Chapter 7
SEVEN
POWELL
By the time Pepper steered Jess around the corner and out of sight, the adrenaline had started to wear off, leaving that familiar post-call hollow buzzing behind my ribs.
She’d looked back once before they turned—just a quick flick of her gaze over her shoulder, emergency blanket crinkling around her. It hadn’t been a glare. That was the part that stuck.
I forced myself to turn away from the empty spot she’d just vacated and back toward the truck.
Pour Decisions was a mess.
The visible flame was out. The guys were in mop-up mode now, water hissing softly as they chased hot spots inside the Airstream shell.
Steam and smoke still rolled out of the open side door in lazy curls.
The twinkle lights Jess had so painstakingly strung up were melted in places, dangling in sad loops.
Soot smeared the aluminum skin like someone had dragged a giant charcoal stick across it.
I walked the perimeter, boots splashing through runoff pooling by the curb. My gear felt heavier with every step. What had once been a cheerful little coffee oasis was now just a scorched metal box on wheels.
“Looks worse than it is,” Meatball said from the far side, as if he’d read my mind. He was our resident tinkerer—the guy capable of fixing anything with duct tape and a socket set. He’d taken off his mask and was leaning into the side door, flashlight beam cutting through the dimness. “Probably.”
“Define ‘worse,’” I said.
He snorted. “Well, she’s not serving lattes out of this tomorrow, I can tell you that much.”
The interior, from what I saw over his shoulder, was blackened and dripping. The counters were charred. The cabinet doors nearest the source of the fire were warped and split. The espresso machine—Jess’s pride and joy—was a half-melted silhouette under a layer of soot and foam.
My stomach twisted.
“Any idea what started it?” I asked.
Meatball shrugged one shoulder, beam moving slowly.
“Hard to say for sure with this much damage and all the water we just put on it. Might’ve been wiring.
Maybe a loose connection behind the counter.
Could’ve been some random arc that picked the wrong moment.
Nothing obvious screamed ‘somebody screwed up.’”
I let out a breath I hadn’t consciously been holding. “So… not negligence.”
“Doesn’t seem like it,” he said. “Sometimes shit just… happens.” He glanced back at me. “You know that.”
Yeah. I knew that. Didn’t mean I had to like it.
I crouched by the door, fingers brushing the twisted metal of the latch. The thing was mangled now, bent from where we’d forced it, but I remembered perfectly how it had fought Kelsey. How it had fought Jess. How it had fought me.
“You see this?” I asked.
Meatball leaned closer. “Door gave you trouble?”
“Has been,” I said. “Caught before.” My jaw tightened. “She might’ve tried to leave, and it jammed on her.”
His expression shifted, the corners of his mouth flattening. “Damn.”
“Yeah.”
The word didn’t come close to touching the spike of cold fury that went through me. I’d known it was a hazard. I’d told her. And then we’d gone to the barn, we’d flirted around the edges of something that might’ve been truce, and she’d laughed once, and I’d let myself be distracted.
If we’d been five minutes slower tonight…
I straightened fast enough to make my back protest. Cap was talking to one of the cops near the front of the truck, gesturing at the scorched vent. A few lingering townspeople loitered at a distance, phones out, their faces lit by a mix of flashing lights and morbid curiosity.
Moose fell into step beside me as I walked back toward the engine. He studied my face for a beat. “You okay?”
“Fine,” I said automatically.
He gave me the same look he always gave me when the word fine was an obvious lie. “You got real quiet after she left.”
“I pulled a woman out of a burning metal box,” I said. “I’m allowed to be quiet.”
“Uh-huh,” he said. “Sure. And if that woman had been literally anyone else, I might believe you.”
I clenched my jaw, staring at the ruined truck. “You wanna go wring out your drama somewhere else, or…?”
He ignored that. “She was leaning on you like you were the last solid thing on the planet, man.”
Heat pricked the back of my neck. “She could barely stand. I was convenient.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. Convenient like gravity.” He nudged my arm with his elbow. “You looked scared.”
“I was,” I said before I could stop myself.
The honesty surprised both of us. Moose’s expression softened in a way that made me want to punch something.
“I don’t like pulling anybody out of a fire,” I added roughly.
“Yeah, but this is the first time I’ve seen you look like the world might actually end if we didn’t find her.”
I didn’t answer. Couldn’t. The image of her crumpled on that floor kept flashing in my mind, overlaid with a dozen other possibilities that hadn’t happened because we’d been fast, because she’d held out, because the latch had finally given.
