Flash Point (Kilgore Fire Book 2) (8 page)

She pointed to the boy man that she was currently crushing on.

He was okay, I guess, but he wasn’t that great. At least not as great as she was making it seem like.

In my honest opinion, he wasn’t even that nice, but who was I to argue?

Then my eyes lit on the sexiest man I’d ever had the pleasure of seeing.

He was in tight white baseball pants that stopped at the knee, a yellow shirt that molded to his body, yellow socks and black baseball cleats.

His ball cap was in his hand as he rubbed the top of his shaved head with one hand.

The other arm was clutched tightly to his side where he was holding his baseball glove between his body and arm.

He was talking to, who I assumed was Jeff’s brother, seeing as Jeff was standing right beside them.

Mia pulled me forward, and the movement caught the attention of the man I’d been ogling.

His eyes ran up and down my body, and I blushed.

I had on short shorts, a black tank top, and cute flip flops.

My hair was styled perfectly. Well, as perfectly as driving 50 mph in an open top Jeep would allow.

What had me embarrassed, though, was the ketchup stain on my shorts from where I’d dropped some from my earlier burger.

Which he zeroed in on almost instantly.

His mouth kicked up as he turned away, and I blushed beet red.

“Wanna sit here?” Mia asked.

I looked at the bleachers, which happened to be only inches away from the man, and nodded.

“Yeah,” I said, clearing my throat.

The man’s body tightened, and I looked down, nervous now.

Mia sat down on the inside, making me sit down on the part of the open bleacher that was closest to the man.

Oh, God. He smelled good.

“Your shoe’s untied, man,” Jeff’s brother said to the other man.

“Thanks,” he said, dropping down to one knee beside me.

He placed his ball glove on the bleachers next to my leg, and I started to hyperventilate slightly when I saw how close his fingers had come to touching me.

I tried to look at something else—anything else—but my gaze was mesmerized by the play of muscles that were working in his arms and back by the simple task of
tying his shoe.

Then a man on the other team came up to the guy tying his shoe and knocked his hat off his head.

I caught it in my hands almost out of instinct and handed it back to him.

His eyes, then, turned to me.

He was nearly eye to eye with me, giving me my first close up view of his face.

“Thanks,” he rumbled, sending shivers down my spine.

I smiled at him.

“You’re welcome,” I replied softly.

Whistles blew and he got up, grabbed his hat, and then his glove.

This time his fingers did touch me.

Chills spread out along the path that his fingers had touched.

It’d only been a quick brush of his fingers but it’d been enough that I could still feel the warmth.
in their wake

“Whoa, Mase. What the hell was that?” Mia asked, bumping me with her shoulder.

I shook my head. “I have no earthly idea.”

He played third base.

Which meant I got to see him the entire time. Well, his ass anyway.

And what a spectacular ass it was.

I’d been staring at it for three hours now, completely ignoring everyone else on the field but him.

They were calling him ‘Mike.’

Well, someone would say ‘Mike’ and the rest of the crowd would say, ‘Who?’

I snickered as someone said it again.

Thunder rumbled overhead, and I looked up at the sky and frowned.

I didn’t think it was supposed to rain today, but Texas was notorious for heat storms.

Lighting and thunder followed the heat, lighting the sky up with them.

Maybe it was one of those, I thought.

Except it wasn’t.

I couldn’t be that lucky.

“Strike!” The umpire called.

“Yeah, boy!”

I giggled as the team started to jump up and down, excitement thrumming through their veins at the win.

A fat droplet hit me on the leg, and I looked up at the sky once again.

“Hey,” I said, poking Mia with my elbow.

She ignored me and instead continued to talk to Jeff’s brother, leaving me to wonder what I should do.

Then the rain answered for me moments later when the sky opened up.

I got up and gasped, staring in horror.

Then I remembered my project that was in my backpack in the car and took off.

I sprinted to the parking lot, running as fast as my legs could take me.

“Shit, shit, shit,” I said as I reached my Jeep.

