Nothing like the heat I felt when Grace touched me.

“Listen. Kelsey–”

Cutting me off, she pouts, looking ridiculous. “If you want me to listen, why don’t we go back to my place? It’s nice and quiet there.” On that note, Ian clears his throat and stands.

He mouths Good luck to me from behind Kelsey’s back. She slides into his seat as he walks toward the bathrooms.

“You don’t come around here much anymore. I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever.” Her knees brush against mine as she moves in her seat. It’s a deliberate move, setting me on edge. “You haven’t returned my calls either.”

Even though I really want to say, I know. I’ve been avoiding you on purpose, it’s not in my makeup to be rude. Instead, I say, “It has been a while.” Finishing off the last chug of my beer gives me a second to avoid having to say much more. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Ian take a seat a few stools down. He’s failing miserably at trying to look like he’s not eavesdropping.

As she drops a hand to my leg, she asks, “So what do you think? You want to get out of here and head back to my place? It’s been too long.”

“Kelsey, what we had was good while it lasted,” I lie. “But it’s run its course.” Clearly insulted, her face twists in some kind of agony. It takes actual strength for me not to roll my eyes at her ridiculous reaction. Up until five minutes ago, I thought I’d made this very clear. She’s right. We haven’t seen each other. I haven’t called her back. Haven’t made any attempt to get in touch with her over the last month.

“Run its course,” she mocks. “Okay, fine then. I guess I saw it as more than a fling.” With a giant huff, she stands from the bar stool and walks away.

The good guy part of me wants to call her back, offer her more of an explanation, but it’s unnecessary, really. While we definitely were not a one-night stand, I would barely call what we were anything more than a fling.

When Ian walks back to his seat, he has a shocked look plastered to his face. “I thought for sure I’d come back out here and you’d be lip locked with Tits Magee over there.”

Shrugging, I don’t bother answering him with words.

“Okay, so now I know something is definitely up. Or did your dick go numb?” The ass he is, Ian actually laughs at himself.

“First my ass, now my dick. Any other body part of mine on your brain I should know about?”

Shooting me a wry look, Ian keeps his eyes trained on the television. “No, asshole. I was simply wondering why you’d turn down a night with Kelsey. And,” he adds, twisting in his seat to face me, “if I’m correct, which I usually am, I heard her say it’s been a while. So what’s up with that?”

Over my shoulder, he eyes Kelsey, who finds a seat at the other end of the bar. As a means of avoiding his question, I refocus my attention back on the television, but catch a glimpse of Kelsey out of the corner of my eye. She’s all legs, cleavage, cheap hair extensions, and fake eyelashes. Toying with the end of her blonde hair, I know from experience it feels like straw. Flipping back through my time with her, I can’t say it was terrible. But it was anything but memorable. She was sweet. Always nice and especially attentive, she would hang on every last word falling from my mouth. But she was shallow as fuck. And that was something I could look past. Hell, I should still be able to look past it. But when she walked up to me, something was different.

Up to this point, my life had been a vicious cycle of wash, rinse, repeat. Wake up. Fight some fires. Go home. Shower. Go out with friends. Drink. Go home—maybe sometimes with Kelsey. Wash, rinse, repeat.

And holy shit, was that getting old.

“So, are you going to tell me what’s going on or what? You haven’t said more than two words since Kelsey walked away,” Ian prattles on.

“What are you, Dr. Phil or something?” Lamely, I attempt a joke, but he doesn’t laugh. Instead, he waits patiently for me to say something. “Fine,” I concede. “I guess I’m just not up for it.”

“For sex?” He nearly chokes on his beer. “Dude, what the hell?”

“It’s not always about sex, asshole.”

His face twists in confusion, as if I’ve just said the most ridiculous thing in the existence of words. “Not always about sex?” he mocks. “Uh, last time I checked, it most definitely is. Something change in the last week?”

Chuckling low, I grumble, “A week? More like four.”

Slapping his hand on the bar-top, he rattles the empty mugs sitting in front of us. “Four weeks? Oh, hell no. We need to fix that.”

“Shut up.” Trying to keep conversation of my sex life, or lack thereof, to a more normal volume, I shoot Ian a serious look. “I’ve been studying for the Lieutenant’s test. It’s eating up all my time. Add in a shitload of overtime shifts, and sex is pretty much the last thing on my mind.” As if I needed more of an excuse, I say, “Plus, my parents are remodeling their kitchen, so I’ve been helping them.”

Without missing a beat, and without listening to a single word that just came out of my mouth, Ian says, “So what? It’s sex. There’s no excuse. Unless . . .” he drags it out, dramatically scratching his chin. “Unless of course you want there to be an excuse.”

Shrugging, I say nothing. The raw truth is that his words hit a little too close for comfort. “Maybe I’m just tired of the game, the groupies. You know I’ve never been a one-night stand guy–”

“But Kelsey?”

“She wasn’t a one-night stand,” I defend.

Arching an eyebrow, Ian’s look screams really without actually saying a word.

“She wasn’t.” I laugh. “We were together a month.” Ian continues to look at me as if gibberish is coming out of my mouth. “Okay, fine.” Finally giving in, I admit, “She was a month-long string of one-night stands. It was a month held together by nothing else, though.”

“Much better,” he says as he laughs. For a few more minutes, neither of us says anything else. Then, spinning in his stool, Ian looks at me as if an actual lightbulb is going on over his head. “It’s the redhead, isn’t it?”

Knowing Ian would make a bigger deal out of her than she was, I said nothing about Grace to him since she came to see me at the station. Where Ian is concerned, sometimes less is better.

But there is no denying it. It most definitely is her. From the moment I saw her at the bar, I needed to know if it was her or not. I’d thought about her over the years here and there. Probably more than was healthy at times. Especially when I was younger, I thought about her a lot. Where was she? How had she adjusted to moving? Did she like her new school? Then as I grew older, I wondered if she had a boyfriend? If her hair was still as red as it had been when she was a kid? Was she as beautiful in real life as she was in my dreams?

Of course there were times—spans of years even—when she never crossed my mind. College, mostly. But hell, most of it was a blur, anyway. It wasn’t exactly my cup of tea, but my parents made me go, saying that I’d need something to fall back on if the fire department didn’t work out. In my own head, I knew it would have to work out. Being a firefighter was the only thing I’d ever wanted to do with my life. So the thought of it not working out was unfathomable.

It wasn’t lost on me that in those most significant moments—my first day of the academy and my graduation from it, my first day on the job, and my first fire—those were the times I thought of little Gracie McCann the most. It was because of her that my adult life took shape and I wanted nothing more than to thank the little girl I’d saved so long ago for giving my life a purpose.

Then, with every fire I fought, with every person I saved, I thought of Gracie. Mostly, I lied to myself saying I just needed to know she was doing well. But the more I thought about it, the more I needed to know what kind of woman she’d grown into.