Page 3 of From the Ashes (Redwood Bay Fire #2)

CHAPTER 3

Colt

I’m not even sure how I’ve made it to Monday morning. I feel like I’ve been in a daze since I stumbled back onto Redwood Bay Beach, a little girl in my arms as I fell at the feet of the love of my life.

Okay, it wasn’t quite as dramatic as all that, but it certainly wasn’t the chilled-out afternoon of surfing I’d hoped for, either.

Zahir Delacroix. All grown up into the most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen in all my thirty-three years. In that moment, I was faced with everything that I gave up, everything I walked away from.

Everything I lost to be the person my father insisted I had to be.

As I sit at my desk staring listlessly at the affidavit I’m supposed to be working on, I wonder what I hell I had been I thinking.

Over the years, I tried not to think about the boy I loved so desperately in secret back in high school. We were each other’s firsts in all the ways that mattered most. That last summer before college was the happiest I can ever remember.

But then reality came crashing down around us. He knew I’d gotten into a bunch of schools, but I selfishly let him believe that I had options and hadn’t made my mind up. Of course, my father had decided I was going to Harvard Law from the moment I was born, and I stupidly applied like the loyal son I am.

I never had a choice. So when the time came, I took the coward’s way out and simply left him a note before heading east and never looking back. I was certain I could have never dealt with the pain of keeping Zahir in my life but not being able to be with him, so I just shut him out completely. I tried my best not to think about him at all, burying myself in studies and occasionally dating acceptable girls that I could bring home the odd Christmas to keep my parents happy.

But I could never bring myself to sleep with them. I might be a manipulative sonovabitch, but I’m not cruel. I’m also not a cheat. When I wasn’t ‘seeing’ anyone, I’d feel free to find some out-of-town bar and pick up a guy for the night.

It was Zahir I tasted in every kiss, though.

And now I’m back in Redwood Bay. I kind of already appreciated that my hook-ups would most likely dwindle now. The risk of getting outed is so much greater this close to home. I could go into LA or San Diego, but now that I’ve seen my lost love in the flesh, filled out and even more handsome than before, I don’t think I have an appetite for strangers. All I’d do is go looking for his doppelg?nger, and again, that wouldn’t be fair to anyone.

Is what I’m going through fair, though? I feel like I’m stuck in an awful limbo, paralyzed and helpless. I can’t even focus on a simple legal document. Nothing seems to matter other than Zahir.

Of course, the only thing that really matters is that the little girl was okay. She seemed to be when Zahir and his partner took her off to their ambulance. I’d just really like to know for sure, but when I called the hospital, the nurse in charge kindly but firmly told me that if I wasn’t family, she couldn’t give out any information. I already knew that and sheepishly apologized. But there’s this niggling anxiety at the back of my mind that wants to know for sure.

I thought about going to the firehouse to ask there.

Redwood Bay only has one. There are several in San Clemente, and it wouldn’t be out of the question for Zahir to be working at one of those. But my gut is telling me that he’s stayed here.

That would be a real dick move, though. Even if I really do want to know if little Nevaeh is okay. I have to be honest with myself and admit that wouldn’t be the only reason for me visiting.

I want to see Zahir again so badly my insides are in knots and my head hasn’t stopped throbbing since Friday afternoon. However, that would be outrageously out of order. I’m the one in the wrong with how everything ended. I should never have ghosted him the way I did, and I cannot expect anything from him now.

Hopefully, time will heal this gaping hole in my heart the way it sort of did before. I’m certain I hurt him beyond measure when I left, and I probably have no right to feel sorry for myself considering what I did. But Jesus Christ, I’ve never suffered like that before or since. When I got to Massachusetts, I barely ate or slept for weeks, constantly picking up my phone day and night, typing out hundreds of messages that never got sent.

In my life, I’ve made mistakes. I’ve lost cases and said dumb things, and there was that one time I invested in my buddy’s cactus farm start-up when I knew I really shouldn’t have.

But no regret comes close to how I ended things with Zahir Delacroix. Or the fact I ended our relationship at all. At the time, it seemed like the only option.

Now, I’m not so sure.

There has been the odd moment of drunken weakness where I’ve looked him up online. He doesn’t appear to be on Facebook or BlueSky, and his Instagram is pretty much just nature photography of wildlife and flowers and sunsets, so it doesn’t give a lot of insight into his life. But as I cave in and pull up the page on my work computer now, I can see his artistry in every shot. He always had an incredible eye for composition and finding beauty in the mundane.

Having seen the man behind the camera up close in the flesh for the first time in a decade and a half, I look at the photos in a new light. I wonder if he’s hiding from the lens. If he is, I hope it’s not because of me. It would be outrageously arrogant to think that I could still be affecting his life choices after all this time. But still…I still hope it’s not my fault.

The world deserves to see him. All of him.

Leaving him isn’t my only regret. So is hiding him and our relationship. Our love. He knew my parents weren’t exactly homophobic, but they had a very set life plan for me that seemed too big and important to them to risk coming out at seventeen. I was old enough to know that other people being gay and queer was fine, but not Angela and Fredrick Ross’s only son. Nuh-uh. It was my duty to carry on the family legacy and bloodline.

Still is.

