Maddie’s gaze snaps to mine, all humor gone.
Outside, Wyatt’s voice goes quiet and dangerous. “Where?”
Ethan answers, “Circling the cabin. Like someone’s been watching.”
And behind Maddie, the front door clicks—Wyatt stepping back inside with a look on his face I’ve never seen before.
Not irritation. Not control.
Something else.
Something that says the rules just changed.
Chapter 4
Wyatt
Idon’t like bringing trouble into the station.
The station is sacred ground. It’s where we eat, sleep, bleed, and keep each other alive. It’s where you can be a bastard all day and still trust the guy next to you with your back in a burning hallway. Devil’s Peak Fire & Rescue doesn’t do drama. We do calls. We do duty. We do the quiet kind of loyalty that doesn’t need an audience.
Ellie changes that the second she steps through the bay doors.
Not because she’s loud. Because she’s Ellie. Because half the station knows her from her chocolate shop, and the other half knows she’s Wade James’s sister, which means the men who don’t have brains know to keep their mouths shut and the men who do have brains know to watch my face.
And I’m not in the mood to be watched.
She’s in my flannel again because she’s stubborn and because she’s still got no clothes, and the sight of her in it flips something possessive low in my gut that I keep locked down with the same discipline I use when a roof is collapsing. I walk her in front of me anyway, one hand light at the small of her back as we cross the concrete, guiding her without asking.
She stiffens at the touch, then doesn’t move away.
Good.
She looks around the station with her chin up and her eyes too bright. That’s her “I’m fine” face. It’s the face she uses when she’s balancing too much and refusing to set any of it down.
She’s not fine.
The bay smells like diesel and coffee and the faint metallic tang of equipment that’s been cleaned a thousand times. Radios murmur. Someone laughs near the kitchen. The air is warm, dry, safe.
Ellie’s phone is in her hand like a weapon.
“Why are we here?” she asks, quiet but sharp, like she doesn’t want anyone listening.
“Supplies,” I say. “And eyes.”
She turns her head, brows lifting. “Eyes?”
I glance down at her. “You want to pretend you didn’t just have boot prints circling my cabin?”
Her mouth tightens. “I want to pretend you’re not treating me like an emergency.”
I lean in close enough that she feels my breath against her ear. “You are an emergency.”
Ellie’s inhale catches. She looks like she wants to argue, but the words don’t come out clean. She settles for glaring at the concrete.
I guide her toward the storage room. Halfway there, Levi spots us.
Levi is a firefighter in the way a storm is weather. Loud, relentless, and always in everyone’s business. He’s sitting on the bench in the common area, boot off, tugging at a sock like it personally offended him. Sadie sits across from him, elbows on the table, sipping coffee and watching him with the kind of patience that says she’s either deeply in love or planning his murder.
