Walk Through Fire

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  This book is dedicated to Beth Isenhour Ruble.

  A woman who proves friendship lasts a lifetime…

  And beyond.

  CHAPTER ONE

  I Never Would

  Millie

  I SHOULD GET a salad.

  I should have gone to Whole Foods and hit their salad bar (and thus been able to get a cookie from their bakery, a treat for being so good about getting a salad).

  I didn’t go to Whole Foods.

  I went to Chipotle.

  So, since I was at Chipotle, I should get a bowl, not a burrito.

  I had no intention of getting a bowl.

  I was going to get a burrito.

  Therefore, I was standing in line at Chipotle, trying to decide on pinto or black beans for my burrito, telling myself I was going to have salad for dinner (this would not happen but I was telling myself that it would, something I did a lot).

  And in the coming weeks, I would wish with all my heart that I’d gone to Whole Foods for the salad (and the cookie).

  It was lunchtime. It was busy. There was noise.

  But I heard it.

  The deep, manly voice coming from ahead of me.

  A voice that had matured. It was coarser, near to abrasive, but I knew that voice.

  I’d never forget that voice.

  “Yeah, I signed the papers. Sent ’em. Not a problem. That’s done,” the voice said.

  I stood in line having trouble breathing, my body wanting to move, lean to the side, look forward, see the man attached to the voice, needing that, but I couldn’t seem to make my body do what it was told.

  “Not set up yet with a place, don’t matter,” the voice went on. “Got a condo in the mountains for the weekend. Takin’ the girls up there. So I’ll come get ’em like I said, four o’clock, Friday. I’ll have ’em at school on Monday. I’ll sort a place soon’s I can.”

  I still couldn’t move and now there was an even bigger reason why.

  Takin’ the girls up there.

  I’ll have ’em at school on Monday.

  He had children.

  Logan had kids.

  Plural.

  I felt a prickle in my nose as my breaths went unsteady, my heart hammering, my fingers tingling in a painful way, like they’d gone to sleep and were just now waking up.

  The voice kept going.

  “Right. You’d do that, it’d be cool. Tell ’em their dad loves ’em. I’ll call ’em tonight and see them Friday.” Pause, then, “Okay. Thanks. Later.”

  The line moved and I forced myself to move with it, and just then, Logan turned and became visible in front of the food counter at Chipotle.

  I saw him and my world imploded.

  “Burrito. Beef,” he grated out. “Pinto. To go.”

  I stared, unmoving.

  He looked good.

  God, God, he looked so damned good.

  I knew it. I knew he’d mature like that. Go from the cute but rough young man with that edge—that dangerous edge that drew you to him no matter how badly you wanted to pull away—but you couldn’t stop it, that pull was too strong.

  I knew he’d go from that to the man who was standing in front of the tortilla lady at Chipotle wearing his leather Chaos jacket.

  Tall. His dark hair silvered, too long and unkempt. Shoulders broad. Jaw squared. I could see even in profile the skin of his face was no longer smooth but craggy in a way that every line told a story that you knew was interesting. Strong nose. High cheekbones. Whiskers (also silvered) that said he hadn’t shaved in days, or perhaps weeks.

  Beautiful.

  So beautiful.

  And he once was mine.

  Then I’d let him go.

  No, I’d pushed him away.

  I turned and moved swiftly back through the line, not making a sound, not saying a word.

  I didn’t want him to hear me.

  Out, I needed out.

  I got out. Practically ran to my car. Got in and slammed the door.

  I sat there, hands hovering over the steering wheel, shaking.

  Takin’ the girls up there.

  I’ll have ’em at school on Monday.

  He had kids.

  Plural.

  Girls.

  That made me happy. Ecstatic. Beside myself with glee.

  I signed the papers. Sent ’em.

  What did that mean?

  So I’ll come get ’em… I’ll sort a place soon’s I can.

  Come and get them?

  He didn’t have them.

  Signed the papers.

  Oh God, he was getting a divorce.

  No. Maybe he’d just gotten one.

  I’ll come and get ’em…

  He was a father.

  But was he free?

  I shook out my hands, taking a deep breath.

  It didn’t matter. It wasn’t my business. Logan Judd was no longer my business. He’d stopped being my business twenty years ago. My choice. I’d let him go.

  And clearly it didn’t happen—where he was heading, where that Club was heading, what I expected would happen didn’t.

  He was in line at Chipotle, not incarcerated.

  I didn’t see him top to toe from all sides but from what I saw, he didn’t have any scars. He had that scratchy voice, so obviously he hadn’t quit smoking when he should have (or not at all). But he seemed strong, tall, fit.

  Maybe he had a beer gut.

  But with what he’d been getting into then, what Chaos was into back in the day, I expected twenty years later Logan would be a lot different and not just having-a-scratchy-voice, having-a-craggy-but-still-immensely-attractive-face, maybe-having-a-beer-gut different.

