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Sam echoed, “For a while,” and Lucy nodded, her chin still tucked into the warm, sweet spot where his neck met his shoulder.
“It started out innocently enough. We helped each other study. Worked out together. Gave each other pointers. That kind of thing. We were friends. Until we were…” Here, she trailed off, her cheeks flaming at how stupid, how gullible she’d been. “More than friends.”
Sam stiffened in realization. “Ah.”
Just like relationships between firefighters in the same house, there weren’t any out and out rules against fraternization at the academy, although it was generally pretty frowned upon.
“I’ve always been a rule follower,” Lucy said. “The order gives me comfort. Even though there was no technical rule against me and Brandon having a relationship, casual or otherwise, I knew it wouldn’t go over well, especially for me since I already had the trifecta of being a woman, being Black, and being the chief’s daughter to contend with. I knew that if word got around that I was in a relationship with a fellow cadet, brows would go up and unflattering assumptions would get made, so I asked Brandon to keep it quiet. I thought it didn’t matter—we were still the same smart, skilled cadets whether we were in a relationship or not.”
“There are a lot of cases where that’s true,” Sam said slowly. “Luke and Quinn work together on every shift.”
Lucy nodded into his shoulder, the warmth and comfort of his touch so good, her words just kept spilling out. “Exactly. We have to set our personal stuff aside when we come to work no matter who we’re involved with. So, for a while, that’s what we did. I was so happy.” Her words felt like broken glass, slicing her on their way out. But then Sam’s arms tightened around her, his steadiness reminding her that she was steady, too, and she said, “I really thought…I thought Brandon cared about me. That we had something really good.”
“Why do I sense there’s a ‘but’ coming that’s going to make me want to turn Barlow into finger paint?” Sam asked, his intuition spot-on.
“I started scoring higher than Brandon on drills and tests,” she said. “At first, he seemed fine. Happy for me. He was still doing well—he was literally second in our class of fifty cadets. But the more I held on to the number-one spot, the more I began to notice him pulling back. I figured he was feeling a little stung. Woman or not, girlfriend or not, it’s hard to take your ego out of a competition when you want the top prize, you know?”
“That’s fair,” Sam allowed. “My ego’s bigger than most, so I get healthy competition, and when I was a cadet, wedidall want that top spot. But still…”
“Suddenly giving your girlfriend the cold shoulder and no-showing on all your plans when she equitably outperforms you, then offering flimsy-ass excuses when called out makes you a dick?” Lucy supplied.
Sam made a noise of disapproval. “I knew I didn’t like this guy.”
“Well, hold on to that thought,” she said, her gut twisting. But she’d come this far, and she couldn’t change what Brandon had done, no matter how badly she wanted to. “After a week or so of him dodging me, I started noticing the other cadets giving me weird looks. Lots of side-eye and raised brows, conversations would come to a screeching halt when I walked into the locker room, that kind of thing. No one would partner with me—even worse, a lot of them did their best to trip me up. Finally, I’d had enough. Brandon had pretty much ghosted me altogether at that point, so I screwed up my courage and asked one of his friends what the hell was going on.”
Lucy’s heart ached at the memory of what had come next, but God, she was so tired of carrying it. “His friend, Kyle, told me that during the second week at the academy, Brandon had bragged that he could get me into bed. ‘Dirty up the chief’s goody-goody daughter’.” Her tone hooked air quotes around the phrase, and even after all this time, it still turned her stomach.
Sam’s whole body went rigid beneath hers. “Please tell me you aren’t serious.”
Oh, how she wished she wasn’t. “A handful of other cadets called bullshit on him, said no way he could get me to sleep with him, so Brandon turned it into a bet.”
“Hewhat?”
Humiliation stung her eyes, but she needed to get the rest of this out. Over with. “He bet three of our classmates five hundred dollars each that he’d sleep with me before graduation. But once he did, it wasn’t enough for him. Brandon upped the bet to include graduating first in our class, too. I was helping him with everything, so why not, right? Only, then I started to outscore him, and he realized he wasn’t going to be able to come in first on merit or skill.”
“So, he broke your heart to throw you off your game, then slide in to take your spot so he could win the bet all the way around,” Sam said, his teeth clenched tight.
“Yep,” she said. “Brandon bragged to everyone that he’d slept with me. Told them all I’d begged for it, and that I’d tried to ridehiscoattails, when really, I’d been coaching him through our drills and exams the whole time. Everyone thought I was a fraud, trying to sleep my way to the top.” She dragged in a breath. “I was crushed, not to mention absolutely mortified. To have my reputation ruined, and by someone I cared about, no less…it gutted me. I couldn’t eat or sleep, and I definitely couldn’t concentrate. I started to question whether or not I was even in the right place, or whether I should become a firefighter at all. It got so bad, I nearly quit.” Aside from when her mother had died, those had been some of the hardest, darkest days Lucy had ever faced.
Sam was still, but Lucy could feel the quickened thrum of his heartbeat, his body tense against hers with the electric charge of anger. “I’m going to find this guy and shred his face off with my bare hands.”
“That’s sweet. Mildly disturbing,” she added with a quirk of her lips, “but I can’t say I don’t get the sentiment. Anyway, it’s not necessary. Brandon actually got what he deserved.”
“Was it better than an ass-kicking?” Sam asked, and here, Lucy managed a tiny smile.
“Yep. One of our instructors overheard two cadets talking about the bet in the locker room. Turns out, the RFD has a zero-tolerance policy for bullyingorsexual harassment. The captain in charge of our class pulled me into his office to ask me if the story the instructor had overheard was true. At first, I was too embarrassed to say yes.” Her classmates already thought she was a joke. Telling her instructors? People who knew her father? It had been nearly unthinkable. “But then I realized that even though it was my word against Brandon’s, my word was good. It was a risk, but I knew that if I didn’t speak up, he would do something equally cruel to someone else. He deserved to face the consequences of what he’d done to hurt me. So, I told the captain everything.”
Sam’s arms tightened around her. “That is incredibly fucking brave.”
“It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done,” Lucy said by way of agreement, “and it really could have backfired. But I’d always been taught that the RFD is a family, and we stand by our own. I had to believe in that.”
She took a breath to center herself before telling him the rest. “The academy launched a full investigation. The truth became evident pretty quickly once everyone was questioned, mostly because the three cadets Brandon had made the bet with threw him under the bus, and at least four other people in our class came forward to back me up. Brandon and the cadets he’d made the bet with had to complete rigorous sensitivity training, along with issuing an apology. I asked for the matter to be kept private—I didn’t want to start my career on anything other than my merit, and I definitely didn’t want my father to know what had happened—but the whole thing did go on Brandon’s record. He was on strict probation for his whole first year with the RFD, with the added stipulation that any further discussion of the matter, either online or among other members of the department, would be considered further harassment and grounds for immediate dismissal.”
“You’re right. He did deserve all of that,” Sam said,“andan ass-kicking.”
“Oh, that’s not the best part,” Lucy said. She waited a beat before adding, “I graduated in the top spot. Fair and square. And after everything shook out and I stopped helping him? Brandon wasn’t even in the top ten.”
Sam’s laugh coasted over her in a warm rumble, and oh, it felt so, so good. “Okay. You win. Thatisbetter than an ass-kicking.”
