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“Wow.” Sam channeled all of his effort into keeping his smile locked in tight despite the unease that wanted to erase it. “Don’t sugar coat it, Hawk. Tell me how you really feel.”
“How I feel is worried,” Hawkins said. “Look, I know you ain’t never gonna be shy. You do your own thing and you don’t give a shit what anyone thinks, and that’s fine most of the time. But you fucked up today, Faurier, and true to style, you don’t do anything halfway.”
Frustration bubbled in Sam’s chest, hot and thick. “How is going into a burning building fucking up, exactly? Last I checked, we do that for a living.”
“Whenwe’re told,” Hawk countered. “For Chrissake, you’re on Squad. You know there’s protocol for everything, and I’d like to think you’re not too hardheaded to remember why.”
Sam knew he was picking a fight, but it didn’t stop him from saying, “By all means. Please remind me.”
“We do things by the book because that gives us the best chance of saving lives and getting out alive,” Hawkins said, his hazel eyes on Sam like a laser. “You can’t shoot first and ask questions later if you’re too dead to get to the second part. With the way that fire was jumping today, you’re damn lucky you got out at all.”
Again, something about the fire niggled at the back of Sam’s brain, there and then gone. Story of his fucking life. “I went in to try and save someone,” he said. “I didn’t break rank just for shits and giggles.”
“But that’s just it,” Hawk said, taking a step toward him. “You don’t get to break rankat all. Whether or not you go into a building, whether or not you fall out once you do—hell, whether or not you so much as blink—none of that is up to you on a call. It’s up to your commanding officer.”
Whether it was the adrenaline soup running through his system or the frustration of the fact that he’d been relegated to the goddamned academy for three weeks, Sam couldn’t tell. But something made him dig in his heels. “There was someone inside that warehouse. What was I supposed to do?”
Funny, Hawkins dug in just as hard. “You were supposed to give Bridges two fucking seconds to assess the situation and come up with a better strategy than busting down the door with no plan, that’s what.”
Sam froze as the words trickled in. Bridges had said no S&R. He’d said to stand down, even after Sam had said he’d seen someone and asked to go inside.
“Bridges said not to go in,” Sam said, his gut sinking as Hawkins shook his head.
“He said not tobargein. But you didn’t give him a chance to come up with a plan that didn’t involve you getting all reckless because you think you know best, now did you?”
Sam opened his mouth. Closed it. Tried again, and damn it, he had nothing.
Hawkins must have seen the realization on Sam’s face, because he softened his attitude, taking a step back on the floorboards. “You’re a good firefighter, Faurier. One of the best I’ve ever worked with, if I’m bein’ honest. But you need to get out of your own damn way. You should’ve made lieutenant twice over by now.”
“I don’t want that,” Sam said, his pulse slapping at his throat at the semi-lie. He had plenty of skills to get him over the line. But the lieutenant’s exam? With all that writing and memorizing? The textbooks’ worth of reading he’d have to do? No way would his brain let him pull that off. Plus… “I don’t want to leave to go lead a crew somewhere else. Seventeen is where I belong. Everyone there is my family.”
“And yet you didn’t think twice about takin’ one of your family down with you today, now did you?”
“I didn’t mean for Lucy to follow me into that warehouse,” Sam said, a splinter of guilt sticking him right between his ribs. Despite his better judgment (which had showed up to the party far too late, clearly), he’d looked for Lucy before leaving the fire house. He’d wanted to…well, he didn’t know what, really. Apologizing probably wasn’t going to cut it, and she’d been right when she’d given him crap inside that storeroom. Just because he hadn’tmeantto put her in a bad situation didn’t mean it hadn’t happened.
Sam jammed a hand through his hair, unable to keep from taking a few steps to burn off some of his frustration. “Look, I just want to be a firefighter, Hawk. It’s what I’m made for.”
For Chrissake, he’d bucked his family legacy in order to do this job because he’d known it was the only thing that would ever fit him.
“I get it, Faurier.” Hawkins let out a slow exhale. “But freelancing isn’t the way to do it. You really fucked up today. You’re gonna need to earn your way back. We want to trust you, brother. We really do, but…”
The words landed right in Sam’s solar plexus, and damn it, he had to fix this. Starting with apologizing to Lucy. “Understood. I’ll make things right with de Costa. I promise.”
Hawkins nodded. “You gonna be alright otherwise?” he asked, the concern in his green-gray eyes genuine. “Three weeks at the academy is no joke.”
Sam stuffed down the jumble of emotions in his chest, reaching for his faithful smile like the armor it was. “I’m always alright, Hawk.”
“Yeah, well, do yourself a favor and keep you head down and your nose clean. The last thing you need is to get yourself into trouble.”
6
Sam had never suffered from a lack of charm. He’d learned to use it to his advantage early and well, getting himself out of parking tickets and into the panties of more women than should probably be counted. While he wasn’t trying to get into Lucy’s panties, he did owe her an apology, and he needed to frame it just right for her to forgive him.
Ah, you tried to get into her panties once, though, didn’t you?whispered a little voice in the back of Sam’s head, making his fingers tighten on the steering wheel of his Jeep. It had been three years ago, not long after she’d landed at Station Seventeen as a rookie. Everyone in the house had been out at the Crooked Angel, enjoying their usual night-off fun of beers, burgers, and games of eight ball and darts. Sam had felt an undeniable pull of attraction to her even then. It wasn’t against the rules for two firefighters from the same house and shift to hook up as long as one of them wasn’t the other’s superior officer, although it was frowned upon. But he was on Squad and Lucy on Engine, and anyway, he hadn’t been interested in anything that would last more than the span of a couple nights. A few reciprocal orgasms, no big deal, and definitely no strings attached.
They’d been professionally friendly until that night, so he’d kept his interest in her at bay. Yeah, Sam had thought everything about her was sexy as hell—dark brown stare that assessed everything with speed and care, the determination and skill she stuck to everything from drills to traumas to four-alarm blazes. Even her tendency to follow the rules to the letter somehow turned him on, like there was a story there he wanted to uncover. So, when she’d matched his trash talk that night at the pool table, her eyes lingering on his just a beat too long as she’d surprised him with a challenge to put his money where his mouth was, then proceeded to lose the game despite a valiant effort, he’d whispered that maybe they should forget the bet and get the hell out of there together.
She’d passed him twenty bucks and a smile as she’d turned him down cold, and they’d never spoken of it since.
