16. Midnight Confessions
Chapter sixteen
Midnight Confessions
Sterling
Midnight is a heavy thing in this loft. The industrial windows leak the orange glow of the Chicago streetlights, but I'm not looking at them.
I'm lying on top of the covers, staring at the ceiling, running my thumb along my own jaw the way I did to hers at The Inked Teacup.
The memory keeps replaying with the same relentless rhythm.
The first crack of thunder rolls through the brickwork before I hear it in the sky, a violent, bone-shaking groan, a low-frequency warning, but I'm still thinking about the way she tasted like cold brew and something I don't have a name for yet.
The lights flicker once, twice, casting jagged, strobe-like glimmers across the exposed beams, and then die with a soft, final click.
The hum of the refrigerator cuts out. The digital clock on the nightstand vanishes.
The warehouse plunges into a darkness so thick I can almost feel it pressing against my skin.
The only remaining sound is the sudden, frantic drumming of rain against the glass, a chaotic percussion that drowns out the quiet hum of my own breathing.
I don't move for a second, my military training keeping me still while my eyes adjust to the void. My years in the service taught me to respect the dark, to listen for the cadence of movement within it. Then I hear it. A soft scuffle from the kitchen, followed by the sharp, indignant yowl of a tri colored furball who clearly blames the weather on the nearest available human. Thankfully, that’s not me.
"Mandy?" I call out. My voice sounds rough, catching on the dry air of the bedroom. I clear my throat, the sound feeling loud in the vacuum of the power outage.
"I'm fine," her voice floats back, sounding small and slightly breathless. "Just currently losing a territorial dispute with a cat who thinks the darkness is a personal affront."
I grab my phone, the screen acting as a tiny, blinding beacon in the gloom.
I find her in the kitchen, a silhouette against the stainless steel of the fridge.
She's wearing one of my navy t-shirts, the one with the faded department logo on the chest that I thought I'd lost, and her auburn hair is a chaotic nest around her face.
She looks vulnerable and beautiful in a way that makes the kiss from earlier flare up in my memory like a fresh burn.
"Search and rescue mission?" I ask, keeping my tone light to mask the way my pulse is currently hammering a rhythm that has nothing to do with the storm. I sweep the phone light across the counter, illuminating the scattered remains of her sketchbook and a half-eaten apple.
"Candles," she says, pulling open a drawer with more force than necessary. The rattle of silverware echoes through the cavernous space. "I know I saw them. Somewhere between the menus for the Thai place you like and the stack of mysterious Allen wrenches that seem to multiply in the dark."
I join her our shoulders brush, and the contact sends a jolt of static through my arm.
My phone light cuts a beam across the counter and I watch as she tugs at a stubborn drawer, wrestling with it.
She gives up, but before she can move to the next I step in, and go straight to the lower cabinet beside the fridge and pull it open.
Inside, tucked behind a roll of duct tape, are the candles: tea lights mostly, and a few half-burned pillars that smell faintly of vanilla and old dust.
I strike a match, and light three pillars, setting them on the kitchen island.
The light is soft, flickering, casting long, dancing shadows against the exposed brick.
It makes the loft feel smaller, more intimate, as if the rest of the world has been erased by the rain drumming against the industrial windows.
Outside, the city is a blur of gray water and shadows, but in here, there's only the amber glow and the smell of vanilla.
"Living room?" she asks, already moving toward it with one of the pillar candles held out in front of her like a lantern. The flame bends and recovers with each step.
I carry the rest and set them on the coffee table, the low light catching the grain of the wood.
Mandy drops onto the couch and pulls the throw blanket from the back of it over her legs.
Bowie follows at his own pace, stepping onto the cushion between us, turning once, and settling with his back to me in what I can only interpret as a statement.
Outside, the rain has become a constant, rhythmic roar, sealing us inside this amber circle.
The rest of Chicago might as well not exist.
"Truth or dare?" Mandy asks. She's tracing the rim of a tea light with her fingernail, her face half-hidden in shadow. The flickering light catches the curve of her bottom lip, and I have to look away to keep my head on straight.
