Rogue #3
"He's not asking me to hide it. He's asking me to be strategic about it." She squeezed my hand. "And I told him I'm not interested in being strategic. I'm interested in living my life authentically, with the person I love, regardless of what strangers think about it."
God, I loved her. Loved her so much it hurt. But that love came with responsibilities, with consequences, with the weight of knowing that my choices affected her in ways I couldn't control.
"If your job is at risk because of me—" I started.
"It's not."
"But it could be."
"I don't care."
"I do." I pulled into our apartment complex, parked, and turned to face her. "I won't let you lose your job because you're with me. I won't let your career suffer because I made a decision on a ridge that day."
"You don't get to make that choice." Her eyes flashed, fierce and unyielding. "I'm not leaving you, Petra. Not for my job, not for the board, not for Henry or the reporters or anyone else. We're in this together. That's what being in love means."
"It means watching you suffer because of me? Watching your peace get destroyed? Watching strangers dissect our relationship like it's entertainment?" My voice cracked. "How is that love, Vera? How is that anything but selfish?"
She reached over, cupped my face in her hands, and forced me to look at her.
"It's love because I choose it. Every day, knowing the risks, knowing the difficulties, knowing that being with you means facing things I'd never have to face alone.
And I still choose you. Because you're worth it, Petra.
You're worth every difficult conversation with my boss, every reporter's question, every uncomfortable moment. You're worth it."
I wanted to believe her, wanted to trust that this would all work out, that we could weather this storm together. But the fear was so loud, drowning out everything else.
"What if it gets worse?" I whispered.
"Then we handle it together." She leaned forward, pressed her forehead to mine. "You're not allowed to push me away to protect me. That's not how this works."
"How does it work?"
"We face it together. The good and the bad and the absolutely terrible. All of it, Petra. Together."
I closed my eyes, breathing her in, trying to find strength in her certainty when I had none of my own. "I don't deserve you."
"Shut up." She kissed me softly. "You don't get to decide what I deserve. I do. And I've decided I deserve you."
We sat there in the parking lot for a long time, holding each other, trying to find solid ground in the middle of everything that was falling apart.
The online harassment started that night.
We were on the couch, attempting to watch a movie, attempting to pretend this was a normal evening for a normal couple doing normal things. But Vera's phone kept buzzing with notifications. Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, all of them lighting up with comments and messages and tags.
At first, she tried to ignore it. But the buzzing was relentless, constant, impossible to tune out. Finally, she picked it up, and I watched her face change as she scrolled, watched the color drain from her cheeks, watched her eyes fill with tears she was trying desperately to hold back.
"Let me see," I said, reaching for the phone.
"No. Diana told you not to, Petra." She pulled it away, but I was faster, taking it from her hands despite her protest.
The comments were worse than I'd imagined. So much worse.
Traitor cunt defending a criminal
She's just with her for the adrenaline junkie lesbian sex
Wonder if the rogue firefighter is as rough in bed as she is on the job
Someone should burn HER house down, see how she likes it
The comments went on and on, getting increasingly explicit, increasingly violent, increasingly focused on our relationship in ways that made me want to throw the phone across the room.
People had found old photos from Vera's college days, were posting them with crude captions.
Had found her LinkedIn profile, were making comments about her qualifications, her education, whether she'd gotten her job through merit or "diversity quotas. "
They were dissecting her, these strangers who'd never met her, who knew nothing about her except that she was dating me. They were reducing her to a character in their narrative, stripping away her humanity and replacing it with whatever story they wanted to tell.
I looked up from the phone to find Vera crying silently, tears streaming down her face while she stared at the frozen movie on the TV.
"Vera, baby.”
"It's fine." Her voice was thick. "They're just trolls. It doesn’t matter."
“It matters when they make you cry." I set the phone down, pulled her into my arms. "Jesus, Vera. Some of those comments were... they were threatening you."
"I know."
"We should report them. Or call the police. Or—"
"And say what? That people on the internet are mean?" She laughed bitterly. "Police can't do anything unless there's a credible threat. And most of this is just vague enough to not qualify."
