Benny clapped me on the shoulder as he headed out. "You're good for her," he said quietly. "Don't mess it up."
The simple directness of it — no threats, no warnings, just a statement of fact — was somehow more meaningful than any elaborate speech could have been.
Finally, it was just Izzy and me in the quiet station. She walked me out to my car, the bottle of wine in her hand, her other arm linked through mine.
"So," she said as we reached my car, "what's the verdict? Think you can handle dating a firefighter?"
I thought about the evening — the easy acceptance, the sudden shift to emergency mode, the way her crew had looked at her with such obvious respect and affection. I thought about Sophia's words about Kellen, about the cost of caring too much for too long.
"I think," I said carefully, "that I'm starting to understand what your world looks like. And I want to be part of it."
She smiled, stepping closer. "Good. Because after tonight, you're definitely part of the family. Thompson doesn't give out approval lightly."
"What about you?" I asked, reaching up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. "Do I have your approval?"
Instead of answering, she kissed me — soft and grateful and tasting faintly of the stress and smoke of the call. When she pulled back, her eyes were bright with something that looked like pride.
"You more than have my approval," she said. "You have my gratitude. And my heart, if you want it."
The words hung between us, more significant than either of us had probably intended. We'd been dancing around the deeper feelings for weeks, but this felt like the first time either of us had acknowledged them directly.
"I want it," I said simply. "All of it. The good days and the bad calls and everything in between."
She smiled, the kind of smile that made my chest tight with the magnitude of what I was feeling. "Good. Because you've got it."
I looked at her standing there in the parking lot, still smelling faintly of smoke, her crew's approval still warm in the air around us, and the words rose up from somewhere deep in my chest.
"I love you."
Her smile became something radiant. "I love you, too."
I drove home with the windows down, the wine safe in my passenger seat, and Sophia's words echoing in my head. The evening had been everything I'd hoped for — acceptance, integration, the beginning of something that felt like belonging. But underneath the satisfaction was a new awareness, a question I hadn't considered before.
How do you love someone who runs toward danger for a living? How do you build a life with someone whose job asks them to absorb other people's worst moments? And how do you do it without losing yourself in the process?
I didn't have answers yet. But I knew, with the certainty that had been growing over the past weeks, that I wanted to find out. Whatever challenges lay ahead — for Izzy, for us, for the future we were building together — I wanted to face them as part of her family, her crew, her life.
The rest would figure itself out as we went along.
chapter
twenty-one
The alarm tonesat Station 2 had been mercifully quiet for the past hour, giving my crew time to recover from the three-call marathon that had kicked off our shift. Thompson was sprawled on the day room couch, remote in hand, flipping between a cooking show and what appeared to be a documentary about people who collected vintage lunch boxes. Martinez was at the kitchen table, meticulously filling out equipment inspection logs with the kind of attention to detail that made me proud. Benny had claimed the recliner and was dozing with a copy ofFire Chiefmagazine draped over his face.
It was the kind of peaceful moment that usually made me grateful for this job, this crew, this second family I'd built. But tonight, an undercurrent of unease ran beneath my skin like a low-grade fever. I couldn't shake the image of Cap from the dinner I had with Margaret and him three days ago — the way he'd pushed food around his plate more than he'd eaten it, the new lines of exhaustion etched around his eyes, the careful way he'd moved when he thought no one was watching.
My phone buzzed on the table beside me.
Jimmy
How is Cap?
I stared at the message, my stomach dropping. It was an odd question — direct and immediate in a way that felt urgent. Jimmy knew Cap had been struggling, but this felt different. More pointed.
He's been better. Why?
The three dots appeared and disappeared several times, like he was typing and deleting responses. That made my unease spike into something closer to alarm.
