by Shey Stahl
Smiling at them, I turn my head toward the window, the lights of the city flying by as we cruise back to the station. I can’t wait to get back. I need a damn shower and out of this turnout gear.
Cap grabs the radio in the front seat. “Truck 10 back in service.”
It’s a fact of life people will lie to themselves to believe what they want. I do it all the time. In fact, I’m pretty good at it. I border on arrogant half the time, but what most don’t see is what keeps me up at night.
And that’s why I can’t give myself to anyone. I don’t even have me, if that makes sense?
When you’re a firefighter, there’s no, “Hey man, you did you best.”
Failure in my mind is the end game, that destructive misery I won’t accept, and I fucking guarantee you every firefighter out there has that same unspoken fear. Some just hide it better than others.
Owen gives me a nod, his voice low so the other guys can’t hear him. “Seriously though, you’re sweating like crazy and it’s thirty degrees out. What gives?”
My only answer as I catch Evan’s gaze across from me is, “I’m hot.”
I stare at Evan but we say nothing to one another.
The radio crackles. “Truck 10, what’s your location?”
Cap pulls the radio down to his face, speaking gruffly into it. “900 block of E Denny Way and Broadway.”
“There’s reports of smoke coming from Granada Apartments. Cross streets of Howell and Belmont Ave.”
Cap flips on the lights, and we all sit up a little straighter knowing it’s time to go back to work. “Truck 10 en route.”
When we get there, the apartment building is burning bright, wrapped in fire and bellowing smoke from the fourth floor upwards.
Once we’re off the truck and reaching for our irons, there’s a man in the street, barefoot and screaming. “My daughter is in there with her boyfriend.”
“What floor?” I ask, masking up as soon as we bail out of the truck. It’s right then I realize my tank’s out of air from the bathroom incident.
Running to the side of the truck, I drop in a new cylinder of air and turn to the helpless man before me.
“Sixth! Third door from the stairs,” the man tells me, grabbing at my shoulders. “I couldn’t get to her. I could only get Macy out. Tara’s in her room. It’s the back bedroom at the end of the hallway.”
We force our way through the open door of the lobby and up the stairs to the right. Once on the sixth floor, two by two, the guys search apartments while Owen and I make our way to the third on from the stairs.
We crawl through the kitchen to the back of the apartment where the bedroom is. Though it’s filled with smoke, I can make out the shape of a body on the floor near the door, a girl, choked unconscious.
I pull her out and carry her down the stairs. When I have her on the street, I work on her, pumping her chest and breathing hard into her mouth. It’s too late. She’s gone, but the paramedics take over as the father who’s screaming in front of the building goes to rush inside.
“I’m going to kill him!” the father screams, taking Finn’s crowbar from him and heads to the front doors.
Scrambling from the ground, I rush to him and grab the crowbar. “Let’s think about this for a minute.” I don’t know who he’s going to kill, but he’s certainly not doing it with Finn’s crowbar.
Angry tears roll down the man’s soot-covered face. “Her boyfriend! He started this fire, and now she’s dead.”
I glance around, making a quick sweep of the bystanders, the ones covered in blankets and the girl now covered with a sheet and next to her, a toddler, also dead, succumbed to the smoke.
Adrenaline jolts through me, my heart racing with the question, “What boyfriend?”
He makes a jab at the apartment. “I hope he burns alive.”
I’m not about to let that happen, and neither are the guys. Mostly because if he did start this fire, he’s not going to burn in it. He’ll burn in jail where he can relive this night over and over again.
While Corbin gets a line on the fire to the north side of the apartment complex, me, Evan, Owen, and Finn rush back inside.
We search the floors, calling out “Seattle Fire Department” as we go until we come to one apartment at the end of the hall on six. There’s a boy in there, who’s maybe sixteen, slumped against the wall like he can’t move. He can. He’s there because maybe he thinks he doesn’t deserve to get out. I don’t know and don’t care. I haul him to his feet and help him outside, all the while, he cries against me.
