Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
By the time I pulled into the station lot that morning, I actually felt…steady.
Not great. Not fixed. But better than I had in months.
Chloe had stayed the night. In the guest room, yeah, but she’d stayed. She’d retaped my ribs with gentle, bossy hands, messed up my dish towels on purpose, and told me I didn’t get to hand her the house like some kind of consolation prize.
I’d fallen asleep listening to her move around the guest room, the soft sounds of drawers and hangers and the creak of the mattress as she turned over. For the first time in a long time, the house hadn’t felt like a museum.
It had felt like home.
So walking into the station, I’d been almost…light. Sore, taped, bruised as hell—but weirdly lighter.
That lasted about nine minutes.
“Jesus, Post,” someone muttered near the engine. “What’s the other guy look like?”
I managed a grunt that passed for humor, stowed my bag, and tried not to wince as I bent to tie my boots. The movement pulled at my ribs and sent a sharp bloom of pain under my breastbone. I swallowed a hiss and straightened upright too fast.
That was when Rankin spotted me.
He was coming in from the bay, turnout pants hanging open around his hips and a cup of coffee in hand. His eyes flicked over my face first—right eyebrow, butterfly bandage, swelling—and then lower, tracking how I held myself just a little too stiff on my left side.
His steps slowed. The coffee didn’t move.
“Post,” he said, voice flat. Not amused, not curious. Assessing.
“Morning,” I said, trying for normal. It came out thin.
He didn’t answer. Instead he walked right up to me, set his coffee down on the bench, and reached out like he was checking a piece of equipment. He jabbed two fingers lightly into my ribs, just below where my coat would buckle.
White-hot pain detonated under my skin.
I sucked in air hard enough my teeth clicked.
Rankin raised a brow. “Thought so. Come with me.”
Before I could tell him exactly where he could put his diagnostic technique, he was already headed toward Captain Holbrook’s office, expecting me to follow.
I did. Because I wasn’t stupid. And because Rankin had a way of looking at you that said fighting him was a waste of oxygen.
Holbrook was at his desk, reading glasses low on his nose, paperwork spread out in neat stacks. He looked up when Rankin pushed the door open.
The captain’s gaze hit my face first. The eyebrow lifted a fraction higher when it landed on the bruise coloring around my eye, then shifted down to the way I was guarding my side without meaning to.
“Post,” he said. “Sit.”
I sat. It hurt. I pretended it didn’t.
Rankin shut the door and leaned back against the filing cabinet, arms crossed. He didn’t have to say a damn thing. His silence was one long, pointed sentence.
Holbrook took off his glasses, pinched the bridge of his nose, and got right to it.
“Tell me why you’re walking like someone took a bat to your ribs.”
“It’s nothing,” I said automatically. “Tweaked something. I’m fine to work.”
Holbrook’s brows went up. Slowly. The way they do right before a structure fire goes defensive and nobody argues about it.
“Funny,” he said, “because I watched you cross the bay holding your breath on every third step. People don’t hold their breath when something ‘tweaks.’ They hold their breath when it hurts like hell.”
I stared past him at a point on the wall. If I didn’t look at either of them, maybe I could maintain the illusion just a little longer.
Holbrook clasped his hands on the desk. “Interior today means SCBA, hose push, breaching, and probably stairs. You taking full air with two cracked ribs is a good way to drown yourself on your own pain.”
“I can do interior,” I muttered.
Rankin snorted. One sound. No words. Plenty of commentary.
Holbrook’s voice didn’t rise, but it sharpened. “I am not sending a firefighter into smoke who has to think twice about breathing. I am not putting your crew in position to drag you out because you let your pride outrank your lungs.”
That one punched harder than JJ’s takedown.
I looked at my boots. My hands. Anywhere but the captain.
Holbrook softened only a fraction. “When did this happen?”
“Yesterday,” I admitted.
“How?” he asked.
Silence stretched. I wasn’t about to say “illegal levels of bad decisions and an MMA kid with a good right hook,” so I gave him the least incriminating truth.
“Gym,” I said. “Sparring.”
Rankin muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “bullshit sparring,” but Holbrook didn’t press. He didn’t need to. He already had what he needed.
“You see a doctor?” he asked.
I nodded once. “Urgent care. No pneumothorax. No displacement.” I lied.
Holbrook rubbed his jaw. “That’s something, at least.”
Then he grabbed a form from the stack to his right and clicked his pen.
“Post, you’re benched from interior until cleared. Seventy-two hours minimum for light duty—inventory, community calls, EMS assist only. No ladders, no bottles, no fireground, no lifting more than twenty pounds. Full clearance when you can take a deep breath without bracing.”