I started yanking the back hatch open even before I’d rocked to a stop.

I hurriedly jumped onto the back bumper, then lifted one foot to rest on the back fender where I started to pull the soft top up and over the top.

I moaned in frustration when it got caught on something, causing me to have to get down, fix it and get right back up again once I’d fixed the kink.

My eyes quickly darted down to the backpack that was becoming soaked, and I prayed that the ‘waterproof’ backpack was actually as waterproof as it said it was when I’d gotten it.

Pushing up hard, I nearly fell when the whole entire thing became weightless.

Looking around in confusion, I saw the hot guy I’d been staring at all night on the opposite side of the Jeep.

He was moving the soft top into place without me even having to explain what he had to do.

And he wasn’t having to stand on the Jeep like I was having to do. He was just reaching up not even trying hard.

My mouth went dry when I saw the way his shirt was being molded to his chest due to the rain.

The smell of rain was thick and heavy as I jumped down and quickly hurried to the inside of the Jeep and started snapping the top into place.

He was already on his side, hooking it in as well.

“Thank you,” I said with a smile.

He winked and reached in the back seat for the windows.

Within two minutes we had the Jeep set up, and I was left soaked to the bone, but incredibly happy.

“Thank you,” I said to him. “I really appreciate your help…”

“Booth,” he answered.

I grinned. “Thank you, Booth.”

He grinned back.

“You’re welcome, Masen.”

My mouth dropped open.

“How’d you know my name?” I asked, my voice high and excited.

He didn’t tell me.

“I’ll see you at the next game, Masen.”

And for some reason, I knew I’d be there.

And I was.

The same thing happened now as I stared in horror at the rain that started to drip slowly from the sky.

I looked at the Jeep, then contemplated just trying to make it home.

But then the sky opened up once again, leaving me no choice but to throw the groceries into the backseat and start putting the soft top on once again.

Like déjà vu, though, Booth showed at the perfect time and started to help me, not saying a word to me as he did.

But this time, he didn’t even smile at me.

He just finished what he was doing and turned to leave.

And I just…
snapped
.

“I don’t really know how many times I’m going to have to tell you I’m sorry before you believe it!” I screamed. “My sister was bleeding out of her freakin’ eyes! I was scared and missing you. And I reacted badly to you calling to tell me you couldn’t make it home. So kill me. I was an eighteen-year-old girl. Girls overreact.”

I was crying by the time I’d finished that statement.

The earth shifted, thunder boomed, but Booth was silent.

I looked up at the man that’d just officially broken my heart, ripped it out and tore it to pieces right in front of me.

He wasn’t crying like me but he also wasn’t happy, either.

He was looking at me like he’d never seen me before.

“And you never tried. You threw us away,” I finished on a harsh whisper.

And some sort of dam broke, and I had Booth back.

Maybe not forever.

Probably only until I stopped sobbing.

But he was mine.

For a few short minutes, at least, he was mine.

Hard arms wrapped around me as I struggled to get away, but Booth wouldn’t let me go.

He held on tighter, making a cage out of his arms, preventing me from leaving.
Or falling.

“Shhh,” he said softly into my hair. “Shhh.”

I didn’t ‘
shh
.”

In fact, I was pretty loud if the looks I was getting from passerby was any indication.

I don’t know how long we stood there. Minutes. Seconds.

But he never let me go.

Not for long, long moments.

He got me into my Jeep, the passenger side, and walked around to the front.

Then he was in and driving away from the grocery store parking lot without another word while I sat in the seat beside him, soaked and crying.

He took me to his parents’ house again, coming around the car and helping me out.

I trudged after him to the front porch and opened it without using a key.

He gestured me inside as he stripped off his shirt and tossed it on the ground next to our feet.

Then he turned to me.

“I was a dick,” he said. “You asked me to call you. I called right before we were leaving to go out on a mission. So I had to go,” he answered. “Then I nearly died, and I thought maybe it would be better not to come back. Maybe I’d die over there, and I wouldn’t have to leave you behind.”

