Only Ever Us

2. Rowan

Chapter Two

ROWAN

Once the fire was under control, I returned to check on Mae. While I was waiting, Carrie Dodge, an elderly woman whose cat I had rescued just last week, came walking over.

“Mae!” she exclaimed. “What in the world happened?”

“Hey, Aunt Carrie. The closet caught fire and then the curtains, I think.” Mae tried to take a deep breath and only coughed again. Dana slapped the oxygen mask back over her mouth.

Carrie looked up at me. “That's my great-niece,” she announced.

I looked over at Mae, and her eyes met mine from just above the oxygen mask on her face. She stayed silent. Even coughing, distressed, and just carted out of a fire, Mae was still beautiful. Her blond hair fell in a tangle around her shoulders, and her ginger eyes were snapping.

“How are you, honey?” Carrie asked as she stepped closer to Mae and patted her on the shoulder.

Mae blinked at her. Dana interjected, “Give her a minute. With a little more oxygen, she probably won't need to cough again.”

Carrie turned her attention back to me. “Thank you.”

“For?”

“Rescuing Mae.”

“It's my job.” When my eyes bounced over to Mae again, hers were narrowed. If eyes could shoot flames, I was certain hers would.

I had tons of questions, but now wasn't the time for any of them. I turned my attention back to the fire. I’d tagged along with the town crew today just because I could. They were at half capacity since part of the crew was out training. As much as I wanted to stand by Mae’s side and wait to finally have a freaking conversation with her, now really wasn't the time.

I walked toward the fire truck and stopped beside Susannah, another firefighter. “All taken care of,” I commented.

She looked up at me, her lips quirking at the corners in a faint smile. “It was contained in that one room, thank goodness. This is the only funeral place in town. I'm just glad it wasn't the church portion of this structure.”

The funeral home was attached to the back of the only church in this small town. I glanced over at it. The pastor was standing outside at the base of the stairs, talking to some of the parishioners who’d scurried out. “Do we know if the service was over?”

“Yes. Maisie already called and got the scoop and then reported in.”

“Do we know what caused the fire?”

“Apparently, the water heater in that closet caught fire, then the curtains. We'll have more time to check on it later. Nobody got hurt, so it's not an emergency.”

I glanced over toward Mae. Dana had removed the oxygen mask, and she and Mae were talking with Carrie. I really wanted to go over there, but I didn't.

This was the second time I'd seen Mae in town. The first had been over two months ago, and then she disappeared again. I still couldn't get over the chances of finding her again.

Dragging my eyes away from her, I left. An hour or so later, after I had showered and changed, Maisie Steele called my name as I was walking down the hallway at the station. Glancing over my shoulder, I stopped and turned. “Yeah?”

“You have a visitor.” The door at the end of the hallway swung shut behind her.

Curious as to who would stop by the station to see me, I walked up front into the reception area. It was situated between the fire station and the police station, where the single building served as a shared space. Maisie was the central dispatcher, and she was already on the phone at her command center, as she referred to it.

She smiled over at me and gestured toward the chairs by the windows. I looked over to discover Mae sitting there.

“Hey, Mae.” I walked over as my heart kicked into an irregular beat. I wouldn't admit it aloud, but simply seeing her again made me nervous.

Her eyes whipped up from where she'd been looking at her phone. She immediately slipped it into her jacket pocket and stood. “Hi.”

Her hair was damp and frozen on the ends. It was early November, and we'd already had snow here. I was accustomed to winter, but not this early, and definitely not this cold. Winters in the mountains of North Carolina weren't like those of Alaska. I’d been warned we weren't even to the coldest part yet. I didn't mind. I loved the mountains, and I loved the snow.

“Thank you,” Mae said, her ginger eyes blinking up at me.

“For what?”

Her lips pressed in a line, those lips that were just as inviting as they'd once been years ago. They were pink and full and tipped up at the corners.

“For rescuing me from the fire.” Her breath came out in a rush.

“It's my job.”

“I know, but still.” She stuffed her hands in her pockets.

I didn’t know how it was possible, but she’d gotten more beautiful, at least to me. Back when we’d been friends and then a little more in college, she’d been stunning to me. She was medium height with curvy hips. She wore jeans with cowboy boots and a fluffy down jacket. Her blond hair spilled around her shoulders in shades of honey, dark ash, and sunshine. She removed one hand from a pocket and brushed her long bangs to the side.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Uh, I work here.”

Mae rolled her eyes. “No, I mean here in my hometown in Alaska.”

“My friend, Remy, is one of the firefighters here. He told me about the job.”

“What?”

I lifted my shoulders in a shrug. “He's a hotshot firefighter. They travel all over. He's married with a baby on the way here, so he’s definitely staying. He thought I'd like it here.”

“What are the freaking chances of that?” Mae muttered.

I chuckled. “I don't know.”

“It’s annoying more than weird.”

Mae and I met in college. She'd been on a scholarship in college in North Carolina. To this day, I thought about her more than I'd like to admit.

“Did you know this was my hometown?” she asked.

I shifted my shoulders uncomfortably. “Yeah.”

Her eyes coasted over my face curiously. “Yeah?”

“Of course, I remembered, Mae. We were best friends before.”

“Before?”

“Before we went on a few dates and you stopped talking to me,” I said flatly, ignoring the pain that felt like a spear driven through my heart.

Her breath drew in sharply. She glared at me before she spun away, walking swiftly out the door. I moved to follow her. “Mae!” I called when I reached the parking area.

She glanced over her shoulder. “Let it go, Rowan.” She climbed into a small blue car and drove away.

I stood there, watching the glow of her taillights disappear. I sighed and walked back into the station. Maisie looked up as I came in. “What did you do to Mae?”

I crossed over, resting my elbows on the counter that encircled her desk. “I wish I knew.”

Maisie wrinkled her nose. “I need you to connect the dots for me, please. How do you know Mae? I didn’t think you were from here.”

“I'm not. I'm from Stolen Hearts Valley in North Carolina, same town as Remy.”

“Oh, that's right! He's the one who told you about the job opening here.”

“You got it.”

“So, about Mae?”

“We met in college. She had a scholarship to UNC.” It wasn’t that I wanted to avoid this conversation, but it was uncomfortable because I didn’t know what I’d done to piss off Mae. She’d been one of my closest friends, and I’d fallen for her. Hard. I’d finally found the nerve to ask her out. A few dates later, she stopped talking to me and avoided me so thoroughly I never found out what happened.

“Do you know Mae well?” Maisie pressed. Maisie basically ran the station, and even though I’d only been here for a few months, I knew she kept her thumb on the pulse of everything going on. “As far as I know, she just moved back. Her grandmother passed away.”

“Yeah, she was Carrie Dodge’s sister.”

Maisie’s brows rose. “Yeah, I know. So, Mae seems pissed off with you?”

“Maybe.”

“What did you do?” Maisie pressed just as my friend Remy Martin came through the doors.

“What's up?” he asked, stopping beside me.

“Apparently, Rowan was a dumbass in college,” Maisie offered helpfully.

Remy glanced at me, his eyes crinkling with a smile. “Really?”

I sighed, straightening as I ran a hand through my hair. “I don’t even know what I did.”

“Dude, why do you look so upset?”

I gestured toward the parking lot although Mae was long gone. “You remember Mae Townsend?”

Remy looked as if he were rifling through a cabinet in his brain before he nodded slowly. “You were best friends in college. I thought you had it bad for her.”

“Yeah. That's the one. This is her hometown, she hates me, and I don’t even know why.”