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Lieutenant Rosa and his kid, at least, survived.
But now we’re wearing our dress uniforms and folding a flag. Paying tribute to a melted helmet and pretending we don’t all suffer nightmares of coming upon the same fate of being destroyed in a fiery rage. We hold ourselves together while a mother weeps, and remain stoic while the hotshot smoke jumper, Lieutenant Ruiz, awaits the folded flag and helmet of his dead lover.
He’s being handed the very future I refuse to place on Hannah’s shoulders.
Fuck.
“Lieutenant Ruiz.” With a croak in his voice, Nix hands our colleague the flag and pulls him in for a hug. But Ruiz’s body remains rigid, hard and unyielding, as he holds Cootes’ things and refuses to return Nix’s embrace. “I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah.”
Firming his lips and sniffling just once, Ruiz takes a step back and turns away from my boss. Away from Cootes’ casket, where it sits above the ground and awaits being lowered. He clasps the flag to his chest and studies the name on the helmet.
Then he walks.
All the way across the cemetery that spans almost a mile in every direction. He leaves behind the bagpipes, and the salutes. He ignores the pats of condolence, and shakes his head when men try to approach him.
He was a man in love, and now the woman he called his… is gone.
I can’t even blame him for wanting to disappear.
“Axel?” With tears in her voice and, when I look, more on her cheeks, Hannah wraps her hands around mine and squeezes my arm.
There’s no longer seduction in her eyes or teasing in every word she speaks. There’s just a woman who loves so much, she hasn’t slept more than an hour at a time since that night of the Oriane fire.
She faces the same fears Idalia does when her man drives off in a truck to fight the next blaze. She lays awake at night, thinking and overthinking thewhat ifs.
And this… this is the life I swore I would never give her.
It’s like karma saw us cross a line that night, so she swooped in and killed a firefighter purely to remind us we stepped too far. We touched the sun,for a moment, anyway, and now we’ve been burned.
“Hey?” Hannah whispers the word, while others turn and converse with their families. Idalia sobs, and Nixon holds her. Others walk away, while the funeral director lowers Cootes’ coffin. “Are you okay?” She pushes up to her toes and presses the world’s gentlest kiss to my jaw. “Axel?”
“Don’t.” I hobble back a step and pull my arm from hers so she can no longer hold. “You should be at work, Han. Not here.”
“What?” Her eyes shutter with pain. Confusion. Tolerance. “The whole town is here.”
“So maybe you should be at work.” I swallow the ache in my throat and look anywhere but into her perfect eyes. “My sister’s here, because she’s my sister and wants to support me. It’s literally your job to run the shop in her absence.”
“Axel, I don’t…” Her eyes flicker with anger, but when I take another step back, she follows. “I’m here because I want to support you, too. I’m here foryou.”
“I don’t need you here.” I turn on my heels and hope, pray,begwith all of my soul, that she’ll go with as little damage to her heart as possible.
“Lieutenant Rosa.” I step up to the small family and drop my gaze when Idalia peers my way. Her jaw quivers with anguish, so I continue on; get out of their way and move on to the next.
“Rizzo.” He helped Nix fold the flag. He’s our second most senior crewmember. I accept his hug when he opens his arms, then the next when Sloane steps up. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there that night.”
Emotion clogs my throat, and tears burn the backs of my eyes. But I cough away the lump and swipe my eyes before moisture drops. “I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault.” Sloane claps my back and looks me up and down with swollen eyes. “How’s your leg?”
“Axel?” Hannah’s voice pokes at my consciousness.Poke. Poke. Poke. “We need to t—”
“Gotta book an x-ray,” I answer instead. “It doesn’t feel too bad, so I think it’s healing up fine.”
“That’s good.” Sloane glances in the direction Ruiz left. “Someone’s gonna have to keep an eye on him. He needs a friend.”
“It’s gonna have to be one of you,” I sigh. “I was supposed to be on shift that night. It was supposed to be me in that box.”
