My breath punches out.
He stops with his hand on the knob. Looks back.
For a heartbeat, everything is open. Raw. Him. Me. This thing sparking between us like live wires.
“Don’t look at me like that again in public,” he says, voice rough. “It makes me forget we’re pretending.”
“Maybe we should,” I whisper.
He swallows.
Then he opens the door.
Cold night air rushes in.
“Lock up, firecracker,” he says without turning. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Then he’s gone.
Door shuts.
And I’m left in my kitchen, lips still tingling, heart still pounding, wanting a man who keeps insisting he’s only a placeholder.
Except no placeholder has ever kissed me like that.
No placeholder everleftlike that.
And I know, bone-deep and furious:
The rules?
Yeah.
They’re not just bending anymore.
They’re burning.
Chapter Six
Clay
Gabe doesn’t mean to tell her.
I can hear it in the way his voice goes careful in the firehouse bay, in the way he rubs the back of his neck like he’s working a knot that never loosens. She’s perched on the tailboard of Engine 2 in paint-smeared overalls, ankles crossed, listening like she does everything—eyes bright, heart wide open, no shield anywhere.
“Clay’s not…” Gabe searches for the word as I come in from inventory, boots scuffing concrete. He spots me, too late to shut the door on the story. “He’s not good at… birthdays.”
Ember smiles at him like she knows it already. “Neither am I. Mine’s always a disaster.”
“It’s not that,” Gabe says, and now he won’t look at me. “His started going bad the year Dani?—”
“Gabe.” My voice clips hard.
He flinches. Ember’s gaze cuts to mine, sharp. “Dani?” she asks softly.
Gabe exhales like he’s stepping into a room on fire. “His high school sweetheart. There was a house fire, years back. Clay wasfirst on scene. He—” Gabe stops, shakes his head once. “He had to wait for backup. It took too long.”
The station is suddenly too loud—coffee machine hiss, radio chatter, hose couplers clinking—everything turning into that high-pitched whine I get sometimes when memory bites bone.
