Don’t Fall (Storm Season #1)

Chapter 1

ONE

NORTH

“No. Absolutely fucking not.”

I freeze, then grimace, turning slowly in an attempt to give puppy dog eyes, but the little beast on my shoulder isn’t going to let me get away with anything.

“CAW CAW!”

“You’re not bringing your devil birds into my station!” Camilo, the fire chief, narrows his eyes at me, arms crossed over his chest, making his biceps bulge, and it reminds me of when I was a rookie with a raging crush on him.

He looks more distinguished now with the greys at his temples and the tiny crow’s feet by his eyes. Which, incidentally, should make him feel a little bit of kindred spirit toward Russell.

“Don’t call him a devil bird,” I say, gently stroking Russell’s slightly downy-soft feathers on the top of his head. “He’s only small, and it’ll give him a complex.”

Russell’s been following me around since he was a chick, but this is the first time he’s followed my truck to the station, and what was I supposed to do? Turn him away? Force him to wait for me in the forest?

I mean, the answer is probably, but I’m not going to say that out loud and hurt his feelings.

“If I’m not going to allow Easton to have a fucking dog, I am not going to allow you to bring in a goddamn crow. And don’t give me that look,” he says when my bottom lip pokes out. “It doesn’t work on me. I have a teenage son. My heart is blackened and withered.”

“Aww, Chief.” I take a step closer, and he takes one back. “Wait, are you afraid of birds?”

“I’m afraid of demons in the shape of birds who can steal your soul. You couldn’t have chosen worse, North. Not unless you’d picked a fucking owl.” He shudders.

“Oh my god, I love owls. I—”

“North.”

My jaw snaps shut at his tone.

“No.”

With a heavy sigh, I turn and walk back to my truck. It’s in the parking lot next to Camilo’s very fancy SUV and the newest rookie’s motorcycle, which is leaning a little too far to the left.

I know it’s a project bike though. It looks rough and in need of TLC, but it’s all he can talk about, so I’m assuming it’s going to glow when it’s done.

Pulling the bed of my truck down, I hop on the back and urge Russell off my shoulder and onto his little perch. He’ll probably take off for a while, but I know he’ll be back before my shift is up tomorrow morning.

He twirps at me, and I stroke down his front. He’s still baby-soft, though his sleeker adult feathers are starting to come in. I don’t know a lot about crows. It wasn’t exactly my plan to have a stage-four clinger that won’t leave my shoulder.

But when I bought my house, someone told me that if you throw treats and shiny rocks out into your yard, you can get some crow friends. I thought it might be cool.

And it is.

I have three that never leave the massive oak shading my house, and they wake me up every morning, tapping on my window for their daily dose of dog kibble I keep in a bag by the front door.

What I didn’t expect was to find a freshly hatched nestling with a missing foot, who was probably starving to death.

Several calls to a wildlife facility, who told me that I lived too far from their nearest office—and that crows weren’t endangered, so I should let nature take its course—and about a hundred hours on wildlife YouTube, and I nursed him to where he is now.

Smarmy.

Freakishly smart.

Imprinted on me like a fucking duck—if crows actually do that sort of thing.

And apparently, now determined to follow me to work.

“Um. Are you a witch?”

I turn my head to see one of the rookies, Oziah, hovering a few feet away, hands in the pockets of his jeans that are so tight, I can’t help but wonder how the fuck he got them on. He’s very short and very pretty for a firefighter.

I’m still amazed he passed the physical exam, though having worked with him for the last couple of months, I can tell he’s deceptively strong. But he’s the kind of twink I might have tried to pick up in a club five years ago when I was still trying and failing to lose my virginity.

“I’m not a witch. Can boys be witches?”

“I think boys can be whatever,” Ozzie says, taking a few steps closer. “I don’t think practicing magic is like…gendered or whatever.”

I shrug. I’m not interested in being a witch either. That sounds like a lot of work for little reward, which is not my thing. I am definitely a man addicted to instant gratification, which is maybe an odd thing to say, considering I work here, and I’m still a virgin.

Oziah finally finds the courage to reach my truck and leans his elbows on the bed. Russell meets his gaze steadily, fluffs his feathers, then settles better on his one leg.

“He’s hurt.”

“Nah. He was born that way,” I tell him. “I found him on my doorstep like that.”

