Page 30 of Igniting Her

“Four days,” Ellie said.

“What?”

“Until A shift is back.” She picked up her jacket. “Just confirming the calendar still exists under incident command.”

“It does.”

“And between now and then?”

Cassie’s expression closed. “I’ll contact you.”

There it was: control extending beyond the bedroom and trying to occupy the days around it. Ellie could have refused. Instead, she slipped into her jacket. “Copy, Captain.”

Heat moved through Cassie’s eyes before discipline extinguished it. The reaction was small, involuntary, and entirely worth the risk. Ellie opened the door. The air outside smelled rinsed clean. Her car waited at the curb beneath a dripping eucalyptus, exactly where she had abandoned it in the storm.

“Ridge.”

She looked back.

Cassie stood at the end of the hall, one hand braced lightly against the wall. “Drive carefully.” Not a term. Not quite an order.

Ellie nodded and stepped into the rain. She meant every agreement that protected the job. She would not expose them. She would not turn a fireground into a private argument or use desire to bargain with rank. She wouldn’t ask about Cassie’s past again.

That didn’t mean the rules had won.

Privately, Ellie intended to outlast every one of them.

On the drive down the hill, she considered the difference between a rule and a warning. Foster homes had given her plenty of both. Some rules meant this is how we keep everyone safe. Others meant do not get comfortable enough to leave your mark. Adults had often used the same voice for each and expected a child to know which one she was hearing.

Cassie’s terms contained both meanings. The station rule was safety; Ellie would defend it as hard as Cassie did. No questions was a boundary, and Ellie had given her word. But no mornings, no future, no evidence left in a kitchen: those were exit signs installed before the room had even properly opened.

Ellie would not tear them down. She knew too well what it cost when someone treated another person’s defenses like an obstacle course. She could wait until Cassie looked at her own walls and decided whether they still belonged there. Patience had never been Ellie’s defining virtue. Apparently, wanting Cassie was going to make her develop it despite herself.

The next ninety-six hours passed without a message.

Ellie ran along the waterfront the first morning and checked her phone before her shower, after it, and twice while making breakfast. She bought groceries she didn’t need, did laundry twice, and accepted a drink with Teak near the harbor without mentioning the address Teak had provided or why Ellie now knew Cassie’s house smelled faintly of cedar. At night, she remembered the weight of Cassie behind her and the careful way warm cloth had moved over her skin afterward.

She didn’t text.

The rule had not forbidden it. That made restraint more necessary, not less. Cassie had said she would make contact, and Ellie refused to turn waiting into pursuit simply because waiting exposed every old nerve she owned. By the fourth morning, silence had become its own form of contact: present in every room, charged by everything neither of them had done. She walked into Station 12 at 6:37 and found Captain Everett reviewing the duty board.

“Morning, Ridge.”

“Captain.”

Nothing shifted in Cassie’s face. Ellie kept walking.

Mo handed her a mug at the long table. Teak was complaining about a movie Jamie had chosen during the previous shift. Priya had brought muffins and was pretending not to notice Mo relocating the blueberry ones to his side of the table. The station received Ellie in the same untidy warmth it always did.

Across the room, Cassie capped her marker and called the crew together. “Teak and Priya, medical. Jamie, backup on the engine. Ridge, nozzle. Mo, I want the aerial waterway checked before eight.”

Ellie drank her coffee. “Yes, Captain.” The title contained nothing anyone else could hear. At apparatus check, they were flawless strangers. Ellie stepped into her turnout pants to inspect the suspenders, closures, and knee reinforcements. Cassie moved down the row with the clipboard, checking dates and asking the same clipped questions of everyone. When she reached Ellie, her eyes stayed on the gear.

“Glove liners?”

“Intact.”

“PASS alarm?”