Slide (15 page)

I took the sub and brushed my fingers over the palm of his hand. “Thanks. I needed this.”

He smiled shyly. “Don’t want you wasting away. Are you working a double tonight?”

“Probably,” I said, knowing a Friday-night shift wouldn’t have me home before dawn. “Why? Are you going to miss my pretty face?”

“You’re not that pretty.”

“Liar.”

“Get out of here, asshole.”

He reached out and jokingly shoved me toward the door. I pushed him back and pulled my faithful old CFD beanie onto my head. “I’m going, I’m going. See you tomorrow.”

We parted with a last longing look, him heading for the stairs, and me out into the freezing Chicago winter.

I turned my back on our building and crossed the street, pondering the encounter. He’d seemed happy enough, but with Ash, sometimes it was hard to tell. He was prone to weird moods, and a bizarre moment just that morning had gotten me worried again.

A few hours after we’d passed out in a sweaty pile of sated limbs, he woke up sore and pissed off. His stomach hurt, and on top of that, he was freaked out. It was no surprise—it happened every time he bottomed—but I
hated
it. It messed with my head to know I’d caused him that pain, even when the choice had been his, and it wasn’t just his obvious physical discomfort that caught my attention. In the murky light of the early morning, his wide and fearful eyes reminded me of the skinny punk-ass kid who’d shuffled into my apartment back when I’d first met him. He’d come a long way since then, but those days still haunted my memories. I never wanted to go back to them.

I couldn’t rest after that, even when he went back to sleep, so I got up and watched the news channel go around in a loop for hours until he came looking for me. It was kind of cute, watching him stumble around with half-lidded eyes and clumsy feet, but even as he pulled me back into bed and wrapped his arms around me, something still felt off.

Sighing, I crossed the street and stopped to grab a coffee from the old Colombian guy by the L—plain, black, and strong. I couldn’t handle the three packets of sugar Ash liked to dump in his coffee. The first sip slid down like magic. I was tired as hell, and I needed the caffeine hit. The respite was brief, though, because my mind quickly returned to my puzzling nighttime tryst.

It was rare,
really
rare, that Ash let me fuck him.
Asked
me to fuck him. The last time was months ago, when he’d finally moved all his things into my bedroom and turned his into a studio, and even that was only the second time ever. The first had been more than a year ago now, and though it was… fuck,
mind-blowing
, it turned out to be something neither of us was ready for. Ash for whatever reason he wouldn’t talk about, and me? I just couldn’t handle putting him through something he found so difficult. It was an issue we’d learned to live with, and for as long as we’d been together, I’d never felt anything was lacking. Though I’d enjoyed—
almost
enjoyed—every moment of topping him the night before, his sudden U-turn was perplexing.

I pulled my collar up against the cold air, chucked my empty coffee cup, and reached for my cell. Ellie was at the top of my pretty short texting list. I tapped out a message as I crossed the busy street:
Hey, sugar. Are you free tonight?

The response was almost instant.
Are you asking me out again?

I grinned.
Not quite. Can you drop in on Ash?

Sure. He owes me dinner. Everything OK?

I waited until I’d navigated through the busiest part of town before I tapped out my answer.
Yeah, just working all night… again.

Gotcha. X.

I shoved my phone in my pocket, reassured that Ash wouldn’t spend another night on his own. Ellie was his best friend. She’d taken care of him since he was just seventeen. Whatever his mood, I knew she’d watch over him while I was gone—she always did.

In fact, it was Ellie who’d brought Ash into my life in the first place. I’d met her in one of the city hospitals. Her father was a doctor, and she’d been waiting for him when she saw me pinning the ad for my spare room on a bulletin board. She’d knocked on my door the very next day, then dragged Ash into the apartment behind her. He was quiet back then, letting her talk for him, but despite his silence, I’d been intrigued by the stormy eyes hiding behind his messy hair. A cursory glance at his solitary reference told me he had a steady income, and a heartbeat later, I’d rented him the room.

