Reckless (28 page)

But he hadn't. He'd hesitated, and that caution could've cost a man his life.

Movement in the door frame by the foot of his gurney captured Alex's attention, his surprise quickly becoming a bolt of pure goodness as the sight of Zoe registered in his fog-filled brain. Even if she did look like she'd been through the wringer.

“Hey, Gorgeous.” He lifted his arms to reach for her, but between the sling on his left side and the IV tubes snaking up from his right, it was pretty much a no-go. “Don't take this the wrong way, but you kind of look terrible.”

“After everything that's happened, you're going to joke with me?” she asked, her lips pressing into a pale, practically nonexistent line, and shit.
Shit.
Her news about the grant—along with the argument they'd had with her father—came crashing back into focus.

“Zoe, I'm sorry. I know today's been rough, but we'll find a way to help Hope House. And to patch things up with your father.”
Eventually. Maybe.
Damn, Cap had been so angry. But at some point, Alex would convince him that what was going on with Zoe wasn't fast and furious.

He was in love with her. And he didn't even care if Westin, or everyone at the station, or everyone in the whole goddamn galaxy knew it.

“That's not what I mean.” Zoe wrapped her arms around her body as if she were holding on for dear life, but she didn't move past the three steps she'd taken into the trauma room. “I saw the fire on the news, and then Cole told me what happened, how that ceiling beam just came down right on top of you, and I thought . . . I thought . . . God, Alex, I thought you were dead.”

The shell-shocked look on her face took a slap at his sternum, and he gestured to himself with his right arm in an effort to reassure her. “But I'm not, see? Totally fine.”

Disbelief bled into her expression, taking over her tear-stained face. “You suffered a traumatic brain injury and blunt force trauma to your shoulder.”

Ah, she sort of had him there. “Okay, I guess you're right. I did get a little banged up. But my shoulder's not even broken.” He didn't voice his
probably
, because really, she looked frightened and furious enough.

“Do you honestly think this is no big deal?”

Alex paused, his gut going tight. “I think getting hurt is part of the risk involved in my job, but I promise, Zoe. I'm no worse for wear.”

“You promise,” she whispered, her eyes flashing with a sharp flare of anger before the emotion dulled into sadness. “You promised me you'd be fine to begin with. Just like you promised that sinking all my time and resources into applying for the Collingsworth Grant would be worth the risk.”

“I didn't try to get hurt at this fire, Zoe. And we both know you deserved the hell out of that grant.” There was only so much of life you could control. Fuck, he'd learned that lesson at the ultimate cost when he'd lost his parents twelve years ago, then again when Mason had been killed in that apartment fire.

Still, she shook her head. “I understand that you made those promises to me in good faith, Alex. I really do. But it doesn't change the fact that they turned out to be wrong.”

His chin snapped up, and even though it scrambled his vision a little, his determination didn't budge. “Have I ever been wrong when I said I had your back?”

“No, but—”

Even though he knew it would likely piss Zoe off to no end, Alex interrupted her anyway. “And have I ever been wrong when I told you I'd be fine?”

“You're not fine now!” The fiery glint returned to her stare, and yup. Pissed.

But again, Alex pressed. “This will heal. Have I?”

“It doesn't matter.” Zoe's voice wavered, her arms curling even tighter around her body. “You can't promise me you'll always be okay.”

A dark ripple of frustration pulsed through his blood. “I'm a firefighter, Zoe. There are no absolute guarantees. You know that's not how it works.”

“And I also know I can't live like this.”

The words were no more than a feather-soft whisper, but they ripped through every part of Alex as if she'd screamed, and impulse had him answering, hard and fast and with everything in his heart.

“Yes, you can,” he said, leaning forward in the bed just to bring himself closer to her. “You just have to take the risk and believe in me. In us.”

“I can't take any more risks!” Zoe cried, stabbing her feet into the floor as her face hardened with determination Alex knew all too well. “Don't you see? They all
fail.
I wasted all that time and energy that could've gone toward feeding people who depend on me. I put something that mattered on the line and I lost. I risked my relationship with my father, who won't even speak to me right now. And I . . .” She broke off, her chest shuddering on a swallowed cry. “You let me believe that all of this would be okay. That the risks were worth taking. But they're not. You could've died today, Alex, just like you could die every time you're on shift. And I can't take risks when all they do is fail.”

Just like that, Alex's last thread of control snapped. “They
don't
always fail. Sometimes, risks save lives. If I'd taken one today, the man I pulled out of that fire wouldn't be in the shape he's in now. But I hesitated, and it cost valuable time.”

