Blowing Smoke: A Small-town Firefighter Gay Romance (The Wilds Book 2) by Ashton Cade

Author:Ashton Cade [Cade, Ashton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-10-29T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

Jared

“Just a little bit more,” I call down from the roof, feeling a little dizzy when I look down. I shouldn’t be up here, but someone needed to get the snow off the roof and there’s no way I am sending Nick up here. He’s only thirty years older than me, but he’s already had two heart attacks and an open heart surgery a few years ago. He’s got no business shoveling snow, and none of his employees could come in.

The snow’s still coming down, it hasn’t stopped since this afternoon when the second round picked up. We’ve gotten almost fourteen inches in the last twenty-four hours. It’s not record-breaking by any means, but it’s more than enough to bury the town and send everything to a complete standstill.

Even though we did everything we could to get the word out and encourage everyone to stay home, I’ve watched three people slide out and get stuck today while I’ve been helping Nick secure his grocery store. At least one of those people was coming to his store, desperate for supplies they failed to stock up on ahead of time.

Most folks around here are smarter than that. We know not to underestimate a storm, to have more supplies than we could possibly need because there’s no telling how long we could be stranded.

Which of course means the shelves of the grocery store are nearly bare. I don’t think the customer was happy with their assortment of canned fruit, but they’re really lucky Nick’s here at all.

“Careful,” he calls up to me as I shove another pile of snow off the roof. I’m sweating and shivering, my nose hasn’t stopped running since I left the house, and my lungs are burning with the effort of sucking in freezing air.

“Last one, head’s up,” I call right before the heavy wet thud of snow on the sidewalk. That’s the next thing.

Besides the one customer that actually came in to buy things, the other cars that cruised by made my spidey senses tingle. There’s no proof that they would have done something differently if there wasn’t a cop car parked outside the grocery store, but I’m glad I could be here all the same. With the shelves nearly cleared out and the generator not working, Nick’s store is like a beacon to vandals and ne’er-do-wells. They’ll take what they can and smash up everything else. I’ve seen it before in storms like this, and I’d like for it not to happen under my watch.

We can’t have officers just stationed outside local businesses, though. Wish we could, but our resources are too thin for that. When I wasn’t on the roof, I flagged down anyone driving, told them to get home and stay home. The Mayor and I have issued a curfew and only emergency personnel—or civilians with an emergency—should be out here right now. By tomorrow I’ll be writing tickets if the snow keeps up. No one wants to learn that way, but I’d rather piss off a couple people than find them in pieces on the side of the road.

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