Dancing with Fire #2
I don’t wait for her to agree. I slide my hand down to her waist, the contact possessive and deliberate, and I guide her toward the center of the floor.
She comes without a second of resistance, her body molding against mine as if we’d never been apart.
Behind us, I feel Derek’s eyes like a cold draft, but I don’t give him the satisfaction of a glance.
The band is playing something slow and orchestral, a swelling melody that feels like it’s being written for this exact second.
We reach the middle of the dance floor and I turn her into my arms. One hand stays at her waist, pulling her flush against me, while the other takes her hand, my thumb tracing the line of her knuckles.
She’s trembling. The vibration of it travels through me, a rhythmic tremor that matches the pounding of my own heart.
For three minutes, the rest of the room vanishes.
The noise of the crowd, the clinking of silverware, the judgment of my peers, it all burns away in the heat between us.
“You’re here,” I whisper, the words buried in the curve of her neck. The scent of her, hibiscus and something sweet, like jasmine, is an assault on my senses. It’s the smell of home. It’s the smell of the loft at midnight. It’s the smell of everything I almost threw away.
“I’m here,” she says, her voice muffled against my chest. She doesn’t pull away.
She leans into me, her forehead resting against the silver buttons of my jacket.
“I didn’t know if I should. After the loft.
After the way I just... left. After the way we both just stopped talking because the truth was too heavy. ”
“The dress,” I say, my hand tightening at her waist. I pull her closer, until there’s no air between us, until I can feel the frantic pounding of her heart against my ribs, matching mine beat for beat. “Mandy. The dress. Why?”
She pulls back just enough to look at me, her brown eyes swimming with something I can’t quite name.
Fear? Hope? It’s a kaleidoscope of emotions that I want to spend the rest of my life decoding.
“It’s the color of the ties. I wanted to walk in here and have every person in this room know exactly whose side I was on. ”
“There is no performance,” I say, the truth of it finally breaking through the walls I’ve spent years building.
The ballroom vanishes. The five hundred people watching us don’t exist. There is only the weight of her hand in mine and the way she looks in this light.
“Mandy, look at me. There is no audience. Your parents aren’t here.
My crew doesn’t matter. I’m not doing this for them.
I’m not dancing with you because it looks good for my reputation. ”
She swallows hard, her throat working against the tension. “Then why are you doing it? Why did you cross the room like the building was coming down?”
“Because I can’t stand the idea of anyone else touching you,” I say, my voice sounding raw and stripped of its professional veneer.
“Because I’ve spent three days in a loft that feels like an empty warehouse again, and I realized that I don’t want a sanctuary.
I don’t want a quiet life if you aren’t in it.
I want you. Even if it’s messy. Even if it’s terrifying.
I want the fire, Sparkles. I’m tired of playing it safe. ”
She lets out a breath that sounds like a sob, her eyes closing as she rests her cheek against my shoulder.
We sway together, the music a distant hum.
It’s the first time in weeks that the silence between us hasn’t felt like a weapon.
It has texture now, the velvet of the dress, the wool of my uniform, the heat of our bodies joined at the hip.
It’s a conversation we’ve been having since the morning I found her in one slipper on a curb, a dialogue of touch and rescue that finally found its words.
“You look stunning,” I murmur into her hair.
It’s not a line. It’s not a part of the act.
It’s a statement of fact, as undeniable as gravity.
“I think I forgot to say that. Between the rescue mission and the heart failure. You’re the most beautiful thing in this entire city, and I’m a fool for letting you walk out that door. ”
She laughs, a small, wet sound that makes the tightness in my chest finally start to loosen. “You aren’t having heart failure, Sterling. You’re a paramedic. You’d know the symptoms.”
“I’m pretty sure I’m currently in V-fib,” I say, my hand sliding up her back, my fingers tracing the delicate line of her spine. The curve of her waist feels like it was designed for my palm. “And you’re the only one who can shock me back. You’re the only one who ever has.”
The song starts to wind down, the violin notes lingering in the air like smoke after a flame is extinguished.
Neither of us moves. We’re locked in our own private orbit, a two-person ecosystem that refuses to acknowledge the reality of the room.
