Page 50 of Christmas with Three Firemen

“I’ve been watching you put yourself in danger since you got here,” I say. My voice is low. I don’t mean it to be. “The apartment fire. The scene perimeter. Now this. Every time I turn around you’re somewhere you shouldn’t be and doing something that could get you killed.”

“That’s my job.”

“It doesn’t have to be done the way you do it.”

“How do I do it?”

She treats herself like the least important thing in the room. Has since the day she arrived.

“Recklessly,” I say instead.

Her jaw tightens. “I get results.”

“You get lucky.”

“Don’t condescend to me.”

“I’m not. I’m telling you that skill and luck look identical until the one day they don’t. Trust me when I say this. I’ve been doing this long enough to know the difference.”

She steps closer. I don’t move back.

“You’re not in charge of my life,” she says.

“I’m aware of that.”

“Then stop acting like you are.”

“I can’t.”

The words land in the space between us before I’ve fully decided to say them. She hears it. I can see it in the way her breath changes, the slight parting of her lips, the way her eyes track up to mine and stay there.

I am running out of ways to pretend this is purely professional.

I’ve known that for a while. I’ve been managing it in a way that doesn’t interfere with running the station and keeping the crew safe. I’m good at management. I’m good at keeping things in their place.

She is not staying in her place.

She’s standing close enough that I can see the faint shadows under her eyes from too many nights not sleeping, the one small scar at the corner of her left eyebrow that she got somewhere I don’t know the story of yet.

Yet.

I notice that word in my own head and shut it down.

“Noelle,” I say.

“Don’t,” she says.

Neither of us moves.

The office is very quiet. Through the wall I can hear the distant ordinary noise of the station. Someone in the kitchen. The weather radio running in the bay. The building exists around us without caring what’s happening in this room.

She doesn’t step back.

Neither do I.

I step into her space at the window until we are only inches apart. Her eyes stay on mine, breathing shallowly. I lift my hand, cup the side of her face, and kiss her.

It is not rough. It is deep and slow and full of everything I have been holding back for weeks. Longing. I kiss her like I have been imagining this moment every time she walked into a room, every time she argued with me, every time she put herself in danger and I had to pretend it did not tear me up inside.