Page 77 of Falling for My Grumpy Fireman

"Nellie." Soft. He sets my whole clinical argument down in the grass like a plate he's done with. "I didn't come out here to talk about my leg. I—"

It's in my throat. All of it. The folder from Kerrville, the little gray circle on the printout, the vitamins on my counter. Owen, I'm. Two words. His hand comes up toward my face and I lean in, God help me, I lean in, and my lips part—

Every pager in the yard goes off at once.

Not one. Not two. All of them, a wall of tones screaming out of belts and truck dashboards and the kitchen windowsill, and under it every firefighter's phone starts detonating in every pocket.

Owen's head snaps toward the house. Tater's already moving, radio to his ear, and I hear it crackle across thirty feet of dark grass.

"—structure fire, the old feed mill, River Road, fully involved on arrival, exposures on the north side, all units, repeat, ALL units, mutual aid en route—"

The yard empties in forty seconds. I've timed codes my whole career and I have never seen anything like it. Grown men set down plates mid-bite and run. Rey scoops Bree up out of the path of them like she weighs nothing and tucks her against Sadie. Debbie's already got the twins by the collars, already got her ER face on, because a working fire means my board fills up in an hour.

Owen doesn't run. Not yet.

He takes my face in both hands.

"This conversation isn't over."

"Owen, your leg—"

He kisses me. Hard, fast, in front of God and the whole scattering yard, his thumbs at my jaw, and then he's gone, cutting across the grass toward Tater's truck at a dead run like there was never a rod put in that leg, and the taillights tear out of the drive.

I stand alone under the string lights with paper plates blowing across the empty yard.

And I watch him go, this man I love, running full speed toward the exact thing that widowed him. The thing that put a ring on a chain around his neck. The thing that made him wake up screaming a dead woman's name in my bed.

He didn't hesitate. Not one second. He never will. That's who he is, and no counselor, no baby, no woman standing in a yard is ever going to change it.

My hand finds my stomach.

That. That is why he can never know.

Because men who run toward fires leave people standing in yards. And I will not raise a child waiting in one.

Debbie comes off the porch with her keys, scrubs already half on, and stops when she sees my face.

"Nellie."

"I'm right behind you," I say. "They'll need every nurse tonight."

She goes. And I stand one more second in the lantern light, listening to sirens gather on the far side of town like a storm rolling in, and I make the coldest decision of my life with the taste of him still on my mouth.

I'm not leaving Saturday.

I'm leaving tonight.

Chapter twenty-three

All Personnel Accounted For

OWEN

Nine forty p.m. The mill is already lost when we round the bend on River Road

Fire owns the whole east wall. Windows glowing top to bottom, smoke rolling black and greasy off the roofline, and under all of it that sound. A low roar, steady, like the building is breathing through its teeth.

Sixty years of grain dust in there. Every rafter, every crack in the floor. That place quit being a building the second fire got inside. Now it's a bomb with a lit fuse, and nobody on this road knows how long the fuse is.