9. Lila
NINE
LILA
I told Beck we should keep it professional on a Monday, and by Wednesday I almost believed it.
We were in the supply closet, me restocking the med kit, him logging equipment inspections, and the proximity was the cruel kind, the kind that felt designed by someone who wanted to teach me a lesson about self-preservation.
The closet smelled like sterile packaging and latex and the faint woody scent that followed Beck around like a signature.
"The laryngoscope blades need replacing," I said, not looking at him. "These are dulling."
"I'll put in the requisition."
"Thanks."
Professional. Clean. Two colleagues discussing equipment. No one would have guessed that a week ago he'd had me against a wall with his hands in my hair and his mouth on my throat. No one would have guessed that I replayed that moment every night before sleep like a film I couldn't stop watching.
"Lila." His voice was different. Lower. Not the professional register.
I looked up. He was standing very still, a clipboard in one hand, his eyes doing that thing, the storm-before-rain thing, the darkening.
"I should have—" he started.
"Beck." I set down the laryngoscope blade. "We had a moment. You decided it was a mistake. I'm a grown woman and I can handle that. What I can't handle is the back and forth. So let's just be what we are. Partners. Colleagues. Whatever."
His jaw tightened. The clipboard creaked in his grip.
"Is that what you want?"
"It doesn't matter what I want. I've spent enough time wanting people who can't decide if they want me back."
The words were sharper than I'd intended.
They came from the Charlotte wound, from Garrett, who'd kept me on a string for months while sleeping with someone else, who'd said he loved me in the morning and texted her in the afternoon.
I wasn't comparing Beck to Garrett. Not really.
But the shape of the pain was similar. The push-pull, the almost, the not-quite.
Beck's expression did something I'd never seen before. The wall flickered. It didn't come down, just flickered, like a power grid during a storm, showing what was behind it in a flash too brief to fully see but too bright to ignore.
"Okay," he said.
"Okay."
We finished in the supply closet. We went about our shift.
The day was uneventful, a minor medical call, a fire alarm at the elementary school that turned out to be burnt popcorn.
I ate dinner with the crew and laughed at Ty's stories and helped Cole FaceTime Lily, who showed me a drawing she'd made of a fire truck that looked more like a red rectangle with wheels, and it was the most beautiful piece of art I'd ever seen.
Normal. This was normal, and it was enough, and I was going to make it be enough.
At 21:45, the tones dropped.
"Engine 7, Medic 7, structure fire, Old County Mill, report of flames visible through the roof. Second alarm requested."
The old mill again. Or what was left of it.
The previous fire had gutted the interior, but the shell remained, a brick skeleton that apparently still had enough material inside to burn.
We rolled hard, the engine screaming through empty streets, the night cold and clear with a half-moon that turned the mountains silver.
The mill was different this time. The previous fire had weakened the structure, and what we were looking at now was a compromised building burning from the inside, flames shooting through gaps in the roof, the brick walls bowing in ways that made my stomach clench.
Captain Harding set up command. "Defensive operations only. No interior. This building is compromised. I don't want anyone inside."
I set up medical at staging and worked through my equipment check with hands that were steady and sure. The crew went to work, hose lines, ladder pipe, protecting the neighboring structures. Beck was directing the attack from the alpha side, his voice on the radio controlled and clear.
Twenty minutes in, it happened.
I was restocking the airway kit at the back of the medic unit when I heard the sound, a low, tearing groan that vibrated through the ground. The south wall of the mill was shifting, bowing outward, and a section of the roof behind it was sagging.
"All units, evacuate south side. Wall collapse imminent," Captain Harding barked.
The crew moved. I saw Ty and Sadie pulling back, saw Cole repositioning the engine.
And then I saw the flash, a burst of fire through a ground-floor window on the south side that hadn't been involved before.
A flashover, rolling across the ceiling of whatever room remained, and the heat wave hit me from thirty yards away.
I was behind the medic unit. I should have been safe. But the flashover blew out the remaining windows on the south side, and a chunk of burning timber came with it, arcing through the air like a comet, and the world went white-hot and sideways.
