Scorch by Dani Collins Page A

up at the sight of him. They called him out if he dated other women, razzed him because I was so obviously in love with him. I was in high school the first few years. He genuinely wasn’t interested. Then I turned twenty and I honestly think it was peer pressure that made him ask me out for my birthday dinner. We couldn’t make a move after that without someone noticing. You saw what it was like when we got married, heard the remarks after the honeymoon.”
    She still blushed with indignation at the off-color ribbing. Did you two set the bed on fire? It’s not the size of the hose, but how you use it.
    “That was bad,” Vin agreed, scratching his jaw. “For what it’s worth, I tried to cut it short when I could.”
    “I know,” she murmured. “And it was good-natured. I know they didn’t mean anything, but it was one more way that our marriage was never just ours. And we also worked together so we got really good at all the things we needed to do to present a united front. I couldn’t contradict him in front of you guys. You needed to believe he was on task and in control, not spatting with his wife over which side of the living room to put the new sofa.”
    Vin gave her a blank look. “That wasn’t a real fight, was it? The sofa goes where it is.”
    “Oh, my God, right ? Why do you think you had to put in the console? He wouldn’t do it until I agreed to the other side. When you asked me which side of the room I preferred and agreed with me…? I seriously got off the tablet and yelled, ‘ See ?’ at the ceiling. Dad came in ’cause he heard me and wondered who I was yelling at.”
    Vin’s mouth twitched.
    “As for real arguments… Russ was so much older than me, and my boss to boot. He had a confident personality, which he needed. I know that. But it meant that I deferred to him everyday on almost everything, at work and at home, never really feeling like I had a say.”
    While Russ had consistently filled their evenings and weekends with other people so she hadn’t had many moments alone with him to voice any disagreement she might have had. Vin wasn’t the only rookie or out-of-towner or fellow firefighter that Russ had given a bed. Jacqui hadn’t minded in the big scheme of things, but she would have liked more privacy. She would have preferred to be consulted.
    She would have loved for her husband to act, just once, like he had wanted to spend time with her .
    She sighed, thinking of all the things about her marriage that had been the furthest thing from easy. There’d been lots that had been downright difficult.
    “Man, you never know what’s really behind the curtain, do you? Growing up in foster care, I thought nuclear families were perfect and nothing bad ever happened to the people in them. All you needed was a real mom and a real dad and life was roses. You’ve disillusioned me, Jac. No one lives the dream, do they?”
    “No, there is no Santa Claus.”
    His shoulders slacked and he gave her a mock-angry frown. “Now why did you have to say something like that?”
    She grinned, but it didn’t stick. “I’m probably not the person you should be talking to about happily ever after. I’m kinda disillusioned myself these days. Russ and I were happy,” she said sincerely, ignoring that there were times when she had wondered if that was true. Had “they” been happy? Or just her? Had there been enough love on her side to sustain them for the long haul? “All I’m saying is, no relationship is as perfect as you want it to be. They’re all going to require work—Oh, good grief. That sounds sad. I’m going to quit while I’m ahead.”
    He shook his head, cleaning his plate of his final bite. “It sounds real. But it kind of makes me wonder if I should have tried harder to make it work with Tori. At the same time…” His brow furrowed. “That takes two, you know? And she had already quit. I could tell.”
    Vin’s eyes were a really dark blue. For a second, they were an