Chapter 4
JOSH
Be cool. Be normal. Whatever you do, don’t scare off the pretty nurse who’s hopping in front of you like a spooked rabbit.
The most unexpected gift just dropped in my lap. The beautiful, sharp-tongued woman who stitched up my arm three days ago is my neighbor, and she needs my help. But the way she’s glancing back at me every few seconds with those wide hazel eyes tells me one wrong move, and she’ll bolt.
I follow Lily up the exterior stairs, keeping a respectful distance behind her as we climb to the second floor.
She still hasn’t changed out of her scrubs, and her honey-blonde hair has escaped its ponytail in places, curling around her face in damp tendrils.
Even disheveled, she’s gorgeous. Understated but breathtaking in a way that makes my throat tight.
“Sorry about the mess,” she says over her shoulder, her voice clipped. “I wasn’t expecting company.”
I take in the wet towels draped over her balcony railing, weeping onto the Mediterranean concrete below. A serious leak, then. Not just a dripping faucet.
“My entire closet is still in boxes or in the laundry basket”—I adjust my grip on the toolbox—“I’m not judging.”
She doesn’t laugh, but her shoulders relax a fraction.
“Is this the first time the sink broke?” I ask, nodding toward the towel collection.
“No. Mr. Hagerty swore he’d fixed it last month.” She fumbles with her keys. “But I came home to a geyser.”
She pushes the door open and hesitates before stepping inside. Is she having second thoughts about letting me in?
Maybe she’s not thrilled about inviting a stranger into her apartment, toolbox or not. Or it could be the firefighter thing; a job that hits too close to home. Or she might just be tired and not up for anyone’s company, period—including mine. Especially mine?
I pretend not to notice.
Our apartments have the same layout, but that’s where the similarities end. Where my place is still half in boxes and only has essential furniture, hers is lived in. Comfortable.
Her life is written in the details. Grocery lists and kids’ drawings tacked to the fridge, scattered magazines on the ottoman, a phone charger coiled on the floor, and family photos on the wall.
Feminine touches everywhere, but nothing frilly.
Signs of her kid. A small purple backpack by the door, a doll face down on the area rug, and a pair of tiny ballet flats kicked off near the TV stand.
I try not to stare, but I can’t help cataloging every detail. This is where Lily lives. Where she laughs, cries, reads, sleeps.
My gaze returns to the pictures on the wall. I slow my walk as I take them in. Lily with a little girl who has her eyes and smile. Them at the beach with three other women, two older and one young.
And finally a man, her late husband.
Daniel Finnigan. The lieutenant who died four years ago, whose job I now have.
He’s in several photos. Arm around Lily at a department barbecue.
Cradling a newborn baby. Sitting on a firetruck with a toddler in his lap.
He had dark hair and a square jaw. In every photo, he projects the kind of steady presence that doesn’t need words to command respect.
His grin is unguarded, playful. He looks like someone who could break the tension with a joke just as easily as he could take charge.
A weird pressure creeps under my ribs. Am I intruding just by looking at these photos? This isn’t just her past—it’s her wound. And I’m the walking, talking reminder of everything she lost.
“That’s Daniel. My late husband.”
Her voice startles me, and I turn. She’s watching me, arms crossed over her chest, expression unreadable.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s fine.” She cuts me off, but not unkindly. “You were going to find out either way. Might as well address the elephant in the room.”
I nod, grateful for her directness even as I scramble for something appropriate to say.
“He was station 27’s lieutenant before Wilcox… Before you.” Her gaze drifts to the photos, the corners of her mouth pulled tight, jaw clenched, fighting a battle with grief she must’ve lost a hundred times. “You have his job now.”
That difficult truth has been sitting between us since the hospital. Only I didn’t know about her dead firefighter husband then. But I do now.
“I’m sorry,” I say, meaning it in more ways than I can articulate.
She shrugs, but the casualness is forced. “It’s not your fault. It’s been four years. The squad needs a lieutenant. Life goes on.” Her voice catches on the last word.
I search for something to say that won’t sound trite. “Still sucks.”
Her eyes meet mine, surprise flickering across her face, and the line of her mouth relaxes. “Yeah. It does.”
“Glad we ripped off the Band-Aid,” I offer with a tentative smile. “Better to get the awkward stuff out in the open.”
“I appreciate that. But that’s as much talking as I want to do about the topic.”
I nod.
She studies me for a moment, then, as if to draw another line under the subject, turns and leads the way. “Bathroom’s this way.”
I follow her down the hall, relieved to be moving onto safer ground. “Show me this sink of mass destruction.”
The bathroom floor is still wet, and the cabinet looks like it’s been through a tsunami.
“I shut off the water supply,” she explains, “but not before it sprayed me in the face and flooded half the room.”
I set my toolbox on the floor and crouch down to inspect the damage. “Mind if I take a look underneath?”
“Be my guest.” She sits on the closed toilet lid, watching as I open the cabinet doors.
