by Zoe York
Adam waved and moved to make a beeline for the bartender, but Seth yelled out, “Graduation boy does not buy his own drinks.”
“Graduation man, you mean,” Adam said, pivoting to join them. “And I’ll have a beer, in that case.”
The next person to stick into him about Isla wasn’t one of his brothers, but Kerry. When Owen got up to get the next round of drinks, his wife slid across the couch and perched herself right in front of Adam. “So…”
“Not you, too.”
“She’s really nice.”
“She was my boss.”
Kerry shrugged. “Operative word: was.”
“It’s not like that. She…” He dropped his voice. He liked Kerry, a lot, and trusted her to parse this information appropriately back to Owen. To shut down the chatter. “She got divorced last year. It was messy. She’s not in a place for a relationship, but even if she was, it wouldn’t be with a guy like me.”
“What does that mean?” Kerry looked genuinely offended on his behalf. “You’re a catch.”
“I’m a work in progress.”
“Aren’t we all,” she said breezily.
Owen returned carrying four bottles of beer. The bartender followed behind with a shot of tequila for Josh and a gin and tonic for Kerry.
Adam’s oldest brother looked at them both suspiciously. “Aren’t we all what?”
“Works in progress,” Adam and Kerry said simultaneously.
Adam needed to change the subject. “Is it too early to think about dinner? Graduation man wants a steak.”
Dinner passed without any more grilling over his friend showing up. But it still took Adam a long time to fall asleep that night. He tossed and turned, consumed by thoughts of his brothers. By the little comments that got under his skin, and the wildly different ways he and Josh had dealt with the older three.
It was like there was a gulf between them, Owen and Will and Seth having raised Adam after their parents died a year apart, their father suffering a catastrophic heart attack when Adam was eleven, their mother dying of what Adam had always thought of as a broken heart a year later. Josh had been a minor, too, but at fourteen, he had escaped the parental triad somehow. Rejected them in that role. Tolerated Owen as his legal guardian until he turned eighteen, and then he popped smoke.
Adam had clung to his brothers instead. He hadn’t moved out of Owen’s house until he was twenty. He’d relished his role as a young uncle to Owen’s daughter Becca, and justified his prolonged presence as in part for her. He was her uncle, sure, but also a de facto older brother.
Which made Owen his father figure.
For every moment that Owen’s over-protective instincts grated on Adam, there were just as many moments where Adam had wanted that—wanted all of them at his graduation, needed their help moving him home.
That was always the way it was for Adam. A double-edged sword. He missed his brothers when he was away from them, but as soon as he saw them, his skin itched like he knew their gentle criticisms, their loving criticisms, would inevitably follow. He was always going to be picked on because he was the baby.
They loved him so much it hurt sometimes.
Chapter Four
The Pine Harbour Emergency Services building was an impressive three-story building, newly built on the edge of town. It backed onto forested snowmobile trails, and on the other side of those woods stood Mac’s Diner, which had previously been the “edge of town” landmark. Beyond that stretched the small rural community where Adam had been born and raised, not much more than a Main Street and a dozen blocks of residential buildings before a visitor would hit the hill running down to the harbour.
He loved this town and longed to return to it whenever he left.
And now he was formally charged with protecting it from fire and other unexpected disasters.
This wasn’t his first time reporting to work at this building. He spent a year on the volunteer fire brigade before leaving for an accelerated firefighter training program in the city. But this was the first time he would get paid for it, and a thread of doubt was loosely stitched right through his midsection—that he wasn’t ready for this, that it was too much responsibility.
That he was still, at twenty-nine, too young for this.
Which was objectively just not true. Most of his classmates had been almost ten years younger than him. Only in Pine Harbour, where he’d gotten into a fair amount of trouble after his parents died, was he still seen as the Kincaid Kid.
It wasn’t even like anyone thought he was still a troublemaker. They hadn’t even bought him as a troublemaker back then. He’d simply been following his brother Josh around, so it had been excused. Adjusting to being raised by his older brothers. He was a good kid who would eventually grow up.
So he’d joined the army, following in the footsteps of Owen, Will, and Seth.
Josh had gone in a different direction, but now they were both back in town—and both living with Will.
More than a decade had passed, and they were both still figuring their lives out.
Technically, Josh didn’t live with Will. He’d bought a garage down at the harbour and was restoring it. There was an apartment behind the garage, but it was, well, an apartment behind a mechanic’s garage, and hadn’t been updated in thirty years. So it wasn’t entirely habitable, and more than a year after returning, Josh didn’t seem to be in a big rush to make the apartment his proper home. All he cared about was the garage, and his growing clientele for customized muscle cars.
But Josh wasn’t Adam’s problem.
Adam was Adam’s problem. Like figuring out why he was still standing in the parking lot, even though his first shift started in ten minutes and he wanted to be early.
A familiar truck crunched into the gravel parking lot.
Had he been waiting, on some subconscious level, for Owen to arrive? Adam had checked. They would both be at work today, although technically his brother wasn’t his supervisor. Owen ran the whole building and managed the paramedics who worked out of it.
