By the time they climbed into his truck, there was still a dizzying rush rocking her that might not have had much to do with the train.

  While they drove to his apartment, she realized no guy had ever made her feel like this before.

  Was this the getting attached part everyone warned her about after one lost their virginity? Or perhaps something more?

  There didn’t seem to be an easy answer, kind of like the text from Paul still sitting on her phone.

  Later.

  She’d deal with all of that later.

  For now? Blake. She wanted all things Blake until Sunday. And then she’d deal with the cards how they fell.

  *

  If Blake had wanted a romantic setting for their night, he couldn’t have planned it better. The temperature had dropped, and the rain had come in. It was the perfect night to light a fire in the gas fireplace and order delivery Indian food.

  “I didn’t take you for a four-star girl.” Blake closed the app on his phone that he’d ordered the food on and gave her a teasing smile.

  It felt so natural having her here in his apartment, curled up on the sofa beside him.

  “Out of context, that could be insulting.”

  “I’m referring to the spice level of the chicken madras we just ordered.”

  “I know.” She tucked her legs under her bottom on his sofa and returned his smile, her eyes sparkling. “I love spicy food. I’m the type who will carry around those mini bottles of Tabasco in my purse.”

  “That’s hot.”

  “Literally.” She let out a soft sigh while staring at the fire. “I had a lot of fun today. Last night, too.”

  “Yeah?” He scooted closer and tucked a wayward strand of hair off her cheek.

  She made a murmur of content and turned her head to press a kiss into his palm.

  The small gesture made his breath catch.

  Shit, she was so sweet. So sexy.

  Need rose inside him, but he forced it down. They had all night. He wouldn’t rush things this time.

  Last night, he’d lost control like it had been his first time. Not the other way around.

  “And not just the obvious dirty stuff.” She shrugged. “I’ve been going nonstop since I arrived in Seattle and never had a moment of down time. Today was almost magical. Just so chill and relaxing.” She gave a whimsical smile. “Low key with no big plans. And then being with you… It’s just all been really nice.”

  “Yeah. I know what you mean.”

  Usually, he packed his days off with errands and activities. Being relatively impulsive had been a good change. Taking time to get outside and just breathe.

  Having Kristen’s hand in his had made it even more relaxing. Intimate. Where he dreaded leaving her and going back to work.

  What the hell was wrong with him?

  “How is it that you’re even single, Blake?”

  Her question, soft and conversational, had him cringing a bit.

  “I’m not great at relationships.”

  She arched a brow and leaned back against the side of the couch, sliding her sock-covered feet onto his lap. “Have you stuck around long enough with a woman to try?”

  Ouch. But her question only held mild curiosity, clearly no jab intended.

  “Not in a while,” he admitted as he began to massage her foot.

  The memory of the day that had changed it all rose along with bile in his throat. He rarely let himself think about it. He’d become awfully proficient on erecting that mental wall in an instant.

  “You should try sometime.”

  Something about her tone had him giving her a closer look. “You applying for the position?”

  Pink flared in her cheeks, and her eyes widened. Clearly, she hadn’t been applying and had just realized how that sounded. “Me? Well, you know, that long distance thing is a bitch.”

  Amusement warred with disappointment. “So, you’re sticking it out in Vegas, then?”

  “I haven’t looked anywhere else for jobs.”

  “So, it’s just the job, then?”

  She paused. “Also friends and…stuff.”

  Stuff. Hmm. The way she’d said that word made him curious, but he didn’t pry. He needed to let it go.

  “What are you thinking about?” she asked.

  Keep it light.

  “Your toes.” He teased one of her little toes. “And that cute, sparkly-pink polish you have on them.”

  “Fantasizing about my toes, are you?” She gave him an impish smile. “I can’t decide if that’s weird or hot.”

  “Go with hot. But if I start touching you now, dinner will show up right when things are getting hot and heavy.” He set her feet down and sat up. “Can I get you something to drink?”

  “Total cop-out. The delivery dude would probably love it,” she joked. “A drink sounds great.”

  He walked into the small kitchen and opened the fridge. “I’ve got some fancy ginger beer, water, milk”—he hesitated—“no alcohol. Do you want me to run and grab some wine?”

  “Blake,” her tone gentle, “I’m absolutely capable of not drinking alcohol. It’s actually rarer when I do have a beer in my hand. This week I was in party mode. It’s my vacation.”

  A hot flush started at his neck, and he nodded. Of course he’d just made things weird. It was still something he struggled with. His masculine image and career, and yet he refused to have a beer. Any kind of alcohol. And a lot of the guys—and women—judged him for it. But, then, they didn’t know the reasoning behind it.

  “Sorry.” He forced the word out on a sigh. “I didn’t mean—”

  “You don’t owe me an explanation.” She climbed off the couch and followed him into the kitchen. She wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her face against his back. “Or an apology.”

  Blake closed his eyes and let out a slow breath. Just the feel of her soft body pressed against him had the muscles in his body relaxing.

  “I’ll take a ginger beer. Which, you know, for the longest time, I thought ginger beer had alcohol in it. I mean, duh, the name,” she murmured conversationally and pulled away. “I actually yelled at a pregnant cousin when she ordered one.”