The impact knocked me off my feet. I hit the ground on my back, the air leaving my lungs in a rush that tasted like smoke and copper.
Something was on top of me, debris, hot, heavy.
My turnout jacket took the brunt, but I felt the heat through it, searing against my left shoulder. The sky above me was the color of fire.
Hands on me. Pulling the debris away. Beck's voice, stripped of every layer of control I'd ever heard in it. "Lila. Lila."
He was there. On his knees beside me, ripping the burning timber off with his gloved hands, patting out the embers on my jacket.
His face was inches from mine and it was wrecked.
The wall wasn't flickering. It was gone.
Demolished. What was behind it was raw fear and something so fierce it looked almost violent.
"I'm okay," I croaked. "I'm?—"
"Don't move." His hands were on my face now, gloves off, bare skin against my cheeks, and he was checking my pupils, my airway, running the assessment with shaking hands. "Your shoulder?—"
"Surface burn. The jacket took it." I sat up despite his protest. My left shoulder throbbed where the heat had gotten through, and my back ached from the impact, but I was intact. Whole. Here.
Beck held my face in his hands. His thumbs rested on my cheekbones. His eyes were wild, the gray-blue consumed by something darker.
"I can't lose you either," he said. "That's the problem. That's the whole goddamn problem, Lila. I can't. I tried not to feel this, and I can't."
My hands came up and circled his wrists. I held him holding me.
"Then stop trying," I said.
He kissed me. There on the ground, in the red light of a burning building, with soot on both our faces and the crew somewhere behind us and the south wall finally giving way with a sound like thunder.
He kissed me like it was an answer to a question he'd been asking himself for weeks.
Like it was the only true thing in a night made of fire and fear.
Captain Harding called the scene. The mill was a total loss.
My shoulder was assessed and bandaged, first-degree, nothing serious, more insult than injury.
The crew gave me the once-over with worried eyes and bad jokes, Ty offering to carry me to the rig in a fireman's carry, Sadie telling him she'd break his arms if he tried.
We drove back to the station in convoy. Beck rode in the medic unit with me, not driving, just riding, sitting in the back where the patients went, and when I glanced at him through the rearview mirror, he was looking at me with an expression that made my chest ache in a way I didn't want to stop.
At the station, we cleaned up. Debriefed. The crew filed out, exhausted and smelling like smoke, and one by one the lights went off, and the station settled into its nighttime quiet.
I walked home. My shoulder ached under the fresh bandage. My clothes smelled like fire. My apartment was cold. I'd left the window cracked that morning, back when the biggest thing I'd been worried about was laryngoscope blades.
The knock came at 23:14. I opened the door knowing who it would be.
Beck stood in the hallway. He'd showered. He was wearing the same gray T-shirt as last time, or maybe all his T-shirts were gray, which tracked, and his hair was damp, and his eyes were clear.
"I'm not running," he said. "I'm not leaving. I'm not going to kiss you and walk away."
"Promise?"
"I swear."
I reached out. Took his hand. Pulled him inside.
The door closed behind us, and this time when he kissed me, there was no hesitation. No half-measures. He kissed me like he meant it, like the whole weight of his fear and his grief and his want was behind it, and I took all of it and gave him mine.
We moved through the apartment in a blur of touch and breath.
His hands found the hem of my shirt and I raised my arms and he pulled it over my head, careful of the bandaged shoulder, his mouth tracing the edge of the gauze with a tenderness that made my throat tight.
My hands went to his shirt and pulled and he was bare-chested in my lamplight, and god, the sight of him, the broad planes of his chest, the scars from the job, a burn mark on his left forearm that was pale and smooth.
"Your shoulder," he murmured against my collarbone.
"It's fine."
"Lila."
"Beck. I promise. I'm right here, I'm fine, and if you stop touching me right now I will genuinely never forgive you."
A huff of almost-laughter against my skin. His hands moved, down my sides, over my hips, pulling me against him with a certainty that hadn't been there before. I could feel the heat of him through the remaining layers between us, and I wanted them gone with a single-mindedness that surprised me.