The fire department was managed separately. They had one pumper truck stationed here, a single team of four firefighters switching out every twenty-four hours. Other teams were stationed at the base of the peninsula, and there were volunteer brigades to the north and south.
Emergency services on the peninsula was a complicated quilt, always on the edge of not having enough funding and needing to augment with volunteer services. Pine Harbour had lucked out with getting this building constructed and they all knew it.
And now two Kincaid brothers, the oldest and the youngest, worked here.
“Did you just arrive?” Owen asked, grabbing his coffee and backpack from the passenger seat.
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“You nervous?”
“Nope.”
Owen chucked him on the shoulder. “Liar. We’re all nervous at first.”
Adam wasn’t sure if he believed his brother. The only thing Owen had ever been outwardly nervous about in his whole life was personal shit. Falling in love with Kerry had done a number on him. Having Becca, and then Becca having Charlie… but work stuff?
Of course, Adam had only been a kid when Owen had started his career in emergency services. Maybe a lifetime ago, Owen had been nervous. It better not take Adam two decades to lose the “what the fuck” feeling inside his chest. He rolled his eyes—maybe at himself, maybe at his brother—and followed Owen inside.
He’d met two of the three firefighters he would be working with the other day, when he came in to sign his contract and get his certifications photocopied. Stan and Denise were both twenty years into their careers, contemporaries of Owen’s, and Adam had a sneaking suspicion they were going to treat him with kid gloves for a while.
That was fine, he would prove himself in time.
But the real challenge would be winning over Richard, who drove for their team. He’d been a firefighter for thirty-five years, and could retire any time.
; The first thing he told Adam was that his retirement wasn’t going to happen any time soon. The second was that Richard didn’t see anything wrong with the way they’d always been doing things, which Adam took to be a reference to the fact they used to send out a truck with just two or three firefighters, and round out their numbers with volunteers.
If there had been any doubt about what Richard meant, he came back to it again and again over the course of their shift. By the time the four of them sat down to a dinner Stan had made, twelve hours into their day, Adam had run out of ways to say, “I hear you, but I’m glad to be on the team.”
He couldn’t deny there were people who had been on the volunteer brigade a lot longer than he had. But none of them had taken a year to do the required training to be become a full-time firefighter. None of them had shared a two-bedroom apartment with three other people and counted every last penny so their savings stretched over the entire year in the city.
He’d earned this position, and he would demonstrate his value to the team in time.
Or now, because as soon as dinner ended, the alarm went off. They’d had two callouts earlier in the day for minor problems, but the report coming in over the radio was that this was a three-alarm blaze at a rural home.
Fifteen seconds after the call came in, Adam dropped down the pole and sprinted to where his gear waited next to the fire truck.
After a year of intense training, this drill was unconscious routine. He kicked off his shoes and stepped into his boots, already inside his pants. The straps came up next, over his shoulders. Once the pants were on, the balaclava hood went next. Finally the coat, his thumbs sliding into the protective cuffs. His gloves, helmet, and breathing apparatus would all go on in the truck.
Less than a minute later, they were buckled in, barking the all-clear to Richard so he could get them to the scene.
A ladder truck met them at the farm, both arriving at the same time, and they worked together to account for all members of the family and get the kitchen fire extinguished. They managed to confine the damage to one part of the home, and while it looked devastating, Adam knew they’d saved the structure from complete disaster.
It was late in the night when they were cleared to leave. “Pine Harbour Pumper 2, heading back to station,” Richard reported to dispatch.
“Roger Pumper 2.”
Back at the station, Richard backed the truck in, then they all unbuckled and climbed out. Their gear needed to be sorted out, scrubbed off, and reset for the next call.
“Kincaid,” Richard barked out.
Adam stopped and turned.
“Good job, kid. Welcome to the team.”
It was a win. It wasn’t the end goal—the kid was still there, tagged on as always—but he grabbed onto the praise with both hands. “Thanks. That means a lot.”
Adam: First shift done.
Isla: How’d it go?
Adam: It was busy. We had a kitchen fire. Saved the house, though.
Isla: Good job.
She didn’t call him kid. Maybe she would have once upon a time, but not anymore.
Isla: Are you going to sleep now?
Adam: As soon as Will leaves for school. He’s noisy to live with. I need to find my own place. That’s on my agenda for tomorrow.
Down the hall, Adam heard Will’s shower turn off. His brother had a really nice new-build home that had more than enough space for Adam and Josh to crash, but the bedrooms were all right next to each other.
Maybe he could move into the basement for the days when he had to sleep post-shift.
Or maybe he could just find his own damn home. He was on his second real career. He had sorted his shit out, and knew what he would be doing for the rest of his adult life.
That unexpected realization—that he was now, finally, in the position that Will and Owen had been in for years—carried him off to sleep, and when he woke up in the mid-afternoon, his first call was to the local credit union.
