April Embers_A Second Chance Single Daddy Firefighter Romance Page 4

  “I care,” I said firmly. “And they’re not going to get away with it anymore. At least not on my watch.”

  Sometimes I wondered what the hell I was doing at Hartford High School. Sometimes, when I found myself lost in a sea of students pushing and shoving in the hallways, I wondered if I had made a mistake when I chose to come back to my old hometown high school as a teacher...

  But moments like this were an instant reminder that I was exactly where I was supposed to be. When I looked at Callie Watson, I saw a sliver of myself in her eyes.

  I came back to Hartford High because I wanted to give students like Callie -- like myself -- a safe place. I knew I couldn’t change the world, but I could make it feel a little less cruel. I could be an advocate for the kids that felt overlooked or forgotten; I could be a voice for the voiceless.

  “If you ever need someone to talk to, I’m here,” I said gently. “My door is always open.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Leduc.”

  “Anytime,” I smiled. I assumed that was the end of the conversation, but when I took a step towards the door, Callie stepped in front of me, blocking my path to the exit.

  “Is everything ok, Callie?”

  “Actually, umm, there was one more thing I wanted to ask you…”

  “Ok,” I frowned. “What’s up?”

  “It’s uh…” she wrinkled her face thoughtfully, and I saw panic in her eyes. “Uhh… tonight’s homework!”

  “Tonight’s homework?” I repeated.

  “Yes. I uhh… was just wondering if you could help me with it?”

  “Hmm,” I crossed my arms over my chest and narrowed my eyes. “Well to be honest, that might be a bit of a challenge.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I never assigned any homework for tonight.”

  “Oh.”

  Busted.

  “What’s going on, Callie?” I asked bluntly.

  “Huh? Nothing’s going on…”

  “Are you sure about that?” I raised an eyebrow. “Because it kinda feels like you’re stalling.”

  “What? Stalling? No...”

  “Look, if you need my help with something, I’ll do my best to help you,” I tried to reason with her. “But I can’t do that unless you tell me what’s going on.”

  Callie sighed heavily as she glared down at her toes. “You’ll think I’m being ridiculous…”

  “Oh yeah?” I leaned back on the edge of my desk and crossed my arms over my chest. “Try me.”

  ***

  Ten minutes later I was poking my head through the private set of exit doors at the back of the teacher’s lounge.

  I flicked my head in either direction, surveying the staff parking lot. Then I pulled my head back inside and hissed,

  “The coast is clear, let’s go!”

  With all the urgency of a special operative leading troops onto enemy soil, I ushered Callie silently through the set of doors and out across the parking lot.

  Most of the cars had already cleared out for the day, but my cinnamon brown Kia Soul was waiting loyally at the back of the lot. I tapped the unlock button on my key fob, and the headlights blinked at me from across the parking lot.

  That was our cue; we both darted forward, sprinting across the empty parking lot towards my car.

  My footsteps ground to a halt on the rocky asphalt as I stumbled up to the driver side door. I flung it own and threw myself inside, just as Callie did the same on the passenger side. As soon as the doors slammed shut behind us, I pressed my thumb down on the automatic locks.

  “Whew!” I breathed a dramatic sigh of relief as I slammed my back against the driver seat, whisking away the imaginary sweat from my brow. “We made it!”

  I was about to offer Callie a congratulatory high five, but when I glanced her way, I realized that she was doubled over in the passenger seat. Her head was hung down between her knees and her shoulders were heaving as she gasped for breath.

  My mind immediately jumped to the worst-case scenario, she was having a panic attack, or crying, or hyperventilating… or maybe even all of the above.

  I was still trying to remember the procedures that I had learned in my first aid training course when she suddenly flung her head up and collapsed backwards into the passenger seat. That’s when I realized that she wasn’t crying or hyperventilating… she was laughing.

  “That-- was-- amazing!” she stammered breathlessly as she brushed away the tears that had formed in the corners of her eyes.

