Page 93 of Falling for My Grumpy Fireman

"I got here early."

We wake once in the deep of the night and reach for each other half asleep, slow and wordless, more comfort than fire, and fall back under still joined at every possible seam.

I fall asleep with both feet in the bed and his arm heavy across me, and for the first night in my whole life, I don't dream about leaving.

***

Morning finds us at a roadside diner with pancakes the size of hubcaps. Owen puts his hand over mine on the table, and I turn my palm up under his, and a conversation we started at the Wagon Wheel a month ago finally finishes its sentence.

I make two phone calls with syrup still on my thumb.

The first is to my placement coordinator, a woman who has processed six years of my contracts and has never heard me say the words I say now.

"I need to cancel Millbrook."

Silence. Then, "Cancel. You."

"Me."

"Is everything all right?"

I look across the booth at the man stealing bacon off my plate like he's earned it. "Everything's better than all right."

The second call is to Willowbend General, about a permanent ER posting that Debbie Sue Monroe has emailed me four separate times with the subject line NO REASON, IGNORE THIS.

The HR woman doesn't even pretend to be surprised. "Miss Greer, honey, we've been holding it."

***

We come back under the WELCOME TO WILLOWBEND sign at half past ten, my hand in his on the console, and my phone starts going off before we clear the feed store.

DEBBIE. All caps. Then more all caps. Then a voice memo that is mostly screaming.

We stop at the station first because Owen says the department deserves to hear it from him. Tater takes one look at us walking in holding hands, presses the back of his wrist to his forehead like a woman in a silent film, and faints sideways onto the hose bed.

"Get up," Owen says.

"I'm dead," Tater says from the hose bed. "Grief killed me. Tell my wife she was right about everything."

"She knows."

Chief Weyland comes out of his office, looks at the two of us, looks at Tater playing dead, and says, "Peterson. That permanent slot still needs a name on it."

Owen doesn't even blink. "Put mine."

The bay erupts. Somebody hits the air horn. Tater resurrects for the occasion.

***

The farmhouse takes us three days.

Dust sheets come off furniture that's been holding its breath for years. Windows go up. Light gets in. Owen carries boxes from my cottage in defiance of every lifting restriction Dr. Osei ever wrote, and I let him, because a man needs his victories.

I unpack every box.

Every one.

The last box, the one that has ridden shotgun through six years and eleven cities without ever once being opened, I unpack at the kitchen table while Owen pretends not to watch from the doorway. Mama's old recipe cards. A photo of me at seven, gap-toothed, in front of school number four. A nightlight shaped like a star.