Epilogue
WYATT
Andy and I spent the winter fixing up her father's house.
The tenants had kept it in good shape, but Andy wanted to make it ours.
We'd drive over from West Ashmont on our days off and I'd do whatever she pointed at.
We repainted the interiors, recarpeted the floors, and shopped for new furniture.
Birdie claimed the room with the window facing the backyard on the first visit.
Andy offered Barb the room downstairs and told her it was hers.
Barb walked through the front door on moving day and looked around.
"It's a beautiful home."
We threw a housewarming the first weekend our days off coincided.
Andy strung lights across the fence posts and borrowed a folding table from the station. I stood at the grill and watched the yard fill up.
"You're pressing them. You can't press the burgers. You're squeezing all the juice out."
"Travis, go sit down."
He pointed at me with his beer on the way back to the table where Knox, Greene, Carl and his wife Jill were sitting. Jill was telling a story that had Greene laughing hard enough to choke on his drink.
The Parks came with Suzie and Leon, who found Travis within five minutes and got a high five without missing a beat.
Doug and Diana came through the side gate with Julie and Katie, Rocky on Doug's lead, and Duchess the cat in a pink stroller that Katie was pushing across the grass. Andy had arranged playdates with Doug's girls last summer, and Birdie loved their cat so much she'd been begging for one ever since.
"You brought Duchess!" Birdie and Suzie ran up to Julie and Katie.
"Why don't you go show them your room, Bird?"
Julie, the elder of the two, picked up the cat and all four girls scrambled toward the back door.
"No running!" Diana shouted.
Brandon and his wife came with their three boys, who hit the backyard at full speed. Brandon grabbed a beer and sat down next to Carl.
Selena and Terrence arrived together. She set a bottle on the table and he shook my hand on his way to grab a plate. He and Jeremy ended up setting out food on the folding table.
Captain Thompson and his wife were sitting with Zeus and Barb at the far end of the table. Zeus was in a button-down and slacks, sitting with his back straight, nodding and smiling while Thompson talked. He carried himself like he was at a business dinner, not a backyard barbecue.
I looked across the yard and found Andy. She was laughing at something Diana said, a plate in one hand.
She caught me looking.
I mouthed I love you.
She smiled and mouthed it back.
The house was quiet by ten. Barb had gone to her room with a book. Birdie was asleep in hers, still in the clothes she'd worn to the barbecue because I'd lost the bedtime argument.
I heard the water running.
We'd replaced the bathtub the week before.
The old one was narrow and short, built in a decade when apparently nobody over five-eight took a bath.
Andy picked the new one out herself. She stood in the store looking at it for a long time, running her hand along the edge, and I knew better than to rush her.
That tub meant something to her that went past the plumbing.
I gave her fifteen minutes. Then I walked into the bathroom.
Three candles on the ledge. The room smelled like vanilla. Andy was in the tub with her hair up and her shoulders under the water, her eyes closed.
She opened one eye.
"No."
"I haven't said anything yet."
"You're standing in the doorway. I know what you're thinking."
I pulled my shirt over my head.
"Wyatt."
I dropped it on the floor.
"This is my thing. I've told you this is my thing."
"And now it's our thing." I stepped out of my jeans.
"That is not how this works."
"You bought a tub that fits two people."
"I bought a tub that fits me with room to stretch out."
I stepped into the water and sat down across from her. She exhaled through her nose.
"You're impossible," she said.
"I've been told."
She looked at me through the steam. Her hair was falling loose from the clip. Her skin was flushed from the heat. The candlelight caught the ring on her finger where her hand rested on the edge of the tub.
She didn't tell me to get out.
I reached for her under the water and pulled her toward me. Her back settled against my chest. I wrapped my arms around her and she let her head fall back against my shoulder.
The candles flickered. The water settled. I felt her breathing slow.
I pressed my lips to the side of her neck. She tilted her head to give me more room. My hand moved down her stomach and she inhaled.
"Wyatt..."
"Tell me to stop."
She didn't.
My fingers found her and she arched against me. The water moved with her. I kissed her neck, her jaw, the spot below her ear that made her breath catch. She reached back and gripped my thigh, her nails pressing into my skin.
