Starting Over at Blueberry Creek by Annie Rains

Author:Annie Rains
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2020-02-25T00:00:00+00:00

The sun was on its descent behind the mountains as Luke drove back home with Brenna, quiet in the passenger seat beside him. He wasn’t sure if her silence signaled that something was wrong or if his family had simply worn her out. By the time he pulled into her driveway, he wondered if perhaps she was sleeping.

She stirred as he cut the engine. Then she looked around, blinking heavily.

“You okay?” he finally asked.

“Mm-hmm.”

Neither of them moved to get out just yet. “You and my mom got along great,” he said.

“I guess it’s true that food brings everyone together…Luke?”

He heard a note of hesitation in her voice, and he was pretty sure he knew what was coming. “Yeah?”

“What happened to Marco?”

His brother’s name made him shift uncomfortably.

“When I asked where he was at dinner, the tension in the room was palpable,” she said in a quiet voice.

Luke swallowed painfully. “I should have told you, I guess.”

“Told me what?”

Luke swallowed again and then again. He looked over at Brenna. “I told you about the fire when I was seven. Marco and I were trapped upstairs.”

“And a fireman showed up and saved you. Another came for your brother,” she said, filling in the parts that he’d already disclosed. He’d intentionally skipped a very important piece of the story when he’d shared it with her, jumping to how he’d gotten the injuries on his back. He’d told her that the fireman had put him in an ambulance, and he had been carted away in a flash of chaos and pain. As far as he was concerned as he left the scene, Marco had been rescued just like him.

Luke’s breaths grew shallow as he braced himself to tell the rest of the story. He didn’t tell it often. “The other firefighter, the one that went in to help Marco, didn’t make it out.”

Brenna’s eyes widened as she watched him. The inside of the truck was dark, and shadows danced around them as the trees outside swayed against the wind off the creek.

“The authorities think the fireman had a heart attack while he was in the house. Bad timing. Bad luck.” Luke sucked in another breath, and pain splintered in his chest. It felt like it might rip him apart but he knew from experience that it wouldn’t. “By the time the fire department realized he wasn’t coming out, it was too late to send someone else in after their firefighter…and for my brother.”

Brenna’s eyes welled with tears as she reached for him, taking his hand in hers. “Oh, Luke, I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”

“The report said he died from the smoke.” Luke had tried to reach Marco himself. That’s how he’d gotten burned. The fear and the pain had stopped him in his tracks. For a long time, he’d wondered if he should have tried harder.

Luke steeled himself against the surfacing emotion. He was done blaming himself and getting emotional about what happened so long ago. Instead of crying, he’d put his energy into his passion for firefighting.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.