rising.

  “Follow me then.” He led me up and across the ladder, walking along it like I would a plank on a pirate ship, only there was a bucket with controls at the end. He opened the small gate and helped me in. “You can hold on,” he said, pointing to the rail. There was just enough space to fit the two of us. He gripped one of the levers and smiled at me. The moon shining down on his chiseled face made his white teeth sparkle. “Ready to leave the world for a while?”

  “Yes, please.”

  He pushed the lever and the bucket jolted.

  “It’s alright,” Cal said in that soothing voice again. “She’s a bit jerky, but you’re perfectly safe.”

  I grabbed on to the railing and couldn’t help but gasp when we swayed again, still going up. I tried to think of something other than the unnatural height we were climbing to.

  “So, this is how you get cats out of trees, huh?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Only the finest equipment for our feline friends.”

  I looked down and saw the ladder I’d just walked across start to extend and go up…up…up…

  “Oh, my God,” I breathed.

  The few guys that stood by the truck got smaller and smaller as we rose higher and higher. We passed the roof of the firehouse and kept going. It wasn’t until we were high enough to see the faint, dark purple of the horizon bleeding against the black night that I realized how far I could see.

  Cal stopped the ascent. “You’re over a hundred feet off the ground.”

  I could see the whole city and beyond. The moon was full and glowing, and I was surrounded by nothing but wide open night and Cal himself.

  “Wow,” I said, taking in the incredible view, then the man who gave it to me. “This is amazing.”

  He looked right at me. “Yes, amazing.”

  “How do you do this?” I asked.

  “You just push this button right here.”

  “No, I mean this,” I stared out at the thin line of light beyond the darkness. “How do you deliver on…everything?” Because that’s what he did. In the time I’d known him, he always came through on what he promised. He also made a clear statement of what he couldn’t do. But, in that moment, I didn’t want to hide. Not from him. I felt too far away from earth and it eased my entire body, my chest finally able to take an honest deep breath.

  “Tell me what you need and I’ll do my best to give it to you,” he rasped and took a step closer. “You just have to let me know.”

  I stared at his mouth, and this time, it was me who took a step closer to him.

  “It’s nice not being a part of the world right now. I don’t know if I want to go back,” I said.

  He nodded and cupped my face. “Reality is tough sometimes.”

  It was all so simple up here. Just him and me standing in the night, seemingly floating through the sky. Just us. Just darkness. Twinkling lights of the city outstretched, filled with people and problems I didn’t have to step foot in. I got to rise above. Cal rose me above. And for a moment, I truly felt like, if I closed my eyes, all wretched emotions would fade away.

  “You can handle it, Lana,” he whispered. I opened my eyes to find him looking at my face, examining me with a gentle gaze. “Whatever you’re thinking about, whatever scares you and whatever you want to hide from, you can handle it.”

  His faith in me rocked my ribs like a hit to the chest. I wanted to run, he let me, but he still thought me strong enough to tackle my world, one that I was hovering over.

  “What if I don’t want to go back down and handle it?”

  “You always come down,” he said with a rough edge in his voice. “Getting space and perspective is helpful, but the faster you run and the higher you climb just makes the crash harder to deal with.” He glanced out over the city and then back at me. “And there’s always a crash, Kitten.”

  A streak of pain crossed his face, replaced quickly by anger, then some kind of solace. Whatever secrets he harbored, he dealt with them in his own way. There was so much that didn’t make sense. Cal had a team of men around him that acted like a brotherhood. He had his aunt, who obviously loved him. He had support. What was he running from? Whatever it was, I believed him when he spoke of crashing. Falling was one thing, but hitting the ground was another.

  I said his name, wanting to take some of the weight he carried, like he had taken some of mine. Leaning in, I whispered, “Kiss me.”

  He bent, and snagged my lips with his. So soft and quick I’d thought it imaginary. Just as my eyes closed, the bucket jolted, breaking the momentary feel of his mouth on mine.

  Cal’s hand was on the lever, and we started our descent down towards earth once more.

  Chapter 7

  After we came down, the crew put the truck back into the garage, and I locked myself in the bathroom and stared at my reflection. The buzzing ache of too many emotions wouldn’t dissipate. Cal had taken me away for a few moments, and it was wonderful. But my feet were back on the ground and the lingering feel of his lips against mine wouldn’t go away.

  I left the bathroom and headed towards Cal’s room right down the hall. It sounded like most of the guys were in the living room area, which was at the other end of the house.

  Not Cal, he waited for me in the hall, just by his door.

  “You ready for me to walk you home?”

  “Not yet,” I said and bypassed him, walking myself into his room. He followed, and I shut the door. My system was overwhelmed with too many thoughts, wants, and needs. Primarily Cal.

  I just wanted to feel something good. And Cal was beyond good. He was an escape I couldn’t get anywhere else. He was the man I wanted in so many ways, but could only have in a few. So, I’d take the few I could get. At the very least, it would still be on my terms because my grand plan of staying friends was technically still in effect. Tonight, we’d just be special friends. That was logic enough for me.

  “Lana? What are you—”

  I raised to my tiptoes, slid my arms around him, and drew him down for a kiss. Praying to God he’d come through like he did that first night and hold me back. Only, this time, I wasn’t letting go.

  Clutching was different than reaching. And I was clutching the hell out of him.

  “Lana,” he rasped against my mouth. “You’re upset and have had a hard night—”

  “No excuses. Not tonight. You told me I couldn’t give them, so you can’t either. I know what I want.”

  He stared at me hard, weighing my words, but I wasn’t backing do
wn. I was mad, sad, exhausted, and revved up all at the same time. The adrenaline I had building from the height I’d just been at, tied with the shitty aspect of today, was making me sizzle like an oiled cast-iron skillet.

  I needed to unleash it all, and I wanted to be with Cal because he had been there from the beginning. He didn’t let me hide, which was good, since I was looking for some control right then. Some way to take charge of the tiniest part of my world, if only for a moment.

  “You told me all I had to do was ask? Tell you what I need?”

  “And what is it you need?” he asked.

  I pushed his chest until his legs hit the bed and he sat on the mattress. “You.”

  “Good,” he growled and wrapped his hand around my back, yanking me toward him. I instantly straddled his lap and kissed him hard and fast. Ripping off his shirt, my palms slapped on his chest, and I tried to push him to his back. He was too strong, and apparently wanted to stay sitting, because he wouldn’t let me completely take charge.

  He peeled off my shirt and unhooked my bra, burying his face in my breasts. I threaded my fingers in his hair and pulled him closer. He sucked the plump flesh all over, licking and biting every inch. He sucked on one spot, then moved down to suck on another, teasing me with how close he was to my nipple. But he just continued to taste, licking a perfect circle around the hard point, but never delivering the attention I was desperate for.

  As his tongue slid along my skin, I arched my back at the perfect time, forcing that wicked tongue to drag across the pouting tip.

  I gasped, the zap of heat shooting from my chest to my center.

  A low hum broke his throat. “Not in a patient mood tonight, I see?”

  “No. No patience. Want you now.”

  His answer was to clamp down on my nipple with his thumb and first finger so hard that it went numb. When he released it, blood rushed to the pouting point and he fastened his mouth over it, sucking and licking the sting away.

  “Oh, God!” I moaned. I’d never felt anything like it. The sensation was so intense, alternating between pleasure and pain, and I couldn’t think which part I liked better. All of it. Definitely, all of it.