Every book I’d hand-picked. The reading nook I’d built with garage sale cushions. My favorite mug. The photo of my mother I kept behind the register because it was the only one I had.
The freckled firefighter carried me around the building to the street where an engine was parked at an angle, lights spinning red and blue across the buildings. He set me down on the bumper, carefully, one hand lingering on my back to make sure I was steady.
I wasn’t. My whole body was trembling, which was annoying because I was trying very hard to project“woman who has her life together”and absolutely failing at it.
He crouched in front of me. “Mira.”
There it was again. My name, certain with familiarity.
“How many fingers?”
He held up three. I stared at them.
“You still haven’t told me how you know my name.”
“Three. The answer is three.”
“You’re deflecting.”
A ghost of a grin. “Yeah, well. You’re stubborn.”
“You don’t know me.”
The grin faltered for a second. A flash of grief crossed his face before he buried it under that easy warmth again, and my stomach turned because that grief was real. The kind of grief youonly felt for people you actually cared about losing, and this man had known me for approximately ninety seconds.
“Percy.” The voice came from behind him.
A third man stepped around the engine, pulling off his gloves. Black hair fell across his forehead, longer on top, pushed back as he’d run his fingers through it a hundred times. Storm-gray eyes with flecks of gold found me and his entire body went still.
This guy was leaner than the other two but wound tight, every line of him coiled with a tension that radiated outward. His jaw was set, permanent scowl in place, angular face built for brooding and not much else.
He wore the same turnout gear as the others. The name on his jacket readVALDRIS. His scent reached me before he did, pine and frost, winter mornings, that first December breath that stings your lungs and wakes you up.
My body pulled toward him. A tilt from somewhere in my chest that I had absolutely zero control over, and that was terrifying because I was a woman who survived by controlling everything. Every reaction, every expression, every instinct.
Two years with Hudson taught me that letting my body make decisions got me hurt.
But this bypassed all of it.
His gaze locked onto my face and the scowl changed. For one second the mask disappeared, and underneath it was a rawness so visceral my chest ached just looking at it. Want, grief, andrecognition tangled together in those gray-gold eyes. Then the scowl slammed back down and sealed it all away.
But I saw it.
He turned to the one named Percy with a command. “Status.”
“Smoke inhalation, possible sedation. She’s alert but her pupils are off.” Percy kept his eyes on me. “She’s asking questions.”
“She can hear you,” I said. “She’s right here.”
His gaze snapped back to me and held. The muscle in his jaw jumped, once, and for a moment I thought he was going to say my name too. Instead, he turned away and spoke into his radio, his voice clipped and controlled.
“Lucian here. Building’s gone. Pull the line back. We need perimeter containment only.”
I filed the name.Lucian.The one who carried himself with an authority which surpasses firefighting. He’s surely the kind of man who expected the world to fall in line around him.
“Her pupils are uneven,” the scarred one said from my left, and I startled because I hadn’t heard him approach. He was just there, suddenly, close enough to touch, as silent as a shadow in full gear. He’d removed his gloves and his bare hand came up to my face.
My whole body went rigid.
