Back at the station, we do the ritual all over again—lines, tools, order from mess. Savannah corners me near the medic bay with a look that has command in it. “Let me see your shoulder.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I tell her for the third time this morning, which earns me an eye roll that makes me smirk.
In the quiet of the bay, she peels my coat back gently and works the harness off me. Her fingers find the spot where the beam kissed my bottle and caught some of me—there’s already amean purple bruise blooming under my collarbone, tender when she tests it. She prods, listens to the grunt I don’t want to give, and hums and clucks, verdict sliding steady over worry.
“You’ll live,” she pronounces.
“I tend to.”
She hesitates. My breath does the same. Then she bends and presses her mouth once, soft, to the edge of the bruise. My vision whites out for exactly one heartbeat.
“Savannah,” I say.
She straightens, eyes bright and stubborn.
“You came back to me,” she says, as if that’s the diagnosis and the cure.
“Every time,” I say, as if it’s a promise I know how to keep.
Her mouth curves at one corner. “Okay.”
I want to drag her into the quiet room. I want to tell the building to take a ten and lock the bay and kiss her until the bruise is old news. I don’t. I tap two fingers against my temple and drop them to my chest—a salute we started as kids.
“Shift’s not over,” I remind both of us.
“It better not be,” she returns, dry, and the humor in it breathes more life into me.
We move back toward the sound of the crew. Before we hit the doorway, she catches my sleeve and I turn because I always will. She rises on her toes, close enough that only the wall could be eavesdropping, and says softly, “Don’t make me chase you to kiss you later.”
I can’t help the smile. “Deal.”
Snow starts again outside. The river will be singing by dark. The barn will smoke until dusk. The bruise will flower and fade.
And somewhere past that—when the kitchen is empty and the bay is dark and the world stops asking for our hands for one damn minute—I’m going to take her to the river and kiss herwith no alarms, no witnesses, no promises we can’t keep. Just her and I. The way we were meant to be.
Chapter Twelve
Savannah
The station is too quiet.
It shouldn’t be. After a barn fire that big, after screams and smoke and alarms that still ring in my blood, the place should be loud with cleanup and chatter and the usual chaos. But the others drifted home hours ago, and the night shift hasn’t started yet. I’m trembling, but I’ve been pretending I’m not. Sitting on the bench in the empty turnout room, gloves still in my lap, trying to count breaths. It isn’t working.
My hands won’t stop shaking.
The image keeps repeating: the roof beam snapping overhead like a gunshot. Axel turning—towardme, not the fire. Not the falling debris. Not the crew. Towardmyvoice. Like he’d dive headfirst into hell if it meant getting one inch closer.
Even now, the memory claws through my chest.
I bury my face in my hands and breathe. One, two, three—my pulse won’t slow. The room feels too small, too bright, too heavy with the echo of what almost happened. I can’t lose him. I can’t eventhinkabout it.
“Savannah.”
His voice cuts through the quiet, low and rough, like he walked straight out of the smoke and into my bloodstream.
I sit upright instantly.
Axel stands in the doorway, turnout jacket half-open, soot smudging the side of his jaw. His hair is damp, like he shoved his head under the sink but didn’t bother drying it. He looks wrecked. Strong. Alive.
