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It would be my greatest sin of all to allow us to cross that line between friends and lovers, and be the reason she can’t sleep at night.
“You ready, Axe?” Lieutenant Rosa—Nix—spins in his seat while smoke billows into the sky over his shoulder. The house is surrounded by trees, but we’ve had plenty of rain lately, and summer wasn’t too brutal, which means our primary focus is still the structure itself. The occupants inside, and not necessarily the threat of an all-out forest fire. “You’re first up. Ventilate, then I want you back down. You and Cootes go through the front door. Together.”
“Yes, Lieutenant.”
Being the youngest on the crew, the junior-most firefighter, means I have Nix’s attention and scrutiny the most. He repeats his instructions and stares deep into my eyes to make sure I don’t get myself killed.
He’s got about ten years on me—closer to fifteen, really. If I think my life experience outstrips Hannah’s, then Nix’s blows mine out of the water; he rushed his way up the ranks and deserves every moment of being called my boss.
“Ten,” Sloane announces. “Nine. Eight.”
Seven, I count in my head and wrap my hand around the handle, ready to go. Then aloud, I murmur, “Six. Five. Four.”
“Three.” Cootes bounces in her seat as we cross from tarred road to bumpy gravel. “Two.”
“And go!”
Five of us exit the truck in a single second and grab our oxygen tanks, then while Cootes circles to the pumps, and Rizzo moves to the hoses, I snag my Halligan bar and help Nix with a ladder—my way up.
“Bravo is lit up,” he declares, not only for me, but for our entire crew listening in through the radios on our lapels. “Charlie is unstable.” Rushing us toward the south side of the two-story home, Nix steps back to get as much of the structure into his line of sight as possible. “We’re going up Delta.”
He steers me and the ladder around to the side of the house. After slamming it in place and unlocking the mechanism so we can roll it out to double the size, I stop at the bottom and snap my mask down over my face to block out the already smothering smoke wafting in the air.
I smell rubber. Plastic. Timber.
I smell skin burning, and know without even stepping inside that we have a victim to recover.
“Up.” Nix claps my shoulder. “I’ll follow behind you.”
“Nah, I got it.” I clasp the handle of my Halligan in one hand and wrap the other around the rungs of the ladder. Behind me, Cootes has the truck ladder moving, and Rizz unravels the hose.
We’ve been on site for only thirty seconds, and already, we’re locked and loaded, while on the road, an ambulance screams to a stop and the back doors fly open.
Behind them, a tanker truck sloshes its way closer.
“I’ll go up and ventilate,” I repeat, so Nix can chill, “then I’m coming down.”
“You have one minute.” He claps my shoulder once more and nodsup, ordering me without words to move my ass.
My tank weighs heavily on my back, but the constantwhoosh, whoosh, whooshof air filling my mask brings me comfort. That sound is my safe place. Some rookie firefighters might panic at the noise. Hyperventilate. Gas themselves out and fuck up on the job.
But not me. This is where I find my zen. My security. It’s quiet in here, despite the radio chatter in my ear. The rage of a nearby fire. The loud shattering of glass, and the shouts of my colleagues below.
“Slow and steady, Axe.” Nixon’s calming tone over the radio is like meditation music playing through Spotify. “You’re five feet out. Be careful when you’re up there. We don’t want you falling through.”
“I got it.”
And because I said I do, because I’m the youngest on the crew, and the one with something to prove, I finish my climb and carefully but quickly make my way onto the roof. Shingles groan beneath my weight, and the entire structure complains under the heat of fire.
I have a job to do. And when I’m not on shift, I have a woman to keep safe from the vultures who step into Juniper’s Bakery with wild hopes to order a cake and get a moment with the beautiful Hannah Sullivan.
I can’t be with her, that much is obvious. But I’ll be long dead and buried before I sit back and watch someone else step into my place.
My breath comes a little quicker as I work the claw of my Halligan into the roof and create a gap in the shingles for smoke and heat to escape. “Ventilation is complete.” Then I slowly back up and search for the top of my ladder. “I’m coming down, Lieutenant. You there?”
Black smoke billows through the hole I made in the roof, and the fire inside burns hotter, now that I’ve given it a little more oxygen and a new direction to blaze.
Visibility is low, despite my position atop the roof, and water is yet to flow, since I guess Rizz is still working to connect to the tanker.