"Right there," she whispered.
I kept my hand steady. Her breathing changed.
She turned her head and I kissed her. The water was warm around us, her body warm against mine, and she was making sounds against my mouth that I wanted to hear for the rest of my life.
Her hips moved against my hand and I felt the tension build through every part of her that was pressed to mine.
She let go slowly. Her whole body tightened and then released, her head falling back against my shoulder, her hand gripping my thigh hard enough to leave a mark. I held her through it. The water settled. The candles kept flickering.
She turned in the tub to face me, water running off her shoulders. She put her hands on my chest and looked at me. "Hi."
She kissed me as she slid her hand down my chest, down my stomach, under the water. She found me and I stopped thinking about anything else.
"I love you," she said against my mouth.
"I love you too." My voice didn't sound like mine.
She stayed close, her forehead against mine, her hand steady. The water shifted between us. My fingers dug into her hips. I said her name when I finished, and she kissed the corner of my mouth.
We stayed in the water until it started to cool. Her back against my chest, my arms around her, her fingers tracing lines on my forearm.
"For the record," she said, "you're still not invited."
"I'll remember that next time I'm already in the tub."
She laughed. I felt it in my chest.
I looked at the candles on the ledge, the steam on the mirror, the woman in my arms.
This was hers. The bath, the candles, the quiet. She built it for herself a long time ago, and now she was sharing it with me.
I was just glad she let me in.
I kissed Andy on the way out the door the next morning. She was already in uniform, badge on her belt, coffee in hand. I was in mine.
The tones dropped that afternoon.
The house was fully involved when we pulled up.
Flames through every window on the first floor, smoke rolling thick and black from the eaves. A man was on the front lawn in a t-shirt and boxers, barefoot on the grass, holding a little girl against his chest. He was shouting at us before the engine stopped.
"My neighbor—she's still in there! Second floor. She was home, I saw her light on."
Captain Thompson assigned the attack. Knox and Greene took the interior search. Travis and I pulled the hose line to the Alpha side and started putting water on the first floor to buy them time.
The radio crackled with updates. Greene called out conditions from the stairwell. Smoke was banking down hard on the second floor. Visibility near zero.
I kept the line steady and watched the front door.
Two minutes later, Greene came out. He pulled his mask off and shook his head at the captain. "Couldn't get past the hallway on two. Knox went deeper."
Thompson keyed his radio. "Sullivan, report."
Static.
"Sullivan, report your position."
Nothing. I counted the seconds in my head. I always did when one of ours went quiet. The line in my hands felt heavier.
Then the front door darkened and Knox came through the smoke carrying a woman.
He came down the porch steps and crossed the lawn in long, steady strides. She was limp against his chest, her arms around his neck, her face pressed into his turnout coat.
He knelt on the grass and laid her down. She was coughing, her eyes half open, trying to focus. Her face was covered in soot. Her hair was matted and wet.
Knox pulled his mask off and leaned down to check her breathing. He put his hand on the back of her head to support it, and she looked up at him.
Knox went still.
I'd seen Knox Sullivan work hundreds of calls.
He carried people out of buildings, pulled kids from car wrecks, did CPR on someone's grandmother in a parking lot.
He was the steadiest man on the crew. His hands didn't shake and his face didn't change.
He did the work, filed the report, and went home.
Not this time. He looked at her like he'd seen a ghost.
The medics were running across the lawn with the gurney. I heard Travis calling to me about the hose line. The fire was still going. There was work to do.
But I stood there.
Knox leaned down close to her. His hand was still behind her head. Her fingers were on his neck, right where the scar ran from below his ear to his collarbone. She was looking at him like she was trying to place something she couldn't quite reach.
I thought about the hospital. Knox had slowed down in the ER corridor that day.
His eyes drifted across the nurses' station.
When I asked if he was looking for someone, he said no.
At the gas station on Boulder Highway, he tracked two women in scrubs across the entire store without realizing he was doing it.
Every time I brought it up, I got the same answer. Nobody. Nothing.
Years of watching Knox Sullivan look for someone he wouldn't name.
I was close enough to hear him.
"I've been trying to find you for the last two years."