Hard Rider

“I had to—”

“You had to what?” I snapped, taking a step closer to him. Comparatively, Gunner towered over me, but I wasn’t about to let something like size diminish my righteous fury—I deserved this after all those years. “Leave your only sister behind so you could go be a hero? Play firefighter with your buddies? Live in your nice fucking bungalow and forget we even existed?!

“I

spent the years I should have been playing with my friends outside—years I’ll never get back—playing nurse to your shit-faced drunk of a father while he berated me and called me worthless. What you should have done was actually been there for me—like a real brother would have.”

“I couldn’t stay there, Tanya. Not after what he did,” Gunner said, doing his best to hold out against my anger.

“What he did to you?” I asked, letting out an incredulous laugh. “What do you think he did to me after you left?”

“It isn’t my fault what he did to you!” he said, raising his voice to try and match mine. “What he did wasn’t because of me.”

“But you could have taken me away from him! We could have left together! But instead I woke up that morning alone, without the only person I had left in the whole wide world who loved me.” I looked away from him, my eyes turned down toward my clenched fists. “First I lost mom then you abandoned me, and that’s enough for me to never want to speak to you again.”

I turned on my heel, making my way toward the open door to what I assumed was Gunner’s bedroom.

“Where’re you going?” he called after me; I heard the creaking of his heavy footfalls following behind mine.

“I’m going to take a shower, Gunner. Leave me alone.”

I grabbed the edge of the door and swung it closed behind me, breathing a sigh of relief as I heard the click of the latch catching on the door. It was only a matter of time before he opened it after me, and by then I was safely inside of the master bathroom, the door locked and the water running. As I undressed, I only wished I could wash my life down the drain along with the dirt and grime.

Just as I stepped into the warm torrent of my brother’s magnificent shower I heard a loud banging on the bathroom door. I sighed, putting my facing inside of my hand in frustration before closing the sliding glass door closed behind me.

“Tanya!” I heard my brother call, his voice muffled behind the solid door and the steady hiss of the hot water all around me. I kept my bandaged hand well away from the water as I enjoyed the simple feel of it rushing over me. “Open the door, dammit!”

“I’m kind of taking a shower, Gunner,” I shouted, though I hardly cared if he heard a word that came out of my mouth. “I can argue with you later—preferably when I’m not soaking wet.”

I closed my eyes, letting the hot streams of water wash over my body, relaxing my aching muscles. Ever since the fire I’d felt like I’d never get the feeling of soot and the smell of smoke off of me, as though what had happened would leave a stain on me that would never come off so long as I lived.

My choices of soap were sadly limited to the macho men’s brands that my brother seemed to enjoy, forcing me to smell like an alpine summit until I could manage to go to the store and find some more appropriate scents. However, a wintry aroma was a price I was willing to pay for a little bit of cleanliness.

I couldn’t remember how long I’d stayed in the shower, basking in the invigorating steam that swirled around me. It wasn’t until I realized just how wrinkled my hands had become did I finally decide that I’d gotten myself as soot-free as I was going to get.

I stepped cautiously out onto the terrycloth rug laid out just outside of the shower door, feeling the course texture against the soles of my feet. I reached out and pulled down one of the towels hanging from the cute little wrack just to the side of the shower, wrapping myself up in it and covering my less appropriate areas. There was something about scratchy towels that made me feel so much better than the other soft kind ever could.

I listened for a moment after I’d managed to get my hair dry, enjoying how quiet it had gotten now that Gunner had stopped yelling. Who the hell did he think it was, anyway? Demanding my fucking time after all those years. I was intent on making him wait as long as I wanted before he ever started to earn a portion of my forgiveness.

I tightened my towel around myself, tucking the corner just under my arm to keep it all in place before pulling the door open. Instead of an empty room, however, I found my brother staring me right in the face. I almost fell backward, barely a foot of space between us as he pushed himself into the bathroom.

“Gunner, what the fuck!” I shouted, trying to push him back out and back into the bedroom.

“You don’t just get to end it like that, Tanya. You’re staying in my fucking house and I expect you to show me some respect.”

“Respect?” I asked, my eyebrows raised. “We can talk about respect when you don’t come barging in on your own naked sister. Jesus, Gunner. What if I hadn’t had a towel on?!”

I looked at him expectantly, but something in the way he was looking at me through me off guard. My heart began to thud in my chest, watching the way my stepbrother’s eyes roved over my body. All at once I became acutely aware of all the places my towel clung to my curves, leaving less of my body as mysterious as I had ever planned.

