Hell, I should have.
I had options. I wasn’t some junior tech filling out burn reports on a tablet. I’d put in fifteen years on the ground—firehouse calls, smoke-choked rescues, body pulls, and warehouse explosions that nearly ended me. Earned my placethe hard way. Passed over once. Twice. Promoted only when the work got too loud to ignore.
Now I sat behind glass on the second floor, my name etched clean on the door:
Tariq Hunt, Lead Investigator – Arson Division.
Most days, the department moved in a tight loop around me. Two junior investigators—Goodwin and Reyes—ran point on fieldwork under my direction. Rotating field support filled in the gaps. Admin was shared with Fire Safety, which meant one overworked secretary, Maliah, juggling three high-strung units. My calls were screened. My reports prioritized. If I assigned something, it got handled. Fast.
Which meant I had absolutely no reason to be the one who contacted Sanaa.
I could’ve handed that inventory request to Reyes before I even left the apartment this morning. Could’ve dictated a note, let admin formalize it, never touched the keyboard myself.
Instead, I’d stood there in my kitchen with the city barely awake, reading over the email three times before sending it.
Too stiff. Too formal. Like I was writing to a stranger and I hit it send anyway.
And regretted it before the message even cleared the outbox.
Because no matter how carefully I worded it, no matter how official I kept the tone, I knew exactly what it was—a reason. A thin one, but enough to justify putting my name back in her inbox.
At least if I’d handed it off to someone—anyone—I wouldn’t have seemed desperate.
Well, maybe not anyone because I for damn sure wasn’t about to drag Maliah into that.
She was always lingering near the front. Fresh-faced. Mid-twenties, maybe. Wore her braids long and around her shoulders. Full lips. Confident eyes. The kind of pretty that gotnoticed even when she wasn’t trying, and she wasdefinitelytrying.
She stayed humming some R&B joint under her breath, heels echoing louder than her steps needed to be, always checking if I needed coffee or a file or “just a minute of fresh air.” I kept it polite. Thank-yous. No eye contact longer than necessary. She hadn’t taken the hint.
That’s why my paperwork was backed up now—I didn’t want to owe her energy.
“Man, you’re wild,” Marquez had said earlier, grinning while tossing a report onto my desk. “I been trying to get Maliah’s attention since last summer. You don’t even say good morning and she’s still cheesin’ like you wrote her a poem.”
Marquez wasn’t lead—but he was one of the unit’s steady investigators, the kind who ran the scene when the chaos needed hands and kept the paperwork from swallowing the rest of us. He knew how to read a burn pattern and how to make a vendor call without making anyone feel small. He’d been at my shoulder on more than a few night jobs, the easy counterpoint to whatever storm I brought in.
I shrugged and let him think what he wanted. I wasn’t about to explain I used to be that man—the one who took pretty smiles as invitations and silences as open doors. These days, I measured everything I let touch me.
It was late now. The sun was low, and the hallway dark with just me and Maliah left in the building. I should’ve gone home hours ago, but I’d been circling Sanaa’s number in the claim file all damn day. Telling myself I didn’t need to hear her voice. Lying to myself in slow circles.
“Mister Hunt…”, Maliah’s voice came soft from the doorway before the soft click of her shutting the door behind her.
I sighed.
“I was thinking… you work too hard. You should let me take you out. Just a drink. Something easy.”
Her tone was sugary sweet. One of her heels slipped out of its shoe, a tilt of the hip drawing my eyes where they didn’t need to go. She licked her lips.
My dick didn’t move. That told me everything.
She was fine. Real fine. And years ago, especially after Sanaa left me, I might’ve let that mean something. But these days, when I wanted to fuck, I didn’t play around with workplace games. I had women I could call. Women who knew the rhythm, and who didn’t ask for more.
But even they didn’t hit the same. Because none of them wereher. The only woman I ever truly loved.
I closed my laptop a little harder than necessary. “Maliah?—”
There was a soft knock on the door, and it opened before I could call out.
Sanaa froze just long enough to clock everything: Maliah leaning too far forward, lips parted like she was mid-seduction. Me behind the desk, jaw clenched, caught somewhere between annoyance and fatigue.