  God she was so sweet. So honest and adorable.

  The urge to tell her everything rose up in his throat.

  She deserved to know.

  But, God, did he want to rip off that scab?

  Don’t say it.

  He turned around and set his hands on her hips, staring down at her. Searching her gaze. So torn.

  “Blake? What is it?” She touched his cheek. “You can tell me.”

  He tried to swallow the words back down, but they came up like rising bile.

  “Almost a decade ago, I was in a pretty bad accident. And I…I was the only one who survived.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Kristen struggled to breathe, and the blood leaving her face left her a bit dizzy.

  Whatever she’d been expecting him to say, it hadn’t been that.

  Maybe some confession about a DUI or something else not quite as fatal.

  Oh my God.

  She shook her head, swallowing the large lump in her throat as she visualized it in her head. “Blake.” His name came out on a broken whisper. “I’m so sorry.”

  He pulled her hand from his cheek, his grimace almost a sneer of contempt. “Don’t. Just…don’t feel sorry for me. Please.” He closed his eyes and thrust a hand through his hair. “I don’t deserve sympathy.”

  He had to have been a teenager. Maybe a legal adult, but still so young.

  “How old were you?”

  “Nineteen. We were leaving a frat party to grab more alcohol. Three frat brothers, myself”—he paused, his jaw flexing—“and the girl I was dating.”

  Kristen’s heart stuttered, and her throat went tight with grief for him. She didn’t say anything, just listened. Waited for him to continue, but the heaviness in her stomach gave an indication that she knew where this was heading.

  “Kyle swore he wasn’t drunk. That he’d only had half a beer and was fine to drive.” Blake sucked in a slow breath. “I should’ve been smarter. Should’ve had someone who hadn’t been drinking drive us.”

  But who didn’t drink at a frat party? She didn’t voice the question aloud.

  “I was sitting in the back seat in that shitty middle spot.” His laugh was harsh. “I took it to look like a nice guy and let everyone have the comfortable seats. And then it ended up saving my life. I don’t remember anything from the actual accident, but I’m told he drifted into the other lane and hit a truck head-on.”

  A wash of cold ran through her at the thought of how easily he could’ve been killed.

  This had been the same fraternity her brother had been in, she realized. A hazy memory pricked. Her brother mentioning a fatal car crash that had killed some of his friends. How shocked she’d been and relieved that James hadn’t been in the car.

  But Blake had been.

  The hair on her arms lifted, and her heart began a slow thud. She wanted to reach out and touch him. Comfort him, but he’d already shrugged off her touch a moment ago. “How badly were you hurt?”

  “Pretty bad. I was in the hospital for a couple of weeks.” He was quiet for a moment, and the glaze in his eyes hinted he was reliving it all.

  “The scar on your chest?”

  “Was from the accident.”

  “I can’t even imagine.” What did you say to someone who’d experienced something so horrific? So awful. To lose friends. And a girlfriend.

  Had he loved her?

  The question would stay buried deep. It was inappropriate—and none of her business. She wouldn’t be so callous as to ask. Even if every part of her burned to know because it would explain so much.

  “I never touched alcohol again after that accident. So now you can understand why I freak out when people drink too much and try and drive. There’s a lot of baggage I still carry around from it.”

  “I don’t see how you couldn’t.” Tears pricked at the back of her eyes, and the lump in her throat returned.

  She couldn’t imagine—could not even try to fathom—what it would be like to lose friends and a girlfriend and be the only survivor in a car accident. The anguish and guilt he must have gone through. Clearly, he still struggled with guilt.

  “Here’s another crazy thing. Before it all happened, I was a business major with Wall Street ambition. Hungry for power. For money.”

  That revelation made her blink in dismay. “What? Really?”

  It was hard, almost impossible, to imagine him in that career.

  “Really. But I dropped out of business school. Quit the frat. It’s another way the accident changed me.” He paused, seemed to go back into his memory again. “I have vague memories of the first responders cutting me out of the wreck. Talking to me, giving me hope. Encouraging me to live.”

  It sank in.

  “And that’s when you decided to go the first responder route? To give back and be a hero to someone else?”

  “I wanted to make a difference.” He shrugged. “There’s a lot of my job that’s not very heroic—and pretty damn unglamorous. But then there are the times where I get to be that first responder who helps save someone’s life.” His jaw flexed. “Or be with them when they pass on.”

  At the barely hidden grief in his eyes, she was overcome with emotion. She wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her cheek against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her and held her. Almost clung to her, really.

  Relief that he wasn’t pushing her away roared through her.

  The rapid thump of his heart became the reminder that he had lived when his friends hadn’t. When the tears slipped from her eyes, she prayed he wouldn’t feel them.

  This man who she’d initially written off as a hot-and-shallow sex god was anything but. He was tender and protective. And he embodied the term hero in every sense of the word.

  “I usually don’t talk about this,” he muttered against her hair. “Not with family. Not with friends. Never with women I’m involved with. I don’t let people in.”