"So we're supposed to just sit here and take it? Let them say whatever they want?"
"What else can we do?" She pulled back, wiping at her eyes. "Block them? They'll just make new accounts. Report them? The platform will remove maybe one in ten comments, and the rest will stay up. Fight back? That just gives them more ammunition."
She was right, and I hated it. Hated that there was no way to protect her from this, no way to shield her from the cruelty of strangers who thought they were entitled to judge our lives, our choices, our love.
"This is because of me," I said quietly. "They're coming after you because of me."
"They're coming after me because they're bullies and cowards who hide behind anonymous accounts." She leaned back into my arms. "This isn't your fault, Petra. You didn't make these people cruel. You didn't tell them to harass me. You didn't create this situation."
"But I did. My decision—"
"Saved lives. And yes, it had consequences. But the consequences are not your fault. The way people are choosing to respond, the way they're using this as an excuse to be terrible is on them. Not you."
I wanted to believe her. But the guilt was crushing, suffocating, made worse by the sight of her tears and the knowledge that she was suffering because of her association with me.
We spent the rest of the night deleting comments, blocking accounts, reporting the worst of the harassment. It was futile because for every account we blocked, two more appeared, but we did it anyway. The alternative was doing nothing, and doing nothing felt like giving up.
By the time we went to bed, Vera's eyes were red and swollen, and I felt like I'd been through a battle. We lay in the darkness, wrapped around each other, and I could feel her shaking slightly.
"We could go away," I said quietly. "Just for a while. Until this dies down. Sedona, or somewhere far out past Phoenix, or somewhere they won't find us."
"That's not a solution. That's just hiding." She pressed her face into my neck. "I won't hide from them, Petra. I won't give them that power."
"Even if it means more of this? More comments, more harassment, more invasion of your privacy?"
"Even then." Her voice was muffled but certain. "Because running means they win. Means they get to dictate how we live our lives. And I won't give them that."
I held her tighter, wishing I had her strength, her certainty, her absolute refusal to back down. She was braver than I'd ever been, than I'd ever be. And she was risking everything for a relationship with someone who'd brought nothing but chaos and pain into her carefully constructed life.
"I'm sorry," I whispered into the darkness. "For all of it. For dragging you into this nightmare."
"Stop apologizing." She kissed my collarbone. "You're stuck with me, Petra. For better or worse. And right now we're in the worse part. But we'll get through it."
"How can you be so sure?"
"Because I love you. And love means staying even when everything else is hard."
I fell asleep with those words echoing in my head, trying to believe them, trying to find hope in her faith when my own had burned to ashes.
The support started trickling in three days later.
At first, I didn't notice it. I was too focused on the negative. The comments, the articles, the endless stream of criticism and judgment. But then my email inbox started filling with messages that didn't lead with anger or accusation.
Dear Ms. Alves,
I'm the wife of a wildland firefighter in Colorado.
My husband watched the coverage of your suspension and wanted me to reach out on his behalf.
He says you made the right call. He says conditions like that, where the fire behavior changes that rapidly, are exactly when firefighters need to trust their training and instincts over protocol.
He says if more crew leaders had your courage to prioritize lives over property, we'd have fewer flags at half-mast during fire season.
Thank you for bringing your crew home. Thank you for choosing lives. My husband comes home to our three children because people like you make the hard calls.
Sincerely, Jennifer Marks
I read it three times, something in my chest loosening just slightly. Then I kept scrolling, finding more.
Petra,
I lost my brother in the Juniper Ridge Fire.
Fifteen firefighters dead because conditions changed and they were trapped.
I think about that day constantly. What could have been different, what choices could have saved them.
Your decision to evacuate your crew, even against orders, is exactly the kind of split-second judgment that saves lives.
The people criticizing you weren't there. They don't understand what it's like when a fire turns, when every second matters. But I understand. And I'm grateful you trusted yourself.
You did the right thing.
Paul Harrigan