The Complete Firehouse 56 Series Read online

  “I’d like to keep a closer eye on Judy,” he continued. “At least for these first few months. We’ll take it one week at a time.”

  I swallowed heavily and nodded, already knowing that my mother wouldn’t like the sound of that.

  “It’s better to be safe,” Doctor Burke added, trying to reassure me. “This last round of chemo was really hard on your mother, both physically and mentally. It’s going to take some time before she’s fully recovered from that.”

  Understatement of the century, I thought darkly. The last round of chemo had been so brutal that my mother had ultimately been admitted to the hospital for the last couple of weeks of treatment.

  “Can I see her now?” I asked.

  “Of course,” Doctor Burke said. “I’ll page one of the nurses and see if she’s ready to be discharged.”

  Fifteen minutes later a nurse greeted me in the waiting room.

  “Your mother is just waking up,” she said as she escorted me down the maze of white corridors that led to the inpatient oncology wing.

  We reached my mother’s door.

  “I’ll let you two have some privacy while I put together her discharge paperwork,” the nurse said.

  The nurse turned back towards the office area and I waited until the soft click of her footsteps had faded away before I pushed open the door of my mother’s room.

  The lights were off, but the cloudy grey morning light from outside was spilling in through the wide glass window overlooking the parking lot. I pulled the curtains open the rest of the way, filling the room with a little more light.

  “Cassidy,” Mom said. Her voice was still groggy from her nap. She was sat up in bed, propped up by pillows, sipping a small plastic cup of orange juice.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked her. I perched myself on the edge of the bed.

  “Like I’m ready to burn this place to the ground and never look back,” Mom said dryly. I couldn’t help but smile.

  “I’ll get the gasoline,” I said.

  “I’ll get the matches,” Mom smiled back. Then she pressed her eyes shut and winced in pain.

  “We’ll be out of here soon,” I promised. “They’re just getting your paperwork ready now.”

  Mom nodded. Then she reached up a hand and ran her fingers through my soft black curls.

  “Your hair is getting so long,” she said.

  My smile faded. I had inherited my dark, curly mane from my mother. Before the cancer, she had worn her hair long and over her shoulders, just like mine. But her hair hadn’t survived multiple rounds of chemo, and the curls she had once been so proud of were replaced with a pink silk scarf that she wore tied around her head.

  “I hope you didn’t get all dressed up for me,” Mom added. She nodded at the white cotton sundress and pale blue cardigan that I was wearing.

  “I thought we could go to lunch on our way home,” I said. Then I added: “If you’re feeling up to it.”

  “I’m not sure I’d make a very good lunch date right now,” she sighed. “Besides, you shouldn’t waste a cute little dress like that on me. Maybe we can swing by the staff wing on our way out of here and find some young, hot doctor--”

  “Mom!” my face burned bright red under the sprinkling of freckles that dusted my nose and cheeks.

  “What?” Mom asked innocently. “There are some cute doctors that work here, you know. Single ones, too. I’ve been keeping an eye out…”

  “Oh my god,” the burning in my cheeks intensified. I buried my face in my hands, feeling equally mortified and amused by my mother’s tireless attempts to find me a boyfriend. Even chemotherapy and doctor-mandated bedrest wasn’t enough to stop my mom from playing matchmaker.

  “Well you’re not getting any younger, Cass,” Mom said bluntly. Even though her voice was raspy and weak, I could tell she was serious. “You haven’t even tried dating since What’s-his-face.”

  I cringed. ‘What’s-his-face’ was Mark Ryan, the college sweetheart-turned-long-term boyfriend who had unceremoniously dumped me a week after my mother was diagnosed with cancer. Mom was right: after Mark, I had basically given up on dating or finding love.

  “And frankly,” Mom continued, “I’m not getting any healthier.”

  My mouth went dry again and I swallowed heavily. I glanced up, trying to meet my mother’s pale green eyes, but she was staring absently at through the window behind me.

  “Mom, don’t say that,” I said firmly. “You’re going to beat this. I know you are!”

