He stops. Transfixed by him, it takes me a moment to find my voice. I wheel my chair closer to him and put my hand on his powerful shoulder. It’s so easy to picture him on his job, decked out in fire gear, covered in sweat and ash, ax slung over his shoulder, and a giant grin on his face because he’s the maniac who loves walking a hair’s breadth from death. I like that picture of him more than I would’ve expected.
“Blaze, we don’t have to —”
“We do. Just listen, all right?” He says. “It was the end of wildfire season. The crew and I were spent; I hurt down to my bones because I’d gone six days straight on just four hours of sleep and we all were looking forward to some time off. I still remember it like it just happened yesterday: we were in this bar, O’Reiley’s, in some podunk town in Northern California, three hours drive from everywhere. One of the boys on my crew, this guy named Jake — who was like a little brother to me — got drunk. Too drunk. I sent him home to sleep it off because he was the type to get rowdy and start shit and I wasn’t going to have any of that on my first night off. That night was supposed to be all about having a good time free of any bullshit. Not a minute after I sent him away, I hear this fucking ruckus from the parking lot. I poke my head out, and there’s these guys ganged up on Jake and I see one of them’s got a knife. And I just fucking lost it. I went out there to stop it. They didn’t want to go peacefully, and when the one with the knife tried to show how tough he was, I nearly put him down for good. When it was all over, I was jobless and heading for a stint in Chino.”
“For self defense?”
“You didn’t see how they turned out, Tiffany,” he says, grinning. There’s a part of him that’s proud of his handiwork, regardless of the outcome. Then his expression changes. There’s regret on his face, but also bittersweet fondness. “But the judge didn’t hear the full story of what happened. Those guys who attacked my friend didn’t talk to the cops, and I told my friend to keep his mouth shut. He had a wife, a kid, and I couldn’t have him losing his job.”
“So you took the blame? All on your own?”
He just nods.
It stuns me into silence for a moment; all I can do is just look at him and see him in an entirely new light; for all his bluster and bravado, he’ll tear himself down in a heartbeat if it means it’ll protect someone he cares about. This criminal has a bigger heart than many who walk on the right side of the law.
“Does anyone else know?” I say.
He shakes his head. “Nobody. Not my mom, not anyone in the MC. You’re the first I’ve told, and I hope I can trust you to keep it between us. If it got out, there’s a chance Jake could wind up in legal trouble. His daughter’s starting third grade, soon. That little girl will be going places, and she needs her daddy in her life. Last time I saw her, before all this shit went down, she was just a little thing, but already she was talking. I bet she’ll grow up to be a smart one, like you.”
I sniff. Rub something out of my eye. “Maybe. But I don’t feel like such a smart one most days.”
Now it’s his turn to put his hand on me. To give me strength with a squeeze and a caring look. “Tiffany, you can talk to me. You know my greatest fuck up, but I can share more if it’ll make you feel better. Because I’ve screwed up so many times in my life — and a lot of them have been the kind of failures that’ll make your eyes go wide with how fucking incredible they are — that I know that I can never judge anyone.”
My heart is pulsing with the need to open my mouth and tell him. Deep down, I know he’s telling the truth; I could tell him anything and he’d never hold it against me. Declan ‘Blaze’ Dunne is a fuckup of the highest order in the noblest of fashions.
My heart and mind square off over sharing the truth. I want to talk to him. I want to tell someone the truth about why I left Stanford and the promise of a career with one of the most prestigious financial institutions in the world; talking would hurt me terribly — even the idea of it lights my cheeks with shame and makes my heart quake in regret — but I still want it.
I want to share my pain.
I open my mouth. Wrap my tongue around the words that’ll let him in on the shame and remorse that I’ve carried for years; shame that I’ve buried beneath a mountain of lies and a sea of tears.
Then my wandering eyes catch something; something that we’ve been looking for all these hours — a name, a sum, and another name. A familiar name.
My face falls into a mask of despondency. I look to Blaze and hold the sheet up.
“This problem is way bigger than we realized.”
Chapter Ten
Blaze
“Fuck, that’s your old bank.”
She nods. “And that name signed at the bottom next to your mom’s name? Do you recognize that one?”
I squint. “No. It’s