“I’d like to make an appointment to speak to a mortgage advisor,” he said.
It would be good to do, just to get his ducks in a row. Find out how much money he might need to save up so he could buy his own place.
“Do you want to come in today?”
“I was thinking in a few weeks,” he said before he realized how that sounded.
The woman on the other end of the line laughed kindly. “Sure, did you want to make an appointment?”
“You know what? Today is just fine.”
He made himself a quick sandwich, using up the last of Will’s sliced ham, then made a grocery list and headed out the door.
The bank was his first stop. It turned out the financial advisor had gone through school with Josh, and she knew all about Adam being the new hire on the fire department.
“Based on your salary, you can qualify for a mortgage for this amount,” she said, scribbling a figure on a notepad. “Now let me look at your savings account…”
Adam winced. It wasn’t significant anymore. He’d had a small inheritance from his parents, and then brought back a decent amount of money from his overseas tour—when other guys had spent their per diem allowance, Adam had socked every cent away. He’d more gradually added to that savings over the last few years. But then he’d gone away to school and spent a good chunk of it to get him back home with a real career. “I may not have enough now for a down payment…”
She grabbed a pamphlet. “There are some programs for first-time home buyers who want to borrow against their retirement accounts.”
Adam had that. It had been the first thing Owen made him do when he turned eighteen, and he’d kept up with the maximum contributions ever since. “I don’t want to touch that.”
“It wouldn’t need to be for long. Let me show you what a repayment plan might also look like.”
He frowned. “This seems too easy.”
“Home ownership is a big step, but for someone in your position, you have options.” More numbers scribbled on the pad. “Basically, you’re pre-approved for this amount of lending, and it could be a mortgage or a secure line of credit. And that’s my card if you have any questions.”
Was this what it was like on the other side of a full-time job? People just gave you access to piles of money so you could buy a house?
Piles of money one would have to pay back, with interest, over twenty-five years. He knew enough not to be stupid about this decision.
Adam’s head spun with the realization he could actually get his own place. He thought about it all the way to Wiarton, where he did a big grocery shop, because three grown men sharing a fridge meant it needed to be restocked with shocking regularity.
Becca: Are you awake yet? Dad says your first shift was yesterday. How did it go? Tell me everything!
He grinned and called his niece, who had recently moved to Vancouver with her boyfriend, a rookie in the NHL, and their baby. His great-nephew, Charlie, babbled in his ear as soon as Becca answered. “Hang on,” she shouted from across a room. “I’m just grabbing Charlie a snack. Then I want to hear all about it.”
Adam had been nine when his big brother—who looked like a man and had already joined the army reserves—told the family he was getting married and having a baby. Their mother had cried. That was the clearest memory Adam had from that night. Their father had muttered something about “the boy would sort it out”, and he’d been so confused, because Owen wasn’t a boy, hadn’t really been as long as Adam had known him, except for those fuzzy first memories when all of his brothers had been skinny beanpoles of varying heights.
But by the time Adam hit elementary school and memories cemented, Owen was always coming and going, driving four wheelers by himself, and then a car.
And then a baby.
Becca. Who now had a baby herself, because life was funny like that.
When their parents died, Owen sold their family home, divided up their parents’ estate into five small nest eggs, and bought a smaller bungalow with his own inherita
nce—a hell of a tight place to grow up, with a toddler girl running around half the time.
But that toddler girl had imprinted on him. Half-niece, half-the-sister-he-never-had, who understood his complicated relationship with his older brothers in a way nobody else ever could. In some ways, his brothers tied him to Becca’s age, not his own. In their mind, he was still nineteen, not twenty-nine going on thirty.
“Okay,” Becca said breathlessly, taking the phone away from her babbling kidlet. “How was your first shift? Did Dad embarrass you?”
That made Adam laugh. “Nah, he was great. Saw him at the start of the day, and then a few times as we passed each other. But there is a guy on my team who is going to be a similar, gotta-prove-myself type of challenge.”
“Just ignore them.”
Easier said than done. “Yeah.”
“Are you happy to be home?”
“Very. How about you? Happy to be away from home?”
“Very. And it’s almost time for a Mommy and Me yoga class, so I’m going to pick you up.” Adam guessed she was talking to Charlie. “And we’ll pick up Uncle Adam, too, and then we’ll ask him about the pretty lady who came to his graduation.”
Adam grunted a not-surprised laugh under his breath. “Who told you?”
“All of them. Kerry was most excited of all, but Seth snapped a picture, so he won the gossip title.”
Curiosity definitely won out over annoyance. “If there’s a photo, I want to see it.”
“I’ll forward it in a minute. Who is she?”
“They didn’t tell you that part?”
“Well, sort of. They said you used to work together in the army. But she made you cookies? That’s different.”
“Her name is Isla, and she’s very nice. Very different. And she’s getting over a difficult divorce, so don’t get any ideas.”
“Rebound relationships are—”
“Doomed to fail?”
“Exciting and hot.”
He groaned. “I don’t need to know what you think is hot.”