  “Cass, stop.”

  “Mom--”

  “It’s not like running a 5k,” Mom said. “It’s cancer. There’s no ‘beating’ it. There’s no ‘winning.’ Maybe the cancer is gone for now, but it’s only a matter of time before it comes back.”

  I pointed my eyes down at the floor and tried hard not to cry. I hated crying in front of my mom.

  “I just want to see you happy,” she said, placing her hand on top of mine. Her skin was dry and ice cold, and a shiver trembled down my spine. “When you were a baby, I used to hold you in my arms and imagine your entire life spread out in front of you. I used to picture you graduating from college, finding the love of your life, walking down the aisle in a beautiful white dress, having a little baby of your own someday…”

  My eyes burned with hot tears.

  “I always thought I’d be here to see those things,” Mom said, her voice cracking. I knew she was crying, too.

  “You will be,” I promised her.

  “I hope so,” Mom choked. “I’m not afraid of the cancer anymore, Cass. I’m not afraid of dying. I’ve made peace with it. But you know what I am afraid of?”

  “What?”

  “I’m afraid of what I’m leaving behind.” Her voice cracked, and she squeezed my hand tighter in hers. “I need to know that when I’m gone, there will be someone by your side to hold your hand and dry your tears. I need to know that when I’m not around to love you anymore, someone else will be. I need to know that you’ll be taken care of.”

  Before I had the chance to say anything, there was a soft knock on the door. We both turned to see the nurse standing in the doorway.

  “We’re ready to discharge you now, Judy,” the nurse said.

  I quickly used the back of my hand to dab the tears that had formed in my eyes.

  The nurse and I both helped my mother ease out of bed and into a wheelchair. My mother’s arms felt frail and light under the soft pink terry robe that she was wearing, and her words echoed through my head.

  For five years I had done everything in my power to ease my mother’s pain and make her as happy and comfortable as I could. There was nothing I wouldn’t do for mom. There were even times that I wished that I could transfer her cancer into my body, so that I was the one growing frail and weak instead of her.

  So, if I was willing to do anything to make my mother happy, why couldn’t I honor her dying wish? If it would bring my mother true peace and happiness, why couldn’t I just get married?

  CHAPTER THREE | BRADY

  “What a day,” Josh sighed wearily, cracking open the refrigerator door and ducking his head down to peruse the assortment of craft beers that I kept well-stocked for after-hours at the station.

  “Welcome to Firehouse 56,” I said as I strolled into the firehouse kitchen. “Where saving lives and fighting fires is just another day at the office.”

  I had just stepped out of the shower and toweled off, but my skin was still damp. A cool summer breeze trickled through the open kitchen window and tickled the dewy moisture left behind on my bare chest and back.

  “Put a shirt on, January,” my brother rolled his eyes when he glanced up at me.

  “Jealous?” I shook out the fluffy white bath towel that I had been using to dry my hair and I gave it a quick snap in Josh’s direction.

  “Not a chance, old man,” Josh said as he recoiled from the towel-slap.

  “Who are you calli
ng old?” I made a show of clenching my rock-hard pecs and flexing my thick biceps. Josh looked unimpressed.

  “Is that a grey hair?” he teased, nodding at my bare chest.

  I unclenched my muscles and flicked the towel in my brother’s direction again.

  At twenty-eight years old, I was only three years older than my brother, but we might as well have been born decades apart. That’s how I felt when we were growing up, anyway. Even as early as high school, there were times when I felt like I was more of a father figure to Josh than a brother.

  That was partially due to the fact that my brother never really got along too well with our actual father. Our dad was as strict as they come, the direct result of fifteen years of service in the US Army. Even after retiring from active duty, our father was never able to shake the regimented structure of military life. His affection was hard to come by, and his approval was even harder to earn. He expected nothing less than the best from us.

  That was fine by me. I had grown up in awe of my father, and I thrived under the pressure of following in his footsteps. But while I was the kind of guy who craved discipline and structure, my little brother felt suffocated by it. Josh lacked any semblance of direction whatsoever, and that just drove a deeper wedge between him and our father.

