Page 30 of Falling for My Grumpy Fireman

"And that's the temporary one. Wait till you see the real deal. They come in colors." Nellie tells him.

"Blue?"

"Kid, they come in blue like you wouldn't believe."

Sirens now, far off and closing. I settle onto the curb next to them because my legs decide it's time. The adrenaline's dumping out of me the way it does, leaving everything loose and bright, and I look over at her.

She's already looking at me.

Sweat's pulled her hair loose. There's airbag powder on her cheek and tea on my jeans and Billie between us going through her club sandwich, which she grabbed off the table on her way out the door, apparently, because of course she did.

"You grabbed the sandwich," I say.

"Somebody's blood sugar was going to matter." She hands Billie another quarter of it. "Turns out I was right."

"You're always right."

"I know. It's exhausting."

Neither of us looks away. The space between us over that kid's head is about eighteen inches and shrinking, and there's a pull in it I can feel in my sternum, right where the chain sits. Her eyes drop to my mouth for half a second. Half a second. I'd testify to it in court.

The ambulance rounds the corner with the siren winding down, and the moment breaks like the glass did.

Nellie's up, all business, giving report to the medics in clean clipped sentences. Vitals, mechanism, distal pulse intact. They load Billie and his mom, and June's pressing iced tea on the medics, and Hank wants his belt back, and the little crowd starts folding itself back into the diner to spend the rest of the day telling it.

Then it's the two of us on Main Street. Sunday sun. Broken glass glittering in the gutter like somebody spilled stars.

"Well," she says. "That was—"

"Have dinner with me."

It comes out of me the same way going through that door did. No decision. No plan. My mouth just went.

She blinks. "We had lunch. It's still on your pants."

"A real one." My heart's going harder than it did at the wreck, which tells me something I'm not ready to hear. "No auction. No audience. No town." I nod up the street at the diner windows, where every face drops out of sight at once. "Dinner with me, Nellie."

She should say no. She's got a rule, I can see it sitting behind her eyes, I can watch her load it up.

"…I get off at seven."

Chapter nine

Against Medical Advice

NELLIE

There are four outfits on my bed and I hate every single one of them.

That's a lie. I hate that I care. The outfits are fine.

The green top makes my eyes look good, which is a problem, because I don't want my eyes to look good. I want my eyes to look like the eyes of a woman who is leaving in nine weeks and knows it.

The black dress says trying. The scrub-adjacent T-shirt says not trying so hard it loops back around to trying.

Somewhere in the middle of all this I end up in front of the mirror in my bra, and I give myself one honest minute.

My body has been humming since Saturday night. Since a spotlight and a tight shirt and a man looking down that beam at me like a structure fire he meant to walk into. So, I let myself have it. Ten seconds. His hands. That scowl aimed at my mouth from two inches out.