  This time I breathed a real sigh of relief.

  It was good to see Callie laugh so freely… especially after seeing her on the verge of tears just ten minutes earlier.

  Back in my classroom, Callie had confided that the reason she was stalling was to avoid a group of boys that liked to loiter around the parking lot after school. They had made a game out of following her as she walked to and from the school bus every day, tormenting her with insults and crude jokes.

  It had gotten so bad that Callie had stopped taking the bus altogether. Instead, she would get to school early and hide out in the library until the first period bell. In the afternoons, she would bide her time by hanging around the high school until all the buses had left. At that point, the gang would usually get bored and give up on the hunt… and then she could sneak out and make the thirty-minute walk home.

  I was horrified to hear Callie’s story. I was even more horrified when she admitted that this had been going on since she was a freshman. And when she told me that the school administration had done nothing to help her, my horror turned to downright rage.

  I knew that something needed to be done, but I also realized that this went above and beyond the scope of my newfound confidence and handy-dandy detention pad.

  I couldn’t take down this motley crew on my own, but I could offer the next best thing in the meantime, a safe ride home.

  Staging a theatrical escape through the teacher’s lounge and making a dramatic dash for my car had lightened the mood, but I knew this wasn’t a laughing matter.

  “We’re going to make this right,” I assured Callie as I stuck my key into the car’s ignition. “That’s a promise.”

  The after-school traffic had already died down, and I had a clear path as I drove towards the main road. It should have been smooth sailing after that, but we had barely made it half a mile down the road when I saw a procession of glaring red brake lights up ahead.

  I eased the car to a stop and craned my neck, trying to see around the long line of cars in front of me. In the distance, I could see the flashing lights of a fire truck parked on the edge of the narrow two-lane road.

  “There must have been an accident,” I said, sinking back into my seat. “This could be a while…”

  “It still beats walking,” Callie shrugged.

  Traffic inched forward slowly. One by one, each car in the procession got its turn to zip over the dotted yellow line and dart around the fire truck. As we crawled forward, we got a better look at the scene up ahead.

  At first, I could just see the firemen darting back and forth between their truck and the ditch that lined the side of the road. As we got closer, I saw what they were running to, a grey sedan was wedged inside the ditch. It was crumpled up, like a toy car made out of paper, and the way the firemen crowded around the driver side door gave me a sinking suspicion that somebody was trapped inside…

  I clenched the steering wheel and swallowed heavily.

  I had never been so close to an accident before, and I couldn’t stop my eyes from scanning the scene as I pulled closer and closer. I was trying to get a better look at the car when I caught a flash of black in my peripheral, and my eyes darted towards the edge of the ditch.

  That’s when I saw him.

  There were plenty of possible explanations for why he caught my attention. He was huge, for a start. He was built like the Incredible Hulk, with muscles bulging out in all directions. He didn’t share the Hulk’s green complexion,
but his arms were covered in tattoos.

  Like the rest of the firemen on the scene, he was dressed in all black… but he wasn’t wearing protective gear. Instead he was wearing torn jeans and a black Bauhaus t-shirt.

  His black hair was buzzed short on the sides and overgrown on top, and he wore it slicked back in a neat quaff. An equally well-groomed black beard grew along the bottom of his face, and his eyes were hidden behind a pair of dark Ray-Ban Wayfarers.

  Each one of those traits would have been reason enough to stare, but I knew that my eyes weren’t glued to him because of his tattoos or his massive muscles, or even his taste in moody goth music.

  Actually, the reason my eyes were stuck on him was because there was something so immediately familiar about him.

  I knew him… I was sure of it.

  I had no idea who he was, or how I knew him… I just knew that I knew him...

  Suddenly a car horn honked behind me, jerking my attention back to the road. It was my turn to weave around the firetruck, and I was holding up traffic.

  “Ms. Leduc?” Callie asked from the passenger seat. “Are you ok?”

