Chapter 1 #2
Before she could take another one, someone latched onto her and dragged her down the steps. Shaky hands unfastened her helmet and chucked it across the grass. They ripped her mask from her face, pulling her braided hair tangled in the straps. She winced as strands of her hair tore from her skull.
She heaved the smoke from her lungs and wiped her mouth. Soot stained the back of her hand. She turned, and Charlie blocked any remnants of the afternoon sun. His big umber eyes were wide with terror as he gaped at her.
“That was close,” she coughed.
§
After Charlie stripped Amaris of her SCBA and turnout coat, she fought him to the rehab area. He held tight to the collar of her drenched shirt, dragging her from the fire scene.
“I can walk on my own,” she grumbled, but he was silent.
Amaris could’ve smiled at how well Charlie recognized her desire to jump back in, but not after that disaster.
He refused to release her from his iron grip until he shoved her into a camping chair.
He wasn’t the biggest on the department, but he had an innate strength.
It was the first reason her chief had thrown around the table when deciding whether to hire him two years back.
Her eyes were pinned to the front porch, her nails biting into the armrest. All her muscles tensed as she waited for her best friend to exit the house.
“Come on, Viv,” she mumbled.
A plume of smoke billowed as the front door flew open. Viv and her partner tore through the opening with the victims wrapped in webbing. The newly arrived crews flocked to them, getting the victims onto stretchers.
Amaris sank into her chair, relief overcoming her as her limbs grew heavy.
A water bottle landed in her lap, and Charlie stepped back and sprawled into the grass, drenching his beet-red and sweaty face with an entire water bottle.
Amaris burrowed deeper into her chair and drank half the bottle in a single chug.
What just happened? she thought before taking a breath that was immediately sucked back out as Chief stomped toward her. His helmet skimmed above his scrunched eyebrows and his hazel eyes narrowed in on her.
“What the hell was that, Lieutenant?” His words were sharp, and he shook his head as he stalked closer.
“Chief, I—”
“You stayed in well past your low air alarms, you didn’t exit after we sounded the evacuation signal, and you shouldn’t have been in there in the first place!”
Amaris’s stomach dropped as Chief’s eyes trailed to Charlie’s exhausted form taking root in the grass. “I know, but—”
“Nothing is more important than your safety! When you get back to the station, I want your ass in my office. Do you understand?”
She bit her tongue and her shame. “Yes, Chief,” she replied, trying not to let her frustration seep through.
He returned to the fire and marched toward Lartondale’s chief, likely to scream at him for sending Viv and her partner in. The house creaked, and the roof collapsed in on itself. Amaris leaned forward, pinching the bridge of her nose—fuck.
As she tore her hand away, Viv strode toward her. Wrapping her arms around Viv was all she wanted to do, but her body refused any notion of getting out of the chair.
Viv stripped herself of her gear, casting them aside in the yard as her ruby braid swished back and forth behind her. With Amaris’s boot clutched tightly in her pale fingers, she narrowed her teal eyes.
“Do you have a death wish?” Viv asked, dropping her boot. The smell of burnt rubber overpowered Viv’s rose-scented perfume.
“People were trapped,” Amaris said, hauling the clunky boot over her foot.
Viv was a fierce woman standing at six-foot with an immense amount of muscle and strength.
Folding her freckled arms, she gave Amaris a flat look before plopping in a chair beside her.
Viv tapped her black nails along the armrest, eyeing the house as flames engulfed the upper story and the new crews manned the hose lines.
She returned her attention back to Amaris, her braid falling over her shoulder. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” Amaris assured her, but she shifted her gaze to Chief, standing with a scowl lining his lips. Viv raised her brows. “Fine, I’m not. Why were you in there? The air horn—”
“You had a victim,” she said. “You weren’t going to evacuate.”
“You can’t risk your life like that.”
“You can, but I can’t?”
Amaris dropped her head in her hands. “That’s not what I meant. You went in knowing full well the roof would collapse.”
“I had my guardian angel at my back.” Viv smirked.
Amaris ground her teeth. Viv may have believed in the protection of the supernatural universe, but Amaris never felt the presence of a positive energy or even a god when she was throwing her life on the line every day. “We were already upstairs.”
