Laughing hardest out of everyone
Chapter twenty-seven
Evan
Rain spits against the windshield as I pull up outside Neverland, the neon sign dark for the first time since I can remember. The handwritten paper taped to the inside of the front window shifts slightly in the draft every time someone opens the door.
Closed today for Colt Lawson.
Don’t be assholes.
– Gwen
My hands stay on the steering wheel for a second after I kill the engine, and I glance out the window.
The parking lot is packed. Fire rigs from neighboring towns line the curb beside Maplewood trucks, reflective striping glowing under the streetlights.
PD cruisers sit mixed in between them without the usual territorial parking bullshit, and through the rain-streaked glass I can already see silhouettes moving inside the bar.
So many people. Too many black clothes.
Beside me, Penny unclips her seatbelt. The bruising along her arm disappears beneath the sleeve of my hoodie, but I still see it anyway. I see all of it.
She catches me looking and gives me a small smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes.
“You okay?”
No. Not even remotely. But neither is she, and we’re both getting pretty good at pretending otherwise.
“Yeah,” I lie.
In the backseat, Elle kicks the heel of her sneaker against the booster absentmindedly while she watches rain race down the window. She’s been quieter lately. Careful in a way five-year-olds shouldn’t know how to be.
“You ready, bug?” I ask.
She nods once and reaches for the little penguin clipped to her jacket zipper before climbing out when I open the door.
Cold rain dampens my shoulders almost instantly as we cross the parking lot.
Penny moves slower than usual beside me, still healing, and without thinking, I slide my hand against the small of her back to steady her over the slick pavement.
She leans into the touch automatically, and some tightness loosens.
The second we step inside, warmth and noise hit us together.
Neverland smells like beer and fryer oil and wet jackets.
Music hums low through the speakers beneath the sound of conversations layered over each other, and every table in the place is crowded with firefighters, cops, dispatchers, town council people, and old retirees who haven’t worked a truck in twenty years but still showed up in pressed station shirts.
Gwen is behind the bar in all black, pouring whiskey into glasses with the efficiency of someone running a military operation instead of a wake.
The wall behind her has been cleared except for framed photos of Colt.
Colt grinning in turnout gear. Colt holding a fish. Colt half-drunk with his arm around Fletch after last year’s Maplewood Cup win.
My stomach folds painfully.
For one stupid second, I still expect him to walk out of the back hallway carrying spicy wings and talking shit about whoever cried over the hot sauce first. The realization hits me again when he doesn’t.
It keeps happening. Little bursts of forgetting followed by the slam of remembering.
Leah spots us first.
“Oh, thank God,” she says, already moving toward us with the determined energy of someone about to feed an army. “You three look half-starved.”
“We ate before we came,” I tell her
She knows I’m deflecting, and gives me a look that says she’d like to fight me physically. “Then you can eat twice.”
Elle gets scooped into a one-armed hug before she can protest, and for the first time all day, I hear an actual little laugh out of her when Leah kisses the top of her head.
“There’s my favorite girl.”
“I thought I was your favorite girl,” Penny says lightly.
Leah grins. “You’re in the top five.”
A faint smile pulls at Penny’s mouth, real enough that the coil in my gut eases a little. Herb appears behind Leah next, carrying a tray of empty glasses and carefully places them down on the bar for Gwen.
“There you are,” he says, turning to clap a heavy hand against my shoulder. “Rhodes was asking if you’d made it yet.”
“How’s he doin’?”
Herb exhales through his nose slowly, glancing across the bar.
“About how you’d expect.”
I follow his gaze. Chief Rhodes stands near the back corner beside Remi. She has one hand resting against the carrier holding Zela, while people stop to speak to them in quiet clusters.
He’s dressed in dark jeans and a black button-down instead of his uniform, but he still somehow looks on duty. Spine straight and expression controlled.
Remi looks like someone carved the center out of her.
She’s wearing one of Colt’s hoodies with the sleeves pulled over her hands, staring at somebody talking to her like the words are reaching her from underwater.
Every now and then, she nods automatically, but her eyes stay fixed somewhere distant.
Ghost hovers nearby, pretending not to. He’s carrying a fresh tray of drinks toward another table, but his attention keeps flicking back toward Remi without him seeming aware of it. The second someone emotional corners her too long, he drifts closer like a barrier.
Penny follows my line of sight and goes quiet beside me. Before either of us can say or do anything, Frankie appears at Penny’s elbow, holding two fresh waters and a basket of fries.