  Worst case, I expected he’d be dead.

  Almost as worst case, I expected he’d be in prison.

  Still almost as worst case, I expected him to be committing felonies that would eventually land him either of those two. Not in a Chipotle getting a burrito, talking on the phone with someone about picking up his kids, taking them to a condo in the mountains and getting them to school on Monday.

  What I’d expected was one thing.

  What I saw was what I’d hoped.

  I’d hoped he’d find his way to happiness.

  It struck me on that thought that he’d said his order was to go.

  Oh God, I needed to get out of there. It wouldn’t do for me to escape him inside only for him to see me outside in my car, freaked out so bad I was shaking.

  I pushed the button to start my car, carefully looked in all mirrors and checked my blind spots, reversed out, and headed home.

  I had no food at home except for a bin of wilting baby spinach and some shredded carrots.

  This was because I thought grocery shopping was akin to torture. I did it only when absolutely necessary, which was infrequently considering the number of options available for food in my neighborhood.

  Conversely, I loved to cook.

  I just didn’t do it frequently because I hated to shop for food, and anyway, cooking for one always reminded me I was just that.

  One.

  Singular. I had good intentions. Practically daily I thought I’d chan
ge in a variety of ways.

  Say, go to the grocery store. Be one of those women who concocted delicious meals (even if they were only for me), doing this sipping wine in my fabulous kitchen while listening to Beethoven or something. There would be candles burning, of course. And I’d serve my meal on gorgeous china, treating myself like a princess (since there was no one else to do it).

  After, I’d sip some fancy herbal tea, tucked up in my cuddle chair (candles still burning) reading Dostoyevsky. Or, if I was in the mood, watching something classy on TV, like Downton Abbey.

  Not what I normally did, got fast food or nuked a ready-made meal, my expensive candles gathering dust because they’d been unlit for months and not bothering even to dirty a plate. I’d do this while I sat eating in front of Sister Wives or True Tori or some such, immersing myself in someone else’s life because they were all a hell of a lot more interesting than mine.

  Then I’d go to bed.

  Alone.

  To wake up the next morning.

  Alone.

  And spend the day thinking of all the ways I would change.

  Like I’d start taking those walks I told myself I would take. Going to those Pilates classes at that studio just down the street that looked really cool and opened up two years ago (and yet, I had not stepped foot in it once). Driving up to the mountains and hiking a trail. Hitting the trendy shops on Broadway or in Highlands Square and spending a day roaming. Using that foot tub I bought but never took out of the box and giving myself a luxurious pedicure. Calling my friends to set up a girls’ night out and putting on a little black dress (after I bought one, of course) and hitting the town to drink martinis or cosmopolitans or mojitos or whatever the cool drink was now.

  Seeing a man looking at me and instead of looking away, smiling at him. Perhaps talking to him. Definitely speaking back if he spoke to me. Accepting a date if he asked. Going on that date.

  Maybe not going to bed alone.

  Every day I thought about it. I even journaled about it (on days when I’d talked myself into making a change and was together enough to journal).

  But I never did it.

  None of it.

  I thought all this as I drove home, then into my driveway, down the side of my house, parked in the courtyard at the back, got out and went inside, stopping in my kitchen, realizing from all these thoughts something frightening in the extreme.

  I was stuck in a rut.

  Stuck in a rut that began twenty years ago on the front stoop of the row house I shared with Logan, watching him walk away because I’d sent him away.

  Walk through fire.

  The words assaulted me and the pain was too intense to bear. I had to move to my marble countertop, bend to it to rest my elbows on it and hold my head in my hands.

  Then it all came and blasted through me in a way it felt my head was going to explode.

  You love a man, Millie, you believe in him, you take him as he is. You go on his journey with him no matter what happens, even if that means you have to walk through fire.

  His voice was not coarse back then. No abrasion to it. It was deep. It was manly. But it was smooth.

  Except when he said those words to me. When he said them, they were rough. They were incredulous. They were infuriated.

  They were hurt.

  Walk through fire.

  The tears came and damn it, damn it, they should have stopped years ago.

  They didn’t.

  They came and came and came until I was choking on them.

  I didn’t make a salad with wilting spinach and the dregs of shredded carrots. I didn’t hit my desk and get back to work.

  I pulled my phone out of my bag, struggled to my couch, collapsed on it, and called my sister.

  I couldn’t even speak when she picked up.

  But she heard the sobs.

  “Millie, what on earth is happening?” she asked, sounding frantic.

  “Dah-dah-Dottie,” I stuttered between blubbers. “I sah-sah-sah-saw Logan at fu-fu-fucking Chipotle.”

  Not even a second elapsed before she replied, “I’ll be over. Ten minutes.”

  Then she was over in ten minutes.

  She took care of me, Dottie did.

  Then again, my big sister always took care of me in a way I knew she always would.

  The bad part about that was that I never did any of those things I said I was going to do.

