Hansen
Korbin was the first one out the door to gather his team for some practice drills, leaving Paisley and me standing in the ambulance bay, watching after him.
“Hey,” I said, moving my gaze to hers. “How are you?”
“I’m fine, thanks, Cap.”
“I mean, after yesterday,” I said, lowering my voice. “I worried about how you handled it once the shift was over.”
“I handled it like I handle everything else,” Paisley said, a smile appearing on her lips. “I’ll push it down and ignore it until it eventually overflows into a fit of mad rage.”
I grinned despite myself returning the smile. It was difficult not to. Being around Paisley was like discovering the moon—something about being in her presence alone made the world brighter, bolder, and more beautiful. Being in the same room with her was becoming increasingly difficult but through no fault of her own. The fault was mine; I was the bad guy in this situation.
“If you ever need to talk about it, I’m a shoulder to cry on,” I said, and a slight, red tint rose to Paisley’s cheeks. “And as you know, the city sends a counselor once or twice a month to check in on everybody.”
“I know,” she said. She brushed a strand of long, brown hair out of her face and then raked it into a ponytail, exposing the soft arches of her neck. My fingers twitched by my side, anxious to reach and touch her, hold her, kiss her.
Fuck her.
“It can be beneficial,” I chided, forcing myself to look away from her so I wouldn’t lose my cool.
“I’m fine,” Paisley insisted. She grabbed her work boots and the PPE equipment and slung it over her shoulder, grinning at me. “Let’s do this, shall we?”
“We shall.”
Whatever was going on between Paisley and Korbin, I didn’t know, but whatever she said to him when I walked in just before seemed to have taken effect because he barely glanced her way during the full HAZMAT training we did outside the station.
While Paisley was determined and driven when it came to proving herself, she was just not a large girl. The suit for the controlled training seemed to swallow her up. With the added helmet, hood, pants, coat, gloves, boots, and air pack, she was looking at an extra forty-five pounds or more to carry around, all the while dragging a 145-pound dummy out of a treacherous building. But even then, even when the gear practically swallowed her into a hole of nothingness, Paisley didn’t fall behind. Nor did she waver. Much to their dismay, she kept up with the guys, and a ball of pride welled up in my chest.
A scorching heat flooded the training area, and I forced each of my men to take a small break between training scenarios to drink water and cool down. Korbin, however, refused to slow, insisting that out in the field, they might not get a break to cool down or rehydrate. When one of my recruits, Tanner, saw Korbin hold back, he took it upon himself to follow his lead, refusing to stop for water and a break.
“What’s the problem?” I yelled, but neither one of them answered me. Halfway through a mock rescue session, I tried to count when Paisley had last stopped. I couldn’t. In fact, she was mere seconds behind Korbin as the rest of my crew stopped for a water break, watching from the sidelines Korbin and Paisley compete neck to neck as they dragged a 200-pound dummy across the gravel. With my whistle in my mouth, ready to blow and pull her back, I watched Paisley fall, her body limp in the middle of the lot.
“Shit,” someone hissed behind me. Paisley hit the ground with impressive force, helmet bouncing off the asphalt. She laid there still for a moment, making no attempt to get back up. Korbin dropped his own dummy as soon as he saw her fall and looked over at me, removing his mask, then he headed in her direction. Jake and I darted towards them, panting in the heat, and I dropped down on my knees next to Paisley.
“God dammit,” I muttered, checking for a pulse while Jake removed her helmet. Jake removed her mask, and we checked her pulse. It was there. Weak, but there. “Heat exhaustion,” I mumbled. “We need to get her inside.”
“Here.” Before I could stop him, Korbin grabbed a bottle of water from Tanner and unscrewed the lid, dumping the liquid onto Paisley’s face. She shot upright with a gasp, clawing at the water on her face, eyes bleary and confused as she tried to focus on us. I reached my hand to take hers, noticing how cool and clammy she felt in the heat.
“What happened?” she asked weakly, her frightened eyes meeting mine.
“I think you passed out,” I told her with a gentle hand squeeze. “Heat exhaustion, probably. How are you feeling?”
“I’m—okay.” Glancing down at my hand that held hers, Paisley opened up her fingers to release my hold, ignoring the second outstretched arm I offered her. Without help, she climbed to her feet, swaying a little on the spot, but she didn’t fall.
“That was great, chick,” Nick called from the shade under a tree. “If this was a drill to practice fainting, you would have won. A woman with a flair for the dramatic, eh?”
“Enough,” I said sharply, and Nick fell silent, shaking his head.
“Whatever, Cap.”
“It’s okay,” she said weakly. “I’m fine.” She shot me a warning look just before looking away from me to focus on the task at hand. Her fingers shook as she unbuttoned the heavy suit and let it fall to the ground around her ankles, allowing her body to finally breathe. Then, I noticed the weighted vest strapped over her shoulders and midsection but couldn’t make sense of it. That weight alone added an extra one hundred pounds even without the suit.
“Dude, why do you have that on?” Jake asked before I could even process it. Paisley glanced up, meeting his eyes with a slight frown.
“I thought we needed them.” She looked down at the vest strapped to her body, peeling the Velcro back to allow that, too, to fall to the ground beside her. Her petite frame was drenched in sweat. She was soaked through.
“Who told you that?” I asked, feeling the rage ignite in the pit of my stomach. These childish games were bullshit, and I couldn’t let it go on anymore. “Paisley,” I said. “Who told you that?”
