My phone buzzes again.
Mom:Holt Benjamin Wright, if you answer this one with “they’re just wings” I’m bringing you chicken and rice myself.
I laugh under my breath and type back.
Me:I’ll survive
Her reply is immediate.
Mom:that’s not the standard.
I put the phone down on my chest and close my eyes just long enough to listen to the station breathe around me.
The first two weeks of the department have taught me a few things. That twenty-four-hour shifts feel longer in the middle than they do at either end. That Beckett somehow gets louder after dark. That Ray’s version of concern sounds almost exactly like criticism unless you know better. That Mac misses very little and says even less. That my mother will absolutely text me through a structure fire if she thinks I haven’t eaten a vegetable. That every time the tones drop, something in my chest locks hard for half a second before everything in me goes still.
That part surprised me. Not the adrenaline. Not the focus after. The clean, cold slice right before movement. The flash of awareness that says this could be anything, this could be everything, then disappears the second there’s something to do.
I hear Beckett coming down the hall before I open my eyes. He stops in the doorway, framed in the dim light.
“You’re either meditating or dying.”
“Neither.”
“You looked reflective. It was disgusting.”
I crack one eye open. “Go away.”
He leans one shoulder against the frame and folds his arms. “Can’t. Ray says if I sit in the kitchen any longer, he’s filing a harassment complaint.”
“That’s fair.”
Beckett’s expression shifts, the grin easing just enough for something more honest to show through. “You are good, right?”
I sit up a little straighter and look at him. He asks it casually. He always does. Like he’s throwing a line out and hoping sincerity can hide under the joke.
“Yeah,” I say.
He studies me for one beat. “You sure?”
“Why does everyone keep asking me that?”
“Because it’s your first real stretch on overnights with us,” he says. “And you’ve been weirdly responsible lately.”
I stare at him, at one of my best friends.
He holds up both hands. “That came out wrong. You know what I mean.”
Unfortunately, I do. My past flashes behind my eyes.
“You think I’m going to crack because I’ve had two quiet weeks and one brushfire.”
“No.” He shifts his weight. “I think you care too much about people and this town not to feel it.”
That hits a little too deep. Mostly because Beckett usually swings for the easy joke first and digs for truth by accident. This time, he got there on purpose.
I look past him toward the dark hall. “I’m fine.”
He nods once, reading what he can from that and apparently deciding not to push.
