Yours Completely (Reign 2)

Go away!

All of it. The pain of Jack leaving. The knowledge that Brock may never leave me alone. The shred of fear, unease, that still lingered in my veins. I just wanted all of it to go away.

I hit my hands against the steering wheel one more time, my breath coming fast, and I screamed, “Go. Away!”

A light tap came on my window, and I jumped.

“Whoa, Kitten, take it easy on the Honda,” Cal said. “I can go away, but your poor car looks like it’s being attacked.”

A humorous scoff escaped. I rolled down my window. “And you couldn’t possibly walk away knowing an innocent Honda was being attacked?”

Placing a hand on the top of my car, he leaned down, his Golden Fire Department issued blue T-shirt pulled tight over his chest. He smiled. “No, ma’am.”

With the fire department right across the street and Cal obviously being on shift instead of chasing wildfires, it was hard to avoid him for too long.

He looked at my face, then my hands, which were gripping the life from my steering wheel.

“Want to talk about it?”

I shook my head. “I just had a bad night.”

“Fair enough.” He opened my door, and I frowned.

“I wasn’t ready to go in yet.”

“That’s why I’m taking you to the station. You can hang out, tell me what’s going on, then I can walk you back across the street when you’re ready.”

When I went to argue, he grabbed my hand, helping me out of my car, and began walking me toward the firehouse. It was then I realized that he hadn’t asked. He’d simply told me what he expected, and I did it. Like a trained doll. Shit! It was the casualness in his voice that’d thrown me off.

He punched in a code at the side door and led me in, down a narrow hallway, and into a large room filled with recliners and a big screen TV. What shocked me more was that there was a smattering of firefighters sitting in the recliners.

One man was in the middle of telling a dirty joke when all heads turned toward me in unison, like they simultaneously sensed a shift in the testosterone level. As I stood there, my mouth snapped shut, and I was stared at like some animal at the zoo. Silence.

“Well, hello there,” one man said, getting up from the recliner and snapping the footrest back into place. He strutted toward me, his gaze never leaving mine. “Cal bring you for a tour? Because I’d be happy to show you around.”

“Ease off, Mark,” Cal said. “She didn’t come for a tour. Just wanted to introduce you before we headed to my room.”

All the guys looked at me, then Cal, and their expression was clear. It was practically inked onto their foreheads: “Oh, we know why she came, wink, wink.”

“Yes, I did,” I said quickly. “I came for the tour.”

Cal frowned at me. He had brought me here to “talk,” but I wasn’t about to let his crew think I was one of those girls that just came in and headed straight for his bedroom. Based on the looks Cal was getting, no one was buying his “talking” plan anyway.

“Excellent!” Mark said. “Do you want to start here in the living quarters or with the trucks?”

“If she wants the tour, I’ll give it to her,” Cal said with annoyance in his voice. “But, unlike some of you jackasses, I have manners.” He cleared his throat and faced me. “Lana, this is Mark, we let him hang out here sometimes.”

“Hey! I’m a legit firefighter.”

“Whatever, probie,” one of the guys in a recliner said.

“Probie?” I asked.

“He’s still on his probation period,” Cal clarified.

“Only for another three months,” Mark said with a flirty smile aimed my way.

“And that’s Able, Rhett, and Dave.” Cal pointed at the three men quickly. They all stood to greet me.