Chapter 11 Beau #2
“Swimmers deployed,” I said into my radio, trusting Dane to manage the rope as I started back toward shore. The woman and children clung to me, and I used my free arm to pull us through the current, fighting against the water that wanted to drag us downstream.
The rope held. Dane and Captain Torres hauled us in, and then we were on solid ground, all three of them coughing up water but alive, breathing, safe.
“Medical now,” I said, and Silas was already there, checking the children first while I helped the woman who was definitely an omega sit up.
“You’re okay,” I told her. “You’re all okay. You did exactly right.”
She was crying and laughing at the same time, pulling her children against her with shaking hands. “Thank you. Thank you. I thought we were going to die.”
“Not on my watch.”
Silas looked up from examining the smaller child. “Both kids are good. Some water in the lungs but breathing is clear. They’ll need to be checked at the hospital but no immediate concerns.” He moved to the omega. “Let’s have a look at you.”
I stepped back, suddenly shaking as the adrenaline drained away. Dane appeared beside me, wrapping a thermal blanket around my shoulders.
“You did good,” he said quietly.
“I brought them home.”
“Yeah, you did.”
The radio crackled. “Rescue team, this is Command. Status update.”
I took the handset. “Command, this is Calder. All three occupants extracted successfully. Minor medical concerns, transporting to hospital for evaluation. We’re secure.”
“Copy that.” There was something in Sable’s voice, something warm and proud that made my chest tight. “Well done, Beau. I knew you would.”
Those words landed harder than they should have. She’d known. Had looked at me when I was frozen in panic and paralysis and had seen past it to the person who could do the job. Had believed in me when I couldn’t believe in myself.
“Thanks to your coordination,” I said.
“No. Thanks to you being exactly who I knew you were. The team is coming home now. See you when you get here.”
The transport to the hospital took thirty minutes, and then another hour to hand off the omega and children to the emergency department and complete the paperwork. By the time we got back to the fire station, it was past midnight and the storm had started to ease.
Sable was still in the command center when we walked in, coordinating with the three shelter locations and running status checks on road conditions. She looked up when I entered, and something passed between us. Recognition. Understanding. The acknowledgment that something fundamental had shifted.
She crossed to me, and I expected her to say something professional. To thank me for the successful rescue or ask about the victims’ conditions.
Instead, she reached up and squeezed my hand. Just once, brief and warm and significant.
“You did it,” she said quietly.
“I couldn’t have without you.” I realized it was true.
If she hadn’t looked at me in that moment and told me she believed I could do it, I would have frozen.
Would have let someone else go. Would have kept running from the nightmare instead of facing it.
“You made me see that I wasn’t that person anymore. The one who failed.”
“You never failed, Beau. You just convinced yourself you did because you couldn’t save everyone, and you’re someone who thinks saving everyone is possible.
” She was still holding my hand. “But you saved three people tonight. Three lives that wouldn’t exist tomorrow if you hadn’t been exactly who you are. ”
I wanted to pull her close. Wanted to bury my face in her hair and breathe in her scent until the adrenaline and fear finally drained away completely. But we were in a room full of emergency responders, and she had a job to do.
So I just squeezed her hand back and let go.
“Thank you.”
“You already thanked me. Stop thanking me and go get some rest. We’re past the worst of it, and I can handle coordination from here.”
“You need rest too.”
She gave me a look that would have been intimidating if I didn’t know her better by now. “I’ll rest when this is over. That’s how it works when you’re running command.”
Dane appeared at my shoulder. “How about a compromise. Beau gets food and dry clothes, you take a thirty-minute break to do the same, and then we all come back here and ride out the rest of the night together.”
Sable looked like she wanted to argue, but something in Dane’s expression made her pause.
Maybe she saw the same thing I was starting to see.
That the three of us had formed a unit around her, whether she’d asked for it or not.
That we were going to keep showing up, keep supporting her, keep proving we were worth the risk.
“Fifteen minutes,” she finally said. “But I’m eating here. Dane, there’s pizza in the break room from earlier. Beau, there are spare clothes in the locker room. And someone needs to tell Silas he can stop hovering outside the door.”
“I’m not hovering,” Silas called from the hallway. “I’m strategically positioning myself for optimal coordination support.”
Despite everything, I smiled. We were all disasters. All broken in our own ways, all carrying damage we’d learned to live with but never quite healed from.
But maybe Sable was right. Maybe we were the kind of disasters who could piece each other back together, one small moment at a time.
I changed into dry clothes and found my way back to the command center. Pizza was set up on the break room table, and someone had made fresh coffee. Sable was sitting with a slice of pizza she wasn’t eating, her attention split between her tablet and the radio.
When I sat down across from her, she looked up.
“How are you really doing?” she asked.
“Better than I expected.” It was true. I’d faced my nightmare and come out the other side. Had proven to myself that I could still do the job, that three years of guilt and self-doubt hadn’t broken something fundamental inside me. “Still processing, but better.”
