That was the part I didn’t trust. Not him—he hadn’t given me a reason not to trust him. What I didn’t trust was the idea that a man who looked like Gabriel Hall, who carried himself the way he did, who had the kind of quiet authority that made an entire fire crew defer to him without question, would look at me—smoke-stained, broke, sitting in an oversized sweatshirt with a bandaged hand and a bakery that was falling apart—and see something worth coming back for.
I’d been the girl people helped out of obligation. The girl people were nice to because she was easy to be nice to—agreeable, grateful, never asked for too much. I knew how to be useful. I knew how to make myself small enough to fit into whatever space was offered. What I didn’t know was how to be the reason someone showed up.
Gabriel finished his pancakes, set his fork down, and looked at me again with those green eyes that didn’t wander, didn’twaver, didn’t check his phone or glance at the door. “Dec should be done by now. You want to go take a look?”
I didn’t. I wanted to sit in this booth and drink coffee and pretend my bakery was fine and this morning was just a morning and the man across from me was just being polite.
But that wasn’t how any of this worked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Let’s go.”
I reached for the check. Gabriel’s hand got there first—not grabbing it, just resting his fingers on the edge of the paper, his eyes on mine.
“You said I could buy my own breakfast,” I reminded him.
“I said I wouldn’t expect anything else.” The corner of his mouth moved—not quite a smile, but close. “I didn’t say I’d let you.”
He picked up the check and stood before I could argue, and I sat there for a second, watching him walk to the counter, and a warmth spread in my chest that I knew I should probably leave alone.
I didn’t leave it alone.
I grabbed my jacket and followed him out.
4
GABRIEL
The Community Cookout was Zain’s pet project. The chief treated the annual fundraiser like a tactical operation, and every year he put me in charge of the grills because, according to him, I was the only one on the crew who wouldn’t burn a burger. Coming from a man who’d survived combat and a building collapse, that was the highest compliment he knew how to give.
I’d set up at seven that morning. Dragged the department’s four industrial grills out of the maintenance garage, lined them up on the concrete pad behind the fire hall, and started a charcoal burn in each one. Jesse Harrington showed up around eight with three coolers of marinated chicken and enough ground beef to feed half the county, grinning like he always did.
Jesse always looked like that. It was annoying if you weren’t used to it.
“Big turnout this year,” he said, stacking the coolers near my station. “Bev’s bringing her potato salad. The good one.”
“She only makes one kind.”
“Yeah.” He grinned wider. “The good one.”
By noon, the pavilion was full. Families spread across the grass. Kids chased each other around the engine bay, which we’d opened up for tours. A couple of the guys from the crew were running the ladder truck demo, letting kids climb up and hit the siren, and the noise carried across the whole block in short, sharp bursts that made every dog in the neighborhood lose its mind.
I stayed at the grills. That was where I was comfortable—behind the smoke, doing something with my hands, watching the crowd without being in it. I could see the whole pavilion from here. The picnic tables filling up. Bev moving between groups with her coffee cup, stopping to talk to everyone like she had all day. Hank Rourke lowering himself onto a bench with that stiff-legged care of a man whose body remembered every winter he’d worked through. Tessa Nguyen standing near the engine bay with her arms crossed, watching the kids on the ladder truck with the same calm, assessing expression she wore in the dispatch center.
I wasn’t looking for Brenna. I wasn’t.
I knew that was a lie, but I repeated it to myself anyway.
Three days since the fire. Two since breakfast at Bev’s. I’d driven past Sugar & Pine yesterday on my way to the station and seen the insurance adjuster’s car parked out front. I didn’t stop. I had no reason to stop. Dec’s report was filed. The scene was released. My professional involvement was over.
My professional involvement. Like that was the thing keeping me up at night.
I flipped a row of burgers and adjusted the vents on the second grill and told myself that if she showed up, she showed up. Whispering Pines was a small town. The cookout was a town-wide event. Odds were decent.
I’d been telling myself a lot of things about odds and coincidence since the morning of the fire. None of them were convincing.
“You’re going to stare a hole through that chicken if you don’t ease up.”
Bev had materialized at my elbow. She set a fresh cup of coffee on the prep table next to my tongs and looked out at the crowd with a satisfied expression, like a woman surveying a room she’d personally willed into existence.
