I glanced around the bay. Meatball was rolling hose. Tyler was coiling up cords. Chief had retreated to his office, no doubt starting paperwork. The place hummed with the low-level activity of a call just wrapped.
I raised my voice. “Hey, Meatball!”
He looked up. “Yeah?”
“You busy for the next few weeks?” I asked.
He snorted. “We talking shift schedule or your usual side quests?”
“Side quest,” Moose muttered.
I ignored him. “I’ve got a project,” I said. “Gonna need hands. Tools. Probably a metric ton of swearing.”
Meatball’s brows went up. “What kind of project?”
“You’ll see,” I said. “But I can tell you this much—we’re not letting that fire be the end of Pour Decisions.”
Moose let out a low whistle. Meatball’s expression shifted from curiosity to interest.
“Damn,” Meatball said. “You’re serious.”
“Dead serious.”
I met each of their gazes in turn. “I need your help. All of you. This is bigger than me.”
There was a beat of silence.
Then Moose slapped the locker beside my head, grinning. “Hell yeah, Donkey. I’m in.”
Meatball shrugged. “I was getting bored anyway. Count me in.”
One by one, the others chimed in, some with jokes, some with mock groans, all variations on the same answer.
We were really going to do this.
I let myself, for the first time since we’d pulled out of the station for that call, imagine Jess’s face when she saw her truck again—rebuilt, restored, possibly even better than before.
If I had anything to say about it, she’d never call me a jackass the same way again.
Or she would.
But maybe, just maybe, there’d be something else in her eyes when she did.
EIGHT
JESS
By the time we pulled up to the curb, I already knew it was going to hurt.
I just didn’t expect it to look like… nothing.
Pepper parked a little down from my usual spot on Main, leaving the engine idling like she thought I might bail and demand she drive me away again. Allie and Meghan were quiet in the backseat, which was evidence that things were really bad. Normally, if the three of them were in a car together, we had at least one argument about music and Allie trying to hand me a snack.
Today, nobody reached for the radio.
Nobody reached for me.
We all sat for a second, staring at the empty slice of street where Pour Decisions should’ve been.