“Gunner! Get the fuck out! What are you, some kind of pervert or something?” I asked, hoping that I’d make him mad enough to actually leave. I self-consciously crossed my arms across my chest. Despite how strange I knew it was, I couldn’t help but get a thrill at the way he’d lingered on my cleavage.

“Fuck you, Tanya,” Gunner said, shaking his head, his hands up in the air in a gesture of mock surrender. I watched him turn and leave, my heart still beating like a humming bird’s. I’d had men stare at me countless times whenever I worked the stage at the Domino, but out of all those times I’d never felt so... excited by the way someone took me in—not in the way Gunner had just done.

Chapter 5

Gunner

What the hell is her problem?

I couldn’t stay inside for another second without screaming my head off, and despite how much of a bitch Tanya was being, she didn’t deserve that after the last few days. I’d never been the nicest person in the world, but I was trying to be better. If not for myself, then for her.

I needed some air, some space to collect my head and figure out how I was going to deal with my temperamental stepsister crashing in my spare room.

Just yesterday she’d been all cuddles and hugs, thanking me for saving her goddamn life. And now, all of a sudden she’d done a complete one-eighty and decided that I was the scum of the Earth. Granted, today she seemed much more sober than she had when I’d come to see her in the hospital.

I climbed into my Mustang and pulled out of the driveway, heading back to the firehouse. After hearing about what happened with Tanya the chief had told me to take the day off, but I couldn’t come up with a better place to go to. Firefighting was my life, but considering that it was also the only thing in my life, I was starting to think that maybe that wasn’t such a good thing.

On the drive, my thoughts drifted back to Tanya and the way she’d looked when she’d stepped out of that shower. When I’d seen her last she’d just been a scrawny little girl, but now, after all these years, I couldn’t deny that my stepsister was long past being called a girl—she was all woman.

The way that towel clung to her curves, her hair soaked and dangling like Spanish moss over her neck and shoulders. If it had been anyone else—any girl I’d brought home from the club or the bar—I’d have had her bent over my bed and screaming my name.

But this was my stepsister. The only thing I should have seen when I looked at her was the little brat I used to help put pigtails on when she was getting ready for school, not some smoking hot vixen.

It was wrong...

And I knew that if I hadn’t gotten out of there, then an awkward situation would have become something much, much worse. Despite how she was acting or even how she felt about me, I knew that I couldn’t lose Tanya again—this time, I wouldn’t run.

It didn’t take me very long to get to the firehouse, just long enough to collect my thoughts and think away the tent in my jeans.

When I arrived, I saw half the station outside gathered around our big fire engine. A few of the boys were soaked and covered

in suds and a few others took turns rinsing the truck, the remnants of their handiwork spiraling down into the darkness of the nearest storm drain.

“Yo! Gunner!” one of my boys called from where the rest of them were lounging by the grill. “Ain’t today your day off?”

I walked over, finding Stoggins manning the grill behind a column of smoke. Our resident grill master loved his meat nice and smoky. The rest of us? Not so much.

“Jesus, you’re lettin’ this buffoon around the grill again?” I asked, punching my friend in the arm as he flipped the next batch of burgers over the fire. “What’s the procedure when we have to report our own damn fire? Do we have to call someone else to put the fuckin’ thing out?”

“How about you do us all a favor and shove a damn burger in your mouth, and then shut the fuck up, Gunner,” Stoggins shot back, jerking his head toward a plate of juicy patties.

“I’ll shove my fist in your mouth, is what I’ll do,” I said, fixing myself a burger while I glanced around at the rest of our crew.

These makeshift block parties of ours were pretty common whenever we had to wash the engines, and it gave us a chance to relax. Or until the tones sounded, anyway. A few of the guys made a habit out of bringing their families and letting their kids run around on the side of the firehouse while their wives caught up on the latest gossip. I wasn’t too into the whole family-man bullshit, but having the kids and wives around made everything seem a little more like a family—a community.

I hadn’t had one of those in a long damn time. I briefly—and probably stupidly—entertained the thought of bringing Tanya to one of our get-togethers, someday.

“Hey, Gunner,” Garfield called from behind me. He was only a part-timer, but shit, everybody came out of the woodwork when free food was involved. “What was the deal with you the other day?”

I knew what he meant, but Christ, I’d come here to get away from family drama, not relive it with all my friends. “What’re you talking about?”