  I never pulled myself out of my rut.

  I never fought my way to strong.

  When I lost Logan, I lost any strength I might have had.

  That being him.

  He was my foundation. He was my backbone. He made me safe. He made life right.

  Hell, he made life worth living.

  Then he was gone, so I really had no life and commenced living half of one.

  Or maybe a third.

  Possibly a quarter.

  Likely an eighth.

  In other words, I was the kind of sister who would always need to be taken care of.

  I knew I should wake up one day and change that.

  I knew that just as I knew I never would.

  At a party, in a house, twenty-three years earlier…

  “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  He started it. He’d been checking me out since he got there ten minutes ago and not hiding it. Then he’d come right to me and started it.

  I liked that.

  I also liked that he’d approached, not wasting a lot of time.

  But mostly, I liked how incredibly cute he was.

  Cute and edgy.

  Holding my cup of beer in hand, I stared up at him.

  God yes, he was cute. So cute.

  But cute in a way that my mother would not curl up at night, safe in the knowledge her daughter had excellent taste in men. In other words, I wasn’t talking to a well-dressed guy who I would soon learn had a life mission he’d decided on when he was a boy, this being astronaut or curer of cancer.

  He was cute in a way my mother would despair, pray, live in terror and my father would consider committing murder (one of the various reasons my mother would be living in terror).

  But looking into his warm, brown eyes, for once in my life, I didn’t care what my mother and father thought.

  I just cared about the fact that he was standing close to me at Kellie’s party, he’d come right up to me and he’d said, “Hey.”

  “Name’s Logan,” he told me.

  God, he even had a cool name.

  “Millie,” I replied.

  I watched his eyes widen a bit before he burst out laughing.

  That wasn’t very nice.

  I swayed a little away from him, feeling hurt.

  He kept chuckling but he noticed my movement and focused intently on me, asking, “Where you goin’?”

  “I need a fresh beer,” I lied.

  He looked into my full cup.

  Then he looked at me, smiling.

  Oh God, yes. He was so cute.

  But he was kinda mean.

  I mean, my name wasn’t funny. It was old-fashioned but it was my great-grandmother’s name. My mother had adored her and Granny had lived long enough for me to adore her too.

  I liked my name.

  “You got Millie written all over you,” he stated.

  What a weird thing to say.

  And more weird, it was like he knew what I was thinking.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Darlin’, all that hair that doesn’t know whether it wants to be red or blonde. Those big brown eyes.” His smooth, deep voice dipped in a way that I felt in my belly. “That.” He lifted his beer cup with one finger extended and pointed close to my mouth so I knew he was indicating the little mole that was just in from the right corner of my top lip. “Cute. Sweet. No better name for a girl that’s all that but Millie.”

  Okay, that was nice.

  “Well, thanks, I think,” I mumbled.

  “Trust me, it’s a compliment,” he assured.r />
  I nodded.

  “What’re you doin’ tomorrow night?”

  I felt my head give a small jerk.

  Holy crap, was he asking me out on a date?

  “I… nothing,” I answered.

  “Good, then we’re goin’ out. You got a number?”

  He was!

  He was asking me out on a date!

  My heartbeat quickened and my legs started to feel all tingly.

  “I… yes,” I replied, then went on stupidly, “I have a number.”

  “Give it to me.”

  I stared at him, then looked down his wide chest to his trim waist, then to his hands. One hand was holding his beer, the other one had the thumb hooked in his cool-as-heck, beaten up, black leather belt.

  I looked back to his face. “Do you have something to write it down?”

  He gave a slight shake of his head and an even slighter (but definitely hot) lip twitch before he stated, “Millie, you give me your number, do you think I’m gonna forget a single digit?”

  Okay, wow. That was really nice.

  I gave him my number.

  He repeated it instantly and accurately.

  “That’s it,” I confirmed.

  He didn’t reply.

  I started to feel uncomfortable.

  And nervous.

  I’d just made a date with a guy I didn’t know at all except I knew my parents wouldn’t approve of him and then I gave him my number.

  Now what did we do?

  “You come with someone?” he asked.

  It was weird that he asked that now, after he’d asked me out.

  After I thought it was weird, I thought that maybe he thought I was on a date and then made a date with him while I was on a date and then he’d think I was a bitch!

  “No, just some girlfriends,” I told him quickly.

  He gave me another smile. “That’s comin’ with someone, darlin’.”

  Oh.

  Right.

  I bit my lip.

  “Who?” he asked.

  “Justine,” I answered, tipping my head toward the kitchen table where there were four guys and two girls sitting. When he turned his head to look, I expanded my answer, “The brunette.”

  And right then, Justine, my friend the pretty brunette, drunkenly bounced a quarter on the table toward a shot glass, missed, and grinned. Two of the guys and one of the girls immediately shouted, “Shot!” Thus, she unsteadily grabbed the glass and threw it back, some of the vodka in it dribbling down her chin.