  Her heart quickened, and her chest rose with the deep breath she took. She didn’t want to overthink what he meant by that. A few minutes ago, he’d told her this was still just sex, right?

  And that reply had stung, even though it should’ve been exactly what she wanted. It was getting harder to deny this growing bond between them.

  Was it possible it meant that he was beginning to care for her?

  That should’ve been crazy.

  She was leaving on Sunday. She had an interview for a job next week that would keep her living in Nevada. And she’d undoubtedly see Paul soon—the man she’d thought she was in love with. And yet she couldn’t bring herself to reply to his text.

  Nothing felt certain any more.

  A sharp knock sounded on the door, driving them apart.

  Disorientated and startled, Kristen folded her arms across her chest as Blake went to answer.

  When he opened it, their dinner delivery was there. Blake closed the door a moment later, holding the paper bag of fragrant Indian food.

  Oh God. Food was the last thing on her mind right now.

  “You hungry?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You sure?”

  Her cheeks flushed. “I mean, I will be soon, I’m sure.”

  “I’m not, either, anymore. Look, this stuff reheats well.” He set it in the fridge and approached her. “You know what sounds good right now?”

  Her heart quickened. “What?”

  He touched her cheek gently. “Crawling into bed and making love to you.”

  Making love. He’d said making love.

  “And then just holding you again.” His words weren’t quite steady. “If you’ll let me.”

  She would’ve done anything to remove the pain beneath his words.

  “Nothing sounds better.” And it was the truth.

  He set the bag in the fridge, caught her hand, and led them down the hall to his room.

  And if she went by the way he looked at her, she didn’t think they’d be eating until midnight.

  *

  “How is it almost nine at night?”

  In a drowsy state of relaxation and content, Blake gave a soft laugh. Kristen’s head against his chest gave him easy access to wander his fingers on a journey from her soft hair to the middle of her back.

  “I don’t know. We’ve spent so many hours in here I lost track.”

  Whether it was making love, cuddling, or eating their Indian food while surrounded by a cocoon of blankets, they’d barely left the bed.

  Instead of a mindless movie in the background, they’d talked and put on music, discovering how much their tastes ran the same. She was a huge Alice in Chains fan, she’d confessed, making a little quip about taking the girl out of Seattle but not Seattle out of the girl.

  It still surprised him when he thought about how easily he’d opened up about the accident to her. It wasn’t something he talked about. There were only a handful of guys at the station who even knew.

  What had happened had been brutally traumatizing and painful. It wasn’t something he liked to relive. It’d taken dozens of therapy sessions to come to terms with it.

  Opening up with Kristen had been instinctive. Natural. There’d been nothing forced about it. It’d brought them closer. He knew she felt it, too.

  Across the room, his phone buzzed from a text. There was no temptation to leave the bed and check who’d sent it.

  “You need to get some sleep. You work tomorrow.” Her soft words held regret.

  He grimaced. “I wish I didn’t. You leave Sunday—we’re already running out of time.”

  She sighed and kissed his chest. “Don’t remind me how fast the week is going.”

  “Too fast.”

  “But I’ll see you Friday at James’s dinner, though, right?” Her tone perked up. “Which is going to be hard as hell because we’re going to have act like we’re not screwing like bunnies. I don’t want James to suspect anything.”

  He couldn’t resist teasing. “Just don’t give me that come get me stare, and I think we’ll be cool.”

  She laughed and slapped him with the pillow. “I do not look at you like that.”

  “Oh, you sure as hell do.” He eased her onto her back and propped himself on an elbow above her. “And it’ll be damn hard not to drag you off into a closet when you do.”

  Her eyes were glassy with the look he’d just described as he cupped the flesh between her legs. She lowered her lashes when he slid a finger into her slick heat.

  She wanted him. Again.

  He stroked her, watching her growing arousal as she lowered her lashes and moved with his touch.

  He lowered his head to torment her breast, teasing and sucking the tight tip until she was breathing ragged and begging.

  God, he loved the way she was going after her orgasm. The way she responded to his touch so feverishly. It only took a few more strokes before he took her there. Giving a choked cry as she trembled through her climax.

  He lifted his head from her breast and watched her ride the wave. “You’re beyond sexy right now.”

  She bit her lip and gave a weak laugh. “Am I? Because I’m pretty sure my O face looks more like I just stepped on a Lego.”

  His lips curled in amusement. “Then you must derive a weird pleasure from stepping on Legos.”

  “You know I’m far from normal.”

  He brushed a kiss across her mouth and smiled. “I think that’s why I like you so much.”

  “Do you really?” She her lashes lifted. “Like me so much?”

  His heart did some weird stuttering thing at the intensity he saw there. The sudden vulnerability.

  Yeah. He really did like her.

  The realization had him frozen. Maybe even panicking a bit internally.

  His expression must’ve gotten weird because her cheeks flooded with color, and she looked away.

  “Don’t answer that. I have no idea why I even asked.”

  “Kris—”

  The sound of the apartment door unlocking broke off his protest.

  What the hell?

  He jumped out of bed, scrambling into his boxers.

 

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