  “Fine,” I said quickly.

  I ripped my eyes away from the man in black and focused on the road as I eased my car slowly around the truck. Once I was back in my lane, I glanced at the rear-view mirror so I could see him one last time.

  He was staring at the ground, and I caught the perfect view of his profile, the slope of his cheekbones, the straight line of his nose…

  My mind suddenly raced back in time, and a vision from the past flashed into view,

  It was a dark, moonlit night at the neighborhood park. He was sitting on a picnic table with his head was bowed over a Walkman.

  He was eleven years younger, and he was missing the muscles and the tattoos and the beard… but his face was exactly the same. He had the same straight nose and the same cheekbones…

  I knew that face…

  Rory McAlister.

  CHAPTER FIVE | RORY

  “Daddy, it’s hopeless!” Charlotte declared. She folded her tiny arms across her chest and collapsed onto the floor with a dramatic huff of defeat. “He’s gone forever, I just know it!”

  “Don’t say that!” I said, trying to sound optimistic. “He must be around here somewhere… we haven’t even unpacked all of these boxes yet!”

  Charlotte blinked at the mountain of cardboard moving boxes that were piled up in the corner of her new bedroom, and suddenly her face crumpled and her bottom lip started to quiver.

  Fuck.

  I dropped the cardboard box that I had been digging through -- a tomb of half-naked Barbie dolls and stuffed animals -- and scooped my daughter up into my lap.

  I immediately felt a sharp pain roaring through the first and second-degree burns that covered both of my arms; the consequence of running towards a burning car without any form of protective gear.

  According to the EMTs on the scene, I was lucky to walk away with a couple of minor burns. They had attempted to mummify me in gauze, but I insisted on dressing my own wounds back at the firehouse.

  I didn’t like people touching my arms; I didn’t like it when people could see the scars that were hidden underneath my tattoos...

  I ignored the pain and hugged my daughter even tighter.

  “Come on, Charlie, don’t cry!” I cradled her in my arms. “We’re going to find him, I promise!”

  The subject of our apartment-wide manhunt was Mr. Flipper, a 15” plush dolphin toy that had become an honorary member of the McAlister family three summers ago, when I won him from a carnival balloon dart game. A balloon dart game that, for the record, was totally fucking rigged; the smooth-talking carnie who ran the game booth must have seen us coming, because he swindled me out of $100 before I got fed up and threatened to aim my darts at a different target. That’s when he caved and handed over the dolphin.

  I never thought I’d fork out a hundred bucks for a stupid stuffed animal, but it was all worth it to see the smile on my daughter’s face. That was the same summer that her mother walked out on us, and smiles were in short supply back then.

  We could use some of that Mr. Flipper magic right about now, but unfortunately the hundred-dollar dolphin has been M.I.A. since the day we left Boston...

  Charlotte squirmed around until her face was buried in my chest, and then she started to sob softly.

  “I just want to go home, Daddy!” her muffled voice croaked into my t-shirt. “I hate it here! Everything about this place is stupid!”

  Watching my sweet little girl dissolve into a fit of tears hit me like a steamroller straight to the heart. What made it even worse? Knowing that I was the one to blame for my daughter’s heartache.

  I was the one who decided to take an out-of-town job offer. I was the one who decided to uproot my daughter from the only home that she had ever known. I was the one who decided that it was time for a fresh start...

  Believe it or not, I did it all for her.

  It all started a couple of months ago, when I got a phone call from an old acquaintance back in Hartford. Apparently, there was an opening at the local fire department, and the spot was as good as mine if I wanted it.

  I didn’t want it. In fact, there was a part of me -- a big part -- that never wanted to step foot in my hometown again.

  Even as a kid, I had never really considered Hartford to be “home.” But, since I had never lived anywhere else, it seemed to get that title by default.

  My father was out of the picture before I was born, so it had always been just my mother and me.