Fear sat under my breastbone like a knot of wire.
Moose hooked his thumbs in his suspenders, glancing over at the truck. “How bad do you think it is?”
“Bad,” I said.
“Bad like ‘call an insurance adjuster and a good mechanic,’ or bad like ‘roll this thing straight into the scrap yard and pour one out for her’?”
I took in the warped metal, the black streaks running from the roof vent all the way down the side, the way the interior still glowed faintly with heat despite the gallons of water we’d dumped into it.
The wheels were somehow miraculously intact.
The frame looked more or less straight. But inside…
there wasn’t much that didn’t appear ruined.
“Depends on how sentimental you are,” I said. “Shell might be salvageable if someone with a lot of time and a lot of skills gets stubborn about it. But if you’re asking what’s easier? New truck.”
“Can she afford new?” Moose asked.
The question landed like a punch.
Jess worked her ass off. I’d watched her grind through long days, double markets, early mornings and late nights.
She kept Pour Decisions running with caffeine, charisma, and sheer force of will.
But I’d also overheard enough small-town gossip to be well aware she didn’t have some secret trust fund sitting around waiting for moments like this.
“No,” I said. “She can’t.”
He didn’t argue. Moose was a lot of things, but oblivious wasn’t one of them.
“Losing December is gonna gut her,” he said quietly. “Even if insurance covers some of it.”
I closed my eyes briefly, counting backward from ten like that might slow the spin of my thoughts. December was everything for her. Holiday catering, special drinks, festival nights, the Twelve Stops of Christmas. All of that was… now this.
“I know,” I said.
We finished out the scene, draining and loading hoses, stowing tools, Captain MacAvoy doing his last walk-around. It all blurred together, muscle memory taking over. My brain kept replaying two images like a flipbook: Jess’s face when she saw the truck, and the way she’d felt against my side.
When we finally rolled back into the station bay, the adrenaline dip hit hard.
I hung my gear in my locker, the smell of smoke puffing out with every movement. The sounds of the others filtered around me—locker doors slamming, low voices, someone cracking a joke that got a tired laugh.
I just stood there for a second, hands braced on either side of the open locker, head down.
Almost.
We had almost been too late.
“Hey.” Moose’s voice came from behind me. “You gonna shower or just marinate in eau de burnt coffee all night?”
“Working up to it,” I said.
He came around to lean against the next locker, arms folded. For a big guy, he had a real talent for loitering with intent. “If you wanted to go check on her later, I’d cover your chores.”
“I’m not going to the hospital,” I said. “Her friend took her. She doesn’t need me hovering around like some—” I caught myself before I said creep. “—like some guy who thinks pulling her out of a fire earns him points.”
Moose’s mouth twitched. “You know what you looked like when Pepper took her?”
“Don’t.”
“Like a man who watched his girl walk away with somebody else at prom.”
“She’s not my girl,” I snapped.
He held up both hands in surrender. “Okay. Okay. She’s not your girl.”
Silence stretched between us for a beat.
“She really hates me,” I said, softer.
He huffed. “Buddy, I have no idea what history you two have, but I’m telling you right now—people don’t lean on someone they hate like that. They might tolerate them. They might use ’em in an emergency. But the way she held onto you? That wasn’t casual.”
I flashed back to the feel of her weight against my side, the way her fingers had curled into the edge of the blanket, knuckles brushing my thigh. The way she’d let her head tip the slightest bit toward me when she’d thought nobody was watching.
“Her walls were down,” I said. “She was in shock.”
“Sure,” Moose agreed. “But they were down. That’s new.”
He wasn’t wrong. For ten years, Jess Donnegan had treated me like a walking inconvenience at best and a personal affront at worst. Tonight, for the first time, she’d looked at me like I was… something else. Safe, perhaps. Solid. I wanted more of that look, and I hated the reason I’d gotten it.
“It kills me that it took this,” I said quietly. “A fire. Almost losing everything.”
Moose watched me for a long moment. “So don’t let it end there.”
I straightened slowly, hands falling from the locker. “What?”
“You heard me.” He shrugged one big shoulder. “If you don’t like the circumstances, change what happens next.”
“That’s not how this works, man. I can’t just… un-burn a truck.”
“No,” he said. “But you might be able to help rebuild one.”
The words sparked something in my chest. A tiny flare of… not hope, exactly. Determination.
