“Same baby,” I said, pulling her closer. “Same.”
The movie played. My food got cold. And all I could think about was how I’d been living without this kind of ease for so damn long; it felt foreign.
Halo slid her hand across my stomach, nails tracing a path through my shirt. Subtle. Thoughtless. Intimate. Her soft warm hand rested on my rib cage. The irony of that being her favorite spot to rest her hand wasn’t lost on me. She was my rib, even if I hadn’t changed her last name yet.
She didn’t say anything, just tucked her head under my arm and kept watching Blade slice folks up. Eventually, her breathing slowed. Her body softened against mine. She was half asleep by the time the movie hit the halfway point, and I reached for the remote to turn it off.
She hummed, eyes still closed. “Don’t turn it off. I’m watching.”
“You lie terribly,” I whispered into her hair.
She smiled, still not opening her eyes. “Shut up.”
I kissed the top of her head, scooped her up, and carried her to bed. She curled into me instantly, arms around my neck. She was spoiled as fuck. She rarely ever walked upstairs; she was either in my arms or on my back. Ilaid her down and tucked the covers around her, brushing her cheek with my thumb.
“You gon have my babies?” I asked it low, serious, and soft, with nothing playful in it.
Her eyes barely opened, and for a second, she didn’t answer. She touched my face, thumb brushing my chin, and her voice came out soft but steady.
“Yeah, baby… I want that. With you.”
I smiled, climbed in beside her, and let her settle right on top of my heartbeat again. It wasn’t long before I whistled, and Brixxi came around the corner and climbed into bed with us. This was home.
Everything felt settled. I didn’t know life was about to remind us it had a say too, the way it always tried to when shit got too perfect. But what I did know was this… whatever came would have to come hard as hell to pull me away from this woman. I’d already given her my eyes, my heart, my soul. I wasn’t moving out of the way for nothing or nobody.
A few weeks later…
Iwas still trying to understand how my life had flipped itself into something soft without me even noticing the shift. It wasn’t loud, it wasn’t dramatic, it was just… steady. A delicious thump. The kind of steady that sneaks up on you in the middle of a long day, when you realize you’re not carrying everything by yourself anymore. It snuck up on me the most when I missed him.
Every room in my house smelled like him. Every corner of his house smelled like me. Somehow, without either of us saying a word, I’d ended up spending more nights tangled up with that man than I ever planned. I’d never been the woman who let someone take care of her, but DaVinci made it easy—too easy sometimes.
We’d spent nearly every day that we could together since the gala. Movie nights that turned into sleepovers. Home games in the family suite. Dinners at Ignite, dancing at Ember, baths at his place, mornings at mine. Somewhere between the game, the derby bout, and him whispering things to me that opened up doors inside me I thought were locked for good, we’d become inseparable.
Babies.I laughed thinking about it. He’d brought it up casually one night, testing the waters, and I hadn’t run screaming.
But now work was testing us. The station had been on go for weeks.
It seemed like we hit the trifecta every day: structure fires, wrecks, and medical calls back-to-back. The last fire that almost took out a strip mall. Every shift dragged sleep out of me until I could feel the tiredness in places that didn’t even make sense. My knees, my jaw, the backs of my eyes.
Some mornings, I woke up in his bed and couldn’t even remember how I got there. Other times I’d be in mine with him taking up half the space. And some mornings I sat on that cot trying to figure out what day I was even supposed to be in. But when I let myself think about him watching me in the bath, or the way he held me like he wasn’t letting go, something in me kept pushing forward.
He’d been watching me for days now, with that quiet suspicion men get when they know you’re lying straight to their face but love you enough not to start a fight. Every time he kissed my forehead in passing, his lips stayed there for a second too long. Every time he held me at night, his hand found my rib cage as if he was counting breaths. The crazy part was that I felt guilty about being tired, guilty for making him worry, guilty for the way his arms tightened around me more than usual. It made me push myself harder, even on the days when pushing wasn’t the responsible choice.
By the time I walked out into the bay today, it felt like my body was clocking in before my mind caught up. Shift change had been twenty minutes ago, and the firehouse already smelled like diesel, sweat, and burnt coffee — the usual. The fluorescent lights were too damn bright, and that weight behind my eyes told me I needed more sleep than life was willing to give. I tightened my boots the way you do when you’re trying to wake yourself up from any discomfort. I was moving slower than usual. I rubbed at my temple with the heel of my hand, trying to clear the fog, but exhaustion had settled so deeply in me that I knew I had no business being here today.
Mandatory overtime always hit harder when it was stacked, and this was day two of it, piled on nearly a month of being on go. Back-to-back twelve-hour shifts had my body whispering about me behind my back. I felt it. He felt it too. God bless my man. He’d tried not to smother me, but I knew he was two more‘Lo, you need to rest.’away from calling the commissioner to tell him to get a new firefighter because his girlfriend needed to sleep. I appreciated the restraint. And the concern.
“Grant, are you okay?” Santos called across the truck. Keith had been transferred to a different station, and Santos had replaced him. I likedworking with him way more than I liked working with Keith. We’d become fast friends.
“I’m good,” I said, because the truth wasn’t going to change the fact that the truck was rolling out, whether I felt like myself or not. Civilians never get that part. You don’t get to tap out because you’re tired. You stop when the shift ends, your gear comes off, and your body lets you collapse. Not a second sooner.
I grabbed my helmet, slung my coat over my shoulder, and climbed into the rig. The engine kicked on, rumbling under my boots. I sighed and put my hand over my bracelet out of habit. It made me think of him, think of how all this started. The memory softened me and made me laugh. Because when I thought of that memory, his stalking never came to mind. Not only was I over it, but I also understood it. I loved it. Fuck it. I’d long accepted that I was just as much of a mess as he was.
“Residential structure fire. Smoke showing. Possible entrapment. All hands on deck.”
This was one of those calls that really tested everybody’s nerves. When dispatch called for “all hands on deck,” my mind shifted into tunnel vision. Whatever I was feeling didn’t matter anymore. This wasn’t a small kitchen flare-up or somebody’s drunk cousin burning down a garage because we won. I saw the flames before we even made the turn.
The sky was bright orange, not flickering—roaring. The duplex looked like it was screaming. I took in the scene: people stood outside recording like it was the Fourth of July, which always pissed me off. No one wanted a replay of the worst day of their lives. I shook my head and caught the kids crying and neighbors yelling over each other to tell us who was inside. I took a breath through my mask and let instinct take over. Helmet. Mask. Gloves. Gear check. My feet hit the pavement before the truck even stopped rocking.