  The responsibility of looking out for Josh fell square on my back. I spent most of my teenage years looking over my shoulder to make sure my little brother hadn’t fallen too far behind, or strayed too far from the straight-and-narrow. I loved my brother, but sometimes babysitting felt like a burden. I guess I never thought about how it looked from his perspective; I never considered that maybe he wasn’t lost, just stuck on the wrong path.

  Either way, I couldn’t look out for Josh forever. When I turned eighteen, I enlisted in the Army and was shipped off for basic training. I spent a total of four years serving in the 101st Airborne Division, including two tours overseas. I had planned to extend my stay and serve another four-year term, but those plans changed when I got the news that Dad died.

  I was stationed at an Army base several states away from home, but the chief of Firehouse 56 still came to deliver the news in person. He greeted me outside of the barracks. In his hands, he held my father’s charred helmet. He didn’t have to say a word; I knew.

  Our father had served at Firehouse 56 for over twenty years. I had always known that I wanted to follow in his footsteps and join the brigade after leaving the Army, and losing my father reaffirmed how important it was that I carry on his legacy.

  Instead of re-enlisting at the end of my term, I moved back home to Hartford. The chief didn’t think twice about accepting me into the program; he wanted to keep the Hudson family name alive at Firehouse 56 just as much as I did.

  “So, it’s a Friday night and we’re not on-call,” Josh said, leaning on the fridge door as he inspected the label of a strawberry ale. “Why don’t you go touch up your greys and then we’ll head up to Rusty’s Tavern?”

  “Very funny,” I rolled my eyes at my brother’s second grey hair joke in a row. I combed my fingers through my damp head of thick dark brown hair. I didn’t need a mirror to know there wasn’t a single grey strand on my head.

  “I’ll take that as a yes?” Josh asked.

  I tugged up the waistband of my Hartford Fire Department sweatpants as I reached over his shoulder and grabbed a bottle of Lagunitas out of the fridge. After a long day of work, an icy cold IPA was exactly what I needed.

  The beer fizzed when I popped the cap, and I felt instantly refreshed when I took a long swig from the glass bottle.

  “Rusty’s?” I wrinkled my nose. “That place is a total dive.”

  “I didn’t see you complaining last weekend,” Josh reminded me. He followed my lead, reaching for a Lagunitas and letting the fridge door fall shut behind him. “There was an entire bachelorette party practically lining up for a chance to slide down your fire pole.”

  A smirk spread across my face. My brother might have been exaggerating about the lining up part, but I had definitely enjoyed the company of two hot blondes who were eager to check ‘drunken threesome with a firefighter’ off of their pre-wedding bucket list. My cock throbbed as I recalled the way they’d taken turns licking my thick shaft like a lollipop.

  “What can I say?” I shrugged. “I took an oath to protect and serve my community.”

  “Emphasis on the serve,” Josh clinked the edge of his bottle against mine in a toast of agreement. Then, in a more thoughtful tone of voice, he added: “You know, it’s funny… when we were younger, I always thought you’d be the type to settle down early.”

  “Really? Why’s that?”

  “I dunno,” Josh shrugged, flicking his thumbnail under the label on his beer bottle. “I figured you’d end up just like Dad: the career, the house, the wife and kids…”

  “I got two out of three,” I reminded him, referring to the career and house. After Dad died, I had inherited the deed to the Hudson family home. I had lived there ever since. And until Josh asked to move back into his old childhood bedroom, I had been living alone.

  “But no wife and kids,” Josh said. “If someone had asked me five years ago, I would have bet money that you’d be wifed up by now, driving around town with a whole car full of Brady Juniors.”

  Brady Juniors. I imagined myself married with kids, and the thought made my chest tighten and my heart rate quicken. Settling down and starting a family was one legacy of my father’s that I hadn’t been able to live up to. Not yet, anyway.

