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CHAPTER 13

New Apartment

JANINE

A fire captain and a dispatcher sharing an address wouldn't normally be anyone's business. But my headset was the one sending his crew to calls. I could prioritize his unit, freeze when Engine 19 was in danger, or someone could claim I played favorites. On paper, it was a conflict of interest, even without a relationship.

Alex handled it before we'd finished unpacking. He sat down with his battalion chief. I sat down with my dispatch supervisor. Both offices confirmed our chains of command never crossed, signed off, and the whole thing was paperwork in a file somewhere within a week.

Living with Captain Alex Holloway was like sharing an apartment with a very handsome instruction manual.

He alphabetized the spice rack. He arranged the living room like a magazine spread and hung his shirts at even intervals. Within a week the apartment looked like someone had staged it for a showing.

He put the laundry basket in the closet, behind the door, where it was tidy and out of sight. I moved it to Hazel's doorway. He put it back. I moved it again. This went on for three days until I got tired of it and left it in the closet.

By the end of the week, he'd picked up Hazel's socks from under her bed, behind her door, inside her pillowcase, and once from the bathroom sink. On Saturday morning I walked past Hazel's room and the basket was in the doorway, exactly where I'd been putting it.

The spice rack lasted three days. He'd organized it alphabetically. I moved cumin and paprika to the front because I used them in everything and pushed the cardamom to the back where it belonged. He reorganized it that night. I moved them back the next morning. By Wednesday he stopped rearranging.

Every time he conceded, he got a little more handsome.

He installed a coat hook by the front door at Hazel's height without being asked. He taught her to set the table like a drill, forks on the left, knives on the right, napkins folded in triangles. She loved it because it made dinner feel like an event. One morning I found him sitting on the kitchen floor with her, both of them eating cereal with their backs against the cabinets, watching something on his phone with the volume low. He looked up when he heard me and didn't move, like getting caught on the kitchen floor with a six-year-old was exactly where he was supposed to be.

Our days found a pattern. On mornings he was off shift, he made Hazel breakfast while I got ready for work. On mornings he came home from shift, I left his coffee on the counter and a plate in the fridge. Saturdays were still hockey practice and Thistle & Cup, but Alex came with us now, and Hazel held both our hands on the walk to the coffee shop. We handed her back and forth between our schedules and Erin's, and the handoffs got smoother every week. He learned her shoe size, which jacket she'd fight him on, and that bedtime was eight-thirty with the nightlight on.

He walked into the bathroom on a Tuesday morning just as I was about to step into the shower. The light was off. He'd just come through the door from a long shift, eyes half-closed, already reaching for the light switch when he opened the door and found me standing there with nothing on.

We both froze. One full second of him looking at me and me looking at him before his brain caught up to what his eyes were seeing.

"God. Sorry. I'm sorry⁠—"

The door slammed shut. His boots retreated down the hall faster than I'd ever heard him move in full gear.

I got in the shower and stood under the water until my face cooled down. He saw everything. There was no version of that where he didn't. I spent the rest of the morning pretending it hadn't happened, and he spent the rest of the morning not making eye contact, and neither of us mentioned it once.

I thought about it for three days.

I liked Alex. More than the arrangement required, and more every week.

It was the first time in years that my home felt like something other than a place I was guarding.

I picked up Hazel from Erin's on Tuesday after my shift.

I let myself in to the usual chaos.

"Janine? Is that you?"

"Where are you guys?"

"Kitchen!"

The counter was covered in construction paper, markers, and paste. Jordan was hunched over a handprint turkey, pressing each finger down carefully and frowning when the paint smeared. Holly and Hazel were next to him, coloring paper leaves in reds and oranges. Peyton was in the high chair, gnawing on a pumpkin teether. Erin was standing over all of it with a pair of scissors, managing four small contractors on a deadline.

"Mama!" Hazel held up a leaf. "We're making decorations for Thanksgiving!"

"You're coming to Thanksgiving dinner, right?" Erin looked up from her cutting.

"I took the day off." I never missed a holiday for Hazel. Birthdays, Christmas, every school event. She deserved a mother in the chair next to her, and that was one thing I'd never let the job take.