Lucky for me, because I couldn’t imagine my life without him.

His reticence made life hard at times, but as my musings carried me across town and the firehouse appeared in front of me, I’d run out of time to brood on it.

I hit the locker room, and I’d just changed into my uniform when the first call came in. Mick, my longtime partner, greeted me with a fist bump, and we hauled ass into the bus. It was his turn to drive, and I was glad of it. I closed my eyes in a brief attempt to get my game face on. The coffee had dulled my exhaustion, but not nearly enough. It was going to be a long night.

I opened my eyes with a reluctant sigh as the ambulance pulled out of the firehouse vehicle bay. “Where are we going?”

“Bar fight, Miller Street.” Mick hit the lights and hung a sharp left. “Starting early tonight.”

Great.
The last time we’d been called to a bar, the mainly female patrons had thought we were strippers.

T
HE
night forged ahead, and with it came a brutal run sheet. A heart attack, an overdose, and a car accident later, 5:00 a.m. rolled by and I was about six hours too late to call home. Not that I usually called home when I was working, but earlier in the night, somewhere between a teenager puking up her mom’s Valium and a severed leg, I’d felt the urge to check in. Shame it never happened. It put me in a bad mood for a while, but when I pulled out my cell there was a message from Ash that put a big ass grin on my face.

Wake me up when you get home. Got plans for you, fucker. A.

It was too late to reply, so I opened the message Ellie had sent around the same time.

Plied him with pizza and beer, he seems happy enough. Don’t forget tomorrow night.

That killed my grin. I
had
forgotten about the party Ellie was having for her sister at her place. Even at the best of times, I could have done without it, but after a week of night shifts, I had even less patience for her self-absorbed sister than usual.

Ellie came from money, serious money. It hadn’t affected her personality—she was the sweetest little thing—but her sister was a spoiled brat. Ellie worked for the satisfaction of it, if not for a living, but Megan had never worked a day in her life, and had no plans to, either. I found it hard to stomach the way she looked down on us, and even harder to keep my mouth shut. Ash just let it roll over him—sometimes he didn’t even seem to notice—but that shit just wasn’t me. Whenever we saw her, it was only a matter of time before my mouth got the better of me and ruined everyone’s fun.

I was about to give in and respond to Ash’s message when the radio called for us again. Mick swore and reached for the receiver. We were an hour from the end of our shift; another job meant another two hours… at least. Add in paperwork, clean up and handover time, and even that was wishful thinking. With a weary sigh, I moved to the back of the bus and checked we were ready. I nodded affirmatively, if somewhat reluctantly, and we hit the road.

The drive was silent as we both steeled ourselves for whatever we were about to see. The 911 call had reported a woman lying unconscious and bleeding in the corridor of her building. According to the neighbor, she’d been beaten and left for dead by her husband. Domestic violence at its worst. Whatever happened, the scene would be pretty unpleasant.

Typically, we got there before the cops, outrunning Chicago’s finest. We parked the bus and grabbed our kit. The building was deserted when we got up to the third floor, but that was to be expected in this neighborhood. The neighbor who’d called it in hadn’t left a name. Beyond a 911 call, no one wanted to get involved.

We scouted the corridor. It didn’t take us long to find the woman. She was slumped in a doorway, facedown with her legs sticking out into the communal corridor. Closer inspection found blood pooled around her head and an obviously broken arm bent beside her. I crouched down, reached for the woman, and kept a sharp eye on the corridor while Mick moved past me with well-practiced fluidity to check out the apartment. I lifted the woman’s blood-soaked hair from her face to assess her injuries. “Can you open your eyes for me, sugar?”

There was no response, but I didn’t expect one. She was out cold. Without the need to calm her, we could just scoop and run. I set to work getting her ready to move.

Mick reappeared behind me. “It’s clear, but there are kid’s toys everywhere in there. No sign of the kid.”

