“He must have just missed me,” I tell them all, putting my hands up in surrender, like that’ll help everyone calm down. “I’ll fix this.”
Pushing out of my chair, I dash towards the door and into the hallway. Nate’s at the far end of it already, his head bowed with a hand in front of him. Probably on his phone.
“Nate!” I call out, jogging towards him.
The way he stops has my stomach bottoming out. It’s my gut warning me that something is about to come my way, and it makes my steps falter and slow.
His tall frame slowly starts to turn towards me, the muscles in his jaw ticking as he grinds it together. “Lieutenant,” he corrects.
One word has me wincing like I’ve taken a punch to the kidney. Nate doesn’t pull rank. With me he never has to. He’s well respected by everyone subordinate to him. When we’re on a scene it’s always Lieutenant, but when we’re in the firehouse, and especially when it’s just the two of us, I’ve never addressed him as such.
Fuck. Things between us are not good.
“Lieutenant,” I correct with a bobbing of my Adam’s apple as I swallow the lump in my throat. “You missed giving me an assignment.”
Nate’s stance widens, and he clasps his tablet in front of him. Narrow blue eyes sweep over me with disdain. “You seemed rather preoccupied, Liam. Perhaps you should take the time, while everyone around you is working, to sort through your distraction.”
I blink rapidly at him. Okay, sure, I was lost in my thoughts. I can admit it—I fucked up. I’ve been doing that a lot lately. I should have been paying attention, and I wasn’t. I shouldn’t have fucked his sister, and I did. He’s mad. I get it. We all get it. But that’s no reason to sideline me from helping everyone.
“I’m fine. I can help. Why don’t I help Hailey with the kitchen?” I ask, pointing a thumb over my shoulder in that direction. “Or I could do the mirrors and floors in the gym.”
“Hailey is just fine,” Nate says brusquely. “Brody has the gym covered.”
“I’ll help Quinn with the bathrooms then.” My instinct is to turn back the way I came from, to head in that direction and away from Nate’s impenetrable stare. While I know he’s pissed at the moment, I can’t read anything else about him which is unusual and making me uncomfortable. I stand my ground, though, remaining unmoving.
“No one needs help, Liam. They need you to get your head in the game. Your assignment is to figure it out,” Nate barks at me. Without waiting for a response, he turns on his heel and rounds the corner, more than likely heading to his small office.
“Fucking hell.” The sound reverberates around the now empty hallway, and I blow out a gust of air that rattles my lips. Giving my face a scrub with my hands, I flip around and head in the direction I came from. Maybe Nate doesn’t want me helping anyone, but fuck it, I’m going to. I’m not going to be the only one not doing something. We’re all a team. A family. What kind of guy would I be if I sat back and let everyone else handle chores, while I laid on the couch and played therapy with myself?
Besides, my thoughts, and being alone with them, do not interest me right now.
Everyone is gone from the meeting room when I go by it, so I keep going, headed to the supply room where we keep the cleaning products. Except when I get there, every product, broom, mop, and bucket are gone. There’s not a single thing left to help clean in the entire place, and I search all the shelves, high and low.
I stand back from the shelving unit where things are normallykept and scratch my head. Even if everyone on shift had something to use, there should still be things left over. Even that one mop no one likes using because the handle is cracked, but we haven’t gotten rid of it yet cause there’s a guy on C shift who loves it for some godforsaken reason, is gone.
When I take one more long look around the small room—just in case I missed it on the first two sweeps I did—I head back to the hall. The doorway to the bathroom a few feet away is open, and I head there, giving a knock on the door.
“Quinn?” I call out.
There’s a noise of disgust before she pops her head around the corner, a toilet brush in her hand. Today she’s wearing yellow contacts which, if I’m being honest, freak me out a little as they narrow at me. “What?”
“You got an extra rag or bucket? I could do the sinks.”
“The bathrooms are handled, Liam. Go do whatever Nate told you to do.”
A single eyebrow lifts in her direction. “He told me to help you out.”
One side of her lip lifts in scorn as a humorless laugh meets my ear. “He did not.”
“How do you know?” I ask, crossing my arms over my chest.
“If you’d been paying any kind of attention in the morning meeting, you’d know. Now go away.”
As quickly as my arms were crossed, they’re dropping again. What the hell did I miss that she won’t let me help her with the bathrooms? The bathrooms, for fuck’s sake!
Narrowing my eyes, I purse my lips for a moment and think. I can hear her scrubbing at the toilets and decide a test may be in order. “Okay, you do the sinks, and I’ll scrub the toilets.”
There’s a pause as the bristles stop moving against the porcelain,and I think for one quick second that she might take me up on the offer. Then she both surprises me and begins to stir a thought in my head.
