Chapter Twenty-Three
Kira
Two days later, my cooler head has prevailed. Ultimately, I opted not to immediately spike a flaming resignation letter through the chief’s office door, and the decision pains me.It’s technically
a good thing: I’m following my mentor’s advice and holding off until she gives me some good job leads to follow. I’ve never
not had a job before, and the idea of not having one lined up before I resign is just too scary. I have bills to pay.
There’s just a whole lot of pride-swallowing that has to happen in the meantime. The flaming resignation is so tempting.
Yesterday was my last day at my old firehouse. There was a cake. There were a lot of insincere well-wishes. We don’t normally
do that kind of stuff for someone who’s just transferring, but I basically grew up in this firehouse. I’ve worked here for
almost ten years, since I was eighteen. It’s weird, and it matters, and everyone knows it even as their eyes betray their
guilt. They’re glad I’m leaving.
Well, I’m glad to be leaving. Or so I tell myself. I’m just not going where they think I am.
I head home, determined to enjoy the five days off I have before reporting to my new fire station on Monday morning. September
1. The end of the weirdest, hardest, most painful summer of my life since my dad died. I haven’t had five days off in a row
in... well, I can’t remember. But I’d already put in for one of my many unused vacation days for the day before Skylar’s
party—didn’t want to be dead on my feet for it—and the rest is just how the scheduling worked out for my new shift crew. It’s
for the best, anyway; I definitely don’t want to report at 8:00 a.m. the day after the party, which is sure to go late.
Unfortunately, five days off is also a lot of time to stew in my feelings. It’s been a long week of silence from Nic, and
I’ve basically lost hope of things working out. I’m mad—of course I’m mad—but the past few days have given me time to realize my own mistakes, too. I should be the bigger person here, should
call her up and apologize, but I don’t trust myself not to make a mess of it right now. I still feel raw, like I have emotional
road rash from that giant wreck of a fight we had.
I fall into a fitful sleep, napping from when I get home at 8:30 a.m. until almost noon. I would have slept longer, but my
phone buzzes from its resting place on my breastbone, pulling me back toward consciousness.
Willow: Hey, I’m gonna be in the neighborhood around 7. What’s that coffee shop you love right near your place? Wanna meet me there?
On the one hand, my soul feels incapable of leaving this bed. On the other... something chocolaty and caffeinated. Mmm.
I send Will a map pin for the coffee shop and drag myself up. If I wallow for one whole day, chances are I’ll wallow for my
whole vacation. Better to set a good precedent early.
Me: Meet you there.
Will and I haven’t spent much time hanging out one-on-one, but I do adore them. And hey, since both Skylar and Nic are now leaving, guess I’d better put more effort into my friendships with the others.
We’re barely at the coffee shop for ten minutes that evening, though—just long enough to order drinks—when Will looks down
at their phone and grimaces.
“I’m sorry! I gotta go. Something came up. I’ll see you at Skylar’s party, though, yeah?” they say, walking backward out of
the shop as they speak.
“Okay, but...”
The door closes, and they turn to jog back up the street, presumably toward their car.
That was... weird. Okay.
I take my time walking back to the apartment, enjoying the darkness and fresh air. Maybe I should go for a walk tomorrow morning.
An infusion of sunshine might help me feel human again. I’m not a wallower. I don’t sit in my feelings and do nothing. I act.
I work hard. I make change. What can I do to move forward today?
I’m so lost in thought that I miss getting the key in the lock of my apartment door. Twice. With a swear, I finally get the
door open—and immediately smell burning.
There’s fire everywhere .
Tiny flickering candle flames. Over a hundred of them, sitting on every surface. Pillars, jars, votives, tea lights, and even
some long tapered candlesticks.
And in the middle of it all... is Nic. Holding a pie.
“Grace let me in,” she says, looking like she’d be wringing her hands in front of her if not for the frankly enormous pie.
“I hope that’s okay.”
Grace. Of course. And Willow was the distraction to get me out of the apartment. My heart executes a series of complicated
flips, even as my brain rings every alarm.
She’s here. My brain can’t formulate any other thoughts. Just... her.
Nic.
My emotions are such a messy jumble that my face can’t figure out what to do. I’m angry. Hurt. So frustrated and confused.