Zoe blinked in surprise, but she didn't say anything, and hell if he was stopping before he'd unloaded his piece. “I get that you're raw right now, and I know taking risks scares you. But the flip side scares me. Every day that we have is a gift—a goddamn treasure. Not living my life because of what-if is the one risk I'm not willing to take. If you want to go live in a bubble, I can't stop you. But I can't go with you either. Please, Zoe. Stay with me. Take the risk.”

Alex looked at her, willing her with all he had to take a step toward him, or even to make the slightest move that said she'd trust him enough to stay.

But instead, she said, “I'm sorry.”

And then she turned and walked out the door.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Zoe made it all the way through the Emergency Department, past the double doors and over the stretch of asphalt in the parking lot before the tears she'd been fighting told her stubborn pride to kiss their ass. Wiping her face with the back of one hand, she used the other to get into her Prius, shutting the door so she could cry in peace.

Peace. On second thought, just crying would have to cut it for now.

She started the car, cutting a careful path over the handful of streets between Fairview Hospital and her apartment. Even though the drive wasn't terribly taxing or terribly long, by the time she'd parked her car and reached her threshold, her throat burned as much as her eyes.

Neither one of them came within a trillion miles of the hole in her chest.

Dropping her keys to the kitchen counter with a lackluster
clank
, she surveyed her favorite room. The kitchen had always been the cure-all for her frustrations, for her anger and her sadness and her doubt.

But now when she looked around, all she saw was the box of Lucky Charms Alex had conned her into buying, the skillet he'd washed and put in the dish drainer just that morning before he'd left for his shift, and the dish towel he'd snapped at her legs as they'd cooked together last week. In just one short month, he'd left an indelible mark in her space, her kitchen.

Her heart.

Another wave of fresh tears rimmed Zoe's eyes, and she didn't even bother swatting them away. Yes, she felt as if she'd been dragged across an emotional battlefield today, but the alternative was simply a non-option.

The fear of loving a firefighter had torn her parents' marriage apart after two and a half decades, proving that it never went away, and if anything, it only got worse over time. If Zoe had been this terrified at Alex's near miss, she couldn't even imagine how much worse
really
losing him would be. And between the profession that defined him and the lifestyle that was just as woven into the fabric of his being, the risk was too great.

She wasn't cut out for taking chances. All it did was leave her burned.

Zoe took a deep breath, trying to stuff her sadness down along with it. She wasn't hungry by any stretch, even though she couldn't remember for the life of her when, or even what, she'd eaten last. Deciding to forgo food, she slid a bottle of pinot noir off the shelf over the counter, uncorking it and filling her glass ridiculously high. She padded into the living room with both her glass and the bottle, putting them side by side on the slender coffee table in front of her as she plopped to the sofa, pulling a throw pillow across her chest.

The masculine scent of Alex's shampoo drifted up to greet her, and God, she was going to lose her mind.

Placing the pillow in the armchair across the room with the mental note to do laundry first thing in the morning, she flipped on the TV to scroll through the channels. She avoided anything vaguely hinting at local news, finally landing on a hockey documentary on the sports network. But after an hour of sitting there and not seeing a damn thing other than the level of liquid in her glass go all the way down to empty, Zoe finally decided that if she didn't at least eat something, she was going to be drunk as well as heartbroken.

She was halfway to the kitchen when a businesslike knock sounded at her front door, grabbing her attention and making her pulse rattle. She'd made a passable enough excuse to everyone at the hospital as she'd left, citing exhaustion as she'd slipped away. Rachel didn't know where she lived, and Tina would've certainly called before coming over. Could be a misguided pizza man. But it also could be a misguided serial killer, so Zoe deepened her voice with as much authority as possible before asking, “Who is it?”

“It's me, kiddo.”

Zoe pressed herself flush to the door to look through the peephole, her confusion warring with shock. Sure enough, her father stood in the hallway, looking right at her through the tiny lens.

She unlocked the dead bolt with a heavy
click
, swinging the door wide. “What are you doing here?”

“Chief Williams called in Captain Lewis from Station Four to finish the shift with the rest of the house so I could make sure things were taken care of at the hospital.”

“Okay,” she said, her tone labeling the word as a question. “But you're here instead.”

Her father nodded. “Everett elected to stay behind for a while to attend to any immediate needs, and Alex is resting comfortably, probably asleep for the night. But in order for me to handle this, I needed to talk to you first.”

Zoe's heartbeat picked up speed in her chest, and she ushered her father inside. “I can probably save you the conversation. Alex and I have decided to stop, um, seeing each other.”

He paused, his eyes falling on the empty wineglass and the half-empty bottle beside it. “I see,” he replied slowly. “I thought it was a little strange that you'd decided to leave the hospital, but I can't say I was expecting that.”

“That makes two of us. But we definitely broke up, so . . .” The ache in her chest kicked back to life with renewed vigor, and God, was it too much to ask to not start bawling in front of her father? She was twenty-seven, not
just
seven. For an awkward minute that lasted roughly an ice age, they stood in her living room, her father with his hands in the pockets of his uniform pants and her with her heart smashed to pieces.

