Flashback Read online

  “Shh,” he was murmuring. “I’ve got you. It’s okay, Kenzie, it’s going to be okay….”

  She was hurt, but not so hurt as to stop the memories bombarding her at the sound of his voice. How could she not have instantly recognized him?

  He was the first man who’d ever broken her heart.

  He’d ditched his helmet and she could see his face now. He didn’t look happy to see her, and honestly, on that point, if he hadn’t been saving her sorry ass, they’d have been perfectly in sync. “Aidan.” She could see the fire reflected in his eyes. Blake’s Girl was really blazing now. “My God, we almost—”

  “I know.” His short, dark hair was plastered to his head. Water ran in rivulets down his face, which was starkly pale. His long, inky-black eyelashes were spiky, and he had a cut above one eyebrow that was oozing blood. In spite of all of that, she had the most ridiculous thought: wow, he looked good all fierce and intense and wet.

  Aidan Donnelly, first real boyfriend. First…everything…. She could hardly believe it, certainly couldn’t process it, so she craned her neck, staring at the boat that looked like one big firecracker. “It just blew, and I—”

  “Kenzie—”

  “—I mean one minute I’m sitting there missing my brother, and the next…”

  He looked into her eyes, his cool and composed. “It’s going to be okay, but I need you to—”

  “And it blew. I was just sitting there, surrounded by his things, missing him, and then boom. My Choos are probably halfway to China by now. I really liked those Choos.”

  “Kenzie,” he said in a tone of authoritative calm. “I need you to listen to me now. Can you do that?”

  She could take a gulp of air. But listening? The jury was still out on that one. Her ears were ringing. And the water was so damn cold. In fact, she was shaking and hadn’t even realized it, shudders that wracked her entire body and rattled her teeth.

  “Hold onto me, Kenzie. That’s all you have to do, okay? Just hold onto me.”

  Right. Hold onto him. She’d grown up here in Santa Rey, and once upon a time she’d held onto him plenty. She’d held onto him, laughed with him, slept with him…

  Actually, there’d never been much sleeping involved between them, a thought which brought an avalanche of others. Him fresh out of the firefighters’ academy and possessing a body that had made her drool, not to mention the knowledge of how to use that body to make hers go wild…

  But that had been what, six years ago? Hell, she could barely think, much else handle any math at the moment, so she couldn’t be sure.

  He was towing her out, away from the boat and any danger of falling debris, while shouting something to two firefighters on the other side of the burning vessel, both of whom had hoses on the fire.

  She’d been in a fire before. On the set of her soap opera, Hope’s Passion, before it’d been cancelled. But that was under carefully controlled circumstances. This wasn’t a TV show with lines for her to follow. This was the real thing, with no makeup department standing by to color in pretend injuries, dammit.

  She’d have loved a script right about now, with a happy ending, please.

  At least she was still breathing.

  Hard to beat that.

  Blake’s Girl hadn’t gotten so lucky.

  Neither had Blake. Oh, yeah, there was the familiar rush of pain, slicing right through the numbness from the cold water, lancing her heart—the pain that had been with her since she’d learned Blake was dead. Making it worse, adding confusion and anger to her grief was the fact that he’d been accused of being an arsonist and murderer.

  God, Blake…

  Another chunk of burning debris fell from the still flaming boat, and she imagined it was something of Blake’s, something she’d never see again. Or maybe it was her own suitcase, or her laptop, which wasn’t a big loss in the scheme of things, but it held the scripts she’d been writing…

  At least if she died, she would no longer be a freshly unemployed soap star.

  It was so damn ironic—she’d never been able to come home when Blake had been alive because she’d been too busy working. Then days after he’d died, her soap had been cancelled. Now she could drive up all she wanted, and he was gone…. Her first trip home in forever and it had been to see after his things, things that were now smoldering in the water around her.

  “Don’t give up on me,” Aidan said. His eyes focused ahead on where he was swimming to, some point invisible to her. It was too dark to see their color clearly but she knew them to be a light brown with flecks of green that danced when he laughed.

  He wasn’t laughing now.

  Nope.

  He glanced at her, then resumed swimming straight and sure, moving them away from the flames, which also meant away from any warmth, while she did as he’d asked and just held on. She could do nothing but. Like old times…

  Why did it have to be him, the guy who’d crushed her heart, stomped on her pride and then walked away from her without a backward glance?

  Did he hurt over the loss of Blake?

  Did he believe the lies?

  Because that thought, and all the others that came with it, came close to defrosting her, she shoved them aside. The blessed numbness was working for her. She hadn’t come to Santa Rey in the past six years, but Blake had visited her in L.A. on the set, whenever he could, and on top of his visits, they’d been in frequent contact by e-mail, texting and phone calls, and had remained close despite their physical distance. He was the only family she’d had.

  And now he was gone.

  Forever gone.

  “Kenzie? You still with me?” Aidan’s lean jaw was tight with tension and was scruffy, as if he hadn’t had time to shave in a day or two. Or four.

  “Unfortunately.” She’d like to be anywhere but “with” him. She could feel his longer, stronger legs moving, bumping into hers, and it made her irrationally mad. She didn’t want help, not from him, but when she wriggled free to prove herself fine, she went down like a stone. Straight beneath the surface of the icy water, where she promptly did the stupid thing of opening her mouth to breathe and got a lungful of extremely cold salt water for her efforts.

  Thankfully, she was immediately hauled back up again and pulled against a hard chest, one hand fisted in the back of her shirt, the other arm across the backs of her thighs in a grip that could have rivaled Superman’s.

  Firefighter to victim.

  Not ex-boyfriend to ex-girlfriend.

  And wasn’t that just the problem? Once upon a time he really had had her, only he’d been the one to let go. He’d done it, he’d said, because of their respective careers and because he didn’t like hiding their relationship from his friend Blake, but she knew the truth. It was because he’d decided she’d been falling in love with him and he hadn’t been ready for love, so he’d shooed her away and had moved on.

  She’d hated him for that for a good long time, for not giving himself a chance to feel what she’d felt, and, yeah, he’d been right—she had been more than halfway in love with him. It’d taken a while, but eventually her anger had drained, and she’d acknowledged that he’d been right to break it off with her before she’d gotten even more hurt…. But that hadn’t eased her pain at the time.

  Maybe she should consider herself lucky they were doing this reintroduction in an official capacity—him on the job, and her being just one in a blur of people he rescued. Less personal.

  “Stop fighting me.” His voice cut through the shocking noise of the night: the sirens, the shouting of the other firefighters and personnel, the ever-present, horrifying crackling of the flames, the small waves smacking into each other, waves that would be cresting over her head if it wasn’t for Aidan’s holding her with what appeared to be little to no effort. “I’ve got you.”

  “I don’t want you to have me.”

  “Okay, roger that. But at the moment you don’t have a choice.”

  “Of all the firefighters in this damn tow