We Fall Like Ashes | Wildfire Series

Two: First Dates and Mistakes

He should be a model.

Bren said his girlfriend described this guy that way. That he should be a model.

And my god, she wasn't wrong.

She was also pissed. At me.

Well, not so much me. More Bren. And rightfully so. If I'd known she didn't realize I was coming tonight, I would have never shown up. It was so long ago, that high school era when I hooked up with Bren and other guys just to dull some kind of pain. And sure, we had a connection, but it had nothing to do with sex or romance or anything like that.

I was so far from a threat to Madie and Bren's relationship. But of course, she couldn't see that right now; she just saw her boyfriend walking up with his ex-fuck-buddy. I didn't blame her. I shouldn't have let Bren set me up with his friend. I should have stayed home. Alone. Like I usually did to keep from hurting other people.

Although, then I wouldn't have met him.

Was it possible he was a model? I mean, it would explain how he'd afforded to send five freaking designer dresses to my door with a note to pick out the one I liked best for our date. Who does that? What kind of college kid does that?

The answer was pretty clear now that I was here: Beau Martin wasn't a kid. He might have a boyish charm to him, but the minute he looked me over and gave me a crooked grin from the top of the stairs, I knew.

Goddamnit.

"Hey," he'd murmured.

I'd taken a deep breath. Summoned a smile. I was a bit out of practice with dating.

Okay, it was possible this was my first date. Ever. Like officially, anyway.

"Hey. You must be Beau?"

His smile had grown.

"Damn right I am."

—

St. Paul's Catholic Church was a part of me. When I was fifteen, the woodwork absorbed my tears. The organ, my cries. When I was sixteen, I came to know my reflection through bits of stained glass. When I was seventeen, I found laughter between bake-offs in the basement kitchen. At eighteen, the peace that hymns spoke of...it started to slither into my soul.

At twenty-one, I was leaving.

Trauma and healing—this place held equal amounts of both for me. And now, after clearing my desk of the last picture of my family—mom, dad, and older brother—I didn't know what to feel. Bittersweet didn't cover it. A push and pull, maybe. A soul being torn in two.

Directions was completely unaffiliated with the Catholic church, but St. Paul's had housed it for years. The church was just a building. This organization, though, was the heart and soul. It had done what it could to piece me back together again after the accident. And when I graduated high school, I hadn't been able to move away from the one place where I felt whole. So I stayed. And I paid it forward. Slowly started running grief groups instead of crying in them. Well, maybe I still cried. Sometimes.