I swallowed hard.
“Cap—” I tried.
He held up a hand. “This isn’t punishment. It’s safety. The fire won’t care how stubborn you are. It’ll just take the opportunity.”
Rankin uncrossed his arms. “I’ll cover his spot today.”
Holbrook nod ed once. Then he looked at me, really looked.
“You’re a good firefighter, Post,” he said. “One of the ones I don’t worry about on scene. Don’t make me start.”
That landed. Deep.
I nodded stiffly, stood, and managed not to hold my ribs this time.
“Clock out,” Holbrook ordered. “Go home. Heal. Come back smart.”
I left without arguing. Not because I didn’t want to. Because there was no argument I could make that didn’t sound like a man trying to get himself killed.
Holbrook nodded once and went back to his clipboard like the matter was settled.
Michael didn’t move until we were back out in the bay. Then he stepped in front of me, blocking my path to the lockers.
“You want to tell me what you were hoping would happen in there?” he asked. “Cap just magically forgets you can’t twist without wincing and slaps a pack on your back anyway?”
“I could’ve worked the pump panel,” I snapped. “Done exterior. Something.”
“And you would’ve hated every second of it,” he said calmly. “You know you’re not fit for interior. Not today. Maybe not this week. You know it, I know it, Cap knows it.”
I stared past him at the engine, gleaming red and ready.
“I need this,” I said quietly. “The work. The routine.”
“You need your lungs and your spine more,” Michael replied. “You can’t EMT if you can’t breathe, man.”
“It’d be two days,” I tried again. “Then I’d ride the bus. No fire. Just medicals.”
He studied me for a long time. “We both know you’re not walking into a house with cracked ribs because you’re some selfless hero,” he said finally. “You’re doing it because you don’t know what to do with yourself when you’re not in motion.”
Anger flared, quick and hot. “You done psychoanalyzing me?”
“Not even close,” he said. “Go home, Post.”
“Can’t.”
His brows shot up. “Why not?”
“Chloe’s there,” I said before I could stop myself. The words hung in the air like a live wire.
Something flickered in his eyes. “She’s at the house?”
“Guest room,” I said. “Came over yesterday. Retaped my ribs. Messed up my dish towels.” I rubbed a hand over my face. “I don’t know what we’re doing.”
He exhaled slowly. “Then maybe that’s what you need to figure out today instead of trying to prove you can still drag a charged hose line with half your ribs working.”
I snorted, humorless. “Yeah. Because having a deep emotional talk while I’m taped up and purple is going to go great.”
He slapped my shoulder, careful of the bruising. “Somebody’s gotta go first, man. Might as well be you.”
I grabbed my bag and headed for the door.
On paper, I did what I was told.
In reality, I did the one thing I absolutely shouldn’t have.
I went to Cappy’s.
The bell over the gym door jangled when I stepped inside, and the familiar smell hit me—sweat, rubber mats, leather, chalk. It slid over my skin like a second shirt, settling into all the places firefighting usually lived.
Just past noon and it was already humming. A couple of guys hit heavy bags near the back. Two kids in shin guards worked low kicks on each other in the cage, a coach shouting corrections. Someone was skipping rope up front, the snap-snap-snap steady as a metronome.
My ribs protested every breath, my eyebrow throbbed, and still… part of me relaxed.
Yeah. This was bad.
It was like a compulsion. Almost like vacuuming.
I’d watched Chloe mess up my dish towels on purpose this morning and felt something inside me itch to straighten them. To fix them. To make the lines neat again.
Now, standing here, I felt the same itch.
Only this time it wanted contact. Pain. A problem I could hit back.
Jesus Christ.
Didn’t Chloe have an ounce of self-preservation? She needed to run as far and as fast from me as possible, for fuck’s sake. What kind of man promises his wife he’s done with something and then shows up to do it again before the tape’s even set?
A stupid one. That’s what kind.
I found Cappy near the ring, adjusting the ropes while he watched the kids work. He didn’t look surprised to see me.
He laughed, loud and short. “Well, if it isn’t my favorite midlife crisis.”
“Morning to you, too,” I said.
He gave me a once-over, taking in the bruise, the way I held myself. “You here to sit on an ice pack and watch, or you planning to do something dumber?”
“Set me up with another round,” I said. “Couple days from now. I’ll be fine by then.”
He stared at me like I’d grown a second head. “You’re kidding.”
“I’m serious.”
“Yeah, that’s what worries me.” He shook his head. “You’re straddling a line, Post. Used to be you came in here to train. Get sharp for the job. Now you look like you’re using it to chew yourself up from the inside.”