I strapped the woman to the backboard, glancing behind me into the apartment. “Call it in,” I said. “We’ll be out of here before the PD rolls up.”

Mick reached for the radio on his sleeve. I bent over to retrieve the last of our kit, and, assuming it was the cops, didn’t look up as footsteps approached. Mick’s shout came too late. I raised my head just as a baseball bat came hurtling toward me.

Instinctively, I ducked, shielding the woman with my body and covering my head with my arms. My ribs took the first blow, my back the second. The impact was violent and brutal, and traveled from the base of my spine and up my torso until my whole upper body was throbbing with pain. I rolled away, cursing like a sailor, and looked up as the heavy-set man brandishing the bat dodged Mick and took off down the corridor. Seconds later, the CPD finally appeared on the scene and ran after him. It didn’t look like they’d catch him; they were both fat motherfuckers. The escaping dude was a big guy, but the doughnut-fueled beat officers didn’t stand a chance.

Beside me, the woman remained unconscious, oblivious to the chaos around her. I ran my eyes over her, but it didn’t look like she’d taken any additional hits.

Mick dropped down beside me, his hands on my shoulders. “You okay, man?”

I shoved my hand under my clothes to inspect the damage. Nothing felt broken, but it was going to bruise like hell. “I’m fine,” I said tersely. “Let’s just get out of here. I’ve had enough of this crap for one night.”

Somehow, with my arm wrapped around my ribcage, we managed to hoist the woman out of the building. We were loading her into the rig when the police came down to let us know there was indeed a child, a daughter, unaccounted for. I felt sick as I contemplated the implications.

But scared as I was for the kid, finding her wasn’t my job. We had the woman to transport, and she had to be my focus. Like any big city, Chicago was a scarily intense place to be a paramedic. I’d seen some things over the years that made me want to bleach my damn brain. With the pain and exhaustion beginning to roar in my body, I just wanted to put my fingers in my ears, hand her over, and go the fuck home.

Unfortunately for me, Mick had other ideas. “Rules are rules, asshole,” he said when we got to the hospital. “You took a nasty hit, and you’ve got to get checked out.”

I would’ve punched him if I felt up to it—the wait for an X-ray would take all day—but as it was, the best I could manage was a glare that made him grin.

“Don’t sweat it, dude,” he said. “I’ll take the rig back and sort it out. I’ll even do the paperwork. Want me to call Ash?”

He was the only person I worked with who knew Ash was more than my roommate. He was a good friend whom I trusted completely, but I still didn’t want him waking Ash up. He’d only worry until I got home, and I didn’t want that. Part of me wanted to call Ash myself, just to hear his voice, but I didn’t let myself be that needy.

My mind made up, I climbed awkwardly out of the ambulance. “Let him sleep. I’ll call him later.”

In my head, I was already detaching myself from the incident, filing it away in the part of my brain that housed all the horrible crap I couldn’t handle. Complete disassociation was unhealthy, but I needed a certain amount of it to survive. Dwelling on shit just fucked you up.

I
FELT
like I was stuck in some never-ending cycle of crawling into bed beside Ash, only to wake up to just the smell of him and a few scribbled words. Yeah, we’d fucked just the day before, but the encounter had been one of few words. I still felt like I hadn’t really
seen
him.

When I came back into the room from showering, I spotted the note on his pillow that my sleep-hazed brain had obviously missed when I’d woken up.

You’re off the hook. Meet me there later if you want to. Don’t worry if you don’t.

I didn’t know whether to be relieved or slightly offended that he’d gone to Ellie’s without me.

I considered my options as I got dressed. He’d been pissed when he got up to find me lying battered on the couch with severely bruised ribs. I was asleep, so I didn’t hear him take Mick’s call, or see his face when he found out what happened, but when I woke up I found him staring at me from his position sitting on the coffee table. His clenched jaw and jittery knees were enough to let me know he was freaked.