Page 3 of Irresistibly Wicked

“Can you tell me who the president is?”

He said something that sounded like “Preach,” and then his eyes rolled back in his head and his body went slack again.

“Wake up, Zeke!”

He didn’t respond.

“Come on, Zeke. Open your eyes,” she ordered, relieved to finally hear sirens in the distance.

He remained still and silent, but he was breathing.

Using her knuckles, she applied pressure to his sternum, and he cried out. Relief swamped her. “I need you to stay awake.” She grabbed more gauze, trying desperately to stop the bleeding in his side. “Where were you headed this morning?”

He groaned, his eyes closing again.

“Tell me about your motorcycle. I bet it’s cool, huh?” She had to keep him talking.

His eyes fluttered open and locked on hers, stealing her breath for a split second before those deep pools of blue brimmed with fear, pleading as he weakly panted out, “Don’t…let me…go.”

Her chest constricted, an unfamiliar choke of emotion stealing her voice. There was something familiar in his eyes, something tugging at her. She tried to break that chokehold but was unable. What the hell? Get your shit together, Shauna.

“You’re not going anywhere, big guy. Not on my watch.” She hoped to hell that was true, but she was worried about his blood loss. “We’re going to get through this together. You hear me?”

He mumbled incoherently.

“I’ve got you, Zeke. Just stay awake. We music buffs have to stick together. What kind of music do you like?” He mumbled again as she grabbed more gauze. She began singing her go-to song when she needed strength, “Keep Holding On” by Avril Lavigne, hoping it would give him strength, too.

Moments later the first responders arrived, a different crew from her own since it wasn’t her jurisdiction. As the firefighters headed for the wreckage, Shauna brought the medics up to speed, reluctantly stepping back as they stabilized Zeke. She felt uneasy, like she was breaking a promise. Don’t…let me…go. She’d heard things like that plenty of times from people in crisis and had no idea why it hit differently this time.

She kept an eye on Zeke as she gave the police a description of the accident and the truck that had hit him. When the ambulance drove away, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she should have gone with him.

She turned back to the scene. The flames were out, the police and firemen milling about, doing their jobs. She went to get her coat, which was lying beside a bloody patch of grass where Zeke had lain. That’s when the gravity of what had happened hit her, and the breath rushed from her lungs. She hadn’t even realized she’d been holding it. She’d handled dozens of emergencies that were worse than this one, but this was the first she’d handled on her own, without any time to mentally prepare or get into the headspace of anticipating a tragedy, as she usually did when she arrived at work.

She felt like she’d run a marathon and prayed Zeke would be okay as she picked up her coat and found his leather vest beneath it. A lump lodged in her throat, and she pressed the coat and vest to her chest, pride gripping her. She’d handled it, and she hadn’t flinched or floundered. She’d always thought she had it in her, but until now she hadn’t known for sure. Her phone rang, startling her. She pulled it from her pocket, seeing Brian’s name on the screen, and didn’t think as she put it to her ear. “Hey.”

“I need that money…”

She closed her eyes, accepting a pang of guilt as she tuned him out, unable to deal with the selfishness of addiction when she’d just been knee-deep in a life-and-death situation.

Chapter Two

AFTER A GRUELING twenty-four-hour shift, Shauna was whipped. The guys weren’t kidding about New Year’s Eve taking its toll, only they didn’t know the additional burden she carried. Every time they were dispatched, she worried it would be for Brian, and she hated that feeling. It made her resentful that after all their hard work, Brian was right back at square one, which wasn’t fair to him. She knew addiction was a demon that could sink its claws into a person and lure them back to the dark side without warning. It could do the same to her at any time, and if the tables were turned, she had no doubt that Brian would never give up on her.

Even with all of that going on, she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the guy she’d helped on her way to work. Those pleading blue eyes and the desperation in his voice—Don’t…let me…go—still had her in a chokehold. The strange feeling that she shouldn’t have left him had stuck like glue, too, an urgent voice in the back of her mind refusing to be ignored. As if her promise carried more weight than it ever had before. She didn’t like not having complete control over her emotions and needed to put whatever this was to rest.

“You did great today,” her partner, Howie Glazer, a short, stocky paramedic with military-shorn red hair and an affable personality, said as he closed his locker.

“Thanks.”

He grabbed his bag and smirked. “But you might want to brush up on your cooking skills before our next shift.”

The crew took turns with firehouse chores, including cooking. The guys were always giving her shit about her mediocre cooking skills, and she gave it right back to them, all in fun, of course. “The way you shoveled the food into your mouth, I doubt you tasted a thing.”

He laughed and shook his head as he headed out the door. “See ya in a few days, Flores.” They worked a schedule of twenty-four hours on, then forty-eight hours off before reporting back for their next shift.

She put her belongings in her duffel bag and grabbed her coat before heading downstairs. As she came around the corner, she nearly bumped into the firehouse captain, Rodney Chaney. “Whoa. Sorry, Cap.”

Cap was a tall Black man with a trim gray goatee and the kind of face that could be stern as stone or warm as a summer day, depending on his mood. He was one of her favorite people and one of the biggest reasons she’d become an EMT.