I puff out my cheeks and wonder how long it’ll take for my ‘settling in’ period to be deemed over. Once my father has been given a clean bill of health and I’m up to speed at the firm, no doubt that’ll be the cue for my mom to start reminding me about nice young ladies and all the babies they could be having for me.

Or rather her. I’m not sure how good a father I’ll ever be. Like I said, I’m selfish, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with admitting that. Because looking at my own parents, I’m not sure it’s such a hot idea for selfish people to reproduce.

Wow, I really am determined to hurt my own feelings this morning, aren’t I? It’s one thing to wonder about a different life lived where I never abandoned Zahir, but it’s another thing entirely to be arguing with myself that I should never have been born. My situation really isn’t that bad.

Giving myself a mental slap and reality check, I take a breath and look at Zahir’s Instagram some more. There might not be any selfies, but he’s still captured plenty of beauty that makes the world a better place.

I wonder idly if he still paints. He was always at his freest when he was painting. At our fancy private school, I knew he was constantly in a state of self-awareness, trying to prove to people like my parents that he’d earned his scholarship and wasn’t less because his family didn’t have a ton of money. He never got in trouble or drew much attention to himself. He just kept his head down and got the best grades he could.

But when he painted…oh, man. He could extract an explosion of color from the dullest of scenes. He could have gotten another scholarship to college, I’m sure. But that’s wasn’t Zahir. Painting was something he did just for himself, for joy. It took months for him to open up and even show me in our sophomore year. No, he always knew he wanted to help people in a much more direct way. I’m not surprised he’s become a paramedic.

I just wish he’d put those paintings online as well. Perhaps it’s a secret account I can’t find, and even though that thought makes me sad, it also gives me hope. Maybe I don’t deserve to enjoy his skill and talent anymore, but other people do.

If his work still exists, that is. His grandma’s garage was constantly filled with his canvases. He never seemed concerned about keeping them, but she treasured every one of them. She always was a smart woman. Scary, but smart. And always his biggest cheerleader, even more than cowardly me. I bet she kept all the best and most important paintings.

This is the strange existence I’ve been skirting around for so many years. Knowing what Zahir was doing on the other side of the country without me would have been too painful. It was better to pretend he only existed when I left him at eighteen, frozen in time. But now I’ve been thrown back into his orbit, I need to know that he’s happy, that he’s loved. Then I think I can manage to keep up the strength I’ll need to stay away from him.

Maybe.

My cellphone flashes with a notification that drags my attention back into the here and now. I blink away from my computer and frown, not recognizing the number. Before I can unlock my screen and work out what it is, I hear a rumbling sound.

For a second, my heart stops.

It’s been a long time since I experienced an earthquake. Even though old instinct kicks in and tells me this just feels like a minor tremor, I still jump up and brace myself in the doorframe like I was taught as a kid.

I’m pretty sure this theory has since been debunked. I should have gone under my desk—it’s sturdy enough—but I wasn’t sure I’d fit. Besides, my father would think that undignified to cower like a panicked woodland creature. It doesn’t matter what’s safer, I’m sure. Only that I don’t embarrass him.

Like I thought, the shaking stops before it even really begins. My diplomas rattle on the walls and one of the lamps falls onto the carpet, but all in all, it’s pretty tame. I realize that the alert that flashed up on my phone was probably an advance warning system of some kind.

I puff out my cheeks and cling to the doorframe for a second, gathering my bearings.

“Living out east has made you soft,” my father’s voice scoffs. I sigh and look up.

“You’d prefer me to stay seated at my desk and die like a man?” I drawl with a crooked eyebrow.

My father harrumphs and smooths his tie down and approaches my office along the corridor. “Just no need to make a fuss, is there?” my father grumbles, his white mustache twitching like a disgruntled mouse on his lip. “Buck up and stop being a sissy about it.”

I grit my teeth, knowing there isn’t going to be any winning this disagreement. He has very set ideas about how men and women should behave so they maintain their dignity. I guess showing relief that the roof didn’t collapse makes me a pussy in his eyes.

How tedious.

“I’m almost done with that affidavit,” I tell him to change the subject.

I’m lying. I’ve barely started it. But I know it won’t take long once I finally corral my brain into focusing.

“Good, good,” he says absently as he continues to walk down the hall of his practice, nodding at his employees as he wanders past. Like earthquakes are nothing out of the ordinary.

Well, this is California. I’d forgotten that they aren’t.

“Welcome home,” I mutter to myself with a chuckle.

If there was a metaphor for how I’m feeling right now, the world falling down around me is damned on point. I look up to the ceiling as I sit back down again.

“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” I grumble to the universe. “You don’t need to hit me over the head with it like a hammer.”

I fucked up. I knew it then and I definitely know it now. Zahir deserved a million percent better from me and I let him down. But the universe can send all the tremors it wants. I can’t change the past and I don’t really see what I can do about it in the present, either.

I’m not sure how I’ll manage it in a town this small. But I have to at least try and stay away from the man I once loved—the man I never stopped loving, truth be told. I failed him fifteen years ago, but I can do right by him now and put my own selfish need to be forgiven aside.

He’s never going to forgive me, anyway. So I should probably just dive into this document and lose myself in work like I always do.

Well, maybe just five more minutes on Instagram.