When he falls from my arms, I pick him up and carry him out. Undeterred by him begging for me to leave him, I want to get him out and all of us to safety. Believe it or not, firefighters don’t rescue people because we have some sort of death wish. Sure, we’re crazy motherfuckers but dying in the flames isn’t exactly our idea of fun.
Once outside, the boy slumps against a paramedic who reaches for him, crying into his hands when he sees his girlfriend, I assume.
The father lunges for the boy, grabbing him by his burned shirt. “You son of a bitch! You took my kids from me all because I forbid you to see Macy!”
I don’t know if there’s truth to anything he’s saying and it’s not my job to. What I do know by looking at the boy is, just like that father who ran the red light with his son in the car, his life is forever altered by one moment in time he will never be able to change.
Though it’s a devastating reality, it’s life, and it happens around us whether we want it to or not.
“Did they make it?” Evan asks, bumping my shoulder, his helmet now in his hand.
Twisting my head, I glance over at the girl and her younger sister, their father clinging to their lifeless bodies.
“No.”
My eyes sting, and I draw a shaky breath. Calls don’t get to me much anymore. And then some nights, they do, and I never know when they will bother me It comes out of nowhere.
You have to realize, fuck, you gotta know life, the things you care about, they can be gone in the blink of an eye.
People die.
They die every day. One day they’re there and the next, they’re not.
I’m well aware that everything in my life can be taken from me. It’s why I’m this way. No attachments and fucking out my frustrations.
I see it with Owen. I live with the guy and still don’t know where he goes at night. Most of the time it’s some random woman’s bed, but remember when he asked if I was fucking away my demons?
He knows because he’s doing it himself.
I see it with Evan. Why do you think he won’t give Jacey a relationship, but he gives it to the ones he doesn’t care about?
It’s an endless cycle of a lifestyle we chose. And sadly, we live for it.
Believe it or not, there are firefighters out there who’ve never battled a fire other than in training exercises. Then there are the guys who battle them every day for thirty or forty years.
My point here? The more you fight fires, the more it changes you and becomes some sort of accelerant to your own lifestyle.
Unfortunately, you begin to crave it, as unhealthy as that is, no matter what the consequence is.
Just before shift change in the morning, Mila shows up at the firehouse with coffee in hand and I want to ask her to marry me. Do you believe me? Didn’t think so. I don’t want to marry her, but I’m thankful for her coming by the station. Not only for the coffee and donuts she brings but the distraction she provides back at my apartment later that morning.
IT’S NEARING FOUR before I emerge from my room, rubbing my eyes. I make my way to the fridge first and grab a beer.
That’s when I see Jacey’s on the couch watching television with the remote in her hand.
“Hey, sleepy head. Your girl went to get takeout, said she’d be back later.” She glances up at me. I’m shirtless and wearing a pair of sweatpants. “Put some fuckin’ clothes on.”
I toss the shirt in my hand at her
face. Flopping down on the couch, I crack open my beer. “Where’d she go to get takeout?”
“Chinese I think.”
Grabbing the shirt, I pull it over my shoulders about the time there’s a knock on the door.
Jacey smacks my chest. “You get it. I’m really comfortable.”
“You’re lazy.”
With a heavy sigh, and after I finish my beer, I answer the door. Only there’s nobody there. Stepping out in the hallway, I look down and see a three-foot kid at my feet staring up at me with tears in his eyes.
I glance back at Jacey. “There’s a kid at the door.”
Her eyes don’t move from the TV, uninterested. “Really?”
“Yeah.” Peeking down the hall, I’m thinking I’m going to find his parents looking for him, but there’s nobody out there. Just him.
“I bet he’s Owen’s bastard child. The mother probably dropped him off for him to raise.” And then she laughs, lying down on the couch and taking the spot I was just sitting. “It’s like that Adam Sandler movie.”
