“That is not his girlfriend.”

“Close enough. Word is, they’re almost engaged.”

It had to be Amy. Perfectly nice, nothing-wrong-with-her Amy. The very image of clean, ironed femininity. She was wearing a pink tank top and khaki shorts.

I hated her on sight.

“Amy?” I said, stepping closer.

She looked up, but she didn’t know me. Of course. What did she even see in that moment? Some grimy, sooty, filthy, sweaty female in a firefighter’s uniform. The sight of me seemed to shock her a little.

I could tell she had no interest in talking to me. I seemed like nobody to her.

To everybody in the room, actually.

“I thought you moved to California,” I said, bewildered by this turn of events.

She looked around, like, Who is this? “I’m home on vacation.”

“Why are you here?”

In the second that followed, the whole room, including me, wondered if I had the right to ask her that question. But then she answered it anyway. “Colleen called me.”

It felt so weirdly disloyal of Colleen. She knew Owen was with Christabel now—even if Christabel didn’t exist. And even if nobody in this room seemed to recognize her without her poofy hair and hanky dress.

It pinched my heart to remember that night.

I turned back to the captain. “I need to see him.”

“You can’t.”

But I did need to see him. Who cared about hospital rules?

I moved toward the ICU doors, but then I felt the captain’s hand clamp my arm.

I’ll tell you something. I’m strong, but the captain is stronger. No way was I getting out of that grip.

Now I was right next to ex-girlfriend Amy, close enough to confirm that she was exactly as garden-variety as the rookie had claimed, and the whole crowd was craning to see what would happen next.

I didn’t know what would happen next.

I couldn’t make sense of things. The whole situation felt like a dream—or more like a nightmare. Nothing felt real. Keys jangled. Voices murmured. The ex-girlfriend stared at me like I’d escaped from the loony bin.

Only a few things were clear:

DeStasio had blamed me for everything he did—and everyone who mattered believed him.

I was suspended from my job. And I was going to need a lawyer.

My mother was dying. My dad was three thousand miles away.

And Owen, my Owen, the one guy who was always on my side, was on a ventilator. In a medically induced coma. With a fifty-fifty shot at survival.

“I just need to see him,” I said in a voice that I didn’t even recognize. “Please.”

“Hanwell, you’re exhausted,” the captain said. “We’re all exhausted. Go home and get some rest.”

“I need your help,” I said to the captain.

But he was already shaking his head. “I can’t help you. There’ll be an investigation, and whatever happens will happen.”

“Not with that,” I said. “I need to see the rookie.”

“No can do,” he said in a voice like, We’ve been over this.

I wasn’t getting anywhere.

Time to do something really brave.

I took a deep breath. “I love him,” I told the captain.

He frowned at me. “Who?”

“The rookie!”

“Everybody loves the rookie,” he said.

“No,” I stared at him, like, I. Love. Him.

But the captain wasn’t having it. “Come on, Hanwell. Keep it together. Now’s not the time to develop a crush on the rookie.”

I stood up straighter. “It’s not a crush,” I said. And then, knowing exactly how ridiculous these words would sound to the captain and every single other person in the room, including the guys on our crew, and even myself, I said, as steadily as I could, “When I say I love him, I mean I am in love with him.”

The crowd burst out with gasps and whispers and cries of, “What?”

A mixed reaction, but I’d say the general consensus was that I’d just made myself the butt of every joke forever.

I could read the captain’s response in his face. We never should have hired a girl.

No way out but through. “That,” I said, gesturing at Amy, “is not his girlfriend. I am his girlfriend. It’s not a crush. And I’m not the one who started it, either.”

The captain frowned. “Are you telling me that you and the rookie fell in love with each other on C-shift? In my firehouse?”

Knowing that I was pretty much ending my run in the Lillian FD by confessing this—no matter what happened with DeStasio’s report—I nodded.

He shook his head. “What the hell were you thinking?”

But I had to call him on that. “Are you really going to stand there—you, married thirty-six years, a guy who’d do anything for his wife and his four kids—and tell me that love doesn’t matter?”

That got his attention.

“When I say I’m in love with him,” I went on, my voice shaking, “I mean that he’s the person I want to marry and spend my life with. He’s the person who makes everything else matter. But I never told him that. I was afraid of losing my job. Or of losing the guys’ respect. I know what you all think, that love is weakness—because I thought it, too, and I never questioned it. But I’ll tell you something, as of today I know for sure that it’s the opposite. I would have lifted that entire building off the ground to get the rookie out of there today, and I will do the same to get into that ICU right now.”

The captain closed his eyes and shook his head.

“I need to see him,” I said, my voice starting to crumble.

“Oh, no,” the captain said. “Do not cry.”

“I’m not crying,” I said, as I wiped my face.

Worse and worse. My captain from Austin’s words ticker-taped through my head: Don’t have feelings. Don’t talk about them, don’t explore them, and whatever you do, don’t cry.

I never cry, I’d said. So cocky. Just begging for life to teach me different.

“Women,” the captain said, taking in the sight of me, shaking his head. “This is what I’m saying.”

I stepped closer. “No. Don’t do that. Don’t roll your eyes. Help me get in, or tell me to go home, but don’t stand there blocking the door while the rookie is fighting for his life and act like caring about other human beings doesn’t matter.”

The captain blinked. Then he cleared his throat. Then he said, “Fair enough.”

For a second, I thought he was going to help me get in.

But then he just sighed and said, “Hanwell, go home.”

Twenty-seven

I WENT, BUT not willingly.

I went, but only because the captain steered me by the elbow down to the parking lot and made a highly compelling argument that whatever had happened at the fire, and whatever my feelings about the rookie might or might not be, and regardless of whether human connection actually had any meaning, the rookie’s parents needed all their strength and all their focus—and no distractions—if they were going to get him through this alive.

“So I’m a distraction?”

“You are a massive distraction.”