My entire body slumped with relief.
The loud bang of a door swinging open and hitting a wall made me jump and look toward the firehouse. Heavy footsteps pounded inside the garage, drawing closer as Holt yelled my name.
When I caught a glimpse of him, my entire body gave a great sigh. The men around me parted, giving him a path directly to me. He stopped just shy of yanking me into his arms, his eyes sweeping over every inch of me before settling on my face.
“I didn’t wreck your truck,” I said, trying to sound anything other than completely terrified.
And then I was in his arms. My face buried against the strength of his chest.
Finally, I was safe.
16
“Shouldn’t we have stayed?” I asked him, glancing out the rear window as we drove away from the fire station.
“If we stayed, I would have killed him.”
“Oh. Well, I guess it’s good we left, then.”
“Do you want to explain to me why I want to kill that guy back there?”
I told him exactly what happened, leaving out the part about almost getting run over at Target. I figured it wouldn’t help his murderous tendencies.
Look at me, joking about murder. It really just wasn’t funny.
“He knew my name,” I whispered. I think that was the part that bothered me the most.
Holt held out his arm and I slid across the seat and fit myself into his side. A few minutes later, we arrived back at his house and that made me think of something else.
“He knows where we live.” And that took something away from me that I didn’t even realize I had. Security. The walls of this house made me feel protected, made me feel like I didn’t have to be scared all the time.
“If anybody wants in that house, Katie, they’re gonna have to go through me.”
That didn’t make me feel better. It made me feel worse. I didn’t want any kind of harm to come to him while he tried to protect me.
Inside, I retreated to the bathroom to wipe my face with a cool rag and calm my tattered nerves. Holt was in the kitchen scrounging through the cupboards and that’s when I realized I hadn’t gone grocery shopping.
“I forgot to get something for dinner,” I said from the edge of the room.
“Want to go out?”
“Sure.” It would be better than sitting around here and waiting for something bad to happen. “I’m just going to shower really fast.” I thought maybe it would help wash away some of the crazy I was involved in today.
Holt nodded and kept scrounging around for a snack. I remembered the power bars I bought and went to get them out of the sack I had dumped on the bed and ignored.
“Here,” I said, handing over the two boxes. I was hoping he didn’t notice how the boxes were mashed and mangled looking.
“What the hell happened to these?”
“I dropped them,” I mumbled and turned to flee into the shower.
“What happened to your knee, Katie?” The edge in his voice stopped me in my tracks.
“My knee?” I asked innocently.
“Freckles,” he growled, the warning clear.
“I had an accident in the parking lot at Target.”
“What kind of accident?”
I decided just to get it over with. “Attempted hit and run.”
“There isn’t a scratch on my truck,” he said, not really understanding what I meant.
“I wasn’t the one doing the hitting. I was the one doing the running.”
“Are you telling me someone tried to run you over with their car?”
“I’m fine,” I insisted.
“Why didn’t you call me!” he demanded.
“Because you were at work.”
“So?”
“So… I’m not going to come running to you every time something happens.”
“I take it you didn’t call the police either?” he said, his voice tight.
“No. I just wanted to come home.”
“Jesus.”
“That’s not very nice language.”
He barked a laugh and shook his head. “You are a walking magnet for trouble.”
“I didn’t ask you to deal with my trouble,” I snapped and then raced into the bathroom and shut myself in.
Tears burned the backs of my eyes and it made me angry. I would not cry. I was done crying.
I turned on the shower and then cracked the bathroom door, making sure he wasn’t standing outside, just waiting to yell at me again. He wasn’t, so I gathered all my things out of the bedroom and slipped back inside.
I kept the water at a lukewarm temperature; I found that hot water made me feel anxious these days—probably because of all the heat I endured in the fires. The memory of the last time I was in this shower seemed to be all I could think about.