He opened his eyes and took in the sight of me with a look I could really only describe as blissed out.

“Come on, man! You’re going to get me fired!” I stepped to the bathroom to run the shower, and when I came back in, he was just standing there, again, still, totally naked, fumbling for his pants. “Oh my God,” I said, slapping my hand over my eyes. “You’re so naked.”

“That tends to happen when you take off your clothes.”

I peeked through my fingers. “Do you want to know how many naked men I’ve had in this room?”

“Not really.”

“Zero!”

“Until today.”

“Until today.”

“You’re naked, too,” he pointed out as he buckled his pants. “Under that blanket.”

“We’re going to be late,” I said, back to business, “both of us, at the same time. They’ll totally know what happened.”

“They will not. I have a legendary poker face.”

“I don’t!” I was panting just a little. “Neither of us is ever late! Both of us late—together? We’re screwed.”

“Don’t panic,” he insisted, all chill. “I’ll text the captain. I’ll tell him your car broke down and I’m giving you a ride.”

Actually, that was a good idea.

Plausible, at any rate.

“Go take your shower,” he said then. “I’ll make coffee.” I started to turn, but then he said, “Wait! One quick thing!”

And then he was beside me, no shirt, no shoes, and he was wrapping his arms around me and the blanket. He pressed his face into my hair at the crook of my neck. “Thank you,” he said then. “For everything.”

* * *

THE GUYS DID not suspect us.

If they had, they would have teased us mercilessly. I waited for it all day, but it never happened.

So I just did what I do best: ignored the rookie and did my job.

It was a week before Owen would have a chance to talk to his dad, so we’d have at least two full shifts of doing this before anything changed. Whatever “this” was. It wasn’t dating, that was for sure. I’d forbidden him to come near me again until this whole situation was resolved. I guess we were just keeping a shared secret. Or maybe nurturing a mutual crush. Or having flashbacks—luxurious, shocking, delicious flashbacks—of that glorious night in my attic room and the way the breeze had ruffled the pom-pom curtains.

Or maybe quietly, without even doing anything at all, we were just making each other happy.

It was weird to feel happy—especially when there was so much trouble and sorrow around us. But I just couldn’t seem to help it.

So I let it be what it was. I let it alter my experience of being on shift in ways that didn’t matter and ways that did. I was supposed to be a robot, but I’d become the opposite of that. Instead of metal and machinery inside my rib cage, it was music and motion and color. It was grief about my mother, and euphoria about Owen, and hope for the future and regret for the past—all swirling together in some relentless symphony.

Distracting.

I wasn’t sure it made me bad at my job, though.

If anything, it seemed to make me better—more committed, more alert. More alive.

It wasn’t easier. It was harder.

But it was better.

I made it through a whole week like that, trying to let everything that had happened soak in and start making sense in my head. It did and it didn’t, and my mom insisted that was okay. That’s just how the heart worked, she said—more in circles than straight lines.

Owen kindly respected my wishes and did not come to see me on our days off.

But he called every night at bedtime.

And I’d lie in my attic bedroom on the phone like the hopeful teenager I’d never really had a chance to be, my bare feet against the window, watching the moon through the curtains for hours, as we talked ourselves to sleep.

* * *

THEN, DURING THE last shift before Owen would explain everything to his dad and officially resign, we got a call for a structure fire.

This was not a little garage fire on the edge of town. This was a grocery store, right in the middle, and a fire that had started in the early hours of the morning and built momentum until sunrise, when the manager witnessed a black column of smoke rising from the roof as he pulled in to work.

When we arrived, a crowd already lined the road. We were the first crew on scene.

This was a big fire.

The sight of a blazing structure fire is really mesmerizing. There are always crowds, and the crowds are stupider than you might think. Sometimes they harass the firefighters, sometimes they try to help, sometimes they try to get close up to take selfies.

We took a few minutes to assess the situation.

We were going to need backup. Lots of it.

The captain called in a second alarm. The fire chief was already en route, but he was headed in from Central, farther away. We got word from dispatch that Station Three was also on the way. Gloucester, too.

The unventilated building had spent the morning smoldering, filling with dark smoke. It was a 1960s-style box store with one entrance of glass doors at the front, and probably a door and a loading bay at the back. Windows don’t break until temperatures get to around five hundred degrees, and the row of windows across the front of the store was still intact.

It was a pretty simple layout, but what made the scene complicated was that road access to the front and the back of the store was interrupted by a solid concrete block wall. The front opened onto a highway, but you could only get to the back of the store by going around the block to a backstreet.

From the looks of the smoke, the fire was concentrated toward the back.

The captain grabbed three guys—Tiny, Case, and Six-Pack—to drive around back, closer to the source. He ordered me, DeStasio, and Owen to stay in front with the ambulance, manage the crowd, and direct the chief and all backup crews around back when they arrived. “This is a defensive fire,” the captain said as they loaded up, pointing at us. “No interior operations.”

Meaning, Don’t go inside.

No argument from me. That building was a deathtrap.

We waited out front, the three of us, but kept busy. The rookie kept an eye on the crowd, I manned the radio, and DeStasio went to inspect the building.

I don’t remember now how we divvied up those jobs. I don’t remember any discussion. Though later, I would find myself wishing that DeStasio had taken any other job at all.

Because as DeStasio inspected the entryway and the windows, he saw something that would change all our lives.

He saw a little boy inside the building.

Bystanders falsely see “someone in the building” all the time.

The smoke, the heat, the way it bends the air—it can make you see things. You can think you see a face at the window, but it’s only smoke. You can think you hear someone screaming Help! but it’s only a whistle of steam. Panic can crimp your mind. I’ve seen it happen over and over and heard plenty of stories. When a civilian says there’s someone in the building, you say thanks and keep on doing what you’re doing.

But when a firefighter says it, that’s a whole different thing.

DeStasio showed back up out of breath. Like he’d been running. And firefighters never run. “You saw him, right?” DeStasio said. “You saw him?”