“Good.” She picked up her pizza, took a bite, and made a face. “Cold pizza is terrible.”
“It’s a disaster responder staple.”
“That doesn’t make it good.”
I watched her eat, struck by how normal this felt. The four of us in a break room at midnight, eating cold pizza and coordinating emergency response. It shouldn’t feel comfortable. Shouldn’t feel right. But somehow it did.
Dane leaned against the doorframe, coffee in hand. “Storm’s moving out faster than predicted. We should be clear by oh-three-hundred.”
“Good.” Sable checked her tablet. “All three shelters report stable conditions. No new emergencies in the past hour. We might actually get through this without any major incidents.”
“Define major,” Silas said, stealing a slice of pizza. “Because I’d call a vehicle in rising water pretty major.”
“Major means casualties.” Sable’s voice was flat, professional. “We got everyone out. That counts as success.”
“That counts as Beau being a badass,” Silas corrected. “Which we all knew he was, but it’s nice to have confirmation.”
I shook my head, uncomfortable with the praise even though part of me wanted to hold onto it. “Just did my job.”
“You did more than your job,” Sable said quietly. “You faced down your worst fear and came out stronger. That’s not nothing, Beau.”
Our eyes met across the table, and I saw something in her expression that made my chest tight. Pride, maybe. Or understanding. The recognition that we all carried damage, but that damage didn’t have to define us.
“Thank you,” I said again, because I didn’t have better words.
“Stop thanking me. Eat your pizza. And then we’re all going to take turns getting some actual rest because this crisis isn’t over and I need all of you functional when the next call comes in.”
It was an order, delivered with the same calm authority she used for everything. But underneath it, I heard the care. The concern. The fact that she needed us functional because she cared what happened to us.
That mattered more than I wanted to admit.
The rest of the night passed in shifts. Sable coordinated while we took turns resting, though “resting” mostly meant dozing in chairs or sprawling on the floor with our gear as pillows.
By oh-four-hundred, the storm had passed completely, leaving behind flooded roads and downed trees but no major casualties.
At oh-six-hundred, Sable called the end of emergency operations. Shelters would stay open for another twenty-four hours, road crews would start clearing debris, and utilities would begin restoration work. But the crisis part was over.
I found her standing outside the fire station, watching the sunrise break through the clouds. She looked exhausted, her tactical pants dirty and her jacket wrinkled, but there was something peaceful in her expression.
“You stayed up all night,” I said.
“Someone had to.” She glanced at me, and I caught the scent of her. Cedar smoke and autumn rain, strong enough now that I knew her suppressants had completely failed during the night. “You should go home. Get real sleep.”
“So should you.”
“I will. After I finish the post-incident reports.”
“Sable.”
She looked at me fully then, and I saw the exhaustion in her eyes. The weight of carrying everyone’s safety for eighteen hours straight. The toll it took to be the person everyone relied on.
“Let me help,” I said. “With the reports. With whatever you need. You don’t have to do everything alone.”
“I know.” Her voice was soft. “That’s what scares me. Six weeks ago, I was fine being alone. Now I have three alphas who keep showing up and making it harder to convince myself I don’t need anyone.”
“Maybe you don’t need us. Maybe we need you.”
She was quiet for a long moment, looking at me with those dark amber eyes that saw too much. “Maybe,” she finally said. “Maybe that’s what scares me most. That you need me and I’ll fail you the way I apparently fail everyone who tries to get close.”
“You didn’t fail anyone last night. You saved lives through coordination and leadership. You made me believe I could do something I thought was impossible. That’s not failure, Sable. That’s exactly the opposite.”
She looked away, but not before I saw her eyes get bright. “Go home, Beau. Please. I can’t process this right now, not when I’m this tired and my biology is doing things I don’t want to think about.”
I wanted to stay. Wanted to push for more honesty, more openness, more acknowledgment of whatever was happening between the four of us. But I’d learned that Sable gave things in her own time, and pushing only made her retreat.
“Same time tomorrow?” I asked. “Coffee at six?”
“If you show up with coffee after the night we just had, I’m going to think you’re superhuman. Although with how I feel, I think I might just sleep this entire day away, and then maybe I’ll finally feel normal by six AM tomorrow.”
“I’m just someone who knows you’ll need caffeine to get through tomorrow.”
She almost smiled. “Six AM tomorrow. I’ll be there.”
I left her standing in the sunrise and drove home through streets littered with storm debris. My apartment felt too empty, too quiet after the controlled chaos of the command center. But when I finally lay down, I didn’t dream about the omega and pup who’d drowned three years ago.
I dreamed about three people I’d pulled from a flooded vehicle. About Sable’s hand squeezing mine. About the way she’d looked at me and told me she knew I could do it.
For the first time in three years, I woke up without the guilt crushing my chest.
Maybe that was progress.
Maybe that was enough for now.