“There you are,” she says softly, pulling Penny carefully into a one-armed hug, mindful of her ribs. “I was about to send out a search party.”
“I think the entire fire department already qualifies as one,” Penny mutters.
“True.” Frankie glances over Penny quickly, in that subtle way women do when they’re checking injuries without making it obvious. “How’re you holding up?”
Penny hesitates. “I honestly don’t know.”
“Yeah,” Frankie says quietly. “Same.”
Across the room, Remi shifts Zela higher against her without really seeming aware she’s doing it, and Frankie’s eyes flick there immediately. Her mouth trembles before she presses it flat, eyes shining as she watches.
Gwen’s voice suddenly cuts across the room from the bar. “If one more firefighter leaves water rings on my damn bar tables today, I’m billing the department.”
Fletch lifts his beer. “Colt would want us disrespecting your furniture.”
“He also thought gas station hot dogs were a delicacy,” Gwen fires back.
A small ripple of laughter moves through the room. Brief, and a little rough around the edges, but real.
Fletch takes a long swallow of beer and points toward Gwen with the neck of the bottle. “You sayin’ my man died without refined taste?”
“Your man once ate an egg quiche that’d been sitting under a heat lamp long enough to qualify for a pension,” Gwen calls back dryly. “I watched him do it.”
“He had a strong immune system.”
Another small burst of laughter rolls through the room, and I catch the way people cling to it for an extra second before conversations start moving again.
It’s strange what grief does to sound. Every laugh feels sharper, every silence heavier.
Before I can think too hard about that, the front door swings open again with a gust of cold rain, and a guy I don’t recognize steps inside.
He’s tall with broad shoulders and dark, damp hair curling slightly from the weather. Mid-twenties, maybe. An Ashgrove Fire hoodie is stretched across his chest, and he pauses just inside the doorway, shaking rain from his sleeves while he scans the room.
Then somehow, impossibly, he smiles.
Not because he’s an asshole. At least, I don’t think he is. No, it’s because he clearly thinks he’s walked into some crowded firefighter bar night.
Jesus Christ.
He heads straight for the bar while peeling his hoodie off one shoulder.
“Please tell me you’re still serving,” he says to Gwen. “The motel coffee in this town tastes like it’s filtered through a sock.”
The entire room goes dead silent. Gwen stares at him and slowly sets down the glass she’s been polishing.
“Read the room, Hotshot.”
The guy blinks, then actually looks around. His eyes catch on the framed photos behind the bar, then the helmet sitting beneath them. The black ribbons pinned to shirts, the exhausted faces.
“Oh,” he says, horror draining the color from his face. “Oh, shit. I’m so sorry.”
Beside me, Fletch makes a strangled sound into his beer, trying not to laugh, which is exactly the wrong thing to do because Tucker loses it beside him. A few more people crack after that, tension splitting just enough that even Gwen’s mouth twitches reluctantly.
The poor bastard looks like he wants the floor to swallow him whole, but Herb rescues him before he can die where he stands.
“Easy, son,” he says, stepping forward with one hand lifted. “You just walked into a wake.”
The guy straightens instantly. “Right. Yeah. Sorry. Jesus.” He rubs the back of his neck. “Finn Garner. Ashgrove.”
“Rhodes mentioned they were sending someone over,” Herb says.
“That’d be me.” Finn gestures vaguely toward the rain outside. “Temporary transfer while Maplewood gets back on its feet.”
The wording hangs strangely in the room for a second, and Finn seems to realize it too, because he winces slightly. “Bad phrasing.”
“You’re really batting a thousand here, huh?” Gwen says.
To his credit, he laughs at himself immediately. “Started strong and somehow got worse.”
“Well,” Fletch says, lifting his hand toward him, “welcome to Maplewood. We humiliate ourselves publicly here too, so you’ll fit right in.”
Finn grins despite himself, his relaxed energy slipping back in now that he realizes nobody’s about to throw him through a wall. Then his gaze lands briefly on Rhodes and Remi in the back corner, and the grin fades immediately, replaced by something more solemn.
Rhodes notices the exchange and finally steps forward from the back of the room, exhaustion carved deep into the lines around his mouth.
“Garner.”
Finn straightens automatically. “Chief.”
Rhodes shakes his hand once. “Appreciate Ashgrove sending help.”
“Of course.” Finn glances around the room again, more subdued now. “Wish it was under better circumstances.”
“Yeah,” Rhodes says. “Me too.”
For a second, nobody says anything, then Leah barrels straight through the silence by shoving a tray into Finn’s hands.