Ginger's Heart (a modern fairytale) (27 page)

She flinched, cringing at the hateful tone he used. But her anger at him—seething and raw—rose up within her and she whipped around to face him.

“How
dare
you! What gives you the right to judge me? To . . . to even
speak
to me! Who do you think you are, coming back here and—”

“Who am
I
?” He covered the distance between them in two long strides, his eyes almost white with fury. “Last time I checked, you were pourin’ out your heart to me, offerin’ your pussy to me like a little slut, and then . . . then you—”

“You
rejected
me, Cain! You told me to fuck off!”

He pointed his finger at her. “I
never
used those words. And I had my reaso—”

“I don’t care about your goddamned reasons! You made me feel like trash for bein’ honest, and I hate you for it, Ca—”

“Woman, are you pure crazy? You hate
me
?
You
were the one who left that barn and marched straight—”

Suddenly the lobby door opened, and they both turned to find Woodman just inside the firehouse, staring back and forth between them. Ginger had her hands on her hips, and Cain still had his index finger jabbed in her face.

“What the
hell
is goin’ on here?”

Ginger blinked rapidly, stepping away from Cain and staring down at the floor.

“Cain?” Woodman said.

He exhaled shakily but somehow managed to keep his voice level. “Nothin’, cuz. Just . . . catchin’ up.”

Ginger flicked a glance up at Cain, annoyed to find him mostly composed but for two bright spots of red in his cheeks.

“By
yellin’
at each other?”

Ginger cleared her throat, her stomach rolling and head swimming. She needed to get out of here. Oh God, she needed some fresh air or water or . . . or . . .

Nope. It was too late. It was all just a little too much for her to handle.

Her stomach heaved, her mouth opened wide, and two partially digested, shotgunned beers ended up on the floor at their feet.

~ Woodman ~

Woodman watched in shock as Ginger doubled over and threw up on the lobby floor. When she’d heaved three or four times, she righted herself, looked back and forth between the cousins with horror in her eyes, then ran through the double doors of the firehouse.

“Jesus!” cried Cain, staring at the enormous puddle of puke on the floor. “What the
fuck
?”

Woodman turned on his cousin, shocked as fuck inside but also feeling defensive on Ginger’s behalf. “She got sick. People
do
get sick, Cain.”

Cain scrunched up his nose at the smell. “Did she drink a whole fuckin’ keg of beer? Since when does Princess Ginger drink so much?”

Woodman could smell it too and was wondering the same thing. “She was workin’ here all afternoon. Probably had a beer and forgot to eat.”

Looking down at the floor, Cain shook his head. “Sorry, cuz, but that’s more than one.”

“You know what?” Woodman started, about to lay into Cain, then shook his head and took a deep breath. “I gotta go after her. But what the hell were y’all fightin’ about? She just
vomited
on the floor, Cain.”

Cain gave him a look. “God forbid anyone upset the princess.”

“Can you just call her Ginger?”

“
Ginger
and I aren’t exactly besties,” answered Cain.

Woodman was losing his patience. “What just happened between y’all?”

Cain paused for a moment, pulling his bottom lip between his teeth before looking down at the floor in disgust. “Nothin’. Just dredgin’ up old stuff from a million years ago.”

“Homecomin’?”

Cain shrugged. “Sure. Shit like that.” He looked around the lobby. “You, uh, you got a mop? I’ll clean up this fuckin’ mess, and you can go after her.”

“Thanks. Over there.” Woodman pointed to the supply closet in the corner of the room. He started for the doors then turned back around. “Cain . . . ”

Cain looked up, his eyes troubled, his voice stern. “Just stop. Don’t go diggin’ around, Josiah. Ain’t no treasure to be found.”

Woodman furrowed his brows, taking in Cain’s defensive stance and squared-off jaw.

“I was just goin’ to say it’s good to have you back.”

“Oh,” said Cain, looking sheepish. “Yeah. Thanks. It’s good to be, uh, good to be home.”

***

Whatever had happened between Ginger and Cain, thought Woodman as he walked quickly down the sidewalk, toward his house, it seemed like a little more than a simple dredging up of high school grievances.

First of all, Ginger hadn’t raised her voice above a polite “yes, ma’am,” “no, ma’am,” and “that’s fine” in months, but when he approached the lobby, he could see them clearly through the glass doors, toe to toe and spitting mad. And again, it didn’t seem like their conversation was about something from a million years ago. It seemed current. It felt alive. The air fairly crackled with immediacy, with fury and frustration, when he interrupted them.