“He was abandoned?” Ozzie sounds a little like that concept is personal, and I debate about asking because I do like the guy. But also, I’m not sure I want to be up in anyone’s business.

I have way too much going on to take on someone else’s trauma.

“The wildlife rescue people told me it was normal for birds born like him. They said I should let him die, but you know, I’m not a fuckin’ monster.” I adjust my cap, the brim touching the back of my neck for a second before I lift it higher. “He’s kind of attached to me now.”

“Does he have a name?”

“Russell.”

He blinks at me and clearly doesn’t get it. Fuck, I feel old, and I’m really not even that old. Barely twenty-nine, though some of the guys around here seem to think that’s geriatric.

“Russell Crow,” I tell him. “Haha. Love a good pun.”

Ozzie blinks again, and I decide to let it go.

“Anyway, so, you just coming on shift?”

“Yeah. I’m doing a seventy-two, but Easton said it was quiet, so I—”

Before I can tell him to shut the fuck up because invoking those words is sure to cause chaos, I hear it. The call.

The alarm.

Next door, the EMTs are gone, which means no matter what the emergency is, we have to roll out.

“Shit,” Ozzie says, slapping a hand over his face. “I’m sorry. I keep forgetting.”

I drop to the ground, throw the bed up, then sling my arm around his neck and tug him along. “Don’t worry about it. We all do it when we first start.”

He grimaces. “When Easton finds out, he’s going to fine me, and all I have left is my laundry money.”

“I won’t tell if you don’t,” I assure him.

His eyes go wide. “Really?”

“Really. Some people around here might tell you I’m an asshole, but I’m not. I’m a good guy.”

“He’s also a pathological liar,” Lex says, tossing my jacket at me. “Don’t believe a word he says.”

I flip him off, grinning as I shrug into it. I turn back to Ozzie. “Go clock in, rookie. We’ll chat more when I get back.”

Ozzie smiles and wanders off as Lex slides up next to me and shakes a single finger in my face.

“Do not fuck the rookie.”

I shove him back and ignore the internal flinch because only one person at the station knows my whole big virgin secret, and that’s Easton, who won’t ever tell, not even under the pain of torture.

And it’s not that I’m ashamed. It’s more that whenever people find out, they make it their mission to try and get me laid, and it never ends well. So I pretend, and Easton keeps my secret, and the world keeps turning…

Blah, blah, bullshit, blah.

I grin, showing teeth. “Dude. Not a chance. I know better than to shit where I eat.”

“Do you?” he asks.

I hold up both hands. “I flirted with a rookie once, and it ended so badly the guy quit.” Also true—but it was obvious that rookie already had one foot out the door once he realized it wasn’t all naked firefighter calendars and rescuing kittens out of trees.

I’m not actually going to take responsibility for that one, but he was before Lex’s time and a great deflection from the truth.

“Come on, dickheads,” comes the voice of my best friend. Easton appears a second later, grinning from beneath a collection of shaggy blond curls that desperately need a trim. He has the truck keys in his hand and is holding his radio. “Let’s fucking roll.”

I have no idea what the call is for or what we’re doing. But I’m amongst the only people I really consider family, apart from my mom and sisters, so whatever I’m about to face, it’s going to be fine.

It is not going to be fine. It is not going to be fine at all.

I’ve been doing this job a while now, but somehow, I always forget that when little kids get scared shitless, it literally means shitless. It doesn’t seem to matter if they’re four or fourteen, inevitably, someone will shit their pants.

Today, it’s a six-year-old boy with his head stuck between the railings of his stairs at the top of his landing.

Before we got there, his dad had been dealing with the stress by trying to literally rip the boy’s head through the slats, and his mom had dealt by crying hysterically and refusing to listen to the dispatcher when she tried to give her instructions.

And it didn’t get better when we arrived. The dad took a step back, at least, but his mom is literally at my elbow, screaming into my ear as her kid cries and makes a mess of himself.

And me.

As much as I want to just humor her and let her freak, the boy’s stats keep dropping. It’s probably due to anxiety, but his BP is all over the place, and he’s tachy at 120 bpm.

“Alright, we need to cut the railing,” I finally say once both Easton and I can determine the wood is synthetic and not going to bend the way we want it to.

