The firehouse smells the same—diesel, coffee, metal, smoke baked into concrete. But he doesn’t.
He’s bigger. Broader through the shoulders. His jaw sharper, stubble darker, a faint crease between his brows that wasn’t there when we were eighteen and invincible and stupid in love. He stands in the engine bay like he owns the building, like the mountain itself signed over its authority to him.
“Intern Marshall,” he says when I walk in.
Lieutenant Kane.
We trade titles like weapons.
But when he muttered “Hotshot” under his breath earlier, like it slips out of muscle memory, something in my chest folds in on itself.
Because that name was never professional.
That name was mine.
I tell myself I left back then because I needed more.
More than Friday night football games and diner coffee refills and whispers about who’d marry who before twenty-five. I needed scholarships and cities and to know if I could survive outside the shadow of my father’s fire chief badge. I needed an identity that wasn’t just “Levi’s girl.”
But standing in front of him now?
It feels like I left something unfinished. Like I packed my bags and forgot to take my own heart with me.
I’m halfway through reviewing equipment inventory when the church ladies invade.
You can hear them before you see them—heels clicking, voices layered in sugary authority.
“Oh, there he is!” Mrs. Dottie Henderson trills as she sweeps into the bay like she owns the place. Behind her trail three other women armed with clipboards and foil-covered casserole dishes.
Spring Fundraising Season has begun.
Which, in Devil’s Peak, is basically a competitive sport.
Levi stiffens beside me. He doesn’t look scared—he looks hunted.
“Lieutenant Kane,” Mrs. Dottie purrs, pressing a hand to his arm like she’s inspecting produce. “We were just discussing eligible bachelors for this year’s charity events.”
His jaw ticks.
“Ma’am,” he says evenly.
I bite my lip to keep from smiling.
She circles him slowly. “You are single, aren’t you?”
The crew scatters like cowards.
Axel disappears into the kitchen. Ash pretends to polish a tool with intense concentration. My father is nowhere to be found.
Levi stands there, steady and broad and very much cornered.
“Oh dear,” Mrs. Dottie continues, tapping her pen against her clipboard. “The widows at church will be delighted.”
I lean closer to Levi, lowering my voice. “Wow. You must feel like a hunk of manmeat.”
His eyes cut to me.
Dangerous.
