Crash Lights and Sirens, Book 1 Read Online Free PDF Page B

phone in her uniform pocket. “No,” she promises, pulling on a smile. “It’s nothing.”
    They ride out the rest of the shift with no major incidents, just a routine broken arm on a kid about Connor’s age. He’s brave, so Taryn fishes a lollipop out of the bin they keep under the dash. She texts Jesse as they gas up the bus, predictably getting no reply. He came home two days ago while Taryn was sleeping off a night shift. She startled awake to the sound of Caitlin filling him in on the situation with Pete, first in whispers, then in hoarse shouts.
    “You’re such a shithead,” Caitlin hissed when he banged back out the front door, one of the only times Taryn has ever heard her swear. “It was your stupid fault!”
    It wasn’t Jesse’s fault, not really. It wasn’t anybody’s fault but Taryn’s. She’d tell him if he would return her calls.
    please help me, jess , Taryn keys into her phone, not bothering to press send.
    By the time she changes back into her street clothes, she’s decided to skip the fundraiser altogether. It’s been two solid weeks since she went anyplace besides work or the Price Chopper or the elementary school to talk with Connor’s teacher about why his homework’s not getting done, but wanting to go out for the sake of going out isn’t a good enough reason to leave Caitlin in charge. She’ll make tacos for dinner, maybe. It’s fine.
    She spends a good chunk of the drive home trying to figure out if she ought to shoot Nick another text— jk, sorry, can’t make it after all —or if that’s hugely presumptuous and lame, but it turns out to be a nonissue because when she lets herself into the house, there’s Jesse on the couch with both boys, Lethal Weapon on the TV and six sneakered feet up on the coffee table. “Jesse’s taking us for pizza!” Mikey announces giddily.
    Taryn blinks, dropping her bag onto the recliner. “Oh yeah?” she asks, scritching her fingers through his carroty hair. Mikey’s only six, a good-natured chubster of a kid. She looks at Jesse. “You are?”
    Jesse nods like somebody who hasn’t been totally MIA for the vast majority of the last three months. The duh is implicit. “Don’t sound so shocked,” he says.
    Taryn bites back the retort on the tip of her tongue—this is way, way more than she was hoping for, after all, gift horse, et cetera. “Okay,” she says, smiling. “Thank you.”
    There was a time when it wouldn’t have been a big deal for Jesse to take the kids for the night—for a full weekend, even, like he did when Taryn and Pete first started dating and went to Lake George for Memorial Day. She and Jesse have been a team from the time they were kids, through both of their mom’s remarriages—to Caitlin’s dad, who was okay, and to the boys’, who was not—and her half-dozen stints in AA. Both of them have been working since they were preteens, paying for whatever Rosemary couldn’t cover with short-term gigs or a government check. Jesse potty trained Connor all on his own. It was part of what made Taryn think she could make it work with Pete, the way Jesse helped her dam up the worst of the Falvey tidal wave. She thought she could be normal, just for a second. She thought she could have something normal.
    Anyway. Turns out that’s not true.
    Taryn flips through the mail on the table in the hallway—takeout menus, plus a letter from the bank she knows she has to look at but doesn’t have the stomach for right now—then heads upstairs to change her clothes. She digs through the messy closet for something that doesn’t look like she’s trying too hard for a pass-the-hat affair at a bar that reeks of buffalo wings most of the time, finally settling on a plaid flannel button-down that’s admittedly kind of tight in the chest. She’s rolling the sleeves up when Caitlin wanders in looking for snow boots. “You coming for pizza?” she asks hopefully.
    Taryn smiles. “How about I drive you guys over?”
    In the end