I thought about the Cartwright barn. About the way Esmerelda had trotted over like I’d hung the stars, about the tools and old equipment gathering dust in the corner. About the empty space near the back where someone might feasibly back in a small trailer if they wanted to.
I thought about Jess’s face when she’d seen the ruined truck. The way her voice had broken when she’d said, “That’s my everything.” The fact that she hadn’t shoved me away when I’d wrapped an arm around her and let her shake.
“Meatball thinks the shell’s salvageable,” I said slowly. “Frame’s straight. Wheels are fine. It’s the interior that’s toast.”
“Okay,” Moose said. “So gut it. Strip it down. Start over.”
“With what money?” I asked. “I don’t need to see her books to know this will be a struggle.”
Jess was private, proud, and stubborn. She’d rather set herself on fire than ask for help. Which meant that if anyone was going to step in, it had to be someone who could do it without making her feel like a charity case.
My mind started flipping through mental inventory: who in town owed the fire department a favor, who did renovations on the side, whose cousin might have a line on secondhand restaurant equipment, which of the guys understood wiring enough to re-run a food truck safely.
It added up faster than I expected.
“We’ve got the labor,” I heard myself say. “Between us and a couple of volunteers. Meatball knows his way around a panel. Tyler’s cousin runs that salvage yard outside town. Chief’ll sign off on us using the bay or the barn as a workspace if we spin it as community outreach.”
Moose’s smile grew slow and satisfied. “There we go. That’s the face I was waiting for.”
“What face?”
“The ‘I’ve decided on a terrible, exhausting, emotionally complicated project that will probably consume my life for the next several weeks’ face.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “Congratulations. You’re officially screwed.”
“She will never let me do this for her,” I said. “She’ll fight me every step.”
“So don’t do it for her,” he said. “Do it for the town. For the Twelve Stops. For community morale. For your caffeine addiction. Pick your angle.”
I opened my mouth to argue and closed it again. He had a point. The festival depended on Pour Decisions. Half the businesses downtown did better when Jess was open and caffeinating people. Framing it as a community effort to get her back on her feet wasn’t just spin—it was true.
“Even if we could pull it off,” I said, “we’re talking weeks. Custom build-outs take time. We’re not magicians.”
“Sure,” he said. “But we’re firefighters. We’re used to doing the impossible on a shitty timeline.” He cocked his head. “And Christmas is—what—three weeks out?”
“Three and change,” I said.
He spread his hands. “Sounds like just enough time to be idiots.”
I scrubbed a hand over my face, smoke grit scratching my skin. I was tired, emotionally wrung out, and fully aware that what I was considering was insane.
I also knew I was going to do it.
“Okay,” I said.
Moose blinked. “Okay?”
“Yeah.” I drew in a deep breath, and something settled inside me. “Okay. We’re doing this.”
“Atta boy.” He grinned. “So, what’s the plan?”
I glanced around the bay. Meatball was rolling hose. Tyler was coiling up cords. Chief had retreated to his office, no doubt starting paperwork. The place hummed with the low-level activity of a call just wrapped.
I raised my voice. “Hey, Meatball!”
He looked up. “Yeah?”
“You busy for the next few weeks?” I asked.
He snorted. “We talking shift schedule or your usual side quests?”
“Side quest,” Moose muttered.
I ignored him. “I’ve got a project,” I said. “Gonna need hands. Tools. Probably a metric ton of swearing.”
Meatball’s brows went up. “What kind of project?”
“You’ll see,” I said. “But I can tell you this much—we’re not letting that fire be the end of Pour Decisions.”
Moose let out a low whistle. Meatball’s expression shifted from curiosity to interest.
“Damn,” Meatball said. “You’re serious.”
“Dead serious.”
I met each of their gazes in turn. “I need your help. All of you. This is bigger than me.”
There was a beat of silence.
Then Moose slapped the locker beside my head, grinning. “Hell yeah, Donkey. I’m in.”
Meatball shrugged. “I was getting bored anyway. Count me in.”
One by one, the others chimed in, some with jokes, some with mock groans, all variations on the same answer.
We were really going to do this.
I let myself, for the first time since we’d pulled out of the station for that call, imagine Jess’s face when she saw her truck again—rebuilt, restored, possibly even better than before.
If I had anything to say about it, she’d never call me a jackass the same way again.
Or she would.
But maybe, just maybe, there’d be something else in her eyes when she did.