But... still so in love. So glad she’s here.
Terrified.
“Yes, it’s fine,” I finally manage when Nic starts to look nervous at my silence. “Did... I mean... What...”
Wow, this is going great .
“Isn’t this a fire hazard?” I finally ask with a helpless laugh. Nic holds up a finger, then sets the pie down and pulls a
small fire extinguisher from behind the dining table.
“I wanted you to be able to hear what I have to say,” she says, waggling the mini extinguisher at me, then holding it out
for me to take. “Which means eliminating the thing that I thought might cause you some... distraction. So there. If something
bursts into flames, you can put it out and save us. Or you can hit me over the head with it and run away, if you feel like
it. I would deserve it. Just take the pie with you, okay, because I worked really hard on it, and it’s the best one I’ve ever
made.”
“Nic—” I begin, but she waves me off.
“Please, let me say this first. Kira, I am so sorry .” She steps forward and takes my free hand, squeezing it gently. “I have been oblivious, and hurtful, and cowardly, and just...
generally terrible. I thought I was avoiding my Three of Swords moment by keeping you at arm’s length, but it was the complete
opposite. I hurt you. I kept secrets, and said all the wrong things, and didn’t let you say the right things. I overthought everything and found my way into yet another rigid worldview that... well, it fucked everything
up pretty good. I fucked up.”
Nic rubs at her eyes, which glisten with moisture, then blinks at the ceiling before she continues.
“And honestly, I think it was just another way of clinging to Skylar. I get now that I was never into her romantically. Now
that I know how it feels with you , I can see the difference clear as day. I’ve fully let that go. But it’s almost like I needed to replace that framework with
something else. Otherwise, the whole thing—my life—would be structurally unsound. No foundation. The entire methodology of
my life was wrong, but instead of scrapping everything and starting fresh like I should have, I kept trying to bend the data
to fit my conclusions. And that’s just bad science. That’s the shit that gets you fired in academia.”
I give a weak chuckle, feeling almost lightheaded as the reality sets in. She’s apologizing. She lit all these candles. She
made me a pie. She’s here . But does she mean it? Can she really stick with something new?
“Good thing it was just your entire life and not a lab experiment,” I say with a weird, giddy sort of laugh. I’m so afraid to hope this might actually work out. My
hesitance must show, because Nic drops my hand and gives me some space.
“I went to my first ever therapy appointment this week,” she says.
I blink. “How have you been friends with Skylar this long and not been to therapy? I mean, not because she makes people need therapy, though, maybe ... well, I mean, just because she’s such an advocate.”
She shakes her head with a huff of laughter. “I know, right? Not for lack of her trying. I just kept putting it off, and she
probably thought I’d never go if she pushed too hard. Which, fair. But I finally went, because I wanted to make sure I could
do this.”
“Do... what?”
She smiles, though it’s tinged with sadness.
“Be with you, if you’ll have me. Deserve you. Treat you the way you should be treated, and be with you as my own whole person
instead of just a weird barnacle stuck to you. One therapy session didn’t work all that out, of course, but we had two pretty intense double sessions that laid some good groundwork. Enough to convince me
that I’m not the weird, empty, desperate shell of a human I sometimes feel like. There’s... more to me, I guess.”
“Of course there is,” I say, eyes wide in shock. I knew Nic had some self-worth issues, but I didn’t realize she thought so little of
herself. “Nic, I wouldn’t love you if there weren’t more to you. You’re brilliant. You’re so funny. You help me find my chill. You love your friends so fiercely. God, you’re not a barnacle, Nic. You’re a whole person,
and you’re great .”
Nic collapses into me, burying her face in my shoulder. My arms come up around her, holding her to me like I’ve been aching
to do all week, and I feel her trembling, feel her tears soaking into my shirt, feel the warmth of her body against mine,
and breathe . All I’ve wanted all week is to be close to her, to sort out this awful mess so we could get back to where I knew we belonged. Like this. Just like this, with her a little messy and me a little too uptight and finding our perfect balance somewhere in the middle. Nic
mumbles something into my skin that I don’t catch, and I press a kiss to her temple.
“What was that? Didn’t hear you.”
She pulls back, flicking her eyes up to mine for just a second before looking right back down at the floor.
“You... love me, you said?”
