Page 48

SIXTEEN

COLE

Tuesday, December 15th

God, I really have to stop thinking about her, Cole told himself for the thousandth time while stirring a pot of chili at the firehouse. He couldn’t get tonight out of his head. The way Emily had closed the distance between them with Nutmeg squirming in her arms. The soot on his hands and the smell of smoke sharp in the air, and her looking up at him like he was the only solid thing in the world. He’d almost touched her face. His hand had been halfway there before he caught himself.

And the way she’d leaned in. That was the part he couldn’t shake. She’d leaned in, and for half a second Cole had forgotten that six women were watching, forgotten the smoke and his men on the scene, and every reason it was a terrible idea. For half a second, he’d nearly kissed Emily Whitaker on Oak Way with an audience and a chimney fire still smoldering behind them.

Now he stood at the stove, cooking dinner for his crew, letting the noise of it settle around him.

Tyler, Jackson, and George had come back to the firehouse after clearing Emily’s bakery, and everyone was starving. The past four days had been a relay: Tyler out on the south side clearing access roads, while George ran supply routes to the elderly residents past the bridge; Tyler coordinating generator repairs and fuel deliveries across the east side of town; Cole overseeing all of it while running his own route and managing the radio traffic from the county. They’d crossed paths at the station in between shifts, traded updates over the hood of the truck, left notes on the whiteboard by the door. But they hadn’t sat down together. Not once.

Now tonight with Emily’s kitchen fire… well, there was no better time to sit down and have a meal.

The station communal kitchen wasn’t much to look at on a normal day. Industrial surfaces, a prep table, mismatched mugs on a rack above the coffee machine. A clock on the wall that ran ten minutes fast, that Cole had stopped correcting because the guys had gotten used to it.

Sometime around day two of the crisis, it had acquired Christmas decorations.

Cole still wasn’t entirely sure how it had happened. He’d come back from a delivery run to find a poinsettia on the counter and a string of white lights wound around the window frame above the sink, and Edith Bloomfield’s car, pulling out of the lot. He’d stood in the doorway for a moment, looking at the lights, and decided the conversation wasn’t worth having.

By day three there was a wreath on the refrigerator. By day four, a tin of shortbread with a bow on it sitting next to the coffee machine, which the guys had demolished in under an hour.

The stocking was the one he hadn’t expected. Hand-knitted, red and green, with COLE stitched across the top in white thread, hung on the hook where he kept his turnout coat. He’d taken his coat off that hook a dozen times since it appeared and hadn’t moved the stocking once. He’d heard Maple Falls had a crafting club. He suspected he’d been visited by them.

The fire station had been just as busy as the night the storm hit, but tonight things had finally started to settle. The calls were slowing down. The town was getting back on its feet. Cole could feel it in the quality of the quiet—less tense, more like an exhale.

He’d gotten used to eating alone since coming back to Maple Falls. In New York it had been different. Ten men on call around the clock, a brotherhood that showed up in the kitchen as much as it did on the truck. Someone always had something going on the stove. You ate together because that was just how it was done, and Cole hadn’t realized how much he’d missed it until the absence of it echoed off the walls of his new apartment every evening.

The apartment was still finding its shape. The fire station’s lower level had been partially converted for him when the posting came through—a private bedroom carved out of what used to be storage, the open-plan kitchen and living space still shared with whoever was on shift. It suited him fine. He wasn’t accumulating things. He’d painted the bedroom walls a muted blue-gray that matched the winter sky outside the window, and beyond that he hadn’t done much. A nightstand with a leather journal, his grandmother’s photograph in its frame, and the large mug that had seen him through more late nights and early callouts than he could count. That was enough.

He could see Maple Falls’ rooftops from that window. He’d stood there a few times in the early mornings before anyone else was up, looking out at the town he’d left at ten and never quite managed to feel attached to, even when he’d lived here. New York had given him noise and anonymity and a sense of scale that made small problems stay small. Here, everything was close and known and watched, and he’d never found a comfortable way to stand inside that.

He wasn’t sure he’d found one yet. The crafting club decorating his kitchen suggested Maple Falls wasn’t going to wait around while he figured it out.

But tonight was different. Tyler, George, and Jackson had all stayed on, the volunteer calls coming in fast enough that there was no point in going home between them. And now, with the evening finally quiet, Cole had taken advantage of the lull to make a proper pot of chili.

It was the type of meal that stuck to your ribs and kept your belly full on a long, cold night. Beans, ground beef, dark spices, a splash of hot sauce, a trick he’d learned from a guy at his old station in Brooklyn who’d sworn it was the secret to everything. He’d set out the fixings on the counter with bowls of shredded cheddar, sour cream, more hot sauce, and two bags of oyster crackers that Jackson had already made significant inroads on before the chili was even served.

The four of them filled their bowls and settled around the station table, the wind still howling outside, Captain stationed underneath it with the patient optimism of a dog who had not yet given up on the situation.

“This is exactly what I needed,” Tyler said, reaching for the cheddar. “Robyn and Emma are having a girls’ night. Spa treatments, no boys allowed. I’d have been eating sad sandwiches at home if you hadn’t called.”

“Robyn’s good for you,” Jackson said. “And Emma loves her. That’s important.”

“It’s everything,” Tyler said, in the simple, certain way he had of saying things. He didn’t elaborate. He didn’t need to.

Cole was only half-listening. He’d been keeping an eye on the cake cooling on the rack above the stove.

“Alders,” Jackson said, following his gaze. “Did you get fancy on us over there?”

Cole set down his spoon. The cake had been out of the oven for the better part of an hour, and the smell of warm spice and butter had settled into every corner of the station kitchen. He went to check it, pressing two fingers lightly to the center. Cool enough.

He pulled the bowl of cream cheese frosting he’d made earlier from the fridge—softened cream cheese, powdered sugar, a splash of vanilla, beaten until it was smooth and thick—and set it on the counter beside the cake.

“Is that frosting?” Tyler asked.

“It’s frosting,” Cole confirmed.