I roll my eyes and stare down at the child. He’s maybe two or three, and crying. Careful not to scare him, I kneel to his level. “What’s your name, buddy?”
He says nothing and cries harder and doesn’t answer.
“Okay.” I stand back up and look over at Jacey on the couch. “Don’t ask his name.”
Finally, she sits up and sees the boy. “He’s so cute.”
The boy notices Jacey and walks inside our apartment to fucking sit next to her on the couch.
Confused as to why we have a child inside the apartment with us, I grab my cell phone ready to call Kellan and report a missing child. “Do you think he’s lost?”
“I don’t know.” Jacey wraps her arm around him. “Ask him.”
Scratching the side of my head, I sit on the other side of him. “I don’t think he talks.”
Jacey gets up, goes into the kitchen and grabs him a cookie, and then gives him a blanket and holds him.
I stare at her, blankly. Suddenly she’s mothering him? “We can’t keep him. Stop making him comfortable.”
She actually looks sad. “Why can’t we?”
“Are you serious? He’s someone’s kid. And at some point, us having him in here would be considered kidnapping.”
“You’re being dramatic.”
“Am I?” I raise an eyebrow. “Do you want to go to jail?”
The boy looks from me to Jacey, and then back to me.
“Not really,” Jacey says. “Maybe you should call Kellan.”
Just as I’m about to, Mila walks in with two bags of takeout, sets them on the counter and then looks at Jacey, me, and then the boy.
“Who’s he?”
I smile and wrap my arm around the boy. “My son. Sorry I didn’t tell you.”
Mila’s eyes widen, and Jacey shakes her head, mumbling something indecipherable. “Seriously?”
“Yep.”
“Oh, okay.” And then she takes out the food like he’s no big deal that I kept something as monumental as a child from her for the last two weeks. Given we’re only fucking but still, wouldn’t something like that really piss a woman off?
The four of us, the boy included, are halfway through eating and I’m positive we’re all going to jail for kidnapping, when we hear a frantic mother screaming in the hallway, “Logan! Where are you?”
I look at the boy who has a mouth full of rice. “Is your name Logan?”
He doesn’t say anything.
The screaming gets louder and the mother’s knocking on doors. “Logan! Come to Mommy’s voice!”
I nudge the boy. “I think she’s looking for you, dude.”
Jacey goes to the door and lets the mother in. “Oh my God!” She grabs her chest, gasping. “Logan honey, you scared Mommy! Don’t ever go outside without telling me.”
Turns out Logan’s deaf and he didn’t understand a word we said to him.
His mother glances at the food and his shirt that’s covered in sweet and sour sauce he drank. “Did you feed him?”
I point to Jacey. “No, she did.”
Jacey kicks me but doesn’t say anything.
The mother leaves and Mila’s shaking her head and twirling noodles around chopsticks. “You’re such a liar.”
Flopping down on the couch, I shake my head in disbelief I had her going this long. “You actually believed me?”
“Well, yeah. You said he was yours.”
Jacey reaches for the box of cashew chicken and smiles. “Don’t believe anything Caleb says. Ninety percent of what he says is bullshit.”
Mila meets my eyes and then darts her stare back to her noodles. I know what she’s thinking. The things I say to her in the heat of the moment when her body is beneath mine and I say what I’m feeling. She wants to know if any of that is true but I can’t offer her much because I don’t know if it is. It might be.
“We should do this at your place,” I tell Mila. “There’s no privacy here.”
She laughs around the bite of noodles in her mouth. When she’s finished chewing, she replies with, “There’s no privacy at the place I’m staying. I’m sleeping on my friend’s couch.” Mila smiles and then takes an egg roll from another container, dips it in sweet and sour sauce and takes a bite, her lips wrapping around the width of the fried roll.
She’s got my attention and I’m staring. Flatout fucking staring.
“What?” she asks, chewing carefully, looking at me like I’ve lost my mind.
I wink. “You look good with your mouth full.”
Jacey drops her chopsticks. “I’ve lost my appetite.”
