Chapter 17
Avery had said, "Cordelia will just take her," like this was a thing that had ever once happened smoothly in the history of the two of them. I'd nodded as if I believed it.
Handing Pancake off takes forty minutes. I'd accounted for ten.
Now I'm standing in Cordelia's living room watching Pancake plant herself on the mat like a load-bearing wall while Cordelia crouches down and makes a series of increasingly implausible promises.
Her apartment looks exactly like Cordelia lives in it at full speed.
There are three half-finished puzzles occupying the same coffee table, a stack of magazines on the ground higher than my waist that has achieved structural integrity, and an IKEA bookcase half-assembled near the window with the instruction sheet spotted with coffee and one screw set carefully aside like it’s important.
The couch is deep and slightly rumpled, a throw blanket draped over it like it got there mid-thought, and there’s a dozen pairs of shoes kicked off by the door next to a tote bag that could contain anything from groceries to a mild emergency.
Under the clutter, somehow there’s a system.
It’s not pristine by any means, but the apartment still feels unmistakably like Cordelia.
Half-finished projects sit exactly where she left them because she fully intends to come back to them, and even the chaos has enough structure to make sense once you look at it long enough.
Every surface feels lived-in, busy, and completely hers.
"I have a very comfortable couch," Cordelia says. "And I have a throw blanket that is honestly an eleven out of ten."
Pancake doesn't move.
"I'm going to get her a toy," Avery says from the hallway, and I hear the closet open.
"She doesn't want a toy," I say.
Cordelia looks up at me. "Then what does she want?"
"She wants to come on our date."
"She can't go with you guys." Cordelia gestures at the door. "You have reservations. You can't bring the dog."
Pancake puts her chin on her paws and exhales.
"Sorry shortcakes." Cordelia turns back to me, and I let out a quiet breath, glance at Avery, then back to Cordelia. "She's emotionally manipulative and I want you both to know that I see it and can't be swayed."
"Okay," I say, crouching down, which is not a position I'm accustomed to maintaining in nice slacks.
Pancake looks at me.
"You are going to stay here with Cordelia," I tell her. "You'll be fine. You're acting like we're shipping you overseas, kid."
Her ears move.
"So dramatic. You'll see each other again," Cordelia says. It takes me a half second to understand that she's talking more to me than to Pancake.
Avery opens the door to leave.
Cordelia exhales. "Finally." She takes Pancake's leash and treat bag from my hand with the energy of someone who has survived a siege. "You're welcome," she says to Avery. "You owe me."
"I owe you so much," Avery agrees.
When the door closes, Avery turns toward me and her expression has shifted into a wide smile.
She’s in a floral dress, the fabric catching the light, and I miss a step just inside the doorway. I have to adjust my footing like the floor shifted under me before I get it back under control.
Her hair is down, softer than I usually see it, every curl still falling into place like it knows what it’s doing. She’s so beautiful that for a second it hits me low and hard, not just because of the dress or the way she’s smiling at me, but because this is our first real date.
I’m standing here realizing how completely I’ve fallen in love with her.
I’ve seen her run her store and hold a line against people who underestimate her. I’ve watched her carry stress in the set of her shoulders and smooth her expression before anyone else notices something’s wrong. None of that is here now.
She’s got nowhere else to be and she’s looking at me like this is the only thing on her agenda today.
I realize I don’t have a practiced response for that version of her yet.
"You said that would take five minutes," I tell her.
"I said Cordelia will just take her. Which is a different sentence."
The restaurant is fifteen minutes up the coast, small and not famous. A chalkboard menu hangs by the door, and salt air slips through the screen as it bangs once behind us. I take a table by the window.
A server drops two menus, the paper soft at the edges, and a bottle of water. "First time here?" she asks. I nod, slide one menu to Avery. No one looks up long enough to clock us, and that suits me. We keep it simple, no performing and no strategy, just lunch with a million dollar view.
Avery tears a piece of bread and slides it onto my plate like she's correcting something.
"Remember when you used to steal food off my plate without asking," she says, nodding at the bread I didn’t ask for, "maybe it was Pop-Tarts or a hot dog and you didn’t even pretend it was polite."
