When she turned onto her street her gaze immediately landed on Graham’s beat-up 4Runner parked in his usual spot in the driveway. The breath that whooshed out of her was thick with relief, and after pulling in under the carport she dropped her forehead against the steering wheel.
She took several deep breaths, willing her muscles to release the tension that had built over the last two hours. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d gotten so worked up.
Was it because Graham was her friend, or because memories of her dad’s accident had come screaming back?
Or both?
Either way, she had to calm down before she went in. That was the plan, anyway, which went to hell when she walked in the front door and found him in the living room, completely oblivious to the turmoil he’d caused her.
He was deep into some video game, sitting on the edge of the couch, shirt pulled taut across the muscles in his back as he moved. His dark, wavy hair was disheveled and his sleeves pushed up to reveal toned forearms rippling with each manipulation of the controller.
“Graham!”
His gaze didn’t leave the screen. “Yeah?”
A flood of emotions rushed through her—agitation the most potent—and she marched around the couch and stopped directly in front of the television.
Graham leaned to the side in an attempt to see around her. “What are you doing? I can’t see.”
“I don’t care! I’ve been calling and texting you all day. Why haven’t you answered?”
He frowned, his eyes darting to hers in confusion before his attention returned to the portion of the screen he could see, his fingers continuing to toggle the controls. “You mean when you said you hated me? I didn’t think that deserved a response.”
“What about the others?”
“I didn’t see anything else. I put my phone in my room to charge a while ago, though.”
She pressed her hands against her temples. “Meanwhile I’ve been scared out of my mind thinking something happened to you. EMSA brought a firefighter in, and he said the ceiling fell on several of the guys trying to put out a fire at an apartment complex. I didn’t remember if you were working and you never answered your fucking phone!”
This was exactly the kind of situation she’d always wanted to avoid. The fear and constant worry… She couldn’t live like this on a regular basis. She’d watched her mother do it for years.
And they’d experienced their worst fear come true.
Graham stilled for a beat, finally seeming to hear her, then dropped the controller to the carpet and jogged around the couch to his room. Claire followed him, and within seconds he was on the phone. The conversation was short, and when he hung up he wrapped one hand around his neck and tossed the phone onto his bed.
“Everyone’s fine,” he said. “One concussion from Station 3, which is probably the guy you got. Everyone else has already been checked out and released.”
Claire glared at him, anger and some other emotion she couldn’t identify turning over in her stomach. “I didn’t know that, Graham. I didn’t know where you were or if you’d been there…” She trailed off at the strange look that entered his eyes.
Graham dropped his arm and tilted his head as he watched her. “Claire. Were you…worried about me?”
“No.”
A tiny grin curved one corner of his mouth, drawing her attention there. “You were.”
She rolled her eyes. “Well! Of course I was. You’re my roommate. If you die I have to find someone else to help pay rent in this overpriced condo.”
He took a step forward, his grin widening as he shook his head. “No, I think it’s more than that. You were worried about Graham, the person. Not Graham, your roommate.”
She didn’t blink as he took another step closer. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
She’d quickly lost control of the situation and desperately tried to think of how to get it back.
He was right; she had been worried about him.
But it was more than that. She’d never told him the details of her dad’s death and didn’t intend to talk about it now, but the truth was that history made her hypersensitive to situations like these.
“Admit it,” he continued, his voice softening as he stopped about a foot away. “You care about me, Claire. A lot.”
His brown eyes held a spark and a challenge, which was familiar and welcome in her flustered state. This back-and-forth felt normal, and it hit home just how much she needed this and how important Graham was to her. After the emotional whiplash of the last few hours, the realization caused something inside her to snap.