“Mitchell. Hold.”
Cal’s voice. Not loud—but something in it made me stop.
I turned. He was standing in the bay, phone in his hand, his face doing something I couldn’t quite read. Not panic. Cal didn’t panic. But something close to it. Something that made my stomach drop before he said a word.
“Cap?”
“That was Grace.” He stepped closer, lowering his voice beneath the engine’s growl. “Her water broke. She’s in labor.”
The words didn’t land all at once. Grace. Water broke. Labor.
Three weeks early.
“The ambulance is delayed,” Cal continued. “Roads are icy from the early snow. Twenty-plus minutes out.” He paused. “She’s alone, Owen.”
The bay seemed to narrow around me. The engine idled. The crew waited. Radio chatter crackled with updates—heavy smoke, possible entrapment, additional units requested.
And Grace, twenty minutes away, alone in that big house, was having our baby.
“I’ll go after,” I heard myself say. “We get the family out, and I’ll?—”
“You’ll go now.”
“What?”
“Cal, there’s a family trapped. Children?—”
“And I have a full crew.” His voice shifted into a command tone—the one that didn’t leave room for argument. “Liam’s got the nozzle. Kowalski and Reyes are solid. We’ve run this exact scenario a hundred times.” His hand landed on my shoulder, heavy and certain. “That family has us,” he said. “Grace doesn’t.”
I stared at him.
The engine rumbled behind me. The crew waited. The clock ticked on people I’d never met.
My father’s voice echoed somewhere in my head.
Show up. Always show up.
But which people?
That was the question he’d never been taught to ask.
The question I’d been asking since I was fifteen years old, standing at his funeral, wondering if he’d ever considered staying home.
“Owen.” Cal’s grip tightened. “Go. We’ve got this. You go have a baby.”
I looked at the engine. At Liam, watching me through the windshield, calm and ready. At the empty seat where I should have been.
My father never had this. Never had someone told him it was okay to choose.
He’d carried it alone every time because he thought that’s what the job demanded—showing up for everyone except the people who needed him most.
He’d been wrong.
Or maybe he’d just been alone in a way I didn’t have to be.
“Thank you,” I said.
Cal nodded once. “Text me when she’s here. Now move.”
