AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Her father’s status as a widower was common knowledge to anyone in the RFD who knew him, and Lucy had mentioned her mother’s death a few times at the fire house, although she was a little surprised Sam remembered. “Yes. I’m an only child, and my mother died ten years ago from a pulmonary embolism.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, his expression soft and sincere but his words somehow solid enough for her to hold onto.
“Thanks. My dad and I have always been really close, but after she died that bond got even stronger.”
It was a tidy version of an uglier truth. In those first few unbearable months after her mother had died, they’d clung together like two people on a life raft. Her father’s steady presence had been the only thing to allow Lucy to process her grief. Much later, he’d told her that knowing she needed him had given him the strength to be there for her rather than slip away, into his own grief. Truly, she didn’t think either of them would’ve made it through the pain without the other, and the loss had knit them together even more tightly.
“My father is half Portuguese on his father’s side, which is where de Costa comes from,” she said, sliding into the topic easily. “I’ve got a couple of distant aunts and uncles in Portugal, but I haven’t seen them in person since I was a little girl. My mom’s family is scattered across the country. She wasn’t close with them, and even though my father tried to keep in touch for my sake after she died, it never really stuck, so, yeah. It’s really just the two of us.”
Sam nodded, then lifted a brow. “I’m going to go out on a limb and guess he’s why you became a firefighter.”
“Oh, yeah.” Lucy laughed, the memory warming her as it appeared, front and center in her mind. “He did most of his tenure on engine at Station Forty-One, before he started to move up the ranks as a lieutenant, then captain. When I was eight, my mother took me to visit him at the fire house. The firefighters pulled out all the stops. Turned on the lights, let me sit in the engine. You know the drill.”
“I do,” Sam said, his laughter soft. “A trip like that is actually what made me want to be a firefighter, too.”
Surprise burst through Lucy’s chest. “No way.”
“Scout’s honor.”
“Haven’t we already established that you weren’t a Boy Scout?” she asked, and the look he gave her in response made her breath catch.
“Okay. So my wild streak made the Boy Scouts a no go. But it also made me perfect firefighter material.”
She recovered with a twist of her lips. “And so modest.”
“I am who I am, sweetheart,” he said, his eyes on hers in the soft overhead light of the conference room. “But that’s what makes me a good firefighter. And I suspect it’s the same for you.”
The words led her back to the topic with a blink. “I’ve always had a sense of belonging in a fire house, if that’s what you mean, and I’ve always wanted to do the job. I considered other career paths, mostly to appease my high school guidance counselor, and I got a bachelor’s degree, mostly to appease my father. But I applied to the academy pretty much the minute after I graduated. I never really considered pursuing anything else. Like you said, I am who I am.”
Sam smiled for a beat before his expression grew curiously unreadable. “Your father must be proud of you, following in his footsteps to carry on the family business.”
“Is he proud of me because I work hard and love what I do? Yes,” Lucy said, “but he doesn’t always love that I chose to do what he does.”
“Really?” Sam asked, obviously surprised.
But Lucy just nodded. “Yep. Besides the obvious, which is that being a firefighter is dangerous no matter how good you are, he wanted me to be sure I loved the job—and not just theideaof the job. So, when I was nineteen, he had me do back-to-back full-tour ride-alongs with the two busiest houses in the city. He told them not to hold anything back. I went on every call—ambo, engine, truck, squad, you name it, I went.”
“For forty-eight hours straight?” Sam whistled under his breath.
“That’s not all,” she said. “Obviously, I couldn’t really do much other than observe on active calls.”
“I don’t even mess with liability laws,” Sam said, and hell if that wasn’t a testament to how sacred they were. But no matter how much ambition she’d had back then(lots),she’d had no training. Letting her go hands-on in a real-world situation would’ve potentially put her and everyone else in danger, not to mention putting the department at risk for a whopping lawsuit.
“Exactly. So, in order for me to get as much experience as possible, he had me run drills with the squads in between calls. Obstacle course, rope rescue, ladder drills, timed gear drills…I’m sure my father had them throw everything they could think of in my direction to make me think long and hard about whether or not Ireallywanted to be a firefighter. And it worked, too.”
Sam’s auburn brows creased over his confused stare. “The ride-alongs discouraged you?”
“Hello, no,” Lucy said with a laugh. “I declared my major in fire sciences less than a week later. But it made me think about whether or not I really wanted to be a firefighter, and even though the work was unbelievably challenging and I thought my arms might actually fall off more than once in that obstacle course, the answer was yes.”
“So, your old man never pushed you to do the job?”
“Nope. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I think he’s happy that I’m carrying on his legacy. We bond over work, which makes for some pretty fun dinner conversations. But I think he’s even happier thatI’mhappy, you know?”
“No. I don’t,” Sam said, and damn it, how could she have lost sight of his family fallout?
She clamped her teeth over her bottom lip even though it was too late. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t—”
He shook his head, curling his fingers around her wrist to halt her words. “Don’t be. Please. I wouldn’t wish my family situation on anyone. Even if I don’t understand the dynamic you and your father have, I’m still glad that you have it.”
