Chapter Forty-Four
Eliot
The drive blurs into scattered moments. I remember the stoplight on Grand that always takes twice as long as it should. I remember the flashing neon sign over Austin City Smoothies. I remember Parker’s headlights behind me. I remember wondering if she’d ever willingly follow me anywhere again.
Then…nothing.
I don’t realize I’m home until I turn the key and the engine falls silent.
I blink, my building’s floodlights illuminating the single flight of stairs. My hands are wrapped around the steering wheel so tightly, they ache, and I have to force my fingers to loosen one at a time.
I lock the truck, staring through the window at nothing until Parker comes up behind me. I don’t reach for her, don’t say a word. I just head for the stairs, and she follows.
Deadbolt first. Then the door knob. My keys scrape against the wooden bowl by the door. My bag thuds softly on the carpet. Parker’s lands a moment later.
I move to the fridge. “Shiner?” I ask.
“Sure.”
The hiss as I twist the caps is the loudest sound I’ve heard since we left the Ranger station. I pass her one of the bottles. She takes a swig, but I can’t bring myself to do the same. Instead, I sit at the far end of the couch. Parker eases down onto the opposite corner.
I’ve walked into more burning buildings than I can count. Crawled through hallways so hot, I could feel the flames through three layers of turnout gear. I’ve stood in front of grieving families with nothing to offer them but the truth.
And I’ve never been so fucking terrified as I am right now.
I know exactly what happens after I tell her.
Parker will say it doesn’t change anything. That it’s not my fault. That I’ve punished myself enough already. But there will be a moment. Just one. Here and gone before she realizes it. And in that moment, she’ll start to pull away.
I keep my eyes on the beer bottle in my hands, turning it slowly enough that the corner of the label catches against the pad of my finger, lifting slightly. I work the paper a little more. I can’t watch the woman I’ve somehow convinced to care about me learn what kind of person I really am.
“I’ve been trying to figure out where this story starts.” The words are quieter than I intend.
When Parker doesn’t answer, I finally risk looking up. She’s so focused on me, I can feel her gaze. That impossible patience giving me all the time in the world to say what I’ve spent the past seven years making sure I never had to.
I let out a slow breath and shake my head.
“There was a house fire. Ten years ago. Pretty routine call. Bad wirin’ sparked while the family was havin’ dinner. Everyone made it out. Nothin’ more than some minor smoke inhalation.”
The memory isn’t fuzzy around the edges the way old memories are supposed to be. It’s sharp enough I can still smell wet drywall if I let myself think about it too long.
“We started packin’ up, and I figured that was the end of it.” I stare at the beer in my hands, but all I can see is Zack standing at the edge of his smoke-blackened front yard.
“There was this kid. Nineteen, but looked so much younger. Not because he was small. There was just somethin’ about him.” I peel another section of the label free. “Like he hadn’t yet figured out the world could be cruel.”
My throat tightens, and a sip of beer does little to loosen it.
“He’d spent the whole call carrying his little sister.
At some point, she’d fallen asleep on his shoulder.
” I smile, but it fades too quickly. “Kids are miracles sometimes. Sirens. Smoke. Strangers everywhere. Yet she felt safe enough to take a nap because her brother was holdin’ her. ”
Parker smiles too, and it’s enough for me to keep going.
“He waited until we were done before he came over. Eight of us there, but he made a beeline straight for me. Asked me how hard it was to become a firefighter.”
The beer’s gone warm, but I take another swig anyway to give myself a moment.
“We talked for a while. Long enough my crew gave me shit for keepin’ us from our bunks. I answered every question he had, wished him luck, and climbed back on the engine. I didn’t think I’d ever see him again.”
I rub my free hand over my left thigh, the ache there a constant reminder of how I failed the kid who trusted me to have all the answers.
“Two years later, we get a probie assigned to our house. I took one look at him and realized it was the same kid.” I let out a rough laugh. “He remembered me. Hell, he’d requested—begged—to be assigned to my house. Said if he got hired, that was where he wanted to be.”
I wish I could hold onto that moment for what it was. A kid believing in me. I was proud at the time. Even a little cocky.
But guilt has a way of rewriting history without permission.
“He was good.” My voice drops, and I look toward the window, through the glass to the darkening sky.
“He asked questions instead of pretendin’ he knew all the answers.
