At the firehouse, the teasing ramps up as weeks turn into months.
“Look at you,” Garrett says one afternoon, eyeing the lunch Harper packed instead of grabbing takeout. “All domesticated. What’s next, matching holiday sweaters?”
Theo smirks. “Didn’t know Sloan had a soft side.”
“Don’t tell anyone,” I say dryly. “I have a reputation to maintain.”
“She’s making you eat all that healthy shit, isn’t she? Women,” Garrett says, rolling his eyes.
But Lizzie, passing through the station house for a meeting with Morales, says, “Garrett, if a woman packs you healthy food, then she wants you healthy. If she packs you shit, she doesn’t give a shit.”
Garrett’s a little slow on the comeback, so Theo asks, “And if she doesn’t pack you anything and you’re stuck getting takeout?”
She winces. “Oof. Better to break up now and save yourself the trouble.”
They both stare at their takeout platters.
I snort a laugh. “Cheer up, guys. You’ll be single soon.”
Lizzie winks and catches up with Morales, while my compatriots grumble. My sliced vegetables and hummus never tasted better.
That night, after Mason is asleep, Harper and Roz spread blueprints and calendars across the kitchen island. They talkthrough a grand re-opening—dates, permits, music, food trucks. Roz proposes turning it into a charity fundraiser for fire victims, a way to give back to the same community that showed up for them. Harper’s eyes light up, the idea catching immediately.
“It would bring everyone together,” Harper says. “The bar crowd. The firehouse. People who helped rebuild.”
I watch her as she talks, hands moving, mind racing ahead, already solving problems that don’t exist yet. She’s confident again, and I’m relieved to see that side of her resurrecting before my eyes.
Forever stops feeling abstract. It starts feeling real.
At the firehouse, the jokes continue, but they come with something else now—respect. The guys ask about the re-opening. Lizzie volunteers the medic crew for support. Garrett offers to donate a collection of baseball cards for the silent auction. It looks suspiciously valuable. Theo says he’ll bring his band.
“You’re all in, huh?” Garrett asks me later, watching Harper laugh with Roz by the fence.
“Yeah,” I say, surprised at how easy it is to say it out loud. “I am.”
He nods, satisfied. “About time.”
On the drive home, Harper hums along to the radio, tired and content. Mason sleeps in the backseat, mouth open, dinosaur tucked under his arm. I glance at them in the mirror and feel the decision lock into place.
I realize something important in the middle of a perfectly ordinary Tuesday.
I’m going to marry this woman.
How the hell do I do this? Time to ask some other questions first.
What music she wants for the re-opening. Who she wants there. How she feels about speeches versus just letting the nightunfold. She answers easily, unaware of the undercurrent, too focused on making sure the event reflects the community that carried her through the worst of it.
That makes my chest tighten in the best possible way. At the firehouse, I test the waters. “Hypothetically,” I say to Garrett one night while we’re cleaning equipment, “if someone were planning something… big. Public. Complicated?—”
Garrett squints at me. “You proposing?”
“Not to you.”
He snorts and grins like Christmas just came early. “Talk to me, Sloan.”
I shake my head, but the smile I’m fighting gives me away. Word spreads faster than I expect. By the end of the shift, half the crew is offering suggestions ranging from genuinely thoughtful to wildly impractical. Lizzie insists on something meaningful and subtle. Theo votes for fireworks, because he can’t not vote for them. Carlie, when she hears, just beams at me over coffee. “Don’t fuck it up.”
The more people know, the more real it becomes. I keep telling them that I’m just thinking about it, but they all give me knowing looks. I’m full of it, and they know me too well.
