I’ve had a gut full of his moody stares and short words. Whatever happened to crew morale? He has no problem chatting away to Davey. Just last shift, they were getting into it deep over some ball game.
The radio on Hammond’s jacket squawks.
“Hammond, you guys all done up there?” Sandy’s voice echoes around the ashen room.
Hammond stalks his way to the radio and plucks it off his jacket. “Almost done, be down soon. Over.”
“Copy.”
“Finish that corner, we’re going home,” Hammond grinds out, not bothering to look at me.
Home.
Maybe to him. My home is not a firehouse with a captain, albeit a temp one, who barely speaks to me.
Honestly, I don’t know why it bothers me so much. Davey, Sandy, and Owens are more than friendly, and I couldn’t ask for a better crew. Hammond, he just rubs me the wrong way.
Not in the same way Schmidt does. He’s a walking HR report waiting to happen. The typical guy who has an ego his intelligence can’t keep up with.
Hammond is different. He’s closed off... but just with me.
Fuck him. He wants to play this game?
I’m more than ready to field his plays.
Chapter 7
MILES
The heated water runs over my chest, tracking a myriad of tiny paths over my aching, weary body. Hose duty is always a killer on high-rises. Tonight was no exception. I rub the soap-on-a-rope that Heids gave me last birthday as a joke over my aching muscles.
Joke’s on her, I love this thing.
So fucking practical.
The fact it’s a pink unicorn hasn’t deterred me one bit. It smells like flowers, and that always gets a chuckle out of Sandy. Heids just shakes her head. I read the gift as a dare, and there is no way I’m backing down from it, especially since it puts a smile on the crew’s faces.
The unisex bathroom is comprised of six shower cubicles. We have four half baths in the house. Two on the other side of the lockers, and two downstairs. Someone else walks into the showers, snapping the partition door closed in the cubicle beside me.
The water starts and the soft thuds of clothes hitting tiles and items being moved around are just audible over the stream of water I send my head back into.
A soft moan, a sound I’ve never heard before, comes from the stall by mine.
It’s not Heids—she’d either be singing badly or talking my ear off by now. My towel hangs over my door; she’d recognize it.
Tennison wouldn’t.
The water is all of a sudden too hot.
Another little moan slips from the space beside my cubicle. I clear my throat.
“Um, hello?” she says softly.
Fuck, that’s worse.
I swallow, racking my brain for something to say that’s not awkward as hell when we’re both naked and she’s moaning like she’s?—
Christ.
