Chapter Six Evan
“Dude, did you see this?”
Without waiting for a response, Noah shoves his phone in my face. The screen is so close to my eyeballs that it takes me several seconds to actually focus on what I’m supposed to be looking at.
It’s the FDNY Instagram account, because apparently they have one of those, and the photo I’m looking at shows a row of very well-dressed people posing for the camera.
With a gentle push, I move Noah’s hand back enough to read the caption. But Noah is impatient and starts explaining it to me like I’m five.
“They took group photos of all the firehouse captains and their dates, but they put Midtown’s seven captains on the last slide.”
I stare up at him from where I’ve been lounging on the couch in the station’s television lounge. It’s half past midnight and I’m only a third of the way through my shift.
“Okay…?”
Noah rolls his eyes at me, then hops over the back of the couch to flop onto the cushions beside me. It jostles me so much that I have to grab the armrest to avoid being knocked off entirely.
“Dude, like, look. Whoever is running the account put us last on purpose, despite that fact that Hargrove and Rapunzel are definitely the hottest people there.”
“Rapunzel?”
“Haven’t you seen Tangled? You have a kid!” Noah scoffs at me.
“Leo isn’t really into that—”
“Anyway, Rapunzel has long blonde hair and green eyes and a can-do attitude. Just like our girl Lila.”
“Our girl…”
“Figure of speech.” Noah shoves his phone back in my face. “Anyway, look how fucking amazing she looks in that red dress.”
Despite my better judgment, I peer closer at the picture. Lila does look fucking amazing. The gown fits her like a glove, and she styled her hair to make it look all glossy and smooth. Personally, I think it looks just as nice when she leaves it all wild.
Not that I’m paying that much attention to our new PR manager.
I push Noah’s phone away again. “You shouldn’t objectify women, Trent.”
He snorts. “Bite me, dude. I’m not objectifying her. I’m stating a scientific fact. Don’t act like you haven’t noticed how gorgeous she is. You’re polite, but you’re not blind.”
“Who’s polite?”
We twist on the couch at the same time to find our captain, still dressed to the nines in his tuxedo, hovering in the doorway to the lounge.
Most of the guys are puttering around in the kitchen or down in the gym, so other than Old Bill—that’s what we call him, despite the fact he’s only in his forties—dozing on the recliner, we’re the only people in here.
Instead of answering his question, Noah lets out a loud wolf-whistle.
“Looking good, Cap!”
Hargrove ignores him, flicking his stoic gaze over to me. “Everything okay?”
“It’s been a quiet night so far,” I confirm.
“We were just gossiping about how sexy you look tonight,” Noah adds with a smirk, waving his phone in Hargrove’s general direction. “Where’s your hot date?”
He stares at Noah for a long moment, but the resident golden retriever doesn’t take the silent cue to shut the fuck up. “Ms. Hart is upstairs.”
“Ms. Hart? What is this, Bridgerton?”
“Trent, go mop the first floor hallways. They’re looking dingy.”
“But—”
“Now.”
Noah might be the coworker equivalent of an annoying little brother, but he’s not disobedient. Even as he frowns at the captain’s order, he stands and leaves to do what he’s told.
When it’s just me and Hargrove, I dare to ask, “You alright?”
Me and the captain go way back. At least a decade, long before he became captain and I was promoted to a paramedic role.
And when I lost Bella a few years ago, he checked on me every single day during my bereavement leave.
He even wrote me the letter of recommendation that convinced the state to let me become Leo’s official guardian, even though he’s not my son by blood.
He looks tough on the outside and he acts like he’s impenetrable, but the truth is that Hargrove has a soft heart, deep down inside.
“Why wouldn’t I be alright?” he counters, slipping his hands into his pockets.
His jaw is tight, eyes unfocused—like he’s already bracing for a hit he knows is coming.
He’s trying to appear casual, but there’s nothing relaxed about the tense set of his shoulders and the little twitch in the corner of his eye that always happens whenever he’s stressed.
I switch gears. “Did the gala go well?”
“Why wouldn’t it have?”
“This isn’t an interrogation, man.”
He deflates slightly. “Right. Sorry. Yes, it went well. Lila—the PR team got plenty of content, I imagine.”
“But did you have a nice time?”
Hargrove snorts humorlessly. “I never have a nice time at those sorts of events. You know that.”
I might be one of the few people at Station 47 who knows anything about the captain’s past. Like the fact that he was raised up in Westchester by absurdly wealthy and intensely strict parents.
Years ago, he told me his father wanted him to go to Yale and then be groomed to inherit the family company, but instead he moved to the city and enrolled in an EMT course.
He doesn’t talk to his family much anymore, and he likes to avoid anyone who reminds him of that blue blood world.
So, I switch tactics. “Did Lila at least enjoy herself?”
Something flickers in his gaze, but I don’t understand it. Guilt, maybe? Confusion? Some kind of weird ferocity?
“I can’t speak for her,” is all he says.
“Right.”
He sighs loudly, shaking his head. “It’s just that the Hawk is stressing me the fuck out.”
Kate Branson, he means. Our union rep. She’s made of tougher stuff than most of the hardened civil servants here, but she’s easy enough to deal with as long as you’re polite and compliant.
“How so?”