I give a disbelieving laugh.
“Nic, this whole fight was because you knew I’d fallen for you, and you wouldn’t let me say it. Of course I’m in love with you.”
Nic’s bottom lip goes wobbly, and she just nods, unable to speak. She falls back into me, freely weeping. I run my hands through
her hair, whispering over and over that I love her, I love her, I want to be with her... I love her.
“I love you,” she finally whispers, strangled and hoarse against my skin, her whole body shaking. She pulls back with a watery
smile, shaking her head in disbelief.
“I’m gonna be honest,” she says, steeling herself. “I feel like I’m not allowed to say that. Like I haven’t earned the right.
I only just unlearned my old definition for love, and...”
She trails off, visibly losing her confidence. I pull her to me and kiss the salty tears from her cheeks with long, lingering
presses.
“I don’t care. We have a chance now, and that’s all that matters. As long as you want to try this, as long as you feel something
for me that matches your new definitions, then I’m happy. I just want us to have a shot.”
Nic nods again until she recovers her voice.
“I feel... so much for you,” she says through her tears.
Those words tell me more than an “I love you” ever could. That is Nic’s real “I love you.” But there’s one thing that still needs to be said.
“I owe you an apology too,” I say, brushing the hair out of her eyes and behind her ears. “We set boundaries for our relationship,
and I pushed things further than you were comfortable with. That’s on me, and I’m really sorry for putting you in that position.”
Nic starts to deny it, but I shake my head.
“Hey, don’t let me off the hook. I just want you to know that if we’re going to be together, I’ll respect you and any limits
we agree to. Okay?”
She smiles, red-cheeked and teary, nodding. Then her smile fades.
“There’s just one more thing,” she says, hesitant, some of the pain creeping back into her eyes.
“The PhD?” I ask. She nods.
“I really do want to go,” she says, drawing back away from me, her gaze downcast. “The more I talk to my advisor, the more
I realize how much I want this. Academia is hard, and it sucks in a lot of ways, but there are things I want to research.
I can’t imagine anything else I really want to do. I can defer for a semester, or even a year, and try to find another job
in town to give us a chance, you know? To see if—”
“I’m leaving the SFD,” I blurt out.
Nic blinks. “Uh... what?”
I recount the whole situation with the transfer, my commitment to finding a department that will appreciate me, and the grief
I’m still wrestling with over it all. Nic nods, squeezing my hand in sympathy as I choke up near the end.
“Anyway,” I say, clearing my throat. “The point is that Maryland is as good a place as any to look for a new department. I’ll
ask my mentor to put out some feelers, and I can deal with my situation here until December. Like you said, that’ll give us
some time to see how things go... with us.”
Nic takes a shaky breath, a smile tentatively curling at the corner of her mouth.
“So... we are?” Nic asks, eyes shining with hope. “Going to be together, I mean?”
I pull her to me, melding our bodies together from thigh to cheek, reveling in the press of her soft curves to mine.
“If you agree, then yes. Absolutely.”
She fully breaks down crying then, and my own tears mix with hers as I hold her tight, stunned by my luck. At the beginning
of this week, everything was going wrong. My future was so uncertain. Big parts of it still are, actually. But there’s one
steady, sure thing now, at least. And I feel like with Nic by my side, I can weather the rest. We’ll figure it out.
We’ll pick a new direction together.
Our embrace turns to kisses, then deeper kisses, our bodies beginning the slow spin-up dance they’ve gotten so good at over
the last two months. Hands graze hips and necks, slide up the backs of shirts, and as soon as she brushes the side of my breast,
the spark in my belly ignites.
“Make-up sex?” I murmur against her lips.
“Make-up sex,” she agrees, yanking me back toward my bedroom. We stumble around the dining table, narrowly avoid tumbling
over the couch, and I’m about to hoist her up on the bed when she suddenly pulls away.
“Wait, wait, hold on,” she says, darting around me to run out of the room. My heart drops right through the floor. Did I do
something wrong? Did she change her mind...?
But no, she’s just frantically blowing out hundreds of candles.
“Fire safety and all,” she says before blowing out the next batch.
I fall even more in love.
It’s hours before we remember the pie on the counter. But when we do finally go back for it—Nic’s right.
It’s her best one yet.