"I was redistributing resources."
"You stole half my lunch and called it socialism," she says.
She smiles into her glass, and it does something to me that has nothing to do with the conversation.
"Or when you used to throw me over your shoulder," she says, "like that was a normal way to interact with a person."
"You weighed about twelve pounds," I say. "It felt efficient."
"You enjoyed the public humiliation aspect way too much," she says.
"I was committed to the bit," I tell her.
"It was humiliating."
"You laughed."
"I laughed because Jonah was laughing and I had no dignity left to protect." She looks at me. "You both treated me and Deely like we were—"
"Pesky," I say.
"Extremely," she says. "You were unbearable."
"I had a crush on you," I say.
She lets out one short laugh like the words caught her off guard, then reaches for her water too quickly and nearly knocks the glass with the heel of her hand before catching it.
"No, you didn't."
"At some point, I did."
"No," she says again, but there's less certainty in it. "You were actively committed to making my life worse."
"That tracks," I say. "I was a teenager."
She watches me for a second, recalibrating something.
"I had a crush on you from the beginning," she says finally, like she's annoyed about it. "Which is objectively embarrassing for me."
Something in my chest pulls tight and warm at the same time, enough that I have to look down at our hands for a second before I trust myself to answer.
"Even with the shoulder thing?"
"Especially with the shoulder thing," she says. "There is something deeply wrong with my judgment."
I reach for her hand and she lets me take it without looking away.
"When you and Jonah left for the fire academy," she says, "I told everyone I was sad because my brother was leaving." She shrugs a little. "Which was true. But also I remember standing in the driveway thinking that it was going to be very quiet without you there."
I nod. "That day, I was thinking I needed to get out of there before I did something stupid."
"Like what?" she asks, then immediately shakes her head once like she wants to take the question back. "Actually, never mind. That sounds like the beginning of a terrible decision and probably a local headline."
"Stay," I say.
She goes still for a second, then looks down at our hands like she's confirming they're still there.
"Your scars," she says quietly, lightly holding her hand over my arm, "the Kellerman fire. You never really—"
I feel my breath catch before I answer. "I don't talk about it much. Maybe because it's too hard to, and because once I start, I don't think it'll stay contained."
"Just tell me when you're ready. If you need to." She doesn't push. She just waits, her thumb shifting against my hand.
"Since the fire, I've being trying to find answers," I add finally, quieter. "I need to make sure my friends didn't die for nothing and their families get the answers they deserve."
Her thumb moves against my skin, not quite a squeeze, more like a steady presence that stays with me while I’m saying it.
"Taking over my family's business," I continue, "looked like a pivot when really it was an exit. Between the fire fighting, the aftermath, and feeling like the guy who left when Jonah stayed, the only thing that felt right was not going back."
"It was never a question for Jonah to stay," she says quietly. "Being a firefighter was his thing from the beginning."
I nod. "Yeah. He wanted it his whole life."
A smile pulls briefly at the corner of her mouth. "He used to make us practice fake evacuations when we were kids. He had an actual whistle."
"He drew exit maps," I say.
"And would have laminated them if he could," she cuts in before I can finish.
I huff out a laugh.
"He still talks about the future like it's already mapped out," she says. "The only thing missing is whoever eventually talks him into taking a day off."
"The fire department made sense for Jonah," I say.
"For me, it started differently." I glance out toward the harbor for a second before looking back at her.
"My dad wanted me in the family business from the time I could walk and I hated that he had my whole life planned out before I got a say in it.
Going into the academy with Jonah felt like rebellion at the time.
But it also just felt natural. We did everything together back then. "
"You practically lived at our house," she says.
"Pretty much."
I shift my thumb against hers.
"Then Kellerman happened," I say. "And after that, something stopped making sense to me anymore.
Jonah still knew exactly who he was when he walked back into a station.
I didn't." I exhale slowly. "At the time, taking over the company felt like the only thing in my life that still fit somewhere.
Not because real estate was some dream I was secretly chasing.
Just because firefighting wasn't something I could make myself walk back into anymore. "