The space beneath the sink is cramped and damp. A puddle under a web of cracked seals and metal that’s seen better decades. Classic wear and tear that should have been addressed years ago.
“Found the culprit,” I announce, extracting myself from the cabinet. “Your drain assembly is shot. The gasket’s worn through, and the pipe’s corroded. When’s the last time this was replaced?”
“Never, as far as I know,” she says. “We’ve lived here ten years.”
The casual “we” hits me. She counts in twos, even though her husband’s been gone for almost half the time she’s been here.
She could mean her and her daughter, but the kid couldn’t have been born when she first moved in.
No, that “we” is for the life she built with a man who’s now just a photograph on the wall—she’s half of a pair, still speaking in the plural.
I pretend to examine the pipes again to hide whatever expression might be crossing my face.
“You need a new drain stopper assembly,” I explain, kneeling on the floor beside her. “You’ve got two options.”
She arches an eyebrow.
I hold up my thumb. “Option one: I go buy the part in the morning and install it.”
“You don’t have to work?”
“No, I started my off rotation today. Do you have weekends off, or are you on a variable schedule?”
“No, I switched to a Monday to Friday nine-to-five contract, makes things more manageable with my daughter, Penny.”
“Okay, so we can do this tomorrow. In the meantime, I can restore the water in the rest of the house, but you won’t be able to use the main bathroom.” Her apartment, like mine, must have a half bath, so the situation is survivable for a day.
Lily’s gaze drifts toward her shower longingly. It’s clear how badly she wants to wash off the hospital shift.
“Or?” she prompts.
Her obvious desperation to shower gives me the nerve to offer option two. “We order the part now for one-hour delivery, and you endure my company for a quick takeout dinner while we wait. I install it tonight, and you get your bathroom working before bedtime.”
Our gazes lock, and the offer stretches between us, like a drawn bowstring waiting for release. One that, if you let go too fast, will snap and leave a sharp bruise. Calculations run behind her sad eyes: doubt, hesitation, practical needs, and possibly—hopefully—a hint of interest.
She glances at the shower again, then back at me. Her desire to get clean seems to win out over whatever reservations she has about spending an hour with me.
“Fine,” she says with a nod. “Option two. But dinner’s on me, and I want an invoice for the part to send to Mr. Hagerty.”
I struggle to contain my smile. “Deal.” I check the serial number and brand on the drain and pull out my phone to place the order. “Forty-five minutes to an hour,” I announce, reading the confirmation.
“Great.” She stands, smoothing her hands down her scrubs. “What are you in the mood for—Thai or Mexican?”
“Thai,” I answer without hesitation. “Extra spicy.”
She grabs her phone. “I’ll order from the place around the corner.”
We migrate to the kitchen while we wait. Lily opens the refrigerator, pulls out two beers, and twists off the caps before handing me a bottle. No glasses. I like that.
“Thanks,” I say, taking a long pull of the cold American lager.
We settle on opposite sides of her kitchen counter, studying each other over the tops of our bottles. The fridge hums. The sound of a distant siren bleeds through the window. Somewhere outside, a car door slams. Neither of us talks.
The label on my beer is peeling under my thumb when she finally breaks the silence, sounding painfully awkward.
“So? Where are you from?”
“Delaware City,” I tell her, grateful for the easy question.
“That’s on the opposite side of the country. Did you just move here?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“I was tired of small-town life, not much excitement. And I wanted the challenge of California wildfires. To do my job where it’s most needed.”
She flinches, and I realize too late how that must sound to a firefighter’s widow.
“And,” I add quickly, “I moved to this housing complex because it’s the nicest apartment building…”
To my surprise, she joins in, finishing the sentence with me: “…closest to the station.”
Her face does that pained thing again, the expression I’ve come to recognize as grief punching her unexpectedly.
“It’s the same reason we moved in here,” she says quietly, using that plural again. “I should’ve moved someplace else after Daniel…” She doesn’t finish the sentence; maybe it hurts too much to. She falls silent, her eyes fixed on the middle distance between us.
I want to ask why she stayed, what keeps her here surrounded by memories. But I sense she’s already shared more than she intended. The last thing I want is to push her back into her shell.
Thankfully, the doorbell rings.
“That must be the food.” She looks relieved as she sets down her bottle and heads for the door.
I watch her go, taking another sip of my beer.
Even with the false starts and rough edges, Lily Finnigan draws me in.
Sure, there’s that unspoken, brother’s-widow line I shouldn’t cross.
But I’m on the hook. For the resilience stitched into everything she does, the way she shoulders what most people would crumble under, and the glimpses of humor beneath her guarded exterior.
Lily had no problem roasting me in that ER. And I loved every second of it.
As I stand in her kitchen, surrounded by evidence of the life she’s rebuilt from the ruins of a tragedy, I vow to get a smile out of Lily Finnigan before the evening is over.