Page 96 of Falling for My Grumpy Fireman

Owen didn't say a word for a full minute. Then he put his forehead on my shoulder and stayed there.

The crew files out of the bay in dress uniforms, and there's mine. Fourth from the left, boots shined, jaw tight the way it gets when he's feeling something in public. He finds me before he finds anything else. He always finds me first now.

Chief Weyland takes the podium, taps the mic, and says more words in ten minutes than I've heard from him in a year. The fundraiser. The auction. Grant Walker's match, dollar for dollar. Then he holds up a badge, gold and new, and says, "Peterson. Get up here. Bring your nurse."

Getting up takes me a second these days. Owen's hand is there before I've finished trying.

The chief hands me the badge. "Ma'am. Pin your husband."

Owen stands at attention while I work the pin through the fabric over his heart. My hands are steady. My eyes are not.

"Don't stab me, darlin'," he says, low, only for me.

"I've stitched you before. I know where everything is."

His mouth twitches. The pin goes through, clean, and I press the badge flat with my palm, right over the pocket where he carried a ring on a chain all summer. It's not there anymore. It's home, on the mantel, in a shadowbox Tater built without being asked. Carried, then set down gentle. There's a difference between letting go and putting something where you can see it, and Owen taught me which was which.

The town applauds. Somebody whistles. Owen catches my hand before I can step back and kisses my knuckles in front of God and the Ladies' Auxiliary, and Millie hollers something that makes Earl put his hat over his face.

Then Chief Weyland nods at Tater.

"Now for the part," Tater says, taking the mic like it's a rodeo, "that y'all been trying to bribe out of my wife for a week."

He walks to the engine. Grabs a fistful of tarp.

"This truck was bought by this town. Every dollar bid, every casserole sold, every bachelor humiliated on that stage." Laughter rolls through the chairs. "So the crew took a vote on what to name her. Wasn't close. Wasn't even a discussion, tell you the truth."

He looks at Owen. The whole crew looks at Owen.

"Pulled it off in one vote and one round of grown men pretending they had dust in their eyes."

The tarp comes down.

The door is painted deep red, gold leaf lettering, script like an old promise.

ROSIE

The sound Owen makes isn't a word. His hand crushes mine and I hold on with both of mine and the town has gone church-quiet, because most of them know now. Not from him. From the way stories move here, soft, through kitchens, the town deciding together what to carry for a man so he doesn't carry it alone.

"She goes out on every call," Tater says, quieter now. "Every save this truck ever makes. That's hers."

Owen steps forward. Puts his bare hand flat on the letters, the way you'd touch a sleeping child.

Our daughter kicks so hard I grab the podium.

"Whoa," I breathe, laughing, wet-eyed. "Easy."

Owen turns. Sees my hand on my belly. Comes back to me in three strides and drops to a crouch, both hands framing the whole round world of her, and the mic is still live enough to catch it when he says, "You feel that, little darlin'? That's your big sister's truck."

I stop trying not to cry. So does half the county.

***

The reception is sweet rolls and iced tea and every hand in Willowbend on my stomach. Owen steers me out of it after an hour, one hand at the small of my back, and walks me around the side of the station where the shade is and the crowd isn't.

"Hi," he says.

"Hi yourself."