  Correction, it was my mother and me, plus whatever low-life scumbag she was dating at the time. She had this revolving door of boyfriends; men who would embed themselves into our life, spend a few months playing house, and then vanish into thin air, only to be replaced by the next Tom, Dick or Harry.

  My mother was about as good at picking men as a blind guy is at picking paint swatches. Unfortunately, I was often the one who paid the price for her poor taste in partners… and hidden underneath all of my tattoos, I still have the scars to prove it.

  Cheaters, abusers, womanizers, drunkards, perverts… I thought I’d seen it all. Then she brought home the man who would become my stepfather. The day they got married, I realized that my life would never be the same.

  I was right. Within months, life as I knew it had completely unraveled. Everything was spinning out of control, and then one day everything just... stopped.

  I was fifteen when the state intervened. My mother and stepfather went to jail, and I was sent to Boston to live with the father I had never known.

  Turns out those fifteen years had been a lot kinder to Mr. McAlister. While his bastard son was getting roughed up and cussed out by Hartford’s least eligible bachelors, my father had settled into a comfortable little life in an affluent Boston suburb, complete with a hot wife and two very planned, very wanted kids.

  He had it all, the tenured teaching gig at an ivy-league prep school, the wardrobe of burgundy sweater vests, the receding hairline… I hated the prick as soon as I saw him. And even though he feigned patience and pretended to tolerate me, I knew that he hated me too.

  I spent the rest of my teenage years making his life hell. I had fifteen years to make up for, after all.

  I had always been a bit of an outcast back in Hartford, but to the preppy trust-fund kids in Boston, I was practically the devil incarnate. I was the only kid in school with tattoos and a criminal record. While my peers were concerned with college prep courses, the only thing I gave a shit about was wreaking havoc. Instead of sitting for the SAT, I lit my test on fire and stormed out of the room. I graduated high school by the skin of my teeth, and I celebrated by skipping the ceremony and getting wasted on the most expensive spirits I could find in my father’s liquor cabinet.

  I figured old man McAlister would kick me out of the house when I finally turned eighteen, so I decided to beat him to the punch. On the eve of my eigh
teenth birthday, I walked out of my father’s house and never looked back.

  I spent a few months living on the streets in Boston, wandering aimlessly from one misadventure to the next. Some days I’d sneak onto a MegaBus at South Station just for the hell of it, to see where life would take me. Sometimes I’d end up in New York or D.C. or Maine. Other times I’d get busted and the driver would throw me out onto the side of some rural highway. Either way, it was always an adventure.

  I didn’t mind being homeless in the summertime. I could explore the city by day, and at night I’d sleep under the stars in Boston Common. But my outlook changed with the seasons, and by mid-autumn I was sick of being cold and hungry. It was time to move on.

  I spent the next few years hopping from one gig to the next. I toured the country as a roadie for a rock band. I worked as a bouncer for a bar in Boston. I took up the hobby of betting on cage fights and, when I got sick of losing, I decided to enter the ring as a fighter.

  Women were just another misadventure. That is, until I met Haley Scott.

  The only good thing I can say about Haley Scott is that she’s the mother of my child. That also happens to be the reason why I won’t tell you all the bad things that I could say about her…

  When Haley told me that she was pregnant, I didn’t know the first thing about being a father, but I did know what it was like to grow up without one. And I was adamant that I wasn’t going to let that happen to my unborn child.

  Even before she was born, I knew that I loved my daughter unconditionally. It never crossed my mind that she could love me unconditionally back.

  Charlotte Rae McAlister radiated pure, unconditional love from the moment that she was born. I had spent my entire life being the Big Bad Wolf, but in my daughter’s eyes, I was Prince Charming.

  Charlie was the reason I turned my life around. She gave me the world, and I wanted to give it right back to her.

  I graduated from the fire academy and got a job at the Boston Fire Department. The starting salary wasn’t much, but it was enough to rent a two-bedroom apartment in a safe neighborhood for my new family.