Second of all, Ginger McHuid, who’d been the perfect picture of a young Southern lady since their engagement, had just tossed her cookies on the lobby floor of the Apply Valley Fire Department. Good God, he’d never seen anything like it. And he had to believe that something fiercely upsetting was the genesis of such a reaction.

And third of all, as Cain had pointed out, the vomit was primarily beer. No,
all
beer. And more than one.

He saw her up ahead, walking fast, head down, and he sped up as much as his ankle would allow to catch up with her. His foot, already compromised by yesterday’s dancing lesson, throbbed in his orthopedic sneakers, but he needed to talk to her. He needed to understand what was going on, so he pushed himself to move faster.

As he caught up, he grabbed her arm. “Slow down.”

“Let go,” she growled, shaking him off, continuing her breakneck pace.

“I can’t keep up. Slow down, Gin. Now!”

She stopped midstep, turned, and looked up at him. Her eyes were full of tears, her cheeks slick, and she had a wet stain on the front of her melon-colored T-shirt.

“What the heck’s gotten into you?” Woodman asked. “You barely ever drink.”

“I can drink if I want,” she said, glancing down at the stain of puke, then crossing her arms over it.

“Never said you couldn’t, but I’m goin’ to notice it when it’s somethin’ you don’t normally do, baby.”

Her eyes welled a little more, and she swiped at her cheeks. “Can we please not talk about it? I’m dyin’ from humiliation as it is.”

He took her hand gently, weaving his fingers through hers.

“No, Gin,” he said. “I think we need to talk about it.”

“Woodman,” she sighed, looking down at the sidewalk. “
Please
.”

“You two were
screamin’
at each other when I walked in. What the heck were y’all so worked up about?”

A small sobbing sound escaped from her throat so her voice was thin when she answered, “Like Cain said . . . we were just catchin’ up.”

Woodman started walking again, this time at a slower pace, though his ankle protested with each step.

“That wasn’t catchin’ up. Don’t lie to me.”

“I
don’t
want to talk about it,” she sobbed, walking beside him.

“Baby,” said Woodman as his heart clenched with a huge and growing worry, “we talk to each other. That’s what we do. We don’t lie to each other. We may not have the most romantic relationship in the world, but I know how much our friendship means to both of us. It’s solid. It’s true. I can’t think of anythin’—not one thing—in my life that I couldn’t talk about with you. Why can’t you—”

She stopped walking and squeezed his hand, and he paused midsentence, looking back at her curiously. “Gin?”

“We
could
be more romantic,” she whispered. They were stopped in front of the white picket fence that surrounded Woodman’s house. Ginger looked at it, then back at him. “Make love to me? Right now?”

He’d imagined her saying these words to him a million times. Every morning. Every night. Every time he saw her. And he’d always imagined that when she did, they’d finally be in a place in their relationship where their love for each other—their
romantic
love—had been fully realized.

Never in a thousand years did he anticipate the stark, cold, knife-through-the-heart anguish it would cause him. The air wheezed from his lungs as he stared at her, as the plates of his world shifted, and he was forced to acknowledge what he’d always known but tried so desperately to ignore.

“Gin,” he said, holding her hand firmly as his heart splintered down the middle and broke in half. “In the entire time I’ve known you, there’ve been two times you ever asked me to make love to you. The first was the day Cain left Apple Valley, and the second was the day he came home.”

He watched her face—her beautiful face that he loved like no other—crumble. Her eyes widened to a heartbreaking deep brown before fluttering closed, her lips trembled into a terrible frown, and her neck fell forward, as though whatever was happening in her brain was too heavy for her to hold it up anymore.

She drew in a long, sobbing breath. “This has nothin’ to do with—”

“Cain,” he said. “Say his name.”

“C-Cain,” she murmured for the first time in three years.

“And you’re lyin’, darlin’,” he said gently. “It has
everythin’
to do with Cain.”

When she didn’t answer, didn’t deny this, he closed his eyes and squeezed them shut, feeling an ache in his chest that surpassed anything he’d ever endured during his accident and rehab. She didn’t deny it, because she couldn’t.

