A Firefighter in Her Stocking

“Don’t? Are you kidding me? Don’t?” She practically screamed. At least it felt that way. In reality, her voice wasn’t much higher than normal. It was her tone, the hurt, the anger, the seething, the fear and uncertainty, the total disillusionment, all negatives that he’d caused.

Just as he had with Nina. The argument they’d had rushed through his mind. He’d been a jerk then, too, when Nina had tried to salvage their friendship.

He wasn’t good at this relationship thing. Maybe that was why he did one-night stands.

No, he knew why he did one-night stands.

That had been abundantly clear when he’d seen Charles. He didn’t want to get attached, to care again, ever.

Because he didn’t want to get hurt, again.

He used Nina as a shield, a defense, a reminder to never let himself care.

He’d failed.

He cared about Sarah.

He didn’t want an argument to be his last conversation with Sarah as it had been with Nina.

Which was why he was going to have to admit some things he’d never admitted to anyone, never said out loud.

“Don’t make me go,” he began. When she looked ready to toss him out anyway, he rushed on. “At least, not without letting me explain.”

“You owe me no explanations,” she bit out, her gaze shooting daggers. “We’ve already established that.”

He’d done that, caused her anger, her lashing out, and he deserved her to toss him out rather than hear him.

“I shouldn’t have said what I did, Sarah.”

“Actually, you should have, because I’d gotten everything all tangled up in my head and thought you actually had feelings for me, that I was different from the female parade coming out of your bedroom. Ha,” she scoffed, pacing across the room and shaking her head in dismay. “What a fool I was.”

“You weren’t a fool.”

“I wasn’t smart.”

He took a deep breath and said what had to be said to break through her ire and disillusionment.

“I was in love with Charles’s wife.”

As he’d expected, Sarah’s expression changed, went from hurt and angry to stunned.

“What?”

“I loved Nina.” There. He’d said it. Admitted the truth out loud. For the first time ever.

To Sarah.

Probably not the best person to admit that particular truth to, but he’d never been tempted to tell anyone else. Besides, how else could he explain his unacceptable behavior at Charles and Grace’s engagement party? To make Sarah understand the dark swirling emotions inside him?

She stared, wide-eyed and with a mixture of pity and abhorrence. “But that’s...”

“I introduced Nina to Charles. I brought her to a party with me and was showing her off to my family, thinking our friendship was blossoming into something straight out of a fairy tale. Instead, I got to watch as I introduced my cousin, as she blushed, as she looked at him with an excitement in her eyes that had never shown there when she looked at me. I watched while the woman I was planning to spend the rest of my life with fell all over herself for my cousin, that ‘most excellent man’, as you call him.”

Maybe he shouldn’t have thrown Sarah’s description of Charles at her, but the words spewed from his mouth.

“I got to watch while she married him, while they shared excitement over their announcement they were going to be parents. I got to grieve in silence when she died giving birth to his children and to fall apart later, in private, when I could let out the pain in my heart. So you’ll understand that seeing my cousin fawn over another woman, betraying Nina’s memory, then listening to you go on about him, well, tonight wasn’t the best of nights.”

“Why did you say you’d go?” Sarah whispered, dropping against the back of the sofa, as if her legs would no longer support her.