He learned. He worked harder than anyone I’d ever seen.
I spent a year teaching him everything I knew.
” My fingers tighten around the bottle. “How to read a building. How to recognize when something felt wrong. When to push. When to back out. How to make the call nobody wants to make, because going home matters more than being a hero.” I pause, trying to find a way to say the thing that has lived inside me for seven years. “He was my responsibility.”
Parker doesn’t react. Just waits, giving me permission to keep going.
But I’m standing at the edge of something I know I can’t come back from. The room stays quiet except for the low hum of the air conditioner.
I shake my head, a sigh heaving my shoulders.
“That’s the thing people don’t understand.
When you’re the one training somebody, it isn’t just about teaching them how to do the work.
Anybody can teach you how to throw a ladder or pack a hose line.
But mentoring a probie? The most important thing you can teach them is when not to take a risk.
How to tell when a building’s warning you it’s time to get out.
You teach them how to survive. And you hope it’s enough. ”
I take a sip of the warm beer, praying it won’t come right back up on me.
“He was thirteen months into his career when we got called to a fire."
The memory shifts. Not softens. Never softens. It just moves from the edges of my mind to take up the whole room.
“The building was already bad when we got there. You could hear it.” My eyes unfocus, the apartment reduced to muted colors. No angles. Walls blurring into the floor. “Buildings talk. People don’t like hearing that, but they do. Every one of them has a sound when it’s failing.”
My hands shake, and I tighten them around the bottle again.
“We went in anyway. Because that’s what we do. It was all more or less by the book at first. Until it wasn’t.”
I rub my left leg, the pain as bright and terrible as it was seven years ago.
“I was on the mezzanine when it gave way.”
I stop there. Just for a second. Long enough to catch my breath. My leg remembers before my mind does. The impact. The pain. The helplessness.
“Everything happened so fast after that. One second I was standing. The next, the hose got ripped out of my hands. I was on the floor, pinned down, with my leg broken and the whole world on fire.”
I force myself to keep looking at the bottle of Shiner instead of at Parker. “The fire was below me. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t get to the hose. Couldn’t get myself out.”
The words come slower now, dragged up from somewhere I’ve spent seven years locking away.
“Zack was on the south side of the building. The floor between us was gone. He couldn’t reach me, and I couldn’t reach him.”
I swallow against the ache in my throat.
“But I could hear him.”
The radio is the part I remember most. Not the pain. Not the heat. Not the months afterward when my entire life became hospital rooms and physical therapy and learning how to do things my body used to do without thinking.
Zack’s voice over the radio is the one thing I’ll never forget.
“I could hear him moving. I could hear him trying to get out.” I close my eyes for a second. “He was calm. He was twenty-two years old, trapped in a building that was coming down around him, and he was calmer than I was.”
My next swallow feels like my throat is full of broken glass.
“He was doing everything right. He told us where he was. He told us what was happening. He was working his way out. And then the whole side of the building just…collapsed.”
I stop. Because even now, after all this time, a part of me still believes that if I don’t say the next words, I can keep them from being true.
The apartment disappears for a moment. There’s only the silence that came after. The radio. The absence of his voice.
“I called for him, but he was gone.”
I don’t remember setting the bottle down. I don’t remember leaning forward. I only know that suddenly my hands are empty and there’s nothing between me and the truth I’ve spent years trying to outrun.
“Zack died in that building.”
I’ve carried the truth for years. But I’ve never said those words to someone I was afraid of losing.
“I lived, and Zack…died. He’s gone because of me.” I look down because I can’t stand the thought of seeing Parker’s reaction.
“I spent months in the hospital. Surgeries. Rehab. Learning how to walk again. Learning how to live with everything that happened.” My laugh is quiet and bitter. “People kept telling me how lucky I was. Lucky? I couldn’t even go to his funeral!”
I press my knuckles to the graft margin under my shirt. I need the pain. I deserve it.
“I had an NG tube down my throat. Couldn’t walk. Couldn’t feed myself. Couldn’t even piss on my own. That ain’t luck. Justice, maybe. Not luck. And Zack’s mom— She…forgave me.”
The tears start before I can lock them away. I wipe at my face, hating that I can’t hold myself together. “I was supposed to bring him home.” My voice breaks. “That was my job. My only job.”