ELEVEN
LARKIN
My crew noticed there was something different about me.
It wasn't dramatic. I wasn't whistling through equipment checks or skipping, but the small things were adding up. I'd brought donuts to the station on Monday, which I'd never done. They caught me smiling at my phone during lunch before pocketing it and nearly dropping it in my soup.
“Who is he?" Janice was restocking the medical bags.
“Who is who?”
“The person who's turned our lieutenant warm and gooey.” She counted gauze pads and didn't look up. “Not that you weren't, ummm, a little before, but this week there’s been a transformation. It's unsettling.”
“I’m always like this.”
Janice and Colin exchanged a glance that suggested they disagreed.
“I think it's nice,” Colin offered. "You're less forbidding when you smile.”
“I’m not like that.”
Janice gave me a look, and I retreated to the watch room before anyone else decided to analyze me.
Firefighters lived together for twenty-four-hour stretches. We ate and trained together and slept ten feet apart. There was nowhere to hide. If Janice had picked up on my mood shift after a week, the rest of the crew wasn't far behind.
I needed to be more careful. The donuts had been a mistake.
The ladder climb was Saturday, and I'd spent the week running Colin through his preparation. He was strong and disciplined, and he'd been training hard.
“Don't look down.” This was his final practice. “Focus on the next rung. Let your hands and feet do the work.”
“Easy for you to say. You're on the ground.” But he grinned and started climbing.
I was proud of him, and I told him that. It earned me another round of suspicious looks because apparently complimenting my crew was out of character.
Maybe Percy was right. I didn't let anyone see me rattled, and the flip side of that was not letting them see me pleased either. I'd built a version of myself at this station that was competent and a little distant. The cracks Percy had opened were visible, something my crew had never witnessed.
On Saturday, both stations converged on the training grounds where the aerial ladder was set up. Station 9 was ahead one to nothing, and if they won this event, they'd lead two to one going into the final.
I spotted Percy the moment I arrived, mainly because I had eyes only for him. He was stretching near Station 9's truck. He rolled his shoulders and bounced on his toes, probably because he wanted to get the event started. He was in full gear, with his helmet tucked under his arm. His focused expression wasn’t his usual, day-to-day face, but this wasn’t a time for joking.
He was at the base of the ladder, tilting his head up to study the top, and fear spiked inside me. A hundred feet was high, and the ladder swayed. And the man I'd mated was about to climbit while I stood on the ground pretending he was just another competitor.
My dragon reassured me he’d be fine.I can always fly up and grab him if something goes wrong.
That’d work out well in front of humans.But if it came to Percy’s safety, I’d say to heck with disrupting the world order.
Colin went first. He found his rhythm, but at seventy feet, the ladder began to sway. It always did up there. From the ground, the rocking was barely noticeable, but it was anything but gentle when you were on it. Colin pushed through, and at the top, he slapped the final rung and the timer stopped.
He did well, and I clapped him on the shoulder when he reached the ground.
“Well done.”
“The sway was hard to deal with.” He wiped sweat from his forehead.
“The wind picked up and you adjusted.”
Percy was at the base of the ladder now with his helmet on and gloves. His captain spoke to him, and Percy nodded.
