Wrecked with Fire Excerpt
“James.”
Before seven in the morning, my last name isn’t what I want to hear in that tone. After my last shift at the station, I knew it was coming. Knew I would have to face my decisions.
The chatter around the room quiets, the rustling and movement stalling like a broken-down car on the highway. My skin pricks with pins and needles, the spotlight turned on me. I brought this on myself. I know it.
There’s nothing I would change.
Half-turning from my bunker where I’m unhooking my jacket from the peg, I meet brown eyes that are as hard and cold as granite. Captain Bernard.
I incline my head. “Captain.”
“My office.”
Not once does his attention stray from me. Not to greet the rest of the crew, not to look at them. It’s unlike him, even on a bad day. He always has time for people. It’s one reason he’s so respected as a captain.
My hand slides down the length of the heavy, textured jacket, the material a balm to my callused fingers. My lifeline to a world that keeps me going day in and day out. I give him a nod, but before I take a step to follow him, I feel a hand clap against my left shoulder blade.
“It’ll be okay,” Liam says only for me to hear. “Slap on the wrist.”
We both know it’ll be more than that.
Captain Bernard doesn’t wait for me. He walks at a clip through a door leading to the admin side of the station. I follow thirty paces behind him, but at my six-foot-five stature, my long legs make up some of the distance as I go through the beige door that leads me into the offices.
A long counter runs the length of the room to my right, the desks of our administration team still quiet at the early time. They won’t get here for another half an hour or so.
Good. They won’t witness the ass chewing I’m about to receive.
As I round the corner of the counter, Captain Bernard enters his office, and I nearly come up short when I realize it’s not vacant.
My lieutenant is standing at the side of the captain’s desk, arms crossed over his chest. Even from this distance I can see the thin line his lips make.
Disappointment.
If I had any hope of this meeting being good, it vanishes at the sight of the steely blue-eyed man staring at me.
Nate Miller. Not only my lieutenant, but one of my best friends.
We’ve been fighting fire side by side for twelve years.
He stood beside me at my wedding. I stood by him at his.
I’ve watched him grow into the role he’s currently in.
He’s watched me become… whatever the hell I am these days.
“Have a seat,” Captain Bernard says when I reach the doorway.
He gestures to one of the sage-green visitor chairs in front of his oak desk at the same time as he pulls out his black, faux leather office chair. A hand skims down the front of his white polo shirt with the Santa Rosé Fire Department emblem on it as he takes a seat.
With another glance at Nate, who hasn’t given up his one-sided staring contest, I pull one of the chairs out and fold my body into it.
Like a lot of chairs, it’s not comfortable for me.
The rail of the arms cuts into my thighs, the seat feels too small for my ass, and the back doesn’t come up much more than halfway the length of my spine.
Picking up a silver pen on his desk, Captain Bernard taps it against a light beige file folder. I don’t miss my name on it.
His desk is tidy besides that. A laptop sitting to the side. A computer screen on the other side of the L-shaped desk shows a generic screen saver. Nothing personal. The space is used by every captain in the station; not the kind of space to spruce up with personality.
Probably makes these meetings easier to deal with when a picture of your family isn’t staring at you.
It’s why I don’t have pictures of Heather anywhere at home. It makes everything easier.
“Do you know why you’re here?” Captain Bernard asks.
To get read the riot act. To be reprimanded for making a shit decision on the blaze last shift that almost took the life of one of my friends.
Possibly two, if I hadn’t gotten there when I did.
I have little doubt that Wyatt, the new guy on the crew, would have let himself burn right beside the woman he’d fallen in love with if he couldn’t get her out.
Which is why we’re here.
I let him put himself into that position. I made the call that it was okay to go back into the fire without someone else with him. Instead of forcing him out of the building with the victim we had found.
We live by a lot of rules in the fire station. We have a code we have to abide by. I broke one of the most important ones.
Two in, two out. Never leave a brother or sister behind.
They weren’t there. They didn’t know what we knew. They didn’t see what I saw. Didn’t feel what I felt.
If we had both left to come back, Wyatt would have ended up in the same situation that I’ve found myself in for the last six years. Living without the love of his life.
And that’s only if he’d made it out. I don’t think he would have. If he did, he wouldn’t have been the same man he had been going in.
Ask me how I know.
“Educated guess,” I finally reply, the question having hung for longer than was probably appropriate. But both the captain and lieutenant who are scrutinizing me know I have no problem letting silence hang in the air while I gather thoughts.
“Enlighten us,” Nate challenges.
The captain’s eyes flicker, but he refrains from looking directly at the man standing to the side of us both. I, on the other hand, meet Nate’s eyes.
At one time, there was no space between us.
Between Nate, Liam, and me, we were always on the same page.
After dealing with an arsonist the last few months, it feels like there are worlds between us.
A distance that’s been growing for a while, but what once felt like a football field now seems like a galaxy.
It kills me.
“Reprimanded for the fire at—”
“You’re suspended,” Nate snaps.
I push the chair back, springing to my feet. “Excuse me?”
“You left him alone—”
“—she would have died.”
“He could have been killed!”
“And then they’d both be dead! Is that what you want?”
“Gentlemen,” Captain Bernard barks loudly, stepping between the two of us. “Enough.”
With every word we shot at each other, Nate and I stepped closer to each other until we were face to face. His nostrils are flaring; my chest is heaving. There are so many things we've left unspoken.
“Brody, sit down,” the captain commands. To Nate he says, “If you can’t handle yourself, you can see yourself out and deal with role call. Not another word from you, Miller.”
Grinding my teeth together, I force myself back into the uncomfortable chair. Getting a grip on the arms of them, I push them away from my body, wanting the metal to bend to my will and make the damn thing wider. I hate the way it presses in on me. How this room is pressing in on me.
Nate steps back until he leans against the wall, arms crossing over his chest. He’s glaring at me, but I don’t look at him.
I don’t look at the captain, either. My eyes are glued on the silver pen that must have been tossed on the desk because it’s haphazardly hanging over the edge.
The slightest bump to the table would have it falling over the ledge.
I wonder if I blew on it, if that would be enough to send it to an unknown fate below.
Where it could be trampled on, rolled over, or maybe, if it was lucky, the floor would just open up and swallow it whole.
“Brody,” the captain says, sitting back down in the chair across from me. The pen moves a fraction when he pulls himself closer to the desk, but doesn’t fall.
I grunt in response, not trusting anything else that might come out of my mouth.
“We understand the circumstances. We got lucky with the outcome; it could have turned out very differently.”
They think I don’t know that? I haven’t stopped thinking about it since I left Wyatt there. I know he could have died. I know she could have too. I’m well aware that I could have had two more deaths on my conscience.
Every day I live with the consequences of the choices I made years ago. They don’t need to tell me that things could have been different. I know firsthand.
“That doesn’t mean we can let your actions go unpunishable,” the captain continues. “There are rules so we can protect each other. We don’t have much of a choice.”
But she would have died. And then it wouldn’t have mattered if Wyatt was out of the building or not. He would have died too.
They don’t get it.
No one gets it.
I don’t want them to understand. Don’t want them to walk the path that I walk.
“We have to suspend you.”
He bumps his desk as the words come out of his mouth, and I watch, as if it’s in slow motion, as the pen loses it’s battle with hanging onto the ledge.
Then it’s gone.
I’m not far behind.
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Coming 2027