  Josh took a swig of beer, then added:

  “I definitely wouldn’t have guessed that, between the two of us, my straight-laced big brother would be the one with a Midas touch for pussy.”

  I let out a heavy sigh, shaking my head. I might have had a ‘Midas touch’ when it came to pleasing women in the bedroom, but my golden fingers didn’t do me much good when it came to dealing with all the stuff that comes after sex: feelings, emotions, opening up, being vulnerable...

  I would have been the first to admit my own shortcomings when it came to dating, but hearing Josh make the observation still annoyed me. If my brother wanted to compare relationship scorecards, he definitely wasn’t one to talk when it came to matters of commitment and fidelity. The guy’s dating track record had more red marks than a high school report card.

  “I don’t see you rushing for the altar, either,” I pointed out.

  Josh just shrugged: “Maybe I just haven’t met the right woman yet.”

  “Fair enough,” I drained the last sip of beer from my bottle, then chucked it towards the recycling bin. “Maybe I haven’t found the right woman yet, either.”

  “You bring home a different Miss Right every weekend,” Josh teased. “If you haven’t managed to find a keeper yet, maybe the problem is you.”

  I scowled at the suggestion, but I couldn’t help but wonder if Josh was right. In the six years that I had served as a firefighter, I had sampled a pretty large percentage of Hartford’s female population, but my dalliances in dating never resulted in anything deeper than a night of bliss between the bedsheets.

  That was fine by me. I had always figured that when the right woman came along, my reservations would all melt away and I’d actually want to settle down. But maybe Josh had a point: maybe I just wasn’t cut out for relationships, period.

  “I’m not in any rush to settle down,” I shrugged finally. “If I meet someone who changed my mind, maybe. But right now? I can’t imagine getting married or popping out kids anytime soon…”

  “In that case,” Josh grinned, “I say it’s time to head to Rusty’s. We’ll be local legends after fighting that five-alarm earlier today, and I bet the bar will be packed with women vying to audition for the role of Mrs. Right.”

  He wasn’t kidding. I could already imagine the female fan club that would swarm around us when we got to the bar, and I could already imagine their eyes growing wide and their panties getting slick as we recounted the detail
s of our firefighting heroics.

  “Fine,” I conceded finally. “I’ll go.”

  Josh pumped his fist in the air triumphantly, then he headed for the showers to get ready.

  I sighed. For whatever reason, I couldn’t bring myself to feel excited about spending another Friday night out at a bar, listening to my little brother’s boastful renditions of our workday become more and more grandiose with each retelling.

  Besides, part of me was still hung up on what Josh had said. All of those jokes about grey hairs and growing old must have gone to my head; I wasn’t getting any younger, and I couldn’t spend the rest of my life hopping from one stranger’s bed to the next.

  Despite what I had told my brother, I knew I wanted to settle down eventually. I had always figured that the right pieces would just fall into place on their own.

  But what if fate had done its part already? What if the right woman had already come and gone?

  CHAPTER FOUR | CASSIDY

  I had just finished scrubbing the sink full of dirty dishes leftover from Saturday night’s dinner when I heard the soft pad of my dad’s footsteps treading down the stairs behind me.

  “How’s Mom?” I whispered, twisting off the sink faucet and drying my hands on a white dish towel.

  “She’s not feeling too well,” he shook his head wearily. “She’s napping now.”

  I swallowed the lump in the back of my throat. If the first twenty-four hours were anything to go by, Mom’s remission wasn’t off to a great start. Even though that afternoon had been a scorcher with temperatures soaring into the 90s, Mom had spent most of the day huddled up in bed with the heating on, shivering under several layers of blankets.

  Dinner hadn’t gone well, either. I had prepared Mom’s favorite dish -- homemade spaghetti bolognese -- as a welcome home treat, but she had only managed to get a few bites down before the nausea kicked in.

  “Doctor Burke called in a new prescription to help with some of the side effects she’s experiencing from the last chemo treatment,” Dad said, reaching for his car keys on the kitchen counter. “I’m going to head to the pharmacy to pick it up.”