“And you would be dead and out of air if I hadn’t come to help you.”
Amaris held back her frustration, sitting on her hands to cease their trembling as the adrenaline faded from her system.
“Fuck, Mar.” Viv sighed, gripping the outer edges of her arms. “I’m sorry.”
“I could’ve killed you all because I decided to go in,” Amaris huffed, forcing back the sting in her eyes. “This was my first fire as a lieutenant, and I blew it.”
Viv gripped her shoulder, pulling her in for a hug. “You should’ve taken off today.”
Relief settled over Amaris with Viv’s arms wrapped around her. She squelched the beginnings of a sob. She always took a vacation day on the anniversary of the shipwreck, but at twenty-five, shouldn’t she have been able to stave off the heartache of her parents’ deaths by now?
It’s been seventeen years, she reminded herself, but no matter how much she wanted to forget that horrible day, she couldn’t.
“I thought I could push through,” she lied, thumbing the ruby in her silver engagement ring.
The thought of spending an entire day at home, mulling over her and her fiancé’s fight threatened to boil her stomach.
She asked for one thing from Derek, but apparently setting a wedding date was too much for him.
She cringed as their argument from last night repeated in her head, spinning to the endless track of the longest engagement ever.
Viv eyed the paramedic walking toward them with the vitals monitor and lowered her voice.
“We’ll talk more later if you want. We all made it out.
Don’t forget that.” With a flick of her braid, she was gone, directing the eager young man with the clunky monitor toward another pack of exhausted firefighters.
Amaris would forever be grateful for Viv, even if they bickered like siblings.
She’d first met Viv at the fire academy.
Viv had been loud and boisterous, everything Amaris wasn’t at the time.
She’d fit in regardless of what the other cadets had whispered about the two of them.
Hormonal misfits had been a favorite insult murmured under their classmates’ breaths.
Being the only two women in their class, they’d automatically been roommates.
Sharing their first box of tampons five years ago in that cramped dorm room had solidified their friendship.
Amaris sighed and picked her chair up, dropping it inches from Charlie’s head. A few of his dark-brown strands clung to his forehead and others stuck out at odd angles. Sweat soaked the fibers of his navy shirt, leaving two thick lines where his bunker pants suspenders had been.
“How are you?” she asked.
“Exhausted.” A short reply for a drained soul.
“I hope you’re ready for round two. I sense a second fire in my bones tonight.”
She bit her lip, balling her fists in anxious anticipation. They used to play a game of guessing what their next call would be. She hoped her attempt at humor could rally his spirits. At least one of them needed to not feel like shit about themselves.
“Yeah, whatever you say.” He raised a trembling fist, his muscles fatigued.
A twinge twisted in her gut. A few months ago, he would’ve guessed an iguana stuck in a tree or some other ridiculous call. Now, with her promotion to lieutenant, he’d backed off on the jokes.
“I don’t expect you to want two fires in one shift.” Amaris guessed, if he was playing the role of firefighter, she should offer some kind of positive feedback as his superior officer. “I do appreciate the enthusiasm.”
He rolled his head lazily to the side, raising a dark brow. “I knew what I was getting into when I applied for the job.”
She picked at the chipped pink nail polish on the edge of her thumbnail. “What about a lieutenant who could’ve gotten you killed today?”
The guilt dropped on her shoulders like a load of bricks. It was one thing to risk her own life, but Charlie had stayed in with her.
He let out a sigh and sat, grasping his knees. “I’ve worked with you for two years, Amaris. I know you,” he said. “You don’t sit back and play it safe. That’s the kind of leader I want to be someday.”
That should’ve been a comfort, but it dropped another load of weights, sending her further recoiling into the chair. She was his lieutenant now, and it was her job to keep him safe.
“Don’t ask me to leave you behind,” he added. “I won’t do it.”
She remembered the mumbled gossip around the firehouse, constantly whispering about whether she was ready for the role or had what it took. Maybe I don’t, she thought, but she forced a grin. She couldn’t agree to any of it. Not to Charlie or Viv. They were her friends—she couldn’t risk their lives.