"Pick one, Hayes."
"Fine," I say, sinking back into the cushions. I stare at the ceiling, where the candlelight throws slow, shifting shapes against the exposed beams. "Truth."
She doesn't hesitate. Her gaze is level, stripping away the irony of the game.
"Why haven't you had a serious relationship since Priya?
And don't give me the 'busy with the shift' excuse.
I know how many 24/48s you pull, and I know how many nights you spend staring at that wall. I want the real reason."
The honesty in her voice stops the joke I had ready.
I look at the candle, the flame dancing in the draft from the windows.
I could tell her about the exhaustion, the way the job hollows you out until there's nothing left for someone else.
I could talk about the trauma of seeing people at their worst moments and the difficulty of coming home to a quiet apartment after that. But that's only half the truth.
“There isn't just one reason.” I answer vaguely and yet truthfully, but she looks at me and I know she's waiting for a real answer.
“The job takes something out of you,” I say, keeping my eyes on the candle.
“Not just the physical part. You come home and sometimes you're still in it, still in the building, still hearing it. Priya didn’t love me, she loved that I was a “hero” like it was some kind of fucked up conversation piece.” I pause and let out a dry laugh.
“But she didn't like what the reality of what being with someone like me means and I don't blame her.
Not everyone's built for it. The military was the same way. You learn fast who can handle the version of you that comes home.”
“Does it ever wear on you?" she asks. "Being the one who holds everything up?”
I watch the wax run down the side of the candle.
“When I was a kid I figured out that people don't throw away the things that they need.
Then I was adopted and I figured that the way you make yourself someone worth keeping is by being indispensable.
You be the one who shows up. You be the one who doesn't crack.
The crew, the people I carry out of buildings, you, when it gets bad, you all know I'll be there. And I need that. I need to be needed."
The flame gutters in a draft and steadies again. "But a fire always goes out eventually. And I genuinely don't know what's underneath all of it. Whether anyone would want the version of me that's just… this. A guy on a floor in the dark with nothing to save."
The silence that follows isn't awkward; it's thick with the weight of the confession.
Mandy doesn't look away. She reaches out, her fingers grazing the scar on my forearm, a jagged reminder of a roof collapse three years ago.
Her touch is light, but it feels like a physical brand, a tether to the present moment. Her eyes are dark, searching mine.
"You've spent so long being the thing between people and the fire," she says softly, "that you forgot you're also just a person who can get burned." She pauses, her thumb resting still against the scar.
"My turn," I say, my voice lower now, gravelly. I need to move the spotlight before I crack open entirely. "Truth - or - Dare Sparkles?”
It took her a moment to register the sudden shift in mood and conversation. “Truth.”
“Why did you really stop dating after Derek? You told your parents it was about work, but I've seen you work. You don't stop living for a deadline. You use the deadline to hide from the rest of the world.”
She pulls her hand back, wrapping her arms around her knees, hugging herself tight.
The flickering light catches the gleam of dampness in her eyes.
“My parents' marriage was a negotiation.
My mom gave up her art, my dad gave up his weekends, and they both called it love.
They called it sacrifice. Then Derek came along and made me feel like I had to earn my spot in his life every single day.
If the dinner was five minutes late, if I wasn't the perfect, polished version of the girl he wanted to show off... the love was withdrawn. Just like that. It was conditional.”
She pauses, a single tear tracing a path through the dust on her cheek.
“I realized I don't know the difference between loving someone and performing for them.
I'm so good at the performance, the 'good daughter,' the 'perfect girlfriend', that I stopped trusting the feeling altogether.
I look in the mirror and I don't know which parts of me are real and which parts are just designed to make someone else happy.”
She says it so plainly it hurts. It's the same performance we've been doing for her parents, the same lie we've been living in this loft for the last two weeks.
But I look at her, her face washed in candlelight and her hair messy and her eyes honest, and the performance has been dead for a long time.
There is no audience here. No Robert and Carol.
No Station 99 crew to judge the shift in my posture.
There is only the heat between us and the sound of the rain.