I meet his eyes. “I need to go to the bar. Now. With you.” I can’t call her, can’t text. Whatever it is, I need to see my bar to know it’s okay.
“Then we’ll go,” he says, no hesitation, already reaching for his keys.
I know it’s too early to treat Aiden like a full partner in my life. But I also know it was too soon to fall in love with him in one night.
Maybe we don’t have to play by everyone else’s rules.
AIDEN
The drive to Clover & Mint feels endless and too quick at the same time.
Harper sits rigid in the passenger seat, one hand clenched around her phone, the other braced against the dashboard like she’s trying to hold the car together by force of will. “I can’t text her. Whatever is going on, I won’t feel right if I don’t see my bar with my own eyes.”
“I get that.”
Mason is in the backseat, quiet for once, his small body pressed as close to her as his seatbelt allows. The silence inside the car is sharp and heavy, broken only by the low murmur of the radio and the distant wail of sirens that grow louder with every block. He senses something is wrong with his mom, and the kid is nothing if not protective of her.
When the glow appears on the horizon, I recognize it immediately. Too bright. Too big. Not the contained burn of the first fire, not smoke drifting lazily into the night. This is an inferno.
A column of orange and black claws at the sky like it intends to take the whole block with it.
My stomach drops. “Shit?—”
“That’s… that’s not—” Harper starts, her voice cracking before the sentence can finish. “Oh my god.”
When we round the corner, the extent is clear. Clover & Mint is engulfed.
Flames roar through the front windows, licking up the brick façade like it’s nothing more than kindling. Smoke billows thick and dark, rolling into the street and blotting out the day. The heat hits us before I cut the engine, a physical force that presses against my chest and steals the air from my lungs.
My entire crew is already on scene.
Engines line the curb, lights strobing red and white across the chaos. Hoses snake across the pavement, water hammering against fire that refuses to go quietly. I see familiar shapes moving with practiced urgency, silhouettes cutting through smoke and spray. Every one of them knows what this is.
Gone. That’s the word for it. I pray no one was inside when it began.
Harper doesn’t move when I put the car in park. She stares, eyes wide and unblinking, watching the place she built burn right before her eyes. I follow her gaze and feel something cold and furious settle deep in my gut.
“Oh my God,” she whispers. “Oh my God.”
Mason makes a small, frightened whimper in the backseat, and that finally breaks her paralysis. She twists around, reaching for him immediately, pulling him close as he starts to cry in earnest now, his face buried against her shoulder. “It’s okay,” she murmurs, even though nothing about this is okay. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
The kid had been traumatized by the first fire. This… this is worse.
I’m already moving.
The moment my boots hit the pavement, instinct takes over. I grab my helmet from the backseat, shrug into my auxiliaryjacket, radio clipped on before I’m even fully aware of doing it. Command mode snaps into place like a switch being thrown, the part of me that knows exactly what to do when everything else is burning away.
“Aiden!” Garrett yells. “We’ve got heavy involvement through the main floor!”
“I see it,” I shout back, scanning the scene. “What’s exposure look like?”
“Rear alley compromised. Fire’s venting through the roof!”
“Anyone inside?”
“No!” Morales shouts on his way to the truck.
I nod, already processing, already coordinating. My eyes flick back to Harper for a second. She’s out of the car now, Mason clutched tight against her chest, both of them framed in the harsh strobe of emergency lights. She looks small in a way I’ve never seen before, devastation etched across her face as she watches everything she built go up in flames.
