Reluctantly, I made my way out the door and to my car. Determined that the next opportunity I had I wouldn’t let the moment to tell her how I felt get away.
Chapter Twenty-Four
VIOLET
I rode nextto Seth in the front seat of one of the FD’s utility trucks as he pulled a trailer decorated by the local middle school behind us. The local Boy Scout troop walked in front of us, with Adam and Lyla between us and them as a safety precaution. My job was to toss candy into the crowd of spectators lining the parade route.
I had told Seth I was fine to walk in the parade with the other PD and FD families. But since I had just started feeling like myself yesterday after three days of being sick, he’d convinced me to conserve my energy and ride with him. I was going to haveto help him lead the fire hose activity and supervise a bunch of kids, so conserving my energy wasn’t a bad idea.
Seth slammed on the brakes just as Lyla lost her footing, stumbling over something in the road. Adam was quick, reaching out to grab her arm before she could faceplant into the pavement.
“Friends my ass,” Seth mumbled under his breath.
I glanced over at him. “What?’
“Those two.” He tilted his chin up, indicating the pair in front of us. “I don’t buy that they’re just friends.”
I cocked my head, studying them as Adam held her arm and made sure she was okay. “Why?”
He scoffed before looking over at me. “Trust me, no guy fusses over a girl like that unless he wants to be more than just her friend.”
I stared at him, trying to decipher the look in his eyes. Almost like he wanted to say more. It made me wonder how he really felt about me. Because between taking care of me when I was sick and persuading me to ride with him, he’d done his own fair share of fussing over a girl in the last week. But maybe that wasn’t what he meant and I was just reading into him being a nice guy.
I smiled, thinking how sweet he’d been, stopping by every day to check on me. James would never have done that. The one time I was sick while we dated, he stayed away because he ‘didn’t want to catch whatever plague I was incubating.’ He really was an insensitive ass.
The truck lurched forward, pulling me from my thoughts, and I turned back toward the window and threw another handful of candy toward a group of kids jumping and waving at us.
Seth raised an eyebrow. “You’re going to end up running out of candy before we reach the end.”
I opened a new bag of candy, throwing some out to the crowd. “I feel bad when it looks like one or two kids didn’t get any.”
He chuckled and shook his head.
I finished two more bags just as we made the turn at the end of the marked route. “Look at that. I had just enough.”
“Good girl.”
I sucked in breath, his words shooting straight between my legs, and he sent me a smirk. Did he know the effect he had on me? Did he feel it too? And why did we have to be on the clock for an event when all I really wanted to do was try to figure out the answers to those questions.
Businesses along Main Street had an hour to set up for the block party, so we made our way back to the firehouse. I tried not to overthink the way he looked at me, or how the tension grew between us as we made the ten-minute drive back.
Once he parked the truck, I got out and followed him through the bay and out onto the back lot where he began laying the hose out.
“What do you need me to do?” I asked.
He nodded to two large wooden cutouts. “Grab those and set them up down there where the piece of tape is marked on the ground.”
Easy enough. I set out the house-shaped boards, both with window cutouts that had flames hinged in the middle. I guessed that was what the kids would aim for.
“Dylan gave me a hard time about all this.” I put my hands on my hips and sent Seth a smirk.
“Why?”
“'Cause I’m helping the FD instead of PD.”
Seth chuckled. “It’s not our fault we have more fun things. No one wants to do pull-ups on a bar.”
I raised a brow. He obviously didn’t know preteen and teen boys. “You’d be surprised. Boys come in swarms trying to see who can do more than the other.”