I certainly haven’t. I haul Mila up off the floor and up to my room just to show her how good her mouth looks when it’s full.
With my dick in it.
Overhauling
Late stage in fire-suppression during which the burned area is carefully examined for remaining sources of heat that may re-kindle the fire. Often coincides with salvage operations to prevent further loss to structure or its contents, as well as fire-cause determination and preservation of evidence.
“Mila, what happened in the penthouse suite?” my father asks, staring at his phone in his hand. “Why is it being remodeled again?”
A heaviness settles in my chest. I knew I couldn’t escape this for long. “There was a water leak in the bathroom.” Not a lie on my part. The toilet had been smashed with a baseball bat. So yeah, leak in the bathroom.
My father lifts his intimidating gray eyes to mine. “And the windows?”
I can’t lie to him any longer. It won’t get me anywhere. “Shade was the last guest to stay in the suite, and he did some damage to the room,” I finally tell him, the pit in my stomach growing with each word. “But he’s paying for the damage and I’ve got it under control.”
His lips press into a thin line. “Mila, if you can’t handle our guests, I need to know so I can. I understand Shade’s a VIP and your friend, but I don’t want the integrity of my hotel at risk because of him and his parties.”
I get where my father is coming from. I do. This is his hotel. The last thing he wants is some motorcycle racer destroying it despite him paying for the damages.
Nodding, I clear my throat. “I understand, Dad. But I assure you, I have it under control.”
In the distance, I notice Heather at the front desk, watching our interaction. Dismissing her, I focus on my father.
“I’m trusting you,” he says, walking away from me.
He’s trusting me? While I know he does, why do I get the feeling the comment’s out of context?
Probably because I’m sneaking around this very hotel fucking a firefighter in the most awkward of places and I’m paranoid as shit. Might have something to do with that. Or not.
Can you believe it’s been four days since I’ve heard from Caleb. Four. He hasn’t shown up at the hotel, and I’m too much of a chickenshit to go over to his apartment. Alone that is. Mostly because I’m afraid
if he hasn’t come by the hotel, maybe he doesn’t want to see me.
I even went by the fire station to see if he was there and he wasn’t.
Did he move away?
Maybe it was me pressing for information about him? I shouldn’t have done that.
The dude’s secretive, I know that much, but still. I have what he wants. Don’t I?
Or maybe the thrill of the chase is gone and me bringing takeout was too much?
Goddamn it, I hate girl emotions.
You want to know where all this curiosity got me?
Stalking Caleb.
And by “stalking,” I mean scaling the side of a building and nearly getting arrested. Not exactly my brightest moves but when a firefighter who can get you off the way he does is involved, you tend to go to extreme measures.
So this is where I complicate my life further. As if that’s needed.
After I’m done at work, I pick up Scarlet, who had the day off. She thinks we’re going to dinner with Izzy. She thinks wrong.
“Will you help me with something tonight?” I ask once she’s in my car.
She gives me a muddled expression and then shrugs. “That depends. Does it involve flying to Pasadena and seeing Shade?”
“No, sadly, it doesn’t.”
There’s a frown forming and I know any minute she’s going to deny me, so I’m quick to add in there, “You might get arrested.”
I know how to play my cards with her.
“Count me in then. It’s been years since I’ve spent the night in jail.”
Scarlet’s the easy part of the plan. Convincing Scarlet to do anything illegal is easy because she has this obsession with wanting to be arrested. Not only is she in love with Shade, but she has a thing for cops too.
Then we pick up little Izzy Bizzy. Her last name isn’t Bizzy, but as far as I’m concerned, it should be.
Izzy’s outside, arguing with some guy. When she gets in my car, she all but slams the door. “Can you believe he thinks I work this corner?”
Scarlet smiles. “You mean as in—”
Shamefully nodding, Izzy doesn’t let her finish. “Yep.”
“How do you feel about that?” I ask her, watching her neighbor depart. “He thinks you’re a hooker.”