“Do you have to?” the kid’s dad asks. “He stuck his damn head through there. Why can’t he pull it out?”

“Ever hear of a finger trap?” Easton says as he adjusts the pulse ox on the boy’s finger. The smell in the kid’s pants is getting worse, and I’m trying my best not to gag as I glance around for anything that can break the railing. “Easy to go in, almost impossible to go out.”

“But that’s going to be expensive to fix. You fuckers gonna pay for it?” he demands.

I turn and look over my shoulder as I hold his shit-pants son, who’s shaking and sweating and so scared he’s not even crying anymore. “No. But you can probably crowdfund for his funeral if you let him go into cardiac arrest.”

The dad freezes. “I…” He stops, holds up his hands, and takes several steps backward until he hits the wall. The stunned look on his face tells me he gets it, and that, at least, is a relief, considering the mom is crying hysterically again and tugging at my elbow.

I push her off gently, then turn toward Easton. “Go check the truck for something we can saw through this with, and ask Lex if he can bring some gas for this kid. We need to get his heart rate down.”

Easton nods and takes off running right as the kid heaves and throws up all over my arm.

“Sorry,” he wobbles. “I don’t feel good.”

“I know. And we’re going to get you out of here, and then you’ll feel better, okay?” I rub his back and do my best to keep him calm. “Just try and take slow breaths.”

He kid nods, shaking from the adrenaline. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

My heart breaks a little for him because I know he didn’t.

He was just being a kid. “It’s alright. I promise you’re going to be fine.

” I don’t feel like an asshole for saying those words, even if I don’t know for sure they’re true.

I need to believe in them in order to do my job, and lying to myself is something I’ve gotten a little too good at.

Like how I say I love my job. Like how I say I don’t mind taking care of my mom. Like how I tell everyone I’ve never regretted giving up my career to do this so I can make sure my mom and sisters have food to eat and a roof over their heads.

Like how I never talk about what happened with my stepdad, or how my mom was in and out of rehab for five years before she finally got sober.

Or how my sisters were sent to foster care where I wasn’t allowed to see them for years before my mom finally got her shit together enough that they could come home.

Thankfully, Lex appears a moment later with the small tank of nitrous oxide and a little mask, knocking me out of my thought spiral.

He kneels down, then straps it over the boy’s face. “Deep breath for me, kiddo. This is going to make you feel a lot better.”

“How fuckin’ much is this gonna cost?” the dad grumbles behind me.

I glance at Lex. “I can’t punch him, right?”

Lex rolls his eyes, but the truth is, I know he’s thinking the same thing. And I get it—mostly. I get that even the smallest injury can goddamn bankrupt a family these days.

I hate it, of course.

I hate rolling up to calls and watching people debate if it’s worth risking their life over the cost of an ambulance, and it makes me bitter and angry. I took this job to help my family, and I hadn’t realized the way it was going to open my eyes to a lot of things.

But in this moment, I choose to ignore the dad because he’s not helping.

“I found a saw,” Easton says, barreling in with the tool. It’s the size of his arm, but the blade is thin. We use it from time to time to deal with fallen branches and other shit.

And it’ll definitely do.

My anxiety eases a bit when Lex takes it off him to start hacking away at the top part of the railing, and Easton doesn’t put up a fight about it. He knows damn well Lex is less likely to decapitate one of us.

After what feels like a hundred years and about six gallons of nasty bodily fluids soaking into my pants, Lex manages to get one railing off, which is exactly enough space for the kid to lean back and fall into his mother’s waiting arms.

I stand up and take several steps away, breathing a sigh of relief and taking in sweet, sweet, unsoiled air.

“I should have stuck with my line cook job,” I mutter in Easton’s ear, who’s watching the kid lie down so Lex can do his assessment.

He grins at me, though he doesn’t get too close, and I understand why. The smell is fucking rank. “Aww, honey. When we get back to the station, you can cook for me.”

I want to flip him off, but in reality, making a nice carbonara sounds like a goddamn dream. At any rate, the smell from the garlic bread I plan to make alongside it will hopefully cover up what I can’t wash off in the shower.

And if I’m lucky at all, this call will fade into the quiet void of all the other fucked-up calls I’ve taken over the years, and I’ll be able to sleep easy with a full belly, knowing that today we actually did something good.