And then her father crossed the space between them to wrap his arms around her, and Zoe burst into tears.

“Okay, now. Go ahead and get it out, kiddo. It's okay.”

“I'm sorry,” she sobbed, another round of cries tumbling out of her as her father smoothed her hair with one hand. “I found out I lost the Collingsworth Grant and then you got so mad at me and then Alex got hurt in this fire.... I saw it on the news and I thought . . . I thought he was . . . I was just so
scared. . . .
”

She bit her lip to stop herself from babbling further, but it didn't help. The tears flowed along with a half-sobbed version of what had happened, and her father held her close, the familiar comfort of his Old Spice cologne surrounding her as he simply listened. Finally, her cries became uneven breaths, then quiet sighs, and her father pulled back to look at her.

“I'm sorry you didn't get the grant. I'm sorry . . . well, for lots of things. I know I'm just your old man,” he said, just as calm and matter-of-fact as ever, even as he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe the tears from her face. “But maybe we should talk about what happened earlier a little more.”

“You seriously want to talk to me about what happened with Alex?”

“Not all of it,” her father confirmed, his jaw giving a quick twitch. “But there are some things that I need to say.”

Zoe frowned. “Like what?”

“For starters, you should know that Alex wasn't placed at Hope House by accident. He was placed there for community service because I requested it.”

“What?” Her shock knocked the word from her mouth on a chirp, but her father answered it directly.

“The recommendation seemed like a win-win. He'd screwed up and needed to get his head straight, and I knew you'd make him earn it. Plus, I'm not going to lie to you, I wanted you safe. Donovan's as loyal as they come. I knew he'd look out for you once he got over having to do community service. I just didn't think . . .” Her father trailed off, running his hand over the back of his neck. “I guess I'm just a thickheaded old man. You're my daughter. Alex is one of my firefighters. I didn't put two and two together the way I should've, and when I saw you two together tonight at the firehouse, I reacted poorly.”

Zoe blinked to try and get the information all the way past the holy-shit roadblock in her brain, but after the fourth try, she gave up. “So you put Alex with me because you knew I
wouldn't
give him preferential treatment?”

Her father nodded. “Alex is a great firefighter, kiddo, but the last thing he needed was to slide out of yet another dilemma. If I couldn't be the one to help him get his act together, well, I figured you were the next best thing.”

Jesus. All the blinking in the world wasn't going to help her diffuse the shock of this. “I thought you didn't believe in me.”

“I owe you an apology for that, too,” he said, his eyes going soft. “I don't suppose you'll really understand this until you have kids of your own, but no matter how old you get, no matter how smart or strong, you're still my daughter. I let my worry for your safety get in the way of what really matters. I guess old habits die hard, but that doesn't change the fact that I should've supported you better.”

Zoe thought of how her father had sent Alex to Hope House in the first place, then lent her the support of his entire firehouse, and all the quiet ways her father
had
helped, in his own way. “You did. You are right now.”

“Zoe, listen.” Her father paused for a deep breath.

“You're an adult, and the last person you probably need advice from is your father, especially on your love life—”

Ugh, no. “Dad, please. I don't want to talk about this. I don't have a . . .” She swallowed hard, forcing her lips to shape the word. “Love life with Alex. I couldn't even cope with him getting through a week's worth of shifts. He's too reckless, and I don't know the meaning of the word. It's just not meant to be.”

“I'm not so sure I agree with you there. I watched you get pretty reckless to save your soup kitchen,” her father said, and the words sent another pang through Zoe's gut.

“Exactly. And look what it got me.”

“What it got you was knowledge, experience, and the support of your community. Yes”—he cut off her brewing protest with a single look—“the money would've helped, but I know you better than to think you won't dust yourself off and find a way to get Hope House everything it needs to flourish, and I think you know it, too.”

Zoe opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

Yeah. She had nothing. “You believe that?”

Her father tilted his head, his mouth twitching into a wry smile. “I believe in you one hundred percent, and I'm not the only one. Alex rallied for you even before I did. I might've reacted badly when I saw the two of you together, but Donovan's a good man, one who clearly cares for you. And you deserve that. Both of you.”

“I'm scared,” Zoe admitted. “The job is so dangerous, and it ended your marriage to Mom after all that time. What if I never get over being afraid?”

“Being a firefighter is dangerous,” her father said slowly. “But being afraid to follow your heart is dangerous, too.”

She stepped into the comfort of his hug, the ache in her rib cage giving way to a shaky breath. “But what if I take the risk, only to lose?”

Her father squeezed her tight, holding her up in steady support. “I think the more important question is, what if you don't?”