I sobbed harder.

His arms went back around me.

The cries tore out of my body so hard that my entire frame shook with the force.

Booth absorbed them into himself, burying his face into the back of my neck and holding on for dear life as the last ten years of torment poured out of my body in huge, shuddering, pain-filled sobs.

“I nearly died eight more times on that deployment,” he said softly. “Five of which I actually took a bullet to the body at some point.”

“You stole that away from me,” I whispered.

“I didn’t want you to have it,” he countered just as softly.

I opened my eyes and looked down at the muscled forearm that was wrapped around my upper torso.

There were no tattoos on this part of his body.

I leaned forward and rested my face against his wrist, feeling the pounding of his heart that matched the racing of mine.

“You tore me apart,” I whispered to him.

“I didn’t break you. Don’t you know I was saving you?” He countered, his voice a low rasp that played along my skin like a feather.

“No,” I denied.

“Yes,” he said. “If you’d have been with me, you’d have spent all of your time worrying, wondering if this deployment would’ve been the one that took me away for real. I didn’t live a good life. I risked it, time after time, to get many brothers out of the fire. Off the brink of death,” he said.

I shook my head in denial.

“Booth,” I said, turning around to stare up at his eyes. Those captivating orbs that had the power to grip me by the heart and hold on for dear life. “You’ve had me since you left. I’ve never not been with you. I’ve always been yours. Through these last ten years. Through thick and thin. Through you getting married. I was never not yours.”

He leaned forward suddenly, until his eyes were inches away from mine, and he said. “I’m divorced. The ‘wife’ that you keep referring to isn’t my wife anymore. The only reason we married at all was because she was my good buddy’s girl and he left her pregnant with no life insurance at all. I married her so she could have my benefits. She just married somebody else. Somebody who loves her.”

“That baby,” I choked. “She’s not yours?”

He shook his head. “No. Not mine.”

I closed my eyes, relief flooding through me.

Then anger followed soon after.

Rearing back, I launched my fist at Booth’s face.

He never saw it coming.

It hit him so hard in the nose that I heard it pop.

Or that might’ve been my hand.

Yep, pretty sure it was my hand.

“Owww,” I cried, doubling over

Booth scooped me up and led me into his parents’ kitchen, sitting me up on the counter as he’d done hundreds of times before.

He used to set me up here so he could get me drinks. Cook for me. Find us something to snack on. Talk.

This used to be our place.

We had our first make out session on these counters…and our first sexual experience. Not that his parents would ever know that.

This time, however, we weren’t together.

We weren’t anything.

And my head was currently dropped down to my chest as I tried to breathe through the nausea as the pain really started to make itself known.

“You stiffen your wrist next time you do that,” Booth said as he placed a Ziploc bag of ice on my hand.

“Mmmm,” I was all I could manage.

“Move your wrist,” he said.

I did.

“Now your fingers,” he ordered.

I straightened out my fingers and pain shot down my arm, starting at the base of my left pinky.

“Your pinky finger looks like it’s broken, but there’s nothing the hospital can do for a broken finger. You need one of those splint things,” he explained.

I knew that.

I’d never had a broken
anything
before, so this was new.

And it sucked.

Balls
.

Then, with the utmost care, Booth pulled my hand up to his mouth and placed a kiss on my swollen pinky.

And I’d never ever admit it, but the badass in him looked not so…
badass
.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered gruffly.

“You’re sorry that I hit you and got hurt?” I asked, voice quivering.

He nodded. “I’ve been an ass. I’ve done things to you…on purpose. And I don’t feel good about doing that to you.”

I took in a deep, settling breath, then finally lifted my eyes to his.

He was being sincere.

I could see the weight of his sincerity in his eyes. The way he gave me everything just by looking at me.

“Where do we go from here?” I asked softly.

He pursed his lips, dropping my hand onto my lap and holding the ice down as he thought.