Something in Ginger
fed
off something in Cain—it was palpable and overwhelming, and he’d known it the second he’d walked into that lobby and saw them together: there was more chemistry, more passion, in Cain and Ginger’s hate than there would ever be in Woodman and Ginger’s love. There was something in Ginger that cried out for Cain and something in Cain that answered that cry. Something about being with Cain turned her on like a light being plugged into a socket—he made her vibrant and alive, made her stop saying “fine,” made her
feel
, even if the feeling was fury. That was the way it was. That was the way it had always been. And that was the way it would always, always be.

And Woodman couldn’t deny it any longer either. Nor could he compete with it. Lord knows he’d tried.

At one point in time, he’d believed that
having
Ginger was worth the fact that she might not love
him
as much as he loved
her
. But the agonizing reality, he now understood, was that he’d been wrong. She didn’t belong with him. She belonged with someone who made her come alive. She belonged with Cain, and keeping her from Cain was wrong, no matter how much it would hurt him to give her up. He loved her way too much to stand in her way anymore.

“Please, Woodman,” she sobbed softly, looking up at him with pleading, desperate eyes. “I love you. So much.”

“And I love you,” he said, his voice breaking. “I will
always
love you, but I—”

Suddenly the alarm on his phone sounded, and, echoing it, the alarm from the tower of the fire department down the street, blaring out over the town, calling all members to the firehouse.

Woodman looked away from Ginger, fishing his phone out of his back pocket and staring at the message:
10-23 All hands 10-25 Laurel Ridge Farm Barn.

He looked up at her, part of him grateful for the reprieve from the terrible, painful conversation they were about to have. “I gotta go.”

“Where?”

“Laurel Ridge. I’m active again, remember?”

She took a ragged breath. “Woodman . . . ”

“Stay tonight, Gin. We need to talk when I get home.”

“Of course I’ll stay over. Where else would I stay?” she asked, the last words almost inaudible as her voice broke into sobs. “Woodman . . . you’re s-scarin’ me.”

He leaned forward and cupped her face, the pain in his chest so tight and terrible, he could barely breathe, but he managed to press his lips to her forehead, his eyes burning as he touched her sweet skin.

“I love you,” he whispered.
I love you so much that I’ll let you go because I can’t make you happy, baby.
“And I’m sorry.”

And then, before she could say another word, he turned and—for the first time in his life—Josiah Woodman walked away from Ginger McHuid.

***

When he got back to the firehouse, every bay was open, and there was organized chaos in the ready gear room, where every man who hadn’t been hitting the keg hard, including Cain, was suiting up.

“You comin’?” Woodman asked, taking a seat on the bench where Cain was pulling on some spare bunker pants.

“Hell, yes. First night back and I get to go to a big one! Chief said he could use an experienced pipeman.”

Cain waggled his eyebrows as he said this, but Woodman wasn’t in the mood to joke around with Cain. Frankly he didn’t know how the hell to feel about Cain. With the exception of that one time, when Ginger was fifteen and he kissed her, Woodman didn’t believe that Cain had ever betrayed him. In fact, looking at things in a certain light, he had to wonder if Cain had stayed away all these years out of respect for Woodman’s claim on Ginger. As the thought passed through his mind, he felt the truth in it, the yes of it, like a light bulb going off in his head. Cain had stayed away on purpose. It made it hard for Woodman to hate him.

“Why don’t you ask me ’bout Ginger?” asked Woodman, fastening his bunker pants and looking at Cain dead in the eyes.

“She ain’t my problem,” said Cain, his face losing its teasing and excitement.

“Huh,” said Woodman, stepping into his boots, then pulling the pants down over them.

“This is a bad ’un!” yelled Scott Hayes, the Battalion Two captain. “Double-time it, men! Suit up!”

Cain and Woodman pulled their Nomex hoods over their heads at the same time, grabbed for their bunker coats, and shrugged them on.

“How’s the foot?” asked Cain as he reached for a helmet.

Woodman grabbed a radio from a charger and attached it to the strap near his shoulder. “Fine. Cleared for duty.”

Cain nodded. “But I heard all that was recent. How long has it been since you were inside a live one?”

“Don’t worry ’bout it,” said Woodman, placing his helmet on his head and hustling toward Scott. “I had the same trainin’ you did. Cleared is cleared.”

Cain looked dubious. “Whatever you say.”

“Where you need me, sir?” Woodman asked Scott.

Scott pointed to Engine Two. “Stay back for tonight, Woodman.”

“I’m good to go, sir.”

“Stay back,” said Scott again.

“Yes, sir,” he said.