“She’s pissed about this Save a Hero thing. Keeps reminding me that there’s no fraternizing allowed. Nearly threatened to harvest my organs when she heard the first episode would show Lila as my date for the evening.”
“But what’s the big deal when it wasn’t an actual date? It’s just a lighthearted premise for content.”
Again, there’s an odd look in his eyes, and then he simply shrugs in response.
“Why don’t you head home?” I suggest, even though I’m not the one who gives commands in this dynamic. “You’re not even on duty tonight.”
Hargrove waves me off, already turning back toward the door. “Got stuff to do.”
I frown at his back, but then Old Bill gives a comically loud snort as he startles awake.
“Look alive, boy,” he tells me. “We’ve got trouble.”
“There haven’t been any calls for—”
Before I can finish my sentence, the station’s alert system kicks in.
“Think I’m becoming psychic in my old age,” he mutters as we bustle out of the lounge to respond to whoever needs us at one o’clock in the morning in this great, big, chaotic city.
***
By the time I get home from Station 47, it’s almost five in the evening and I’m running on scattered sleep.
In the past twenty-four hours, I’ve stitched up a nasty stab wound, stabilized a burn victim, tended to three sorority girls who definitely snorted something they weren’t supposed to, transported an NYU freshman with alcohol poisoning to Mount Sinai, and responded to a minor car wreck on Broadway.
All in a day’s work.
Now, when I step into my apartment, it smells like Chef Boyardee and crayons.
Leo’s latest art project is taped to the fridge, the glitter glue still drying around the edges, and Rosa is very subtly slipping sweet potato puree into my son’s canned ravioli—which is the only thing he’ll eat lately, so we’ve had to get creative.
“Hey, Evan,” Rosa calls over her shoulder.
“Hey! Where’s—”
“Daddy!”
Leo comes barreling around the corner, all knees and elbows as he crashes into me. I scoop him up, all the tension from my shift immediately melting away as I take in the sight of his carefree smile.
“Hey, buddy!”
“Me and Rosa built a firetruck out of Legos!”
“Attempted to build,” she clarifies with a laugh. “We tried our best.”
I set Leo down and try to take my jacket off, but he’s already yanking me down the hall to the tiny living room.
Rosa chuckles in the kitchen. She’s been Leo’s babysitter since he was a toddler and Bella was still alive.
She’s an older woman with adult children who have already flown the nest and she lives downstairs in the same building, so it’s worked out perfectly to have her help me out with Leo while I’m at the station.
Leo does a little dance as he waves his hands dramatically at the hard plastic construction on the coffee table.
The firetruck in question is… abstract. It’s a little lopsided and it appears to only have three wheels, but there’s a tiny ladder and a bunch of little firefighter figurines that Leo has lined up neatly.
“This is the captain, just like Uncle Hale,” he informs me, holding up a figurine with a cartoonish frown.
“And this is Old Bill because he has a big mustache. And this one is Noah because of he’s got huge arms. Oh, and this one is Miss Rita, but Rosa let me use a marker to color her hair blue.
And this one is you because he fixes the broken people. ”
Leo holds up what looks like a tiny surgeon in green scrubs, which isn’t quite accurate, but there’s no point in correcting a seven-year-old.
“The broken people, huh?” I shrug out of my jacket and crouch down next to the table with Leo.
“Mmhmm. See? This dinosaur’s tail fell off, so you helped put it back on.”
“How did his tail fall off?”
Leo giggles. “I cut it off with scissors.”
“Supervised!” Rosa chimes in from where she can overhear us in the kitchen. “It was supervised scissor usage!”
My son beams brightly and nods.
This time, I can’t help laughing. Kids are so weird.
Leo continues chattering, happily showing me all the finer details of the firetruck and its crew.
But when Rosa calls him to the table for dinner, after which she’ll head out for the evening, my attention drifts toward the television on the other side of the small room.
It’s playing the local news, and just when my gaze hits the screen, a glossy political ad starts up.
Andrew Banks. Leadership New Yorkers Can Trust.
My stomach drops.
“Now is not the time for people to be losing faith in their public servants,” the ad begins, Banks’ gravelly voice making him sound like he’s the narrator of a Ford truck commercial.
“Unfortunately, Station 47 has lost its way. While hardworking families struggle, taxpayer dollars are wasted on social media stunts and vanity projects.”
Clips flash across the screen. Slivers of Noah’s infamous shirtless cat rescue, as well as a completely unrelated clip of Old Bill pretending to snooze behind the wheel of one of our engines, which was posted ages ago as part of a humorous campaign that multiple stations participated in.
And then there are more recent clips that have obviously been stolen from the content that Lila has posted. They’re carefully edited to make it look like we’re all just a bunch of idiots fooling around. Someone with a good eye took a fine-toothed comb to it all.
Bright red words flash across the screen.
Wasteful. Reckless. Out of Control.
“Reelect Andrew Banks and he’ll make sure to clean up their act…”
It switches immediately to a cereal commercial, but I’m still replaying the ad in my mind.
“That was ominous,” I murmur.
“This ravioli tastes weird,” Leo is complaining in the kitchen.
I shake my head, temporarily dispelling my concern over Hargrove and Lila—including her golden hair and red dress—and the Hawk and the councilman, because I have much more important things to tend to right now.
Like convincing a second-grader that fake tomato sauce is definitely supposed to taste like yams.