The backs of my eyes burned. I told myself it was from the smoke.
My chest hitched anyway.
Powell shifted closer, his knees brushing my thigh. The contact shouldn’t have felt like anything through layers of denim and turnout pants, but my body registered it like a line drawn in the sand. He was solid and warm, and somehow I knew he wasn’t going anywhere.
For once, I didn’t flinch away.
It hadn’t really registered until that moment that he was filthy. His gear was damp, darker in patches. Soot streaked his forehead where he’d shoved his mask up. A smear of somethingthat looked suspiciously like the shape of someone’s hand ran along his jaw.
My hand?
Nope. Not going down that road just now.
“You went in,” I said, voice small even to my own ears. “The door…”
“Stuck,” he agreed. The grim tone wasn’t aimed at me. “We forced it.”
“I told you,” I whispered, the guilt curling cold and sharp in my stomach. “I told you it was?—”
“Yeah,” he cut in quietly. “You did. And you’re still here.”
That shouldn’t have been enough to derail my spiral, but it was. For a second, all I could focus on was the way he said it—like alive was a thing I’d accomplished on purpose, not something he’d dragged me back to with brute strength and stubbornness.
A gust of cold air slipped under the edge of my sweatshirt. My whole body shivered.
He noticed me shivering, because of course he did. “Hang on,” he said, voice low.
His hand left my shoulder, and for one stupid second, I felt the absence—like someone had unplugged the space heater. A moment later, he dug around in one of the endless compartments in one of the rigs and came back with a folded mylar emergency blanket. He snapped it open with a practiced flick, the metallic gold-and-silver crinkling loudly in the chilly night air.
“Let me,” he murmured.
He draped it around my shoulders carefully, adjusting the edges so they didn’t interfere with the oxygen mask straps. The foil rustled as it settled over me, trapping heat against my body. It wasn’t soft, but it was warm, and it felt like a barrier between me and the night.
“There,” he said. “Better?”
I managed a small nod. The blanket reflected the flashing lights in sharp glints; every time I breathed, the air from the mask fogged a little patch of silver near my cheek. The world shrank down to the circle of warmth inside the mylar blanket and the way his knee stayed pressed against my leg, steady and uncompromising.
I should have pushed it away. I should have shoved the blanket back at him with some sharp remark about not needing his charity. That was the script. That was how this went.
I didn’t do either of those things.
I curled my fingers into the blanket and held on.
“I can’t…” My throat closed up for a second. When I forced the words out, they sounded small and wrecked. “I can’t afford this.”
I hadn’t meant to say that out loud. The admission slipped past whatever defenses I had left, a truth too big to be contained.
He didn’t rush in with platitudes, didn’t try to tell me it would be fine when it absolutely might not be. He just absorbed it, eyes dark, nodding once like he’d already considered that and filed it under Reasons to Take This Seriously.
“We’ll figure it out,” he said eventually.
The word snagged in my ears. “We?”
His lips twitched, more grim than amused. “You think I’m walking away from this and pretending it’s not my business?”
“Pretty sure it’s literally your business,” I croaked. “You’re the fire department.”
The corner of his mouth tipped up a little more. “That too.”