I can feel the eyes on us, Jake’s smug grin from the bar, Priya’s quiet, knowing observation, but they’re ghosts.
They have no weight here. This isn’t a charade anymore.
The performative distance has shifted into a visceral, magnetic pull that I have no desire to resist.
The music stops, but I don’t let go. I keep my hand firmly on her waist, my other hand still lacing through hers, fingers entwined.
I’m a man who has spent a decade learning exactly how much weight a thing can take before it goes, and right now she is the only thing holding me up.
If I let go, I don’t think I come back out.
“Ahem.”
The sound is sharp and intrusive, a jagged edge cutting through the peace of the moment.
I don’t even have to look to know who it is.
Derek is standing two feet away, his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes narrowed as he looks at Mandy.
He doesn’t look like a man who’s lost; he looks like a man who’s waiting for the punchline, for the ’fake’ part of the evening to resume so he can take back what he thinks is his.
“I believe this is the part where we cut in,” Derek says, his voice loud enough to draw the attention of the couples around us, his tone patronizing.
He offers a hand to Mandy, his smile oily and sharp.
“It’s a ball, Sterling. Sharing is encouraged.
The department is all about community, right?
And Mandy and I have a lot to talk about regarding that New York move.
Real plans. Not just... temporary arrangements. ”
I feel Mandy stiffen, her fingers digging into my shoulder through the heavy fabric of my jacket.
The mention of New York is a deliberate strike, a reminder of the distance she’s been considering, the exit strategy she keeps in her back pocket.
Derek thinks he can use her fear of staying to pull her away.
He thinks he can leverage her parents’ expectations and his own version of ’stability’ against the quiet, burning truth of what we just found on this dance floor.
He reaches for her, his fingers inches from her arm, ready to claim her like a piece of property.
I see the hesitation in Mandy’s eyes, the old habit of people-pleasing, the fear of making a scene in front of my colleagues, the worry about what her mother would say if she were here.
She’s a perfectionist; she hates a mess.
And Derek is counting on that perfectionism to keep her compliant.
I don’t give him the chance. I don’t look at Mandy for permission, because I’ve already seen the answer in the way she held onto me when the music was playing.
I pull her closer, my arm a solid, immovable band around her waist, and I step forward, closing the space between me and the man who thinks he can negotiate for her heart like it’s a corporate merger.
“No,” I say, the word simple, quiet, and final. It echoes with more authority than any command I’ve given on a fire ground. My hand tightens at Mandy’s waist, pulling her into my side, letting the whole room see exactly where she belongs. “She’s with me. And she’s not going anywhere.”
Derek doesn’t move.
For a second I think he might try it anyway, right here on the parquet in front of five hundred firefighters, and some small ugly part of me hopes he does.
But he is a lawyer. He reads a room the way I read a ceiling, and what he sees is a hundred men in dress uniform who would frankly enjoy the excuse.
So he steps back. One neat pace, jacket adjusted, the smile still bolted on.
“Of course,” he says. “Forgive me.”
And that is the part that puts a cold finger on the back of my neck, because he does not look like a man who has lost anything. He looks like a man closing a folder he intends to open again later.
“Mandy.” He says it past me, as though I am a coat rack. “When you’ve finished here. There are things you and I should talk about that have nothing to do with him, and I think you know exactly what they are.”
He lets that sit. Then he walks off toward the bar with his hands in his pockets, entirely unhurried, and I feel Mandy go very still against my side.
“Ignore him,” I say.
“I am.”
“You’re not.”
“I’m working on it.” Her fingers find the back of my hand. “Sterling, he isn’t wrong that there are things.”
“I know.”
“I need to tell you about,”
That is as far as she gets.
The alarm goes off.
Not my pager. Not the shrill personal chirp on my belt that means somebody three miles from here is having the worst day of their life.
This is the building. This is the Hilton’s own system, every horn on every floor going at once, and the sound of it in a ballroom with a fourteen-foot ceiling is a physical thing that arrives in your chest before your ears.
And here is what happens in a room containing five hundred firefighters when a fire alarm goes off.
Nothing, for about a second and a half.