Page 71 of Falling for My Grumpy Fireman

"She's leaving. I let it get bad and then I fixed it too slow, and she's leaving, and I'm about to go make a fool of myself trying to stop her. Not stop her. Tell her. There's a difference and I finally know it." I grip the rail. "But I couldn't do that carrying you around my neck like I'm still standing in that street. So."

I work the clasp. My hands shake and I let them.

The chain comes free. The ring drops into my palm, small and warm from riding against my chest for two years, and I close my fist around it and press my fist to my mouth.

"I'm not putting you down," I tell her, and my voice goes to gravel. "You hear me? Never. You and—"

I stop.

Say it, Peterson. Doc's voice. Somebody who can't answer back, first.

"You and Rosie."

Out loud. First time. The name leaves my mouth and doesn't burn the town down. The river keeps running. The hawk keeps hunting. The world holds.

"You and Rosie ride with me now. That's all this is. Different seat."

I open my hand. Kiss the ring once, quick, the way she used to kiss me leaving for school.

Then I slide it into the left breast pocket of my shirt and button the flap over it. Over my heart. Carried, not worn.

The wind kicks up off the water and I stand there and let it hit me, and something behind my sternum comes loose that's been bolted down for two years. Not gone. Loose. Room to move.

"Okay," I say. "Wish me luck. She's meaner than you."

I swear the wind laughs.

***

I stop on the shoulder of Route 9 and pick wildflowers like a teenager.

Firewheels and horsemint and a fistful of little blue ones I can't name, and I don't care that my boot fills with stickers doing it, because Nellie Greer got carnations from a cooler last time and that was the wrong flower from the wrong man. This time she gets weeds a man tore up with his hands, and the whole truth with the roots still on it.

I run it in my head the whole drive to Willowbend General.

Not stay. I'm not asking her to stay. That's the mistake, that's the leash, and she's spent thirty years chewing out of leashes. No. She gets the truth and then she gets the choice. Claire. Rosie. All of it, no edits. What she does with it is hers.

A month is enough. Hell, one day is enough. I've watched this woman rebuild a man in less.

The ER doors hiss open and the cold hits me and I'm scanning for her before they finish, past triage, past the board, down the hall where the whiteboard —

Debbie Sue steps out from the nurses' station and plants herself in my path like a road closure.

"Owen."

"Hey. Is she on the floor? I need five minutes."

"Owen." Different voice.

I stop. Debbie Sue Monroe has three settings, loud, louder, and hugging, and she is using none of them. Her hands are knotted in front of her apron. Her eyes are doing something I've only ever seen on notification calls.

The flowers go heavy in my fist.

"Where is she."

"She's not here."